When the State Becomes a Brand

How much longer will Benjamin Franklin's face be on the front of a $100 bill in US currency? I don't know, but I give it about six months. At the current trend of how things are getting Trump names splattered all over it, the New York Times did a major survey in today's publication about all the things President Trump is sticking his name on, his image on. And look, it's been out of control for a while, but now it's reaching the point of parody. The growing list of federal institutions, programs, public facing items while he is still in office. It's not just that it's unprecedented in the United States. It's starting to make third world African dictators blush, and that's hard to do. It's starting to make certain dictators infamous in history seem almost mild mannered and self effacing in comparison. Let's take a look at some of the things going on here. So he's renaming institutions, new benefit programs, official government portals, public building displays, even the military naming of things is putting is getting the Trump name on it. Now it's one thing if you slap your name on an airline or stakes and it goes bankrupt a few days later, but the check clears and okay, you made some quick cash as a celebrity, then there's not a lot of harm in that. But when it comes to major cultural institutions in America and the precedent it sets, how it sullies everything it touches, I mean, I could easily see the winning message of a Democratic candidate running for president next year saying day one, I'm not doing anything in this government until I've scraped Donald Trump's name off of everything. And that certainly might be a winning message and it might be an important thing to do, but it kind of sidetracks all the other important issues, all the other big problems our society needs focus on, it's creating a problem. We have enough real problems not to have to deal with other problems. Now look, I'm a fair, sane, sensible centrist. If President Trump finishes out his term and leaves office without having to be escorted out by the military, and let's say, for example, the economy grows and there's some foreign policy accomplishments, and he lives another 10 or 15 years past life expectancy, he then passes peacefully in his sleep at say, 95 years old, then, then if Congress wants to create memorials for him, put his name on things, fine, I've got no problem with that. That's how it's traditionally been done in America. So I get it why liberals and Democrats are disgusted by this they hate Trump for many obvious reasons. What I don't get is why so many people who consider themselves conservatives, who profess to be conservative don't see this as a destruction of conservative tradition, of conservative morality, of a sense of perspective, of humility, of a sense of, hey, we're trying to conserve democracy here, not recreate the British monarchy. I don't know why they're not so more upset about this, because it really is more like a monarchy. With what's going on with King Donald these days, I want to spend a little time looking at some of these things. Again. It's typically after you've left office, you get a library and you have to go out and raise the money yourself. President Obama's doing that. Former President Bush did that. Former President Clinton did that. You go out and you raise the money for libraries. Maybe a highway is named after you. But now we have Trump using his power of the office, forcing his name on everything. We have the Trump Institute of Peace. It's no longer the Kennedy center for Performing Arts. It is the Trump Kennedy Center. We have Trump accounts for children, Trump gold card residency, trumprx.gov, for gov pricing, Trump portraits on federal buildings, Trump image slated for the 2026 national park passes. Now, you don't have to be an historian to spot a real pattern here. When leaders stamp their name on the nation itself, they're not just selling policy, they're selling permanence. They're saying, hey, I'm the permanent dictator here. You see it a lot in places like North Korea, but I thought here in America, both conservatives and liberals and Democrats and Republicans were united in that. They don't want this to be North Korea. But this constant naming and statues and portraits and the mandatory iconography, it's sickening. It's despicable. And it's going to really put a lot of pressure on whoever the next president is to waste a lot of time and, yes, a lot of money, a lot of taxpayer dollars scraping the name of this individual off. Now, it's one thing to be a popular, beloved and deceased leader and have been out of office for 10 or 20 years. And public approval ratings show that 80% of the country thinks that you did a good job to get awarded your name and posterity for various memorials. I don't think anyone's really against that. But right now, we have a president that is frankly despised. By depending on what poll you look at, as many as 65% of Americans do not support him. And to be putting his name on everything as if he were the founder of our country. It's bizarre. In fact, it's not like even the founder of our country, George Washington, did everything he could to avoid the trappings of monarchy, most notably turning down an opportunity to have a third term again. Let's look at these things. The the Trump Institute of Peace. The Trump Kennedy Center. The Trump counts. It goes on in a Trump class. Navy battleships. The US Mint has unveiled a 250th anniversary coin design. But at least one detailed Federal workforce outlet explicitly noted Trump isn't getting a coin. That's good, but I've seen, I've seen designs that have his face on it already. So where would he get the idea to do something like this? Let's look at history. Joseph Stalin certainly liked naming things after him. There was Stalingrad. It does make you wonder. Will, will Washington D.C. be renamed Trump D.C. if it works for Joseph Stalin. He's a good socialist, communist, authoritarian. A dictator seems to be the role model for President Trump now. Stalingrad later changed its name. It's no longer Stalingrad. Napoleon changed the name of the Louvre museum to the Musee Napoleon during his rule. They scraped his name off after he left. Mao Zedong. The giant Tiananmen Gate portrait is a sustained state symbol. It's repainted, replaced regularly. Do we want to be like communist dictatorships? North Korea, the Kim Dynasty, long time running state driven personality cult. Monuments everywhere, shrines everywhere. Saddam Hussein, again, not typically a role model for most Americans, but he loved having big statues all over him. Who can forget that? The toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue. Perhaps we'll have similar topplings of Trump statues if enough of them are erected. Some people go beyond that. The the leader of Turkmenistan has renamed months and weekdays after himself and months for his mother. So imagine if instead of January, it's Trump. So instead of hey, New Year's Day, it's Trump Day. New Trump Day. If Your birthday is January 16th, yes, he would say, oh, my birthday is Trump 16th. Sounds stupid, sounds crazy. Guess what? We're not that close or we're not that far away from that. We're pretty close to it right now with what Trump is doing, between slathering everything in his vision with gold and slathering his name on everything. Other perhaps role models. Gaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi. Extensive state linked personal imagery, culture photos were everywhere, statues everywhere. And who can forget Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator. He had one of the strongest personality cults in the Eastern bloc that didn't end up too well. Mobutu Sekou of Zaire and the drc renamed the country and had his name and face absolutely everywhere. So there's a lot of tradition here, folks, of a leader building statues for himself, renaming himself, putting his image everywhere. And it's really not a good look for a democracy. And you're certainly seeing centrists, liberals, Democrats, progressives, stand up and say enough already. But they don't have any power in our society. Let's be honest, they are irrelevant. The president's party controls the Senate, the House, the White House, arguably the courts, certainly the Supreme Court. And, and in terms of most viewed and most influential media, Fox News, they, they control the media as well. And no one's willing to stand up to Dear Leader and I, it used to be you people referred to Trump as Dear Leader as kind of a joke, a little bit of an exaggeration, but kind of a joke. It's not joke anymore when, when you continue to do things that dictators from North Korea do. Not really a joke anymore. You just an accurate description. The saving grace in all of this though, is the president is falling so far down in the popularity polls and the opposition is growing. We saw it with the no Kings movement earlier this year. The percentages of the populace out protesting in the streets didn't quite get to the historic norms associated with toppling a regime, getting a regime to flee or run or abandon the seat of government. It wasn't that far. And we've already seen in just the last month or so, whether it's the Marjorie Taylor Greene's, whether it is the Republican state legislators in Indiana, we're starting to see a number of people who are no longer afraid to say the emperor, the king, our king, our Maga king is wearing no clothes.