The news arrives with a whiff of the absurd, the kind of headline that would make Gibbon smirk. Donald Trump, the man who once promised to drain the swamp, has now ordered the immediate repair of Washington's algae-plagued Reflecting Pool. Yes, the iconic mirror between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, a symbol of national reflection and unity, has been reduced to a murky, greenish soup. And the commander-in-chief, in a fit of executive urgency, has declared it a top priority.
Let us pause to savour the historical irony. Rome, in its decadence, famously worried about the importation of marble for its baths while barbarians gathered at the gates. Here, we have a leader obsessed with the aesthetics of a puddle. The Reflecting Pool, once a site for civil rights marches and presidential inaugurations, is now a metaphor for a nation unable to look itself in the eye. The algae is not merely biological; it is the green slime of intellectual decay, the pond scum of a political culture that prefers spectacle to substance.
One must admire the Trumpian audacity. This is a man who turns every molehill into a mountaintop. The pool's neglect is decades old, a slow rot from cuts in maintenance budgets, a bipartisan failure of stewardship. Yet suddenly, with a tweet and a flourish, it becomes a crisis. The executive order will no doubt involve costly repairs, perhaps a new filtration system, maybe a team of divers. But who will clean the ideological algae? Who will repair the reflecting pool of the American soul?
The pool's condition is a perfect symbol of the current era. A once-grand feature of the national landscape, now neglected and forgotten, only to be revived by a populist's whim. It represents the decline of public works, the atrophy of civic pride, the substitution of genuine national reflection with a shallow, Instagram-ready surface. Trump's obsession with the pool's appearance mirrors his obsession with his own image. It is not about the water; it is about the performance.
And yet, this is precisely the sort of distraction we have come to expect. While the nation grapples with fiscal cliffs, crumbling infrastructure, and a fraying social contract, we are to applaud the restoration of a celebrity pond. It is the politics of the bread and circuses, the late Roman Empire's obsession with gladiatorial games and aqueducts while the Visigoths loitered at the borders. But perhaps I am being too harsh. Perhaps a clean pool is a small victory for order, a sign that the government can still do something, anything.
Still, the decadence is unmistakable. The algae blooms are a product of runoff, pollution, and neglect. They are the green bile of a civilisation that has forgotten how to maintain its own monuments. Trump's intervention is a symptom, not a cure. It treats the symptom while ignoring the disease. The pool will be cleaned, but the national character will remain stained.
One cannot help but think of the Victorian era, with its obsession with public hygiene and the moral improvement of the masses. The Victorians built grand fountains and parks to elevate the lower orders. Here, the order to fix a pool is a gesture of control, a signal that the ruler still commands. But the rot is deeper. The pool is a mirror, and what it reflects is a nation in decline, a people who have lost the art of self-reflection.
So let them repair the pool. Let them scrub the green slime from the surface. But do not mistake this for leadership. It is a sideshow, a Trumpian carnival act. The real work, the work of national renewal, requires a different kind of labour, the kind that involves looking into the murky depths of our own failings and not flinching. Until then, the reflecting pool will remain a fitting monument to an age of emptiness.
