A New York Times panel of columnists say America is heading toward its 250th anniversary, but many of its citizens and residents are not feeling celebratory, especially with billionaire President Donald Trump working to make it a celebration for only one certain class of people.
Columnists Michelle Cottle, David French and Jamelle Bouie took turns decimating the failure.
“The weird special event for our birthday boy, Mr. President, two weeks ago, with the U.F.C. fight and all of that — … that [was] not meant for the broad public. Like, you had to have a Paramount+ subscription to even watch it, first of all. It was meant for just a subset of even his own supporters,” said Bouie. “It wasn’t any kind of attempt to bring the country together under common civic rituals. And to me, that’s an intentional thing. They’re thinking of the 250th as an attempt to kind of glorify — and I use that in a religious way — Donald Trump, and not as an opportunity to, despite our many divisions and fractious nature and all that, think about our common origins and our common purpose.”
The White House doesn’t “conceive of all Americans as being American in the same way,” said Bouie, with the dividing line being whether or not you support Trump’s political project.
“It’s this constant stratification,” said French, referring to the celebrations very limited appeal of UFC wrestling and one or two acts of hard rock country singers. “It’s this constant sense of a pecking order, and then this constant sense there is always, always in the back of their mind something that goes like this: ‘How can we do this in a way that will make other people mad, that will make our enemies mad? How can we make our enemies mad today?’ As opposed to, ‘How can we bring the country together today?’ It really does seem to be an absolute communications priority of this administration to just go ahead and decide to tick people off on purpose, as long as it’s the right people.”
“That strikes me as at the root of the president’s movement all along,” said Cottle. “Whatever you think of his politics, it’s all about ticking off the elites, which is hilarious because he is an elite of sorts. He’s just an elite who’s always had a chip on his shoulder and has never really fit in.”
“Right, and elites here are defined in a purely cultural, nonmaterial way,” said Bouie. “For these people — if you are, like, a barista with an English degree, making $15 an hour, you’re an elite because Netflix producers like to make shows for you sometimes. Whereas if you are a billionaire buying pardons for your buddies, you’re not an elite, because the cultural tastemakers supposedly look down on you.”
“What Jamelle said was exactly right about elites,” said French. “You can be an underemployed Brown English or art major grad, and that’s an elite. And if you own five car dealerships in, say, Hattiesburg, Miss., you’re just a working man. … Somebody who might be on the elder board of a church, the head of the local Kiwanis Club, or, you know, has their name on a building in a local college, right? And they will view themselves as the scrappy underdog because, you know, the gender studies department in Oberlin looks down on them.
“Oh, my God, boo-hoo-hoo,” erupted Cottle. “That’s all I’ve got to say to the president, just boo-hoo-hoo. Get over it, OK? Get over yourself.”