“Graffiti” generally refers to the (unauthorized) marking or desecration of public spaces. While some examples do have a measure of artistic quality, when performed without permission is considered illegal defacement.
The graffiti or public defacement, relevant to the theme and context of this writing, has reference to the crass and neurotic program of our hubristic and tasteless Chief Executive, in directing his name to be displayed or added to our Nation’s prominent institutional edifices; the most recent such abomination concerning the “John F. Kennedy Center, Performing Arts Center,” in Washington, D.C.
Such obnoxious acts of neurotic hubris have been observed in such venues as the Trump Memorial Arch, Trump Park, the Trump Institute for Peace, and a myriad of other arbitrary sites, not to mention the plethora of public uses of “Trump Towers” on a plethora of buildings and public sites in New York and internationally. In addition to its crass nature, such widespread, public assertion of demonstrated ownership and celebrity, in our view, is revelatory of Trump’s lifelong, neurotic, insatiable quest for universal veneration and recognition as an eternal “winner.” The graffiti-like indulgence speaks volumes about his lifelong search for adoration and recognition as the avatar of successful celebrity.
Trump’s systemically impenetrable singular bubble shields him from seeing himself as the continuance of the “infant terrible” who would stop at nothing to attract exclusive parental attention. This compulsion has, presumably, been his systemically neurotic impetus from the days of his needy childhood to the present stage of his adult egocentric megalomania.
Donald Trump’s systemic absence of aesthetic sense and complete disregard for cultural matters seem not to mitigate his fervent desire to add his name to the Kennedy Cultural Center, just as his unauthorized declarations of war and errant authorization of bombing other sovereign states t appear not to mitigate his bizarre request to be awarded the International Nobel Prize for Peace. If awards were awarded for hubris or delusion, it would be empirically appropriate to grant Trump the ultimate prizes.
Trump’s misuse of Presidential authority to insert his name into the nation’s venerated institutions has the analogous significance and degree of public imprimatur as street graffiti. For the present, Trump appears to be in charge of the spray can.
-p.