We Are Not Entertained
No Bread, Lame Circus: Mr. Trump's Birthday Debacle
I’m a student of religion, politics, and culture, I know my history, and when I look at the hideous UFC arena going up on the White House lawn, I understand what this commemoration of Donald Trump’s birthday means, know what Mr. Trump was saying when he opined “And, you know, we’re building something in front of the White House that’s quite attractive to a lot of people…. It’s going to have the big UFC fight on June 14, and I’m looking at it—and maybe we’ll never, ever take it down.”
Donald Trump has always loved football, the closest most Americans get to gladiatorial combat, and has railed against rule changes intended to safeguard the players, calling it “sissy football.” Trump likes cruelty, he likes brutality, and he rose to fame on a reality show where he pitted people against each other to see who could debase themselves and others most effectively, invited the contestants of The Apprentice to figuratively mud-wrestle for his enjoyment. In addition to his involvement with professional football, he also has a history with professional wrestling and with its slightly-more-upscale cousin ultimate fighting, and since he can’t imagine any other human experience but his own, he believes that most Americans enjoy violent entertainment as much as he does. Why wouldn’t we maintain a permanent Octagon on the lawn of the People’s House? We’re firing up the Hunger Games next, and surprise: The odds will never be in your favor.
Trump is deluded about the appeal of his White House fighting cage (the vast majority of Americans find it ridiculous or even insulting), but he or someone in his White House knows the value of spectacle when you’re seizing authority and bulldozing democracy as if it were the East Wing.
Power grabs and democratic backsliding are always accompanied by distractions: Look over there, not over here. Look at those bad people I say are doing bad things, not at these bad things I’m doing. Look at this spectacle I’m putting on for you. Are you not entertained?
The Roman imperial governments discovered centuries ago that when you have an emperor, you must keep the populace at home sedated so you can carry out your business of corruption, your lifestyles of the rich and famous. T. G. Tucker wrote in his Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul that it was up to the emperor—or commander-in-chief—to make the common people believe he was looking out for them and their interests: “He took them under his wing, and saw, among other things, that they did not starve or go stinted of amusements. He saw to it that they had corn for their bread, plenty of water, and games in the circus. His ‘bread and games’ kept them quiet.” (54)
Imperial Rome was once, of course the Roman Republic, ruled by citizens and their representatives, and authoritarian regimes and wannabe regimes are very concerned that history be rewritten to their benefit. Every now and then a Roman might remember that Rome had not always had an emperor, that Roman citizens once had some kind of voice. But for the most part, the populace did not rebel against the changes in their station. What encouraged such forgetfulness? The satirist Juvenal wrote that “the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.” (Juvenal, Satires X, 77-81) It became public policy to, as Barry Cunliffe put it, commit “colossal sums of private and public money” to keep the people “in amused idleness.” (Rome and Her Empire, 152)
Comparisons between Rome and America are sometimes too facile, but both are—or were—the greatest powers of their ages, and we can see other similarities. In our own desire for bread and circuses, some Americans share the Roman willingness to be appeased by their culture and their government into inaction. Like the crowds Tertullian describes at the Roman entertainments, our own pursuit of mindless spectacle, amusement, and distraction makes our “ignorance linger and bribes knowledge.” (De Spectaculis 1) Trade out our TikTok and Instagram scrolling for their chariot races, our UFC for their gladiatorial combat, and it feels like some Americans are as happily blissed out as any bread-munching Roman at the Colosseum.
While America has not yet given away democratic representation and abandoned its democratic institutions, we were set on the path to an Imperial Presidency years ago. During the so-called War on Terror, the George W. Bush administration vastly expanded the powers of the executive branch. Barack Obama, first-term Trump, and Joe Biden took advantage of those gifts, of the philosophy of the Unitary Executive and governance through executive order, and Donald Trump’s second-term play to move us out of a democratic, rule of law space toward strong-man rule is in some ways just an exponential expansion of those practices.
If you’re paying attention, you may be terrified, animated, angry. If you’re not, it may be because MAGA throws rallies, entertainments, and other cultural distractions your way.
But even with all the democratic backsliding we’ve witnessed, I remain encouraged. This Trump power grab will ultimately fail because they are bad at bread and circuses. Like everything else that gets done by and for this White House, their plan is simultaneously evil and clownish. Trump and his minions are simply too stupid to grab and hold absolute power.
You can’t govern an angry populace, but Donald Trump has absolutely no interest or even awareness that people want bread. Witness his recent public statements that he doesn’t care about inflation or the economic realities facing most Americans because of his war and tariffs (and when I say this, I believe he is literally unable to care; he has all the Big Macs and well-done steaks with ketchup an aspiring dictator could want). But bread matters if you want to keep your population quiescent, and his cratering poll numbers are evidence that it really is the economy, stupid.
So, there’s no bread. Also: his circuses are super lame. My friend David Dark has written that art eats empire for breakfast, and one of my happiest schadenfreude realizations about this second Trump administration, despite the initial shock and awe of executive orders and ICE violence, is just how impoverished the MAGA cultural circuses are. It’s the kind of has-beens and never-wases that might appeal to an 80-year-old short-fingered vulgarian.
When you take over one of our nation’s premiere arts destinations, the Kennedy Center, and immediately run it into the ground, your concept of entertainment is defective. When Kid Rock is your go-to star, when your basic offering is Lee Greenwood singing “Proud to Be an American” eight times in a row, when a cage match set up on the White House lawn is your big Gladiator moment, only die-hard defenders of the Emperor will be entertained (or at least claim to be), while millions of metaphorically and literally hungry people in Trump’s America are just reminded by these clownish and expensive exercises that the Emperor doesn’t give a damn about us, just wants to keep us in amused idleness while he walks away with our freedoms and with everything in the bank vault.
I’d guess that Mr. Trump will enjoy his birthday circus. But it’s important to recognize this violence-for-distraction as a part of his attempted imperial power grab, and as another reminder that while this administration may be profiting mightily off America and Americans, they remain morally and culturally bankrupt.
Trump’s name was taken off the Kennedy Center last night; this UFC monstrosity on our nation’s lawn will be leveled, sooner or later.
In the meantime, we must make sure we don’t allow MAGA to distract us from the things that matter: love, justice, compassion, mercy, and democracy.
Let’s start good trouble.