TRUMP – THE HISTORICAL ARTIFACT

Donald Trump's new interest in sculpture.

So now Trump’s primary focus for this moment is the potential loss of of our historical artifacts for the sake of political correctness. There’s a non-historical artifactness to a lot of those Civil War artifacts in question – they are not of Civil War vintage, but came much later as turf-pee in service of reinforcing the culture of Jim Crow. The motivation for his sudden interest in sculpture or his weird equivalence of Confederate generals to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington seems pretty clear: when swirling in a tornado of his own making he turns to his base for some love rays. In this case it’s about Charlottesville and white supremacists so the hook is Confederate statues.

It’s not about his worldview. It’s not questions like what does the nation needs in this moment of strife? How does this impact the future of the GOP? Is it good for the Jews? Is it good for his infrastructure agenda?

Trump ponders these issues with a predictable metric set: Is it good for Trump’s numbers at this moment and good for Trump’s egoshere zone at this moment. Or – is there a way to monetize the Confederate statue thing? Build a hotel or golf course around it. It’s not just that we have a president whose ideology is bonkers, corrupt and destructive; what we have is a president who is mentally ill.

— Polar Levine, News Goo Dissection, August 27, 2017

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