The East Wing Obscenity

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When fired up, Rick Wilson can write with bravado and beauty. His most recent essay on Donald Trump's assault on America is laced with both. When I received this in my morning mail, I was struck all over again by the sickening visuals we saw yesterday, the wanton destruction by a small, greedy man who brazenly told the press he loved the sound of demolition because it sounded like money.

A few excerpts below but I would recommend reading the full text. It will make you angry but it will also inspire all of us to keep the pressure on, to recognize the full depths of Trump's depravity, his willful ignorance of what America, despite all her flaws, means to her citizens and the world beyond.

Opening paragraphs:

There’s a way the light falls in the White House on Autumn afternoons in Washington, thinning with the waning of the year, slanting, a dull gold the color of old parchment, that makes you feel you’ve slipped into a country where history isn’t past tense but a persistent whisper.

In the sad obscenity of the moment, one of the White House’s most beautiful spaces has been amputated, torn away from time and memory in an act of vulgar insult. The East Wing is lost now.

And,

Jacqueline Kennedy took the White House and made it an American cultural project without turning it into a museum. Her work wasn’t just about tables and fabrics; it was about the idea that the place mattered, that a nation with the existential threat of the bomb and a tide of trouble on the horizon also deserved elegance and art. Lady Bird Johnson gave us wildflowers and the conviction that beauty is public policy, too. Pat Nixon added to the collection with a practical eye, because good stewardship is rarely fashionable but always necessary. Rosalynn Carter welded compassion to competence.

Nancy Reagan wrapped it all in some theater, yes, but with a director’s sharp instinct for scene and consequence. Barbara Bush, in those kinder, gentler moments, welcomed those points of light to the East Wing. Hillary Clinton put a policy-nerd backbone into it; Laura Bush, a librarian’s quiet welcome to young readers. Michelle Obama threw the doors wide, cultivating White House gardens and kids’ health programs.


And,

The desecration is not a broken façade. It’s a broken covenant.

This is not about the wall being savaged by demolition machines.

It’s about what the East Wing is supposed to accomplish in the American psyche. The West Wing, prior to this fallen era, was where decisions were forged under terrible pressure, the grim and necessary mechanics of governance. The East Wing is where the republic breathes out, where we make meaning beyond politics, show mercy, and demonstrate that democracy can have manners.

It’s the wing that says, “We remember you,” to the bereaved and “We see you,” to the overlooked. It was, in a functional theology of civic life, the chapel. We do not need our leaders to be saints, but we are right to insist they treat the people’s house with respect.



https://therickwilson.substack.com