In retrospect, the Democrats should’ve just stayed home. What was the point of sitting there in their pink outfits, waving around auction paddles? The party stalwarts who sulked and stunted their way through President Trump’s speech were best seen as oppositional props, little different than the assorted guests of honor being doled out prizes with a wave of his magic Sharpie—you get a nature refuge! you get a West Point acceptance letter! you get a Secret Service badge!—as Trump shared his rambling and often incoherent grocery list of goals and grievances.
Republicans, by contrast, had themselves a regular hoedown, gobbling up Trump’s every half-a--ed utterance like pigs at the trough.
As rhetoric, the speech read like dime-store MAGA fetish porn. One can imagine its author, Stephen Miller, in the throes of a playground bully’s ecstasy while drafting lines about Venezuelan street gangs and grown men invading girls’ volleyball matches. But it was so far removed from everyday life that it might have been written for another species altogether.
It was heavy on self-congratulation and certainly light on policy. Trump offered no new ideas for the economy cratering under his watch. He could point to no new legislation to help people afford homes—or eggs. (But, of course, that was all Biden’s fault. It’s all Biden’s fault.) It was lighter still on facts and, you know, coherence.
“We are going to create the highest quality of life, build the safest and wealthiest and healthiest and most vital communities anywhere in the world,” he droned at his ‘rousing’ conclusion. “We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond.”
What the hell is he talking about? We can’t even get our airplanes to stay aloft and now we’re going to put boots on the ground on Neptune? How are we going to create this highest quality of life when we’re tearing down the institutional scaffolding that supports American ideals? How are we going to build the safest and healthiest communities when we’re gutting the programs that keep us safe and healthy?
There’s no point in recounting all the exaggerations, half-truths and self-aggrandizement that ran through the script. (Yes, I know I’ve cherry-picked a few—but there’s just so much low-hanging fruit.) No point, really, in even offering any criticism. But that’s also the point.
The contradictions and hypocrisies were on full display for all who cared to see. Disparaging “unelected bureaucrats” while praising the unelected Elon Musk; praising the nation’s farmers—“I love the farmer!”—while endangering their lives and livelihoods with his ludicrous tariffs and foreign aid contract cancellations which have left tons of food meant to help the malnourished rotting in warehouses; promising to balance the federal budget while pushing his “big, beautiful” spending bill which will add trillions to the national debt.
None of it made sense. None of it was meant to make sense. The reign of Burger King has never been characterized by sense-making. Instead, it’s an exercise in what the late political philosopher Carl Cohen called “irrationalism,” which the writer Umberto Eco in turn described as “(depending) on the cult of action for action’s sake.” What else was that speech but a recitation of King Trump’s great deeds? Never mind that they’ve mostly been nonsensical! “Thinking,” as Eco argued, “is a form of emasculation.”
I should add that irrationalism is, according to Cohen, one of the three pillars of fascism. The other two are authoritarianism and organicism, both of which were also in abundance during last night’s stemwinder. While Congressman Al Green waved his cane at all of this fresh hell, his ejection from the speech did little to impede the night’s proceedings, an apt metaphor for the political establishment’s limp efforts at resistance.
So yes, the Democrats should’ve just stayed home and watched The White Lotus. But even that escapist fun was marred last weekend by the characters asking, “Are we really going to talk about Trump?” No place, apparently, is safe.
