Washington Twilight
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?
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13 comments
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Phil Pryor
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paul walter
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Herbert Rude
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Harry Lime
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Canguro
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Michael Taylor
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Canguro
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Lucy Hamilton
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Clakka
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Arnd Liebenberg
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Andrew Smith
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Clakka
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Arnd
Return to home pageThe “United” spot in the title USA, is only able to be conceived by crushing conformity and illiberal thought and action. Trump loves division. Descended from duty fleeing, untrustworthy selfcentred grubs, who would not obey or conform, Donald Faecal-Extrusion is a remarkable selfcreated image of immortal stupido-masochism, beyond Hollywood, Disney, FoxPox and Marion Morrison. The motto of the USA should be “Fraud wins, suckers, so chew the sandwich, shiteaters,” And, the winners are..?
This really is a beautiful thing, this essay, for some like me, who has been gobsmacked by what has gone this year.
“The construction of a relentless normality” is Pearler of the year.
Off we go, to hell in a handcart!
Lucy Ham, you are a genius!
Brilliant reportage by Lucy Hamilton on how the mighty US imperium polishes and glorifies its steaming turds.
And a handy primer for aspiring lapdogs.
No matter who wins this election,America loses.If it’s as close as expected, and Trump falls short,it will end badly.We’ve been watching a slow motion train wreck since the end of WW 2.If the democratic experiment isn’t dead now,it’s on life support.The reckless pursuit of money and power has fatally wounded our little blue globe.
Not to mention the monumental hypocrisy.
Outstanding essay by Lucy Hamilton, thank you, and a welcome and timely return to The AIMN pages.
Two documentaries by Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing [2012], and The Look of Silence [2014] investigate the mass killings of Indonesians (and consequences of) in 1965-66, a genocidal program instituted by the CIA as alluded to by Lucy with her reference to Vincent Bevins’s book The Jakarta Method.
Well worth viewing imho, if only to inform the viewer of what went on literally on this country’s doorstep less than sixty years ago, and as a salient reminder of what America’s spook industries are capable of getting up to, vis-a-vis criminality on a gargantuan scale.
Available for download for those familiar with handling torrent files, here, and here.
re. Lucy’s reference to the Folger Shakespeare Library and its 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio – that’s 82 out of 235 known to still exist from an initial print run of 750 – I occasionally chuck into the discussion pool the fact of my paternal grandmother’s relationship to John Heminges, co-editor along with Henry Condell of the First Folio – she was a Heming, and had the coat of arms on her wall, issued by James 1, that had been handed down through the generations since the 1630s, acknowledging his role along with Condell in immortalising the Bard.
Canguro, my apologies for your comment getting lost. That can happen when a comment has a number of links as the system thinks it might be spam so gets the moderator to clear it first.
It took me 0.00543% of a second to determine you’re not a spammer. 😁
Thank you Michael, always a wee thrill to get a note from the boss, along with the pleasure of your wry humour. 🙂
Thanks all for finding this worthwhile. Appreciated.
Fascinating, Canguro. What an interesting history to know.
Thanks Lucy for a fine perspective of your tour.
I spent quite a deal of time in the USA doing business in the 80s, and in the 90s holidaying with friends in the northwest. I’ve met many fine folk over the years, but also some blunt, brutal minded racists, militarists and Xtian fundamentalist evangelists – demonstrably with closed minds, inability to research, with little understanding of their own country or the rest of the world. Increasingly I met folk who were very confused and insecure about everything in the USA and the world – clutching and frightened (often armed to the teeth) about where it was all headed.
It seems now (30 years later) is where it was headed – Polarized – Billionaires and the wretched poor and a vastly diminished middle, politically divided between brutal and insipid; both to suit the oligarchs and confuse the others.
Just where will the crumbling “they” take themselves and the world over the ensuing decades?
In the main, to them it seems aspiration only applies to mazuma and castles in the air, whilst anything communal and social has been long shriveled and hollowed out, replaced here and there by celebrity.
Clakka,
Meet Bob VanCoughnett.
Btw, Bob votes for Trump. Or at least he did, four years ago.
Also reflects a comprehensive messaging & comms via legacy media which has joined forces with Big Tech & social media, while Atlas Koch and Tanton Networks have a new policy playbook, Project2025.
Further, the elephant in the room is ageing ‘white’ demographics, low info, less educated, less diverse, proverbial ‘bomb’ of boomers, regional or disengaged; the latter busy ‘amusing themselves to death’ (Postman) and not voting….
Thanks Arnd,
Indeed, it’s no wonder they voted for Trump, in a form of anarchy. Politicians and mainstream media more often than not are either brutal or insipid. The story brings home how the ‘state’ and corporations abdicate social responsibility so they can feed global wars and the greedy. Ordinary folk are surely well sick of it.
Clakka,
That’s been my thinking for a good while. I see Trump-voters (and Brexiteers) as peoples who, in the main, have never been introduced to critical (including self-critical) reflection and the rigors of formal, consequential, logical thinking. They know that something is off, and they do notice the smell of institutional decay wafting through our public policy exchanges … – but they just can’t pinpoint the exact source of the decay, and really see no other choice but to believe the self-assertive explanatory declarations of delusional populists. Hence Trump, dePfeffel, Orban …
I really don’t think that if I were to engage with Bob VanCoughnett in a discussion about the virtues of actual anarcho-communist conceptions of politics and economics, that I would get a very sympathetic hearing – but I could be wrong. (I’ve had some interesting exchanges with a few rather unlikely interlocutors.)
Not even one month ago, right here on The AIMN, Janes Moore offered this obituary of Kris Kristofferson. I first saw Kristofferson portraying a rebellious trucker in that unbearably smarmy road movie Convoy. But I was reminded of this movie when, forty years later, reports of unruly, malcontent truckers breaching corona restrictions showed up on our TVs.
Too many others, and especially those in influential positions within the US Democrats, simply have been way too dazzled by their own brilliance, and missed that perspective. As one Ben Rhodes, speechwriter for Barack Obama, opines in the NY Times:
There’s plenty of other opinion pieces in the NY Times berating the Democrats for their self-centred blindness, but it’s Ben Rhodes’ calling out “competent technocracy” that really caught my eye. It irreconcilable contrasts with the closing remarks of David Marquand’s review of, especially, British politics in The Unprincipled Society – New Demand And Old Politics. Advocating the need to develop a new approach to democratic politics “as mutual education”, Marquand pointedly insists that:
The publication date of Marquand’s book? 1988.
Half a lifetime later, the US Democrats are still bollocking around with their ideas of (in-)efficient technocracy, and expect accolades and re-election.
Ditto for Albo and his lot: don’t bloody well take things for granted!