This Sunday, Donald Trump turns 80. To mark it, the South Lawn of the White House (the lawn where children once rolled Easter eggs and presidents once received foreign heads of state) will be turned into a cage-fighting arena. Construction crews have spent weeks erecting an octagon and a vast arched lighting rig the promoters have christened “The Claw”. Fighters will reportedly prepare on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. They will, we are told, walk to the cage from inside the Oval Office itself. Then there will be a concert, a laser-and-fireworks show and crowds watching on giant screens in the park beside the executive mansion. The whole spectacle will fall on the President’s birthday.
We are having our Roman moment here in the United States.
If you wanted a single image to tell you where America now finds itself, you could not invent a more precise one. The annual extravaganza that has become the President’s birthday does all the talking. We didn’t previously let our presidents glorify themselves like this, as if their birth were a national holiday. Then last year, Trump arranged a first-of-its-kind military parade for himself. This year, he’s building a gladiator’s arena at the People’s House, partly to celebrate his big day and partly for the entertainment of the masses, all of it amid unprecedented allegations of corruption and ceaseless controversies emanating from Trump’s second term.
