Seeing Green

The monument Trump never meant to build

Just in time for America’s 250th birthday, there is a new monument in Washington.

The man who would like to erect a massive marble arch as if he were a Roman emperor has instead found a way to perfectly, if unwittingly, capture the true nature of his time in office. Stretching between the gleaming Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial is a vast sea of stagnant green water, a color that reflects the envy and avarice that have come to define the man and his presidency.

Someone should put up a sign: The Trump Monument. It is the metaphor we have been waiting for.

Images carry immense power.

Especially when they embody a moment in time.
Especially when they are so vivid they require little to no explanation.
And especially when they evoke a response in the viewer that allows multiple currents of disparate thought to fuse into a single synapse of recognition.

Even amidst the far bigger stories battling for our attention, even in an age of war, disease, and the ominous excesses of corrupt authoritarian rule, there is a reason why an algae bloom and disintegrating paint at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., has captured the public discourse.

The late-night comedians Trump would like to see fired are having a field day. Online, the hilarious takes are everywhere. The jokes and internet memes practically write themselves. It is the truth that is impossible to ignore. The fiasco that his desperate ego cannot abide. The literal swamp that Trump built. The man who fancies himself a builder and insists that everything is easy spent months boasting about the Reflecting Pool, only to see it end in spectacular failure.

The image of those green waters captures the corruption of the administration because of the multi-million-dollar no-bid contracts awarded to friends and sycophants who recently “renovated” the pool. The algae are also a testament to this regime’s antipathy toward science. Anyone with a basic understanding of the biology, chemistry, and physics of stagnant water in a large shallow pool could have predicted this outcome, especially if you are foolish enough to paint the surface a dark shade of American-flag blue to absorb even more of the heat of a Washington summer.

Algae love warm water.

And the lies, incompetence, and buck-passing that have followed in the wake of this embarrassment reveal something else: this administration’s loosening grasp on its ability to control the narrative. This is not an abstraction hidden behind classified documents or competing claims. It is something anyone with access to the National Mall can fact-check and anyone with a smartphone can document.

And yet consider this press release from the Department of the Interior. Remember, this is the federal agency charged with protecting and managing the nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage.

Mind you, this was released on Wednesday, when the Reflecting Pool was plainly green and swarming with workers fighting a losing battle against the slime.

The statement is really a gem, isn’t it?

The perfunctory attack on Obama. The belief in a simple fix—”advanced nanobubbler technology”—that will solve everything (sort of like ivermectin for COVID). The image that was an outright lie.

And then the pathetic boast/joke about the navy of Iran? At a time when the president is effectively waving the white flag of surrender after a disastrous war that never should have been started and was tragically bungled? Because whatever military might Iran has left is apparently enough to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

It is easy to be infuriated by propaganda like this. But the truth is that its very absurdity is a sign of weakness. The more blatant the lies, especially when almost no one is buying them, the more they suggest a shrinking ability to control the narrative.

In the larger scheme of things, the green soup of the Reflecting Pool is not much of a tragedy, save for the money that would have been better spent elsewhere. No one is dying. No one is being terrorized.

What we really have is a massive joke with seemingly infinite punchlines, all of which point back to Trump and his failures.

And we all know how much he loves being laughed at and called a loser.