Three important things happened in 1953: Eisenhower began his peaceful and prosperous presidency, I was born, and the Keep America Beautiful campaign began.
The American Can Company and Owens-Illinois Glass Company got it rolling with the simple idea of not living like pigs who litter the streets, the parks and other things. Don’t be a litterbug! they said. And we stopped being litterbugs.
Well, most of us.
The National Mall was left quite messy after Barack Obama’s first inauguration on January 20, 2009.
One point eight million people attended and left at least 130 tons of trash for city and federal crews collected at least 130 tons of trash, including paper, plastic bottles, food wrappers, newspapers, and discarded American flags.
Nearly 8 months later, on September 12, 2009, the tea party held its Taxpayer March on the National Mall. Glenn Beck-linked Tea Party volunteers actively raked leaves, picked up sticks, and bagged trash on the Mall in follow-up efforts.
Similar behavior noted at other Tea Party gatherings: Attendees (mostly older, middle-class conservatives) brought their own bags or stayed to tidy up, aligning with the movement’s emphasis on personal responsibility. It was like a Methodist potluck dinner without food. You can be darned sure, no flags were left behind.
The Mall is home to the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. President Taft pushed to build the former. Civic leaders raised money and built the latter. Construction of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool began under President Harding.
Obama made two major contributions to the mall. He made the reflecting pool environmental, replacing treated water with the brackish water of the tidal basin to accommodate algae blossoms and bird droppings.
As you may know, President Trump is undoing as much of that as he can.
If only he were not so shy about his accomplishments.
Trump said on Thursday, “You’re going to have the reflecting pool opened within hours. I mean, literally within hours. The water starts pouring in tonight. It’s going to be beautiful. You haven’t seen that since 1922!
“The parks are open. We changed the grass. You know, grass has a life also. Grass has a life. And that grass hasn’t been changed in 70, 80 years. It died many times over!
“We have beautiful grass, beautiful parks, beautiful everything. We don’t have people living on it. And Washington, D.C. In a matter of 14 months, Washington, D.C. is like a different place that people are coming here!
“You know, the restaurants were all going out of business, you know, because you used the restaurants. And now the restaurants are hot. In fact, if anything, we don’t have enough restaurants based.
“They’re all reopening. It’s become vibrant. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. And I am honored that I’ve been able to do it to our nation’s capital.”
While the press mocks him and dismisses his three-story penthouse in Trump Tower as gaudy, the fact is he has excellent taste and an eye for beauty. Mar-a-Lago is a testimonial to that.
Obama is an ugly little man. His second gift to the National Mall was this atrocity.
The New Yorker said of it, “The National Museum of African American History and Culture aims to faithfully represent blackness in America but does not present the full force of its rage and the full range of its experience.”
Rage. That’s the key word. Totalitarians love rage and playing on emotions.
Trump wants to keep America beautiful, which is uplifting and what leaders do in a free republic.
That is the opposite of Obama’s goal of subjugation through architecture. His windowless presidential center looks more like a mausoleum than a library. He spent $850 million constructing his center.
Trump spent $847 million in 2009 building the 98-story Trump Tower Chicago in 2009. It’s the second tallest building in the nation. The city collects hotel, sales and other taxes from Trump’s business.
Obama’s center is a tax-exempt non-profit generating only sales taxes when someone buys his books and other paraphernalia.
Making America ugly is a tactic that echoes Stalin destroying 45,000 churches and cathedrals in Russia.
The most iconic and architecturally celebrated church destroyed under Stalin was the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which Christians built to commemorate Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812. It took 44 years to build. Stalin ordered it dynamited on December 5, 1931, to make way for the never-completed Palace of the Soviets.
After the wall fell, Russians rebuilt the cathedral in the 1990s.
Stalin demolished the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pokrovka, built in the 17th century, in 1936 to widen a street. A restaurant now stands there.
I don’t blame all the bad architecture and ugly buildings in America on Obama.
The graying of America has turned McDonald’s and Wendy’s into mini Obama centers. Gone are the playlands and the red-and-yellow plastic signage. The food is bland. The prices are high. And the staff turnover seems constant. I feel sorry for the franchise owners who are stuck with these unfriendly restaurants that seem better suited for Pyongyang.
Never surrender your red and yellow, Buc-ee’s.
And Obama did not start the Democrat war on beauty in public spaces. The war dates back decades. This led to Rudy Giuliani’s broken window crusade in which graffiti and yes, littering, were policed led to a turnaround in crime. Liberals whined about his Disneyfication of Times Square. I guess we now know who the customers were for those XXX shops.
In this century, Democrats have rolled their 101st Homeless Division and its sister 82nd NARCAN-borne Drug Zombies to take over the parks. Instead of arresting junkies, we give them free needles and food stamps to buy the drugs.
Democrats legalized shitting in the streets, then shoplifting, then leaving restaurants without paying the tab.
Trump has cleaned up Washington DC. Fountains flow again. Bums no longer own the streets. Even carjackings are down.
Keeping America Beautiful is part of Making America Great Again. Nothing saddens Obama more.
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This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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