Trump: “We’re Going to Make it Beautiful!”
Christmas 2023: Three Media Personalities Echo the Trumpian Vision to Make America Beautiful Again
December 30, 2023–In the last 12 days, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Raheem Kassam have all keenly pointed out how ugly America has become under the Biden regime. The opposite, most conservatives would agree as these three do, was true under Trump.
All waxed nostalgic for the good ol’ days of not just say a traditional Christmas at the White House celebrated with classic panache when Melania Trump decorated it (see brief commentary about Jill Biden’s Christmas decor at end of article), but also more broadly they pine for beauty as in the Burkeian ‘beauty is truth’ definition.
The Left wants anything from the past that may have been aesthetically pleasing in our culture – whether in architecture, decor, objects, fashion – to be erased, reduced to ashes, destroyed, mocked, or contorted. We see ever more shocking and unrecognizable iterations of form across the culture.
Cock-eyed fashion like images below are now the norm:
And of course the Left is promoting ugly people too as the new beauty standard. Woke Beauty dictates that mainstream beauty standards must be jettisoned in favor of the new woke aesthetic. Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein, to name just two major fashion houses, did major ad campaigns featuring models that went beyond showcasing what the French call jolie-laide or pretty-ugly. Calvin Klein featured a trans man in a bra (here), while VS sent their deliberately un-angel models down the runway (video here).
And, if you don’t like it, you are definitely conservative, if not fascist or racist or both, and too bad.
Trump has Always Talked About Beauty
Just a few short years ago, America seemed to have its aesthetic house in order as much as it did say national security, and a good economy when Donald Trump was in office.
Carlson, Bannon, and Kassam emphasized the importance of living in a nation — a place on this Earth — that manifests and supports beauty in some tangible way. Chalk it up to holiday sentimentality, but they did not seem to notice the ugliness engulfing us as much when Donald Trump was telling us eight years ago, “You’ll see we’re going to make it beautiful” but nevertheless they are addressing it now.
The ‘it’ Trump most often referred to back then was his promise to build ‘a big beautiful wall at the southern border.’
Trump’s often-stated goal of making America great again contains within it the idea that there is no grandeur that accrues to a nation, no greatness — if a nation cannot manifest an aesthetic that is considered to be a reflection of what people generally consider beautiful as opposed to vulgar with its implication of moral goodness as opposed to moral depravity.
Everything Trump warned the country about in 2015 has come true. The list is quite long but notably he referred to illegal southern border crossings as an invasion. As of this week, 12,000 illegals are flooding across our border daily and everyone except paid MSM propagandists is calling it an invasion.
The invasion at the border is ugly. It’s the ugly we got from Biden, not Trump. Have we heard a single environmentalist say that these caravans – numbering in the millions – are harming the environment? Anyone with half a brain knows trash turns to filth quickly. The damage that will be done due to overcrowding in towns, and cities across this country will be incalculable. This week, Democrat mayors of New York, Chicago, and Denver are up in arms at the influx saying they cannot handle the influx.
The Daily Mail covers here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12082307/Huge-pile-trash-wet-clothes-dubbed-mattress-discarded-migrants-crossing-Texas.html
Like ugly models on runways and in ads, we’re not allowed to say that Leftist or woke culture is ugly. Nothing to see at the border when of course it’s ugly. It’s hideous and vile and it’s unhealthy and dangerous. But let’s excoriate Donald Trump one more time for his mean tweets.
Obviously, had Trump been sworn in as the duly elected President of the United States on January 20, 2021 more of his policies like his “Make America’s Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” executive order would have gone into effect. We know the ugliness of this border invasion would be at least be stopped. It’s worth reading the order – here – for its language. Donald Trump’s passion — what I call his affinity for beauty — comes through.
Architecture trade pubs panned the idea when Trump issued it. The National Review praised it saying it was, ‘a great step toward restoring beauty in government buildings.’ At the other extreme, one pub declared that ‘his decree harks back to Hitler’s Germany.’ Of course!
Tucker Carlson Asks Why Are We Being Bombarded by Ugliness?
Before Christmas while driving in Phoenix to get to Amfest, a TPUSA event, Tucker Carlson, who is usually not so philosophical, made a surprisingly poignant case for beauty. He deftly connected beauty and aesthetics to the universal truth we know from God and Christianity and our western values. He wowed the young audience with his trademark lightheartedness and exuberance while serving up a serious sermon, if you will, that expressed his outrage at how the elites are treating us as ‘non-human.’ They are telling you, he says, ‘a government that cares about you, tries to elevate you; if you inculcate dependency, they don’t care about you.’
His remarks run about 50 minutes. Here are a few highlights:
At 24:54: “Anyone who bombards you with ugliness, hates you and we are being bombarded with ugliness, and we don’t even notice…And we have the best looking country in the world…and they are making the environment ugly. And, the way things look really matters…the uglier they make the environment, the more oppressed you are…
At 25:27: “Truth is beauty. The most beautiful things are made by God. The way your environment looks really matters…It is not accidental that they are making it ugly...”
At 26:40: “They are making the environment ugly because they are serving evil…”
At 27:06: “I was driving through Phoenix to get here and saw this new construction. It was a really aggressively ugly building and it was such an offense against aesthetics, I thought, ‘where is the architect? and why isn’t he is prison?’ The real criminals are the ones building Dollar Stores in your towns…”
At 28:10: “If it increases the amount of ugly degradation I’m against it…as long as [we produce] something that is prettier, pro- a more human world, I’m for it…this is not a Western worldview….it’s a Christian worldview…”
Watch the full video here.
Why Create Great Architecture or Music if You’re Not Going Anywhere as a Society?
American historian, Larry Schweikart, sat down with Steve Bannon for his Christmas special on December 23rd.
As Bannon played old Christmas carols, they talked about the beauty of the carols written in the 1900s, the ‘complexity’ of which, says Bannon, ‘we don’t hear very much anymore.” They touched on other cultural differences in architecture and other areas of our culture too which Schweikart attributes to the secularism of our era.
At 1:00 SB: “You’re the co-author of The Patriots History of the United States…talk to me about that, what is about this music, the old carols, you don’t hear it on radio, you certainly don’t hear it in churches, your thoughts?
At 1:13, LS: “We don’t hear it because these people were almost all Christians, and they were singing from a certainty of where they were going in the afterlife, singing from a certainty of where victories were promised in the Bible...so many modern people they lack that certainty, because let’s face it they are not believers, they are having trouble with this stuff…it was time when let’s face it all western countries thought they were to lead the world to a new era of hope and enlightenment…”
At 2:10 SB: “Let me ask you about hope and enlightenment…it seems like we are besieged – you see the collapse of western society…it’s really accelerated over the last ten years…with immigration and seeing same thing here. because of the invasion – what was it about then that gave them hope, it was about enlightenment, that they were the future….cut to today when we have a lot of material wealth…what had them so positive and energetic and urgent in their mission as a civilization and a society? You can see it and hear in their voices and today it sound like we are almost worn out.”
At 3:32 LS: Well two goals – one was a material goal to improve the material world. You have J.D. Rockefeller who said we have to make kerosene good and cheap, then he would turn around and give a million dollars a year to his Baptist church. In Europe you have the same thing…”
“You see this in the in building of Cathedrals in Europe…and I wanted to talk to you about this with you today with regards to architecture…
“…I like chrome and glass as much as the next guy. I do like modern architecture, but but I don’t like ONLY modern architecture.”
“What’s interesting in our society today is that you see NONE of the inspirational and uplifting buildings like Westminster Abbey, or Notre Dame or anything like that or even some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s stuff that you can’t match today…”
“And a lot of that is because we have a very different view of where humanity is heading and it is an overwhelmingly secular view that says we’re not going anywhere and if we are, it’s not anywhere good…”
“So why create great buildings and great music as a testament to man’s enduring nature with God, not apart from God but with God?”
Find Larry Schweikart at: www.wildworldhistory.com and listen to the full segment here:
We’re Building Ghastly New Museums for a Reason
Raheem Kassam with Jack Montgomery, of The National Pulse, sitting in for Steve Bannon on War Room – The Boxing Day Special on December 26th:
Montgomery, a Scot, was visiting D.C. and NYC for the first time and shared his impressions with Kassam.
At 1:42: “I visited the Capitol and New York and I really saw American greatness...In New York, it was the Freedom Tower and the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building….and in Washington it was the Capitol with it beautifully painted rotunda, and the neo-classical beauty of the Lincoln Memorial…and I thought we need to save and preserve this. We [as Europeans] need to want America to succeed. It would be a terrible loss to civilization if it were to just fade away…”
At 3:33: “You talk about the architecture, you talk about the imagery…there is a reason they try to capture these institutions, there is a reason they locked down the Capitol…there is a reason they want to build these ghastly new museums around the Capitol to block the view...All of this is an attack. It’s an attack on the morale of the nation…I think people are being while dissuaded, they are dissuading citizens away from Washington D.C. and New York when they should come to see some of the greatest monuments of American prowess – to the heavy lift that people has been done over centuries now to build it up to make it the powerhouse that it is…”
Listen here:
https://americasvoice.news/video/oGWgT3GszAa6fMt/?related=playlist
There’s Hope: Eastern Europe’s Neo-Classical Building Skins
In Europe there is a big swing toward cladding modern, brutalist buildings in neo-classical ‘skins.’ This is happening mostly in former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe but also in places like Amsterdam, London, and Paris.
The more we see of so-called modern architecture, the more it obvious it becomes, that as Tucker put it, “they are making the environment ugly.”
The images in the gallery below were pulled from Architectural Uprising: The alternative to ugliness, a group on Facebook. Join to see more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ArchitecturalUprising/
The group’s companion website is here.
A Word about Jill’s Nightmare at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Christmas Show
First Lady, Jill Biden’s 2023 White House Christmas video is a bizarre Nutcracker-themed dance, featuring a tap dancing ensemble, that many are calling creepy and bizarre and comparing it to a “Hunger Games aesthetic.”
When toys come alive and start dancing around, things get a bit creepy.
Countless stories feature this theme – sometimes the intent is to horrify and sometimes it can be playful. George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker,” enacted all over the world at Christmastime and every year at Lincoln Center by the New York City Ballet, is one such story but it tamps down the horror. Jill’s White House Christmas Nutcracker amps it up.
Yes, it’s like the Hunger Games, and it’s also like a nightmare version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (see here), it’s Nightmare on Elm Street, and it’s Chucky in Child’s Play all rolled into one big schlocky confusing mess.
Who is the audience for this larger-than-life scary circus character rendition of The Nutcracker Suite with it’s mockery and exaggerated gestures of a classic Christmas show for children?
Yes, ‘when toys come alive’ is a thing in literature and narratives. Yale Books published a book by the same title. See the book blurb here.
This is a double video: Top is Jill’s WH Christmas video and bottom is one of Melania’s:
A link from Fox 5 to full 2023 White House Christmas decorations.
It’s Too Long!!! I get it…but Happy New Year…Let’s Make it Beautiful!!!
