In a moment of sublime irony, a young bald eagle has taken its first flight in a nest perched above the Potomac. The fledgling’s awkward flutter, captured by a National Park Service livestream, is being hailed as a symbol of American resilience. How convenient.
As the republic teeters on the edge of another constitutional crisis, we are offered a feathery parable. The eagle, a creature of pure instinct, knows nothing of debt ceilings, impeachment hearings, or the slow rot of civic virtue. But we, the over-civilised spectators, insist on reading portents in its wings.
One cannot help but think of the Roman practice of augury: priests scanning the sky for bird signs while barbarians gathered at the gates. The eagle’s flight is not a symbol of renewal. It is a distraction.
The real question is whether the watching nation will learn anything from this wild child of the air. The eagle does not preen about its past glories. It does not cling to faded exceptionalism.
It simply flies. America, by contrast, is a nation that has mistaken its founder’s vision for a permanent inheritance. The chick, should it survive the hazards of its youth, will one day soar over a landscape that is being hollowed out by debt, division, and the decay of institutions.
The symbolists will weep with patriotic pride. The cynics, myself included, will note that the Empire State Building once housed the last known pair of nesting eagles in Manhattan. Now we gawk at a single fledgling as if it were the Second Coming.
This is what empires do as they decline: they mistake a biological event for a spiritual one. The chick’s flight is a triumph of nature, not a vote of confidence in the human experiment. But go ahead, celebrate.
The circus is cheaper than a cure. The eagle will not save you. It is just a bird.
