Oof, so many fails. An abject purge from the Kennedy Center, a tatty Iran deal, a brackish Reflecting Pool, and pay-per-view bloodsport at the People's House rife with lurid jingoism, cheesy fireworks, garish flyovers, honor guards for Nazi thugs, grift vast and brazen, the crass smear of an iconic woman in the name of "a permission structure made visible" enabling the worst people in the world to act out. The result: "The cringiest collapse of a nation in real time."

For many appalled observers, the grotesque state of the Republic (if you can keep it) summoned the tawdry antics of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho in Mike Judge's infamous Idiocracy - "Welcome to AOL Time Warner Taco Bell US Government Long Distance," "Welcome to Costco. I love you" - the portrait of a dystopian American future after "mankind became stupider at a frightening rate." His deranged, AR-15-wielding State of the Union: "I know shit's bad right now, with all the starvin', and the dust storms, and we're running outta french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution. We got this guy Not Sure, and he's so smart, he's gonna fix everything in a week."

And so to a pricey Iran "deal” maybe (or not) ending an inept illegal war that fails on all fronts - military, political, economic, moral - and strengthens Iran’s hand as a regional power. Where are we, asks retired Major General Paul Eaton after "a war with no plan, no strategy, no achievable objective, no definition of what victory even looked like, and no plan for day 2." His response: "Thirteen dead. Years of lost readiness. Higher prices in every American home. All to arrive back at the starting line, weaker than when we left it." Meanwhile, the cost of his fucking ballroom that nobody asked for has soared 50% to $600 million, more than half to be paid by us, not imaginary "generous American patriots."

In another weekend fail, symbolic but gratifying, hundreds of real patriots gathered - and thousands watched a livestream - to see the vile name stripped from the Kennedy Center after US District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled it illegal. Alas, the crowd waited all day and night in humid heat - bearing flags, "You're No JFK" signs, hope to see "a horrible scar" vanquished - only for Friday's midnight deadline to come and go as workers built endless scaffolding and Center lackeys filed last-ditch appeals. Rumors flew, chants grew - "TAKE IT DOWN," "Rest in Shame," "Tear down that wall," "More Cow Bell" - as drag queen Tara Hoot blew bubbles and Rep. Joyce Beatty declared, to cheers, "We cannot be silenced."

The approach of midnight brought breathless countdowns - "30 minutes!“ "Five minutes!" "No pressure - you’re doing great!” - then angry charges of "a cover-up in real time" when it passed. People sang This Land is Your Land, thunderstorms halted work (and extended the deadline), and when a miraculous double rainbow emerged, people huddled under awnings to sing God Bless America and give thanks: "And the angels sang...Mother Nature Understands The Assignment...Just think what She'll do when he leaves the White House...Well-played, universe." One worker in a lift could have quickly done the job; instead, 13 hours later, the final scaffolding went up - to hang a tarp, met with boos, to hide a snowflake's shame.

Around 4 a.m, the Center later told the judge, the 18 odious letters of “The Donald J. Trump and" had been removed. For the public, it's hard to tell: The tarp's still up. To Andrew Flanagan, it confirms "how deeply insecure & pathetic" is the guy who's usually a "big redaction fan" - for the Epstein files, Mueller report, Jan. 6 transcripts, any form of accountability. "Nothing says 'stable genius' like illegally slapping your name on a cultural landmark, then hiding your name getting ripped off behind a bedsheet like a toddler who broke a vase," he wrote, adding, "Sheet was probably stolen from a hotel." Still, the action offered a modest "preview of Independence Day," what one resident called "this little splash of hope in the rain."

Not so his vaunted, likely illegal, American-flag-blue do-over of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool: Because everything he touches dies or stinks, it has joined the Resistance by swiftly reverting to its previous brackish algae-green. After the "expert builder" stupidly removed a state-of-the-art filtration system installed by Barack Hussein Obama, boasted its new "CLEAN, BEAUTIFUL WATER” would "SPARKLE magnificently...for 100 years," and insisted the rogue algae was just a “residual part of the normal startup process," the $1.5 million job that ballooned into a no-bid $14.2 million has in days proved an algae-beset bust, with National Park workers now frantically dumping gallons of hydrogen peroxide into it. We wonder if it's great yet?

There was also Paige, the four-ton elephant bedecked with a "Unity Drives Victory" banner the Texas GOP brought into its annual convention in Houston, a promised "larger-than-life surprise" who abundantly peed at the feet of the faithful just as Greg Abbott finished his keynote speech - what Dems called a "perfect metaphor for the Texas Republican Party." While it's unclear how much Dear Leader is to blame for that fiasco, he's totally, shamelessly, smirkingly responsible for the simultaneous atrocity unfolding on the White House Lawn: An impossibly base, blood-spattered cage fight, "crass display of toxic hyper machismo," and "bar fight making millions for the Epstein class" that "flaunted the absolute worst of America."

UFC Freedom 250, the besmirching of a staid White House lawn long reserved for dignified welcomes to foreign leaders, careful displays of statesmanship and the occasional Easter egg roll, began in May with the construction of a massive, hulking, $60 million cage called "the Claw." For weeks, up to 900 workers from seven federal agencies, including DHS and FAA, labored on our dime to build a gaudy monstrosity for 14 mixed martial arts fighters to beat and pummel each other bloody - at a "House that has hosted Churchill, Mandela, the Apollo astronauts...(that) sits at the center of the constitutional republic a generation of Americans bled for in places whose names their grandchildren cannot pronounce."

Trump "sees everything and everyone in terms of dominance or submission," notes Robert Reich. Choosing to mark his fucking big boy birthday by wrapping it in the pretext of the country's 250th anniversary and planning what's been likened to a "human cockfighting" spectacle on the White House Lawn, Reich adds, is "seeking to project an America like the winner of a cage match" - cheap, crude, violent, and so brazenly tasteless that even Republicans who once freaked out at Michelle Obama's vegetable garden there joined the vast 84% of Americans who denounced the event. Implausibly, impressively, the damning consensus reached Fox News viewers. "Tacky as hell," declared one. "Trump is a white trash president."

He is also history's most corrupt president, so no surprise his "gift to Americans" proved, per a failed lawsuit, "a volcano of corruption" and a “private, commercial, corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments," with Trump at its greedy core. He invested heavily in UFC owner TKO; his World Liberty Financial crypto business, earning billions on paper, was an “official sponsor"; so was Truth Social - "Download Truth Social today!"- and TrumpCoins.com - "Limited quantities available now!" Melding corporate and political grift, fighters were "paid" crypto bonuses, ads and logos were everywhere, fights in a Bud-Light-adorned ring had to be watched with a subscription to Paramount Plus,........

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