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Your guide to what the 2024 US elections mean for Washington and the world
Who is currently in charge in the United States? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris? President on paper Joe Biden? Or is it actually President-elect Donald Trump? Many clues point to the latter, not least the undeniable fact that the center of American political power had already shifted some 1,000 miles to the south: from the grand neoclassical designs of the White House and Capitol to the Gilded Age that meets Lewis. -The fourteenth shrine of Mar-a-Lago.
When Marjorie Meriwether Post — the breakfast cereal heiress who created the Florida resort a century ago — bequeathed Mar-a-Lago to the federal government after her death in 1973, then-administration decided it wasn't worth the trouble or expense. The property was returned to the Post Foundation, which sold it to Trump in 1985. He turned it into a private members' club in 1994. But Post's idea of it becoming a “Winter White House” finally became a reality during his term. The first term of the forty-fifth president in office. Although he is not yet forty-seven, the description now seems more appropriate than ever.
In recent weeks, a steady stream of billionaires, politicians and other forms of power brokers and sycophants have passed through the Palm Beach mansion. It seems that Elon Musk has left there almost permanently. Romantic techno Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that – how altruistic – he spends half his time at the club “to help”. Leader of the UK Reform Party was Nigel Farage and Treasurer Nick Candy In the photo there, smiling next to Musk..
Why don't they do that? I was Inside Mar-a-Lago Several times And contrary to popular belief, it's often very tasty. Members and local residents praised Trump for preserving original features. One sees no Ketchup drips on the walls. The only signs that you are on his property – and not at any other private club – are the “TRUMP” WI-FI; Trump's coat of arms (changed from INTEGRITAS when he took office) is emblazoned on everything from napkins to doormats; Framed magazine covers line the walls of the entrance hall; And yes this A rather flattering image In the bar.
Trump instinctively understands what other politicians struggle to understand, including power How are things? He looks. And the beautiful private members' club on a pristine, sunny, palm-fringed plot of land is an inviting invitation — even to the already wealthy (and even if the menu and music selection haven't changed for nearly two decades, members tell me).
He realizes that having a glamorous background for ads and interviews makes him look like a president when he is not in power. In fact, you only have to look at the towering Trump Tower in Manhattan, with its large 34-inch-tall brass letters above the entrance, to see just how powerful the former real estate developer used architecture as a means of advertising.
I came up with this idea while watching a movie screening stardust, Delicious New documentary About the postmodern architectural couple Robert Venturi and Denis Scott Brown (I was moderating a discussion at the Barbican with the directors, one of whom is the son of Venturi and Scott Brown). “It's all just propaganda,” Scott Brown says in the film, slyly comparing ancient Greek temples to billboards in Las Vegas. “Would you rather sell religion or soap? I will go buy soap.”
The question of what exactly the American right is trying to sell in its campaign against modern architecture over the past few years is an interesting one. Earlier this year, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson went on to Roger Scruton-esque Complaining about how “postmodern” architecture is designed to “demoralize and…”. . Destroy your soul.”
And in 2020, Trump himself, a man who made his fortune building high-rise towers, signed on Executive order Decree that all new federal buildings must be “beautiful.” The order (which Biden later rescinded) also decried the “discordant mix of classical and modernist designs” seen in many federal buildings — an odd complaint, perhaps, from a man who has Versailles style apartment In the penthouse of a skyscraper, but then Trump Don't worry too much About consistency.
It is about promoting the idea that traditional conservative values are the only thing that can save America, and nostalgia for a country that no longer exists. I have sympathy for the idea of that Buildings should be beautifulAlthough I don't think Trump's promise of a “Golden Age of America” will come true. With his gilded winter white house, he can pretend to the peddlers and oligarchs who greedily hover around him as much as they can. For them, in fact, it has already happened.
