Why? Who needs a ballroom and who is it for? This nation somehow managed to get by for nearly 250 years without a White House ballroom, but not only is the Stable Genius building it on the site of the now former East Wing, but it will be in the gaudy, nouveau-riche style of his Mar-y-Lago golf hotel in Florida, that vulgar monument to bad taste. Expect an overabundance of chandeliers, numerous Versailles-style fountains, and the same kind of gold-plated chintz that he's used to vulgarize the Oval Office.
The decision was apparently unilateral - he wanted it, he had it built. No indication of review, input, or consultation with historic preservation boards, certainly no zoning, probably no building permits. No national conversation with the American people on changes to one of their definitional heritage sites. If you want a more-than-symbolic visualization of the way the Stable Genius is destroying the American presidency, then look no further than what thar short-fingered vulgarian is doing right now to the actual White House.
The Stable Genius is also asserting that the Justice Department owes him $230 Million for the past investigations and criminal indictments that had been filed against him. Never mind that some of them were filed not by the federal DoJ, but by the State of New York and, I'm proud to say, the State of Georgia. The problem is that while any idiot can shoot off his mouth and claim without basis that the government owes them any amount of money, in this case, the President of the United States may use his broad claims to limitless Executive power to just have the Justice Department cut him a check, no questions asked.
Who's to stop him? His allies now occupy the key positions in the Justice Department, the attorney general is a blindly loyal toadie, the deputy A.G. is his personal attorney who served as lead defense counsel in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and the associate A.G. is the lawyer who represented his co-defendant. So now we have a situation where the Stable Genius just decides that he's entitled to nearly a quarter billion of taxpayer dollars, and the yes-men and sycophants he put in office will just cut him the check without any judicial review or a jury to determine damages, if any.
Mind you, all this is happening while the government is shut down due to a refusal by Republicans to renew subsidies for health-care insurance. No money's available for Medicare recipients, but there's $230M laying around for the Stable Genius, Argentina was just handed $40B, and new jets were provided for the canine-killing ICE Queen at $175M.
Tearing down the White House, openly extorting money from the U.S Treasury, exorbitant payments to cronies and political allies while the poor are left to fend for themselves - these are the kind of acts we've historically seen just before a coup or a popular revolution. "Let them eat cake."
The Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus would advise us to ask ourselves what we could do about it all. I can't stop the demolition, I can't thwart the extortion. I can rise consciousness and awareness of these actions by posting about them here, but that's about it. Epictetus would say, "Fine then, you did what you could and did what you must. Now you need to find the strength to live by that which you can't control anyway." We can't control external events, but we can control our reactions.
The Buddha would look at it similarly, albeit a little deeper. Suffering is caused by attachments, including clinging to a desire for things to be different than they actually are. If we want to stop our suffering, stop wishing the world to be different than it is. That's not a laisse-faire acceptance of corruption and exploitation - wanting to end our own personal suffering at the expense of allowing the suffering of others is not the bodhisattva way. "Beings are numberless, I vow to free them." But recognize that you, not the Stable Genius, is responsible for your own degree of personal suffering as we go about liberating others.
I think Epictetus would agree with that.
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