Exploring Washington DC in late October 2024 was a surreal experience. In New York, Trump was re-enacting the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Gardens. Centrist commentators on MSNBC debated the fact that notably reticent generals were agreeing that Trump was a fascist-leaning threat to the USA. Meanwhile the sun shone benignly on a calm and pristine civic precinct in the capital. 

The violent insurrection of 2021 loomed as an unspoken threat in a city preparing for a standard inauguration as well as the 250th anniversary of a democratic project. Would there be a union to celebrate in 2026?

Tourists are currently kept distant from the west face of the Capitol where gallows were erected to execute politicians. The stands are being constructed for the next inauguration.

The curious are also kept well back from the north face of the White House, where gawkers can usually more closely view the building. Here too, the construction preparing for the celebration of the peaceful transfer of power, the core symbol of the democratic experiment, impedes approach.

Throughout Washington, the construction of grander and larger museums is underway to greet, optimistically, the celebrations of 250 years since independence was declared from Britain. Then again, Washington continued to be built through the Civil War in bullish expectation that there would once again be a united states to govern.

The civic space of Washington is filled with gargantuan buildings and memorials, all designed to chasten the individual in the face of Empire. Many of the government buildings are designed in the classical style and in monstrous scale: no European would be allowed to sneer at this new empire’s hub.

Guides in the Capitol extol the various features, but no mention is made of the insurrection itself. The silence about it forms a looming shadow over the experience. A compulsory film celebrating the democratic experiment that the United States used to represent feels even more like propaganda in the aftermath of that eruption of conspiracist violence.

The guides, employees of the Capitol Architect’s office, tread carefully when hinting at the violence and oppression that pervade America’s settler-colonial and chattel-slave story. Each group to be guided contains people hailing from a range of reactionary states. Any one of those might complain to their representative if a guide delivers actual history rather than the gilded myth. Guides have received reprimands from political representatives for relating the truth that the Founding Fathers kept slaves.

Evidence of the anchor drag of Republican states on American efforts to embrace a more just present is evident. Each state has two statues to represent itself; a state can replace its choice as that becomes desirable. In 2015, Arizona chose to replace their statue of a mining executive with a statue of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was the 1964 presidential candidate who proved to a new breed of Republican that there could be a path to power forged in bigotry; it was this campaign that signalled the Republicans’ turn towards the Trumpian present.

Tribute should be paid to Kansas for holding firm to a statue of Amelia Earhart in a decidedly masculine costume. Such a gender-fluid symbol is unlikely to be welcomed in the current Midwest or South.

The rising tide of Christian Nationalism might be signalled by North Carolina’s choice to update their representation to include Billy Graham this year.

The Smithsonian museums that recognise the dark underbelly of American history and the lasting impact of its victims and survivors are the ones dedicated to the American Indian and African American History. Visits to these are highly recommended.

The others tread very safe paths, largely fostering a sense of morality-free triumph and progress.

The two campuses of the Air and Space museum, for example, celebrate technological advance and achievement. Charles Lindbergh’s contribution to flight is honoured with no recognition that he was America’s most notable Nazi-sympathiser.

Various generations of missile sit side by side at the Udvar-Hazy hangars for growing militarists to marvel at. No note is made of the numbers killed by the American military to enforce its territorial and economic empires. The Jakarta Method is valuable reading to grasp the millions killed to keep the world open for capitalist enterprises to extract cheap resources and cheap labour.

The Enola Gay is not accompanied by images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s dead.

The American partnership in Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians will no doubt be similarly ignored if this current model of memorialisation is allowed to continue as a result of a Harris victory.

Curators of museums such as that dedicated to American History make safe choices so as not to antagonise reactionary visitors, since these can lead to complaints to the museums’ masters in Congress.

Other institutions such as the Folger Shakespeare Library stand as tributes to America’s wealth extracted from across the globe, with obstructions to profit bulldozed by American military forces, diplomatic machinations, and local allies. Some of this wealth then vacuums other nations’ treasures back to America. Why does the Folger need to hoard [automatic article download], and boast of, 82 copies of Shakespeare’s rare First Folio?

The war memorials scattered across the civic zone celebrate, as such constructions are wont to do, the glorious courage and tragic dead. The story told is of American sacrifice, not American harm.

The memorial to Korean War Veterans.

This overwhelmingly white architecture of the civic zone celebrates sanitised versions of America’s story, domestic and international. This October, the sun shone. The dearth of tourists made queues rare and venues easy to visit. The construction of relentless normality was belied by a queue of stories recounting shocking announcements from Republicans and supporters on their path to authoritarian illiberalism. Of course, those were largely only notable to audiences looking for them on activist media platforms; mainstream media continued to diminish the cumulative impact of such threats. Right wing media denied, distorted or ignored them.

The conference that drew me to Washington explored the interconnection of the Global North’s authoritarians and religio-ethnostate forces. It barely touched the corporations (and their propaganda networks) contributing to far right parties and organisations. Late-stage capitalism is ever more overt in its readiness to embrace illiberalism to ensure profit. Elon Musk is far from the only oligarch planning to exploit the opportunities.

On my final day in Washington, I was fortunate to see the only mention I’d found of the January 6 insurrection. The National Park Service granted Civic Crafted LLC a temporary permit to display a statue that pays ironic tribute to the “brave men and women” who literally defecated on the Capitol.

The story of the American democratic experiment and the liberty it ostensibly represents is partial, hypocritical and, at times, farcical. It will be much worse – if only for our efforts to limit the scale of the climate emergency – if Trump wins in the coming days or weeks.

The fossil fuel forces who have driven so much of America’s disastrous foreign and domestic policy over the century are funding Trump with the intent to profit.

Will he be signing the executive orders they’ve drafted for him on his first day in office as a dictator?