One might think Washington had overnight been transformed into another capital. Not Moscow, not Beijing – no, the model lies further east: Pyongyang. In front of the Department of Labor the US flag flutters, and directly beneath it now hangs a giant banner of Donald Trump, staring like the “Eternal Leader” in the textbook for autocrats. Beneath it the mantra “American Workers First” – a slogan that sounds as if it had been rubber-stamped in the party secretariat of a dictatorship. It is a staging of bizarre simplicity: one face, one slogan, one building. Nothing more is needed to turn a ministry into a monument. One almost waits for groups of children in identical uniforms to march in front of it and sing hymns to the “Supreme Leader.” That Trump had only hours earlier praised his closeness to Kim Jong Un feels almost like a dress rehearsal for this new aesthetic.
Next to Trump’s face hangs Theodore Roosevelt. The old progressive is thus degraded into an involuntary sidekick – like a museum piece placed next to the icon so that the cult of personality gains a bit of patriotic patina. Roosevelt, the fighter against monopolies, in a double act with Trump, the monopolist of his own brand. A bad joke in oversize. The reactions are fitting: the internet mocks the banner as “Trumpchella for autocrats,” others call it “the largest campaign poster of North Korea – accidentally in Washington.” On Reddit collages are already circulating showing Trump’s likeness marching alongside Kim Jong Un’s portraits, captioned “Brothers in spirit.”
But for all the comedy the whole thing has a bitter point. That a president fastens his own likeness like a state icon on a government building is more than just tastelessness – it is the visual renunciation of democratic restraint. An attempt to define power no longer through institutions, but through faces. Not through laws, but through symbols. Not through debates, but through threatening looks. America has long laughed about the cult of personality in foreign countries. Now it experiences its own version – made in USA, inspired by North Korea. And suddenly Washington no longer looks like the heart of a republic, but like the stage of an autocrat who seeks only one more title: Supreme Leader Trump.
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Putin und Kim, seine größten Vorbilder.
So will er angebetet werden. Ohne jegliche Kritik vom Volk.
Es ist derart surreal.
Aber die Basis jubelt, in vollkommener Unkenntnis, was da passiert.
Wie passend auch die Worte von Trump, in einem Interview gestern, dazu:
Trump betonte sofort: „Ich mag keinen Diktator. Ich bin kein Diktator. Ich bin ein Mann mit großartigem Menschenverstand und ein schlauer Mensch.“
Er muss einfach regelmässig seine pillen nehmen, das wäre ein kleiner schritt
F.ck, was für ein Idiot
das stimmt
Das nenne ich mal „missbrauchte Flagge“.
…sehr gut ausgedrückt