I am right across the street from the mall. I’m only in the office today, I still can’t decide if I want to do a quick walk around the place or not. At least today it shouldn’t be too hot out.
Trump Truth
Could they have done whatever the hell the state fair is? Absolutely. Would they have? HELLLL NO!
Don’t do it. (IMHO) Let the place be as empty as it can be.
The extra shitty thing about this dumpsterfire is that it displaced the annual Smithsonian Folk Life Festival.
Which was a quite popular institution going back almost 60 years. I haven’t been recently, but the few times I did attend I would say the worst thing about it (other than the heat) were the crowds.
And according to people on X claiming to be close to the Smithsonian they HAD been planning on an America250 edition of Folk Life as part of the celebration, but then when Freedom250 took over they just got shoved aside.
I’m pretty sure I saw that cross-posted on Facebook. I’ve seen others opine that a big state fair that actually brought Americans together for the 250th would have been a great idea, but as usual, Trump has fucked it all up. It’s not such much that he even made it a partisan affair that clearly only welcomes MAGAs, it’s that he made it all about himself. Even a lot of the MAGAs seem to be disappointed with it.
If Trump were even just a touch less of a narcissist, he’d have had a party that people would have actually loved, even amongst all the other crap going on these days, but he just couldn’t take a step back and let someone else do the job.
If he were less of a narcissist, when the pandemic hit he would have admitted that something was not in his control. Instead, he allowed who knows how many people to die.
If it doesn’t guarantee him praise and applause NOW and afterward, it might as well fail.
The issues with the electricity are a telltale of a slapdash job. Besides FolkLife there are dozens of festivals at the Mall every year, this is something that has been done a hundred times. Hell, in his first administration, 2019, the SI did a whole audiovisual restaging of the Apollo 11 launch using the Washington Monument as projection screen (THAT was worth the crowd and heat!).
But of course, they could not let it be done by the people who always do it, they had to bring their own to improvise on the cheap and pocket the difference.
Narcissist or not, I do not attend party’s thrown by complete and total assholes.
But that’s kind of the point - it wouldn’t have been his party. It would have been someone else’s party happening on his watch, which is what it was supposed to be before he started mucking about with everything.
Sometimes the best leadership is just recognizing when to get out of the way and let things happen. But of course, Trump is incapable of that.
Right. The non-narcissist would have allowed the party to be thrown by the Park Service, Smithsonian, and District organizations and independent sponsors under America250 in a normal manner for the enjoyment of all and the commemoration of history.
We will have a party like no other when Trump is removed. That I would attend. I’m gonna put up an American flag when he is out of office.
Gonna turn on my outdoor festive lights as well.
I was thinking about this Smithsonian Institute issue yesterday. It highlights how stupid Trump really is.
His whole schtick is going on about wanting to “make America great again”, and “be respected around the world”. But here you have the SI, which is legitimately both one of the greatest museum systems in the world, and also a celebration of American greatness. People go to Washington just to visit it (I did that 20 years ago myself!). It’s reputation on the world stage is exactly what Trump claims to want, and yet, he has mucked about with it so much, that he’s lost what they had. Paved paradise, and put up a parking lot, as the old song says.
And the parking lot immediately starts to crack and crumble, since it was a no-bid contract rush job done by a contractor who was not qualified to do the work. trump claims vandalism by the ‘lunatic left’ and has people randomly arrested and charged with destroying his big, beautiful parking lot.
That’s the Catch-22. If he were a touch less of a narcissist, it’s doubtful he’d have won election and wouldn’t have been in position to do any fairs, great or not. That’s the quality the cultists admire and wish to emulate.
My high school band teacher got hired as a musician in the Marine band. He wasn’t a Marine before he joined. Now he’s a Marine, with the Marine haircut and everything. This was like, 1996 or so and he’s still in it. “The President’s Own.” He’s in the band that plays “Hail to the Chief” and stuff.
Here’s a sheet from marines.mil about being in the band as a career.
I know my college band director had been a trombone player in the Army band during Vietnam. An old article in the school paper says he “quit school to join the Army as a musician.” His group was then sent to Vietnam " the band were flown by helicopter to areas where soldiers were staked out; they would play 45-minute to one hour sets, then move on to the next encampment to repeat the performance."
Wild.
Anyway, I’m sure the musicians’ full time jobs are to be in the Army Band, and then they all join different smaller ensembles like the rock band, and, surprisingly, the Latin band.
You forgot the part where they install chainlink fence around the parking lot making it inaccessible.
And as noted in the publication, this particular “President’s Own” elite band’s members are exempt from completing regular recruit training and from “secondary combat role” (aka “every Marine a rifleman”). By contrast someone joining as a regular musician in the applicable MOS or rating (depending on service), must audition to qualify but also complete the usual entry and continuing training requirements of enlisted personnel.
A summer music camp friend of mine had a multi-year stint in the Marine band, complete with haircut. She’s now some kind of fashion influencer.
I thought that was the situation with the reflecting pool. I didn’t realize there was a parking lot in the same predicament.