Sometimes a thought experiment does the work of a thousand arguments.
Imagine the pretty picture of Charleston’s city hall rising over Broad Street in all its classical glory — the winding marble steps, the oaken solemnity of its council chamber, the echoes of ancient debates from generations under its cavernous ceilings.
Now imagine the right side of that historic people’s house lying in rubble on the ground. And not because some act of God took it from us. But because a mayor of Charleston decided on his own, without notice to citizens or council members, to demolish a section to build something he liked better — say, a ballroom.
Does anyone think this person would still be mayor after the inevitable emergency session of city council? Does anyone doubt a criminal prosecution would soon follow?
This brings us, of course, to the images we all saw last week of the entire classic East Wing of the White House reduced to shards of stone, glass and steel — a great heap of American junk that stands in sardonic tribute to a presidency defined by lawlessness, vainglory and manic unreason.
Unsurprisingly, President Donald Trump’s faintly comic praetorian guard of toadies, mountebanks and half-wits has rushed to the microphones to defend this latest act of civic vandalism, each pledging fealty with an argument more preposterous than the last.
First, there was the claim, deeply rooted in the president’s to-the-gilded-manor-born aesthetic, that America “deserves” a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to rival the great palaces of Europe. Never mind that the White House already had a small ballroom and that our nation’s founders rejected ostentatious displays as incompatible with our republican form of government. Or that the ballroom, when complete, will be nearly twice the size of the 55,000-square-foot White House it’s attached to.
Next, these nimrods tell us not to worry about the $300 million price tag, since it will be borne by “private donors” — which is to say wealthy individuals and corporations bent
on currying favor with the favor-granter-in-chief. Folks, this is nothing more than solid proof of naked corruption — and another indication of what Trump really thinks of his supporters’ collective intelligence.
And finally, our favorite: By casting aside prudence and just ordering the demolition done, Trump is striking a blow against the annoying not-in-my-backyard hordes who systematically try to stop their fellow citizens from developing their own land. Which might at least qualify as an interesting provocation if Trump actually held the deed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But the last time we checked, that impressive capital property and the republic it symbolizes, belonged to all of us — not just the temporary occupant who’s currently living over the store.
So go back to imagining Charleston City Hall in tatters. While we have differences with childishly thin-skinned Charleston Mayor William Cogswell, it would never occur to us that we might wake one morning to find City Hall torn asunder by bulldozers and bad intentions.
So what does all of this mean for America and the world that relies on her? It means it’s a pretty damn sad state of affairs when we have higher expectations for the mayor of Charleston than we do for the president of the United States.
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