this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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"Mr. Trump said Wednesday that the ballroom will cost $300 million — up from the $200 million figure that White House officials initially cited."

Fuck it by this time tomorrow its gonna be $400 million if not $500.

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[–] despite_velasquez@lemmy.world 57 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What Trump is doing makes a lot of sense. It's just standard iconoclasm.

Authoritarian regimes routinely destroy historical monuments to erase a past they oppose, promote their own ideology, and control national identity.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I think this issue is somewhat more complicated than what is described by iconoclasm. Trump and the conservative wing of American politics are simultaneously destroying certain aspects of what is usually referred to as American civil religion while still upholding massive amounts of it at the same time. For example its not like they have changed the flag, or that they dont talk about the founding fathers as some godlike figures, etc.

Iconoclasm would imply that the Trumpian cult religion is fully attempting to supplant the longstanding civil religion, but that isnt quite the case. They dont want to stop revering the founding fathers and say we should only revere trump, or say we should get rid of the American flag and replace it with the MAGA flag. The trump cult wouldnt exist without the most rabid adherents to tenets of American civil religion; belief that they are the one true patriots, etc. Progressives and the left wing in general tend to be less attached to such ideas. For example, theyre generally more willing to view the founding fathers as fallible humans rather than as figures above any form of criticism.

Rather than something that meets the definition of iconoclasm, this seems (to me, at least) to show how the MAGA cult is a form of cancerous outgrowth from American civil religion. It stemmed from ACR, and now has become so cancerous that it has started cannibalizing the very thing that spawned it in the first place. But all the while the cult members will go on believing that they are still perfect adherents to the civil religion that inspired them to destroy icons of that civil religion. Its hard to call it basic iconoclasm if one thing is not attempting to outright supersede something else, like in the traditional political example of a new ruler eliminating statues of their predecessor