On the Reflecting Pool
A Temporary Monument to Trump's Idiocy
In just a few weeks, we will celebrate 250 years of American democracy. To mark the occasion, a certain orange creature in the federal government decided that what the National Mall really needed — what would truly honor the founders and their sacrifice — was for the Reflecting Pool to be a different color.
Specifically: American flag blue.
The contract to paint the pool (through a $16 million, no-bid contract, because competition just isn’t for countries celebrating themselves) moved forward with the quiet efficiency that this administration reserves exclusively for things that are bad ideas. They dyed the water. They installed a blue lining. The whole thing was going to be gorgeous. It turned algae-green within days.
We spent $16 million dollars for nasty green water. Sixteen million dollars.
Oh, and the lining is also peeling now! There is, according to NBC and NPR, a 250-foot gash in it. The official explanation from the White House is that vandals did this. Vandals. How the fuck do you even explain that with a straight face? A coordinated group of saboteurs descended on one of the most surveilled patches of grass in the United States of America, peeled back a quarter of a football field of pool liner, and disappeared into the night.
The administration promised arrests and they delivered by charging a 67-year-old Olympic canoeist who I’m sure the White House will soon claim is connected to the deep state, the Chinese Communist Party, and a particularly motivated group of Smithsonian employees with blue hair.
In the weeks surrounding this situation, some other things also happened. I am not going to catalog them exhaustively because this newsletter would require a scroll bar that reaches the basement. But suffice to say: human rights, due process, the general project of democracy — all these things have been having a rough stretch. Courts have been tested. People have been in bad situations. The news has been, to use the technical term, a lot. A genuinely relentless, grinding, soul-crushing amount of a lot, if we’re being precise.
The country processed this. People were upset. They expressed their upset in the usual ways… And then someone mentioned the ducklings.
To treat the algae, the pool has been dosed with hydrogen peroxide. As it turns out, hydrogen peroxide is lethal to baby ducks. There are ducklings on the National Mall. The treatment is known to kill them. They are in the pool. You can do the math on what comes next, and I’d rather not do it for you.
The ducklings generated more sustained public outrage and more viral momentum than most of what had come before it. The phones lit up. The segment producers called. People were, genuinely, furious… about the ducks.
I am not here to tell you that the ducks don’t matter. Of course they matter. No creature deserves to be chemically dissolved in a pool that cost $16 million to ruin in the first place, not even Maryland drivers.
But I am simply noting, with complete neutrality and no further comment, that this is the thing. This is the one that broke through.
Kids being locked in detention centers without water? Fine, according to the American public.
$16 million tax dollars spent to reward a Mar-a-Lago contractor who did a terrible job? Fine, according to the American public.
A duckling perishing due to the incompetence of some mid-level staffer at the National Park Service? Nope. No. That’s where we draw it.
Here’s what I want you to do with this feeling — the absurdity, the vertigo, the particular exhaustion of watching a $16 million pool turn green while the rest of it happens in the background. Use it. Register someone to vote. Show up to something. Drag a friend to the polls in November. The founders did not survive eight years of revolutionary war so we could lose the sequel to an algae problem and a no-bid contract. The ducks would want you to organize.
Oh — and the pool is still green, by the way.