The sight is almost too perfect for satire. Donald Trump, a man who has turned the White House into a reality television set, now turns his attention to the Reflecting Pool. Algae, that slimy green ooze of neglect, has sullied the mirror of American power. And so the order goes out: fix it. Restore the shimmer. Let the tourists see a clean reflection of the monument to the Father of the Nation.
But why should we care about a puddle in Washington? Because symbols matter. They are the language of power, the shorthand of civilisation. The Reflecting Pool is not merely a pool. It is a metaphor. It is the nation’s self-image: clear, still, deep. And when it grows foul with algae, it becomes a portrait of stagnation. Trump, with his instinct for the visceral, understands this. He cannot abide the sight of decay in his own backyard. But what of the decay he cannot see?
Let us compare this to the fate of the Roman Empire in its twilight. The emperors of the 4th and 5th centuries spent vast sums on restoring aqueducts and public baths. They scrubbed the marble of the Forum while barbarians camped at the gates. There is something in the human psyche that fixates on the superficial when the foundations are crumbling. We polish the veneer while the rot spreads beneath.
The British ought to take note. Our own diplomatic symbols are equally threadbare. The Foreign Office’s grand staircase still impresses visiting dignitaries, but what of the substance beneath? Brexit, a decade of chaos, a revolving door of leaders. We have our own algae, and it is not in a pool. It is in the institutions. The monarchy’s soft power wanes. The Union Jack flaps weakly in the wind of Scottish nationalism. We fret about the colour of the carpet in the State Dining Room while the Treasury drowns in debt.
Trump’s order is thus a perfect allegory for the age. He is the man who would rather paint the White House gold than fix the roof. But let us not be too harsh. There is virtue in tending to symbols. They remind us of what we aspire to be. A clean Reflecting Pool is a statement: America still believes in its own myth. The problem is when the myth becomes the only reality. When the algae returns, as it will, will there be anyone left to notice the stench?
The intellectual decadence of our time is the refusal to see the connection between the small and the large. We treat the Reflecting Pool as a mere maintenance issue, not a metaphor. But the ancient Romans understood that the health of a republic was reflected in its public works. A clean aqueduct meant a clean government. A filthy one meant corruption. Perhaps Trump, in his crude way, senses this. But he is too shallow to act on it. He will order the Pool scrubbed, then tweet about how great it looks, while the deeper algae of division, inequality, and institutional decay continues to spread.
So let us watch the Reflecting Pool. When it gleams, we may briefly applaud. But let us also remember that the real dirt is not in the water. It is in the souls of the men who govern us. And no amount of scrubbing will cleanse that.
