4th July – like most national holidays a celebration of self-infatuation. Needless to that Trump knows how to celebrate such a day of national unity. By calling “Black Lives Matter” a “symbol of hate” and its supporters “angry mobs”. Like George Floyd, I guess, who most insidiously forced his head under a policeman’s knee. Needless to mention, too, that everything good that has ever come into the world originated in the most ingenious and most extraordinary and most awe-inspiring nation in the entire human history. Incas, Greeks, Romans etc. – historic nincompoops. Europe? Anything worth mentioning? All of this is hard to bear for anyone with their head on straight and a minimum of education and common knowledge. And even more so for every Afro-American or any member of a discriminated minority demanding his or her constitutional rights and instead is accused of wanting to “destroy American history”.
But not on Trump’s watch! After all, he is the unrivalled expert on American history, the history of a nation whose “intrepid deeds” blessed all of mankind.
“Americans harnessed electricity.” Right. As we all know Gilbert, Fay, Galvani, Volta, Ohm, Faraday, Jedlik, Siemens – to name just a few – all of them were Americans from Briton, France, Italy, Germany and Hungary, all of which are White House suburbs.
“Americans split the atom.” Sure. As we all know, Fermi, Meitner, Hahn, Straßmann, Frisch, Bohr were all Americans from European White House suburbs, and probably Donald Trump’s direct ancestors.
“America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth. […] Nobody has ever done it like we have done it.” What are you thinking of, Mr. Trump? Genocide of the truly ‘American’ indigenous people? Slavery and segregation, and internment camps for Japanese Americans? Two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, Agent Orange, Napalm and the murderous ace-of-spade raids of the Vietnam War? Torture schools, NSA espionage, fantasies about WMDs, stand-your-ground laws, opioid crisis?
No, like in the case of police brutality these are just tiny little insignificant mistakes that can happen to anybody. Trump prefers celebrating this day and as usual himself and his barely covered up racism at a historically and culturally indeed ‘outstanding’ location – at Mount Rushmore, where master race and megalomania are wedded in a most American way. Four granite heads that make perfectly plain who is the top dog, who subdues the earth, and that holy mountains are nothing but superstition in contrast to that white man with the long white beard. He even is fool enough to declare that this badge of white shame that desecrated, defiled and befouled a holy Native American place of reverence “will never be desecrated, will never be destroyed”. It is at this place that the supreme instigator, for whom peaceful demonstrators have been cudgelled off the streets, laments anti-American activities and lack of interest in justice and reconciliation, and then promises that true Americans will stand united to defend honour, security and their children.
Like the man enthroned above Trump’s head, the slaver owner Abraham Lincoln, the man responsible for the biggest mass execution in American history, the execution of 38 probably socialism-infected Lakota. Like George Washington, slave owner too, who very early on told his own legend of a great victory over French troops which in fact was a defeat, and who afterwards without any attempt at intervention watched 10 of ‘his’ Indians being murdered. Like slave owner Thomas Jefferson who preached inalienable rights of all men created equal, but considered blacks an inferior race and Native Americans savages and oh so affectionately called them “my children”. And Theodore Roosevelt, who certainly did a lot for white workers, but also is the father of the expansionist “big-stick policy”, that defined America’s claim to be the world policeman and foreign policy’s prime and only aim: American interests, which made it necessary to prevent and destroy any form of democracy in Latin America. Yes, this is a truly apt setting for Trump; don’t forget these are the “greatest Americans that ever lived”. I wonder when he will demand to have his own head added.
And then he announced that by his presidential order a National Garden of American Heroes will be established in which, believe it or not, even Martin Luther King will be honoured (I guess this was the idea of one of Trump’s more successful spin doctors; perhaps they will name the cloak room after King.). This park is dedicated to all those “fighting national socialism and international socialism”. After all, you cannot tolerate that “our most sacred memorials”, like the statue of slave owner Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in Richmond, Virginia, fall victim to the “merciless campaign” of “left fascists”. Oh no! That is why he immediately announced that the ringleader and “hundreds more” have already been arrested and will “get a minimum of ten years”. The leader of the executive sentencing suspects without trial. What a model example of democracy and separation of powers and state of law, of the principles laid down by those towering above him. Impressive, Mr. Trump.
And who is supposed to be adored apart from Jackson, who surely will get a new pedestal? I guess, considering Trump’s profoundly abysmal knowledge and his baseball-bat-sharp analyses he is thinking for example of Joseph McCarthy, the denunciation-loving devourer of communists, who fervently strived at incarcerating or deporting everyone who was not reactionary, fundamentalist and white. Who never took part in any real military action, but turned a party incident into a wound stripe, declared himself a heroic sniper and forged a respective commendation. And whose whole campaign to save America was based on lies, propaganda and conspiracy myths. (By the way, I’m still talking about McCarthy.) Or of General Custer for his heroic fight against those totally unruly savages who he fell victim to in a dastardly battle, when vicious Sitting Bull faked a retreat. And what about Kelvin E. Jones, one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, the fearlessly intrepid defenders of America’s Christian legacy? Probably he would also appreciate a larger-than-life, bloodstained statue of William Calley, who dealt a deadly blow to international socialism by massacring over 500 Vietnamese in My Lai.
The world can’t wait to see his suggestions.
