The Funhouse, Revisited

Reflecting on a week of deadly serious unseriousness.

Every empire eventually starts to miss its own reflection….Published on May 3, 2021. Canon, EOS REBEL T3i. Free to use under the Unsplash License. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

This summer, I wrote an essay about how Trump is the funhouse mirror of FDR. I meant that in the way Franklin Roosevelt represented a nation crystallizing after generations of fighting for a better social contract, Trump represents a nation that benefited from those fights but now unravels under the comfort and selfishness of a society that is more restless giant than living through its finest hour.

Back then, I thought I was diagnosing a phase; turns out I was describing a prototype.

---

Read the essay from this summer here:

---

I went back to reflecting on that essay as we close out a week where the East Wing of the White House seemingly disappeared into a mess of incinerated red tape. It’s a complete reversal of the crystallized bureaucracy that Roosevelt embodied — for better and for worse. The Sphinx himself, that master of quiet calculation and impenetrable calm, once expanded the same wing to house Eleanor and her band of reformers. Now the structure’s gone, replaced by donor checks and renderings of a ballroom that looks like Versailles with better Wi-Fi.

But that’s the point, isn’t it?

Trump may end up being the most impactful president of my lifetime, like the Sphinx was for my grandparents’ generation, not because of his virtue but because of his visibility. His success is defined by how much he’s raised a funhouse mirror to the so-called adults in the room and forced them to narrate his administration’s daily, and in some people’s view, extralegal escapades while pretending that none of it was serious because the right people weren’t the ones doing it. The game was always power, and the handshake deal replaced the blueprint.

The gods still gather; they’ve just traded thunderbolts for smartphones. (Generative AI).

We’ve seen it again and again this fall, the demolition of the East Wing, yes, but also the Club World Cup fiasco, where the president was booed by a global crowd and his media team spun it as patriotic performance art. We’ve reached the point where being booed abroad counts as proof of strength at home; the algorithm runs on humiliation converted into clicks.

And in the streets, the “No Kings” protests have filled the avenues with the sound of a nation chanting at its own reflection. Even rebellion now comes in portrait mode. The crowd yells “No Kings,” but the feed keeps crowning new ones every fifteen seconds. Half the country’s marching, the other half’s refreshing the livestream, and everyone’s convinced they’re the main character.

Meanwhile, the machinery of government continues, just… differently. Less about deliberation, more about tempo. Policies announced like product drops, agencies turned into avatars of personality. Diplomacy as duet. The ambassador’s note is now a quote-tweet.

And still, the pundits gather like weary anthropologists, squinting at the ruins and insisting that civilization is fine if you ignore the smoke. Our analysts keep writing think-tank fan fiction about the return of norms, a kind of Beltway Narnia where civility still roams free.

A lot of this was made possible by a limited imagination, America’s persistent class systems around race, gender, sexual orientation, and geography. We keep seeing ourselves as a picture book of upward mobility, not a modern empire with the broad strokes of nuanced terror that define every civilization that ever thought it was different. There’s a certain naivete, or cynical design, that connects the old New Deal restoration to this moment’s hollowing-out. Both were transformations born of crisis; both relied on myth to sell power as progress.

And now we find ourselves in a post-mythic age where even the cynicism feels nostalgic. Every pundit and protester, every donor and data-miner, is performing a role in a system that no longer believes its own script. We used to debate how democracy dies; turns out it just rebrands and keeps streaming.

So yes.

I’m starting to think this administration will be a marketed success, despite the protests, despite the lawsuits, despite the institutional heartburn. Not because it’s right or wrong. But because Trump revealed the unseriousness behind the serious faces, the columnists, prognosticators, representatives, and courtiers of consensus. He ripped the mask off, and the machinery kept running anyway.

Maybe that’s the real revelation: the machine still hums, but it’s been reprogrammed. The blueprint gave way to the algorithm. The fireside became the feed. Roosevelt built new rooms into the American house; Trump tore down the walls to show us they were hollow.

He’s less a politician now than a content genre, renewed for another season because outrage still tests well.

And maybe that’s our inheritance: to live in the age of performance, not management.

The lights are on, the stage is crowded, and the audience can’t look away.

The rest of us are just trying to find a seat before the next act begins.