Why is MAGA gutting the National Parks and destroying environmental protections? Oh, you say, money… save money by not “wasting” it on National Park personnel, and let the billionaire oligarchs make more and more and more and more money and who cares about preserving parks or increasing pollution or accelerating Climate Change or spurring Global Warming?
OK, sure. But…
I think it is deeper than that. I think that tyranny needs to destroy beauty. I remember an interview of a man who had served time in a Federal Prison. What I remember from that interview was how important it was for the prison to block as much beauty from the lives of prisoners as they could. The movie “Shawshank Rebellion” has a memorable scene where a prisoner managed to play a transcendently beautiful aria over the loudspeaker and was punished as a consequence.
Beauty, love, empathy, compassion… these are powers that need to be killed by Nazis and KKK and MAGA and fascists and oligarchs and tyrants. Because they are powerful antidotes to the soul and spirit crushing aims of the tyranny of the “king”.
Indeed, the billionaire MAGA supporter, Musk, famously said that empathy and compassion were weaknesses.
So, the White House “king” takes over the Kennedy Arts Center. Why? So that the man who thinks gold toilets are beautiful can control the arts. Because the arts, and beauty, are threats to tyrannies.
We are in the midst of a full out fascist takeover of the U.S. This shall not succeed.
