Great American State Fail
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Happy Sunday, friends.
In many ways, I grew up on the National Mall. As the only child of a single mom just outside the DC border, summer vacations largely involved getting on the Metro and spending all day in the museums.
The Mall is big. Football field after football field of grass. But on a summer day, the paths along its length would be always be bustling with people from literally every corner of the world. The Smithsonian was a kaleidoscope of humanity—and to me it was magic.
That’s why the images and video coming from the “Great American State Fair” which Donald Trump’s regime says is a celebration of the semiquincentennial of America’s founding, are so shocking to me—and such a perfect visual metaphor.
To empty out the Mall so thoroughly on a weekend day is, in a twisted way, an achievement. On your average Saturday there would be—and I’m just eyeballing it—about a zillion times more people on the Mall than there are for Trump’s “fair.”
As it turns out, there was a real plan for a real celebration. The Mall would have been open, as it always has been for the Folklife Festival, instead of looking like a cordoned off military green zone in a zombie movie.
Instead of a festival of festivals, people got $27 burgers and empty exhibits. Even Vanilla Ice was cancelled. The Great American State Fail, unfortunately, is exactly what we deserve right now. When you elect a failure, failure is what you get in return.
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