VOICES FROM THE PAST — The editors of this page occasionally invite the great wits and observers of ages past — reconstructed through the miracle of artificial intelligence — to cast their eyes upon the present day. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
On the Occasion of the Emperor’s Eightieth Natal Celebration, as Observed from a Safe Distance
By H. L. Mencken (1880–1956, reconstructed by artificial intelligence)
The Republic, that grand experiment in self-government which the Founders bequeathed to posterity with such touching optimism, celebrated another milestone last Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House — and if the shade of George Washington was present for the proceedings, as the orators of the day no doubt assured the assembled multitudes, one can only hope the old Virginian had the good sense to avert his eyes.
The occasion was the eightieth birthday of the President of these United States, a man who has spent the better part of a decade demonstrating, with admirable consistency, that the American Boobus in his natural state will accept as spectacle whatever is placed before him, provided it is loud enough, garish enough, and accompanied by sufficient flag-waving to anesthetize the critical faculties.
What was the entertainment on offer? Cage fighting. Not metaphorical cage fighting — the sort practiced daily in the halls of the Capitol, where gentlemen of the legislative persuasion pummel one another’s constituents in relative privacy — but actual cage fighting, seven bouts of it, conducted inside an eight-sided wire enclosure erected upon what was once the most dignified lawn in the Western Hemisphere. Men sealed inside a mesh octagon, punching and kicking and choking one another into insensibility, while the birthday boy presided from a position of suitable grandeur. The White House press office described it as a celebration of “the American fighting spirit.” One trusts they composed that sentence without a trace of irony, which is to say, they composed it entirely in the American manner.
The event was called “UFC Freedom 250,” the “250” being a reference to the nation’s approaching quarter-millennial birthday — a coincidence of calendars that the administration has exploited with the same subtlety it brings to all its endeavors, which is to say, none whatsoever. That the celebration of two hundred and fifty years of constitutional democracy should culminate in cage matches seems, upon reflection, not surprising in the least. It is, in fact, the logical terminus of a process that has been underway for some time.
Rome, in its declining decades, staged gladiatorial combats at public expense to keep the populace distracted from the inconvenient facts of imperial overreach, fiscal imprudence, and the general deterioration of civic virtue. The Romans, to their credit, at least provided bread with their circuses. The present administration has streamlined the operation considerably.
The truly remarkable thing is not that this occurred, but that no one found it remarkable. The Republic’s capacity for astonishment has been thoroughly exhausted over the past several years, and what would have provoked stunned disbelief in any previous era is now met with a collective shrug and a scroll to the next item of news. This is what the Founders, in their less guarded moments, feared most — not tyranny imposed from without, but vulgarity embraced from within.
One ought not be too hard on the crowd. The American commonality has always been susceptible to a good show, and there is no denying that the present occupant of the White House is, whatever his other qualities, a showman of the first water. He understands, in his bones, what the editorial writers and the professors of political science do not: that the demos cares far less about the price of eggs or the solvency of the treasury or the constitutional niceties of executive power than it does about being entertained. He has provided the entertainment. He has earned his keep.
Meanwhile, at the very moment the cage doors were being shut and the first combatants were squaring off before the birthday sovereign, word arrived that a deal had been struck with Iran — a country with which the administration had lately been conducting what might charitably be called a vigorous exchange of views, at considerable expense to the taxpayers and the region alike. The announcement came via social media, as all consequential affairs of state now do, a few hours before the main event. One imagines the diplomats and generals reading it there alongside the fight previews and the birthday tributes.
But perhaps this is churlish of me. A man turns eighty only once, and if he wishes to mark the occasion with cage fighters on the South Lawn, that is, in the end, a matter between him and whatever remains of the national dignity. The dignity has survived a great deal. It may survive this too.
I confess I find myself, at moments like these, with a perverse admiration for the sheer audacity of the thing. There is something almost heroic in the completeness of the vision — the total, unselfconscious fusion of the political and the theatrical, the patriotic and the pugilistic, the ceremonial and the carnivalesque. Lesser men hedge. They perform their vulgarity apologetically, with one eye on the editorial page. This one does it with flags.
In a better world, or even a merely different one, such a spectacle would provoke the kind of searching national conversation about dignity and decorum and the proper uses of the People’s House that the civics textbooks once promised us. In this world, it provoked a ratings triumph and a great deal of very enthusiastic posting.
The democracy, as ever, gets the government it deserves. On the evidence of Sunday’s proceedings, it is getting it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was the Baltimore Sun’s most celebrated — and most feared — journalist and essayist. These words were composed by artificial intelligence in his voice and spirit. The editors note that Mencken would almost certainly have had something cutting to say about that, too.
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