How Far Have the Mighty Fallen!

On April 29 1962, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy hosted the largest State dinner of his administration honoring 49 living Nobel laureates and 124 other prominent intellectuals, artists and scientists, including Robert Frost, James Baldwin, J Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, Frederic March, Isaac Stern, Mary Hemingway, Katherine Porter, and John Glenn. In his welcoming speech, the President said, “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.: The room laughed loudly and applauded.  Frederic March read from an unpublished work by Ernest Hemingway.
           On June 14, 2026, President Donald J. Trump hosted a U.F.C. event at the White House to celebrate his 80^thbirthday. The event was priced at $60 million and the President sat at ringside to watch fighters whale at each other “inside an eight-sided cage wrapped in cryptocurrency advertisements.” Trump has financial stake in cryptocurrency. Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times wrote, “The use of the trappings of the White House for violent cage fighting. The corporate sponsorships. The eruption of casual cruelty . . . Money, ego gore, vanity, hype and the flash of the camera, all mixing on the South Lawn of the White House.” The crowd roared.
           Around 100 CE the Roman poet Juvenal coined the term ‘bread and circuses.” Bread and circus referred to the provision by the emperors of free grain handouts and spectacularly vulgar gladiator games and chariot races at the Circus Maximus to entertain the public which then remained submissive to the direction of the current emperor and was then, kept politically passive. The government used the bread and circuses to keep the citizens complacent and ignorant.

My Lord, I think, how far we have descended as a civilized culture. Culture rises up out of a civilization and encompasses and promotes the shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that characterize a group or society. Culture is a learned way of life that includes language, religion, social norms, and the arts, that are passed down from generation to generation and are continuously evolving over time. There are speech codes n dress codes that advertise a culture, In any civilization there are, of course, many cultures, but the dominant culture does what it can to suppress alternative cultures and so to pass itself off as the only acceptable reality. The attacks on Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, the Kennedy Arts Center and the awarding of Medals of Honor to Trump worshipers and sometimes even convicted criminals tells a great deal about the culture that this administration promotes. The language, the pettiness, violence and vindictiveness current in the behaviors of Trump and his sycophants speaks of a degraded culture, one not of aspiration and beauty but of cruelty and narcissistic aggrandizement. This culture promotes fascism.

Trump more recently threatened to destroy the civilization of Iran, but instead he has outraged the civilization and denigrated the civilization of the United States and set about returning out cultures to the darker ages. The violence and bloodshed of UFC events are one thing, but to place them on the front lawn of the nation’s house is offensive and speaks to a contemptuous display that eschews the intellect, music and art, theater and literature that has arisen as a culture in this civilization. Henry David Thoreau argued that every child should hunt when young but that the sport be abandoned for the attainment of higher laws. The Trump administration prefers to remain steeped in the mud and grime of the swamp and promotes a violence that knows few boundaries; he means to keep the country down there with his administration. One of the fighters, Bo Nickal, leaned down to thank Trump for hosting the event. It takes such a special person,” he said, “to be able to have the balls to do something like this.” Need I say more?