It occurs to me that something is really odd about Trump rushing to start his vandalization project on the White House, and then expanding it to destroy the entire East Wing. . . . it's almost like he fears not being around to enjoy it.
Maybe he knows he's not going to be.
Maybe he fears that if he's not around the ugly garden shed won't be built.
Maybe he fears that's going to be so soon, he had to actually take steps that try to force its completion.
Why would that be?
Maybe Trump knows that he's on death's door, or maybe its something else. Let's look at the possibilities.
Trump knows he's not long for the world.
There's been some speculation on this for other reasons.
One could say he's acting weird, but he acted weird in his first term too. He's been acting extra weird. He's been talking a fair amount and expressing fears that he's going to Hell. And well he should fear it. For one thing:
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”
He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.* If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.
He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
Based on the difficulty that implies, and it is not intended to be metaphorical, Trump should fear Hell. He's been far from perfect. He's a serial polygamist for one thing, and genuinely a bad person. It appears to some extent he's trying to buy his way into Heaven with the thought that if he can secure peace in some war somewhere God will credit that and allow him to otherwise get a pass on his sins. He keep seeking reassurance from those around him that will work.
That obsession suggests that he knows he's running out of time.
Trump wants to be remembered for amount to something. He knows that much of his Presidency will be regarded as a fart in a windstorm. So he's building his own monumental mausoleum, maybe.
And in doing so, time is short. Either he'll be out of office in three years, and this is a project that for American construction would take longer than that, or he'll die before its built He well knows that if a Democrat comes into office after him, under the original plan, no ballroom would be built. He's taking steps, by destroying the entire wing, to make sure it has to be.
But even that won't. It'll just assure that something has to be done.
Trump knows that there's next to no chance of getting this monstrosity done in time.
I touched on that above, but there's every chance in the world that Trump leaves office, either at the expiration of his term, or being lead out while babbling in full dementia, and this project stops. As he departs his last glimpse of the ballroom will be of a construction project with workmen likely picking up debris.
There's a good chance that the week thereafter the construction company has cleared out and the trackhoe is back with the same operator demolishing this worthless monument.
It's a natural instinct in most people to complete a project.
And it's a natural instinct to keep and use something, once it's built. . . except for Americans.
Trump's spent a lot of time in the orbit of the high and the mighty his whole life. Since his first legitimate term in office, and now in his second illegitimate one, he's had the opportunity to see monumental public buildings that are really old, quite frankly frequently gaudy. He's not that smart of guy and he probably doesn't realize that the regimes that built such structures aren't always admired in later years, but he probably does appreciate that things Louis XIV built, or the Czars, are still being used.
The American track record isn't quite so good. We take down buildings all the time, including our athletic civil temples that were constructed at great expense. We usually get around to morning them long after they're gone.
Trump probably feels that if he can get this built, particular if the East Wing gets destroyed with it, it'll have to be built, and it'll have to stay when its built. Like Justice Kennedy, he probably naively assumes that after he's out of office, and after he's dead and gone, people will forget that he was a putz, and love him.
People aren't going to love him. He'll be remembered as the worst human being to ever occupy the Oval Office, and the building will come down. A future Democratic President will take it down to make a point, if not out of spite.
Trump is banking on nobody tearing it down (which I suspect is a pretty bad bet).
See above.
Another view of the hideous monstrosity.
An interesting aspect of this is the NatCon one that was circulating before this piece of shit project started to advance.
As we've noted before, Trump's real backers are members of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, but within the NatCons are Catholic and Orthodox intellectuals who have become Illiberal Democrats. Not too surprisingly, this same group has pretty strong architectural views.
They like architect James McCrery.
Some of these folks hang out at website called Rorate Caeli, which is actually a type of Mass, but which means "drop down, ye Heavens." They really like James McCrery, and for good reason. Here's their post on his getting the job of being garden shed architect:
McCrery, Architects of Catholic Beauty, chosen to renovate the White House
McCrery Architects, New Carmel, Wyoming Those familiar with the architectural work of James McCrery know he is among the greats of the 20th and 21st centuries.
McCrery Architects, St. Mary Help of Christians, North Carolina Based on the Senate side of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, he has designed, restored and enhanced numerous churches, schools, homes and other buildings — all in a classical style where the average man, woman and child responds “beautiful” upon seeing his work.
Now, Jim McCrery has designed what will be his legacy for generations of Americans: a new White House ballroom. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday $200 million in private funding (including Trump’s own money) will fund a ballroom next to the east wing of the White House that can accommodate 650 guests. This is needed, as the East Room of the White House (the largest for gatherings) seats around 200 people, so the custom has been to put up tents outside when a large dinner or event is hosted.
See the designs for yourself to appreciate them.
McCrery, who is celebrating his 60th birthday, completed a restoration and enhancement of Saint Mary Mother of God church near his DC studio, where the TLM existed from the mid-1980s until its suppression three years ago. From the cathedrals in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina, to Corpus Christi in the Diocese of Arlington, to the Newman Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, to the Carmelite monastery in Wyoming, the churches he designed are spectacular — no easy task in an age of modern codes, budget limitations and senior officials often advocating bland over beauty. McCrery’s name is synonymous with beauty.
Rorate congratulates Jim McCrery on this achievement and looks forward to the next three years of his project’s construction. And we commend President Trump for choosing traditional architecture, and developing a great relationship with such a fine architect. Who knows what others would have chosen to dump on the White House lawn! It is a time to be thankful for the partnership of McCrery and Trump on this project that will stand tall long after all of us depart this earth.
Rorate Caeli.
This is, quite frankly, part of what upsets me. This thing is ugly and stupid.
It'd be ugly and stupid anywhere, but it'd make more sense in some places. In Georgian England, for example, or in 18th Century France. If you went back, an were honest with yourself, you'd think "well. . . this is ugly and stupid, but looks like belongs here" and then you'd go on to tell everyone, "wow, that's impressive.
The top two buildings are in fact impressive. Why did they take this assignment?
Well, . . . on this, I'll be frank that I"m not so sure about the top building.
Wyoming isn't Medieval France or pre King Henry VIII the Vandal England, and I'm not really too sure that this fits the state too well. There's been a fair amount of murmuring about it, which is slightly embarrassing for Wyoming Catholics. We know we don't live in Medieval France.
I guess, however, that this is religious architecture and they are free to build what they wish.
Monumental public architecture belongs to the public, however. The public doesn't want a gigantic gilded garden shed.
Worthless Democrats
One thing this has served to do is to illustrate how completely worthless the Democratic Party is.
If this was the party of 1975, or 1985, it would have rushed out on day one and filed an action for an injunction, which would have included a request for a TRO. They would have gotten it.
More particularly, what they would have asked for is an injunction returning the White House to the status quo ante until the architectural commission in charge of these things had a chance to consider the matter. That would have meant that Donny would have had to stop the construction and the structure repaired, on his dime, until the body could meet and make a ruling.
Yes, that body is going to say "go ahead", but that would have burned through about $10M of the vandalization money in advance, and delayed the project by at least a year. Mobilization costs would have gone up, and Democrats would likely be back in power. The thing would never have been built.
Instead they sat around and did nothing.
This all points to an existential crisis within the Democratic Party. Most Democrats are actually center left, politically, but over the last fifteen or so years the party has been captured by its hardcore left wingers that will not compromise on anything, and so the party has glaciated. The left wingers in the Democratic Party are every bit as nutty, if not more so, than the hard right of the Republican Party.
We need new parties.
McCrery
I noted earlier that I had placed some home in the design in that James McCrery was responsible for it.
I've lost that hope.
The more I look at it, it's just flat out gaudy and ugly. It's interesting to note that McCrery, who was one of the people that Donny did the roof top tour with recently, has been taking some flak.
Apparently McCrery wasn't always a classicist. And people interviewed about him recently haven't been all that kind. For example, Robert Livesey, who was chair of the Ohio State architecture department from 1983 to 1991 when McCrery was a student wrote recently in an email that “to be honest, I do not have a real memory of Jim. My sense was that he was a good design student which is why Eisenman hired him, Unfortunately, his work does not have the presence of real classical architecture, or even of people who were also after the classical, like Palladio, or later Hawksmoor.”
Eisenman refers to Peter Eisenman, who was a professor at Ohio State and who took McCrery under his wing and later employed him. Eisenman is not a classicist and has called his former underlings design "bonkers", adding "putting a portico at the end of a long facade and not in the center is what one might say is untutored.”
Pretty harsh. In fairness, Eisenman and McCrery seem to have had a falling out some time ago, and McCrery seems to have become very identified with his Faith in regard to his architectural projects, which leads a person to wonder why he'd want to take on a giant civil structure like this. Frankly, Eisenman's criticism seems pretty valid to me.
Rats
One potentially good thing about this is that it might make a lot of rats homeless. Apparently the White House is full of them, in the walls.
No big surprise.
Rats being rats, however, they're probably just moving into the house itself.
What should reconstruction look like?
One thing that this brings up is what should reconstruction look like. The White House grounds are already pretty crowded without this monstrosity. Frankly, a pretty good argument can be made that the East and West Wings detract from the original appearance of the structure. Maybe this presents an opportunity just to take them out, although apparently that would create an office space problem.
The donors
Here's who is paying for this abomination:
Altria Group, Inc.
Amazon
Apple
Booz Allen Hamilton
Caterpillar, Inc.
Coinbase
Comcast Corporation
J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul
Hard Rock International
HP Inc.
Lockheed Martin
Meta Platforms
Micron Technology
Microsoft
NextEra Energy, Inc.
Palantir Technologies Inc.
Ripple
Reynolds American
T-Mobile
Tether America
Union Pacific Railroad
Adelson Family Foundation
Stefan E. Brodie
Betty Wold Johnson Foundation
Charles and Marissa Cascarilla
Edward and Shari Glazer
Harold Hamm
Benjamin Leon Jr.
The Lutnick Family
The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Konstantin Sokolov
Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher
Paolo Tiramani
Cameron Winklevoss
Tyler Winklevoss
Some of these you know, and some of their products you use everyday. Microsoft, for example, is pretty hard to avoid.
Some can be easily avoided. I'll never eat in another Hard Rock Cafe again, ever, which of course will be an easy thing for me to do.
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