Route 250 pt.2
E Pluribus Absurdum
Being natives to the early decades of the 21st century, I'm sure most of us are used to the experience of watching dystopian fiction come to life...but have you ever physically immersed yourself in a series of self-replicating Onion articles? Welcome to next part of the Freedom 250 experience…
It may seem a hazy memory now, but there really was a time when Trump’s Great American State Fair was going to feature the likes of Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, Bret Michaels and other treasures of ironic nostalgia- that is until most of them dropped out when their geiger counters went off the chart at the sheer radioactivity of the MAGA association. Vanilla Ice still tried, but God said no and Flo-rida ended up using the stage to endorse a Democratic candidate.
Trump would just have to headline the fucking thing himself wouldn't he?
Two tickets please!
Now of course security was going to be a thing and after Rededicate and UFC, I was worried that once again, there was going to be a ban on cameras...and to my very pleasant surprise, there wasn't. I was almost in disbelief as I floated through the gate with my cameras after the TSA guy had me prove my Instax wasn't an AR-15 by taking a picture of him. I don't know why it was different in this case (despite the president actually being there) and it did strengthen my suspicions about ulterior motives at the previous events- but who was I to complain?
We walked onto the National Mall and headed towards the seated area in front of the stage. We were greeted by this bizarre and photographically irresistible frame of rows of the party faithful in their proverbial pews holding flag placards over their faces, either to shade their faces from the sun or hide them from the hordes of photographers- which only served to encourage us, somewhat akin to throwing blood at sharks hoping to scare them away. Every photographer who was there that evening has a picture of this. Sadly we were eventually chased off by some Mar-a-Lago intern playing at security and were thus relegated to the grassy back bits where the frames and compositions became more paltry. Thankfully we were soon through the looking glass as proceedings proceeded on stage…
We got a nice little Christian nationalist prayer, jet fighters and bombers whizzing overhead (admittedly cool) and various MAGA and regime luminaries verbally fellating the president. One of the stand out moments was when Secretary of Transportation and professional dickhead Sean Duffy actually dropped the word "libtard" on stage. Yes, a high-ranking government official actually chose to denigrate half or more of the country on the National Mall. If this was a crystallisation of how partisan Trumps vision of America's semiquincentennial would be, then the jets screeching overhead was a reminder that it was being largely funded by the tax payer. In other words Freedom 250 was most definitely not for all Americans despite being paid for by all Americans. How gross is that?
As usual, Trump himself was preceded by an as always off-key rendition of "God Bless the USA" by the official national bard, Lee Greenwood, followed by yet more jets. Trump rambled on about mythic algae vandals, the Biden years and achieving peace for the first time in 3000 years. In other words, a speech with all the timelessness of curdled milk.
When he finally shut up and the crowds turned to leave, the pictures once again came more easily. We strobe-lit the night with reckless abandon. Outside a small protest awaited. I noted that it was essentially the same half dozen folk I've seen at other similar events over the course of this year. It it me, or are the protests getting...smaller? As we ourselves headed home, I reflected on the surreal and almost uncanny inner dichotomy of being out on the Mall that evening: being acutely aware of how weird, disturbing and dystopian this all was…but also, normal…virtually the textbook definition of hypernormalisation in fact.
The Great American State Fair (GASF) itself was something I had actually been looking forward to and not just ironically either. I had imagined the light, colour and rides of a conventional fair but with a lurid coat of Trumpian paint. MAGA has a flair for the carnivalesque and there's no lack of money, so surely this would be both imperious and impressive.
Wrong.
It quickly became a viral laughingstock, primarily because of its spotty attendance and shoddy cardboard and canvas inconsistency. It brought to mind an Americanised version of Glasgow's infamous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory debacle.
When we went, the numbers were actually alright and some of the pavilions were pretty crowded. Some states put in a good effort, others did not (Maryland's was almost rebelliously and subversively bland -essentially a repository of tourist brochures), many states did not show up and Texas's one was shut down because some valiant rogue had had scrawled "8647" on the car they invite you to scrawl whatever you want on it.
To my mind however, the main problems with the fair weren’t the foot traffic or even the quality issues.
For one, the religious right and conservative think tanks had a heavy and often openly partisan presence ( for instance, you could get a beer coaster that said “the left needs to get a grip”). There wasn’t even a mildly left-leaning counterpoint- and even the apolitical felt lacking. I was again reminded that this big fuck you to over half the country was funded by all of us and this was how America’s big 250 was being wasted.
There was also the prominence of AI slop. I’m not a total anti-AI absolutionist being a former user myself (something I may write about another time) but the pervasiveness here was truly egregious. And boy was it slop. The mutant hand freaks of the New Jersey pavilion were truly something to behold:
What makes it worse is that they could have and should have used this opportunity to highlight and promote artists, illustrators and photographers from the various states, but for the most part they said “nah”. I felt like this wasn’t so much out of laziness or cheapness but more to drive home a point and agenda. Past regimes often had their own form of propagandic aesthetic- Völkisch or Socialist Realism comes to mind. America in the 2020’s gets slop kitsch. Meditate upon that.
One of the more fascinating bits was the military section. There was one of those Boston Dynamics robo-dogs. I couldn’t help not seeing the mecha-shuck of death from Black Mirror. Here, people were petting it as if it were a real dog:
On the way out of the fair, we were accosted by a Chinese woman who essentially forced us to recite the Lords Prayer as she followed us to the metro and declared us Saved.
I have to admit, the GASF was it’s own special sort of dumb dystopian fun and whilst technically a pain in the ass to photograph, full of compelling content. I’d rate it so bad it’s good.
Now, I had said in the last post that we were strongly considering going to Philadelphia for the 4th instead of DC. On July 3rd we had still not yet made up our minds, but we did go to Gettysburg. It would be the big anniversary re-enactment weekend pumped up on semiquincentennic steroids and the town would be absolutely packed with tourists and ersatz yanks and rebels. It would (in theory) be both photographically fruitful and poetically resonant with the fraught state of the union on its 250th anniversary. When we drove into town however, we found the streets and battle sites to be near dead and nary a flash of blue or grey in sight.
The culprit was the dangerous triple digit temperatures that had set in cancelling 4th of July events up and down the east coast, including the famous re-enactments of Gettysburg. The poetic resonance here lay not with the long ago war between the states, but rather the effects of the very contemporary climate crisis that in re-electing Trump we thought we could denial and disbelieve our way out of. Gaia had chastened us for our hubris.
Gareth and I decided to wander along Gettysburg’s tat mile, trying to stay cool amongst the tacky souvenirs (MAGA and civil war themed alike) and ghost tour offices on the site of perhaps America’s greatest crucible.
Now we finally get to the 4th. So what’s it going to be? Philly or DC? Philly would be something fresh for us and of course the site of the original 4th of July- but there were concerns about distance and logistics. DC- well I’ve done the 4th there a couple of times, was a little over it but it would be an easier trek and in terms of the current zeitgeist, this was perhaps the place to be. Our main concern was the potentially oppressive and photographically neutering security. Ultimately we chose DC.
Pulling on the top of Union Stations parking garage, we were greeted with the spectacle of an F-35 zooming around and sometimes hovering in mid-air- which was a little eerie given I’ve seen this in a lot of my dreams. When we got to Freedom Square, instead of seeing an orderly security queue to make passage on to the Mall, we saw people strewn all over the place.
They had just evacuated the Mall due to an incoming storm and no one knew if things would get back on track or if the party was cancelled. Good for us as photographers as it made for a rich shooting range and we didn’t even have to faff with security. A menagerie of warplanes periodically screeched and boomed overhead to everyones delight but what really stole the show was the new Qatari Air Force One. To the non-MAGA aligned, it’s a symbol of Trumps grift and corruption. To look at the crowd here, you’d think they’d just seen Superman.
I spent a lot of the time photographing people coming out of the fences after being cleared off the Mall. For whatever reason, this evacuation took hours. One flustered evacuee took a look at my cameras and asked if I was with the New York Times. I said no. “GOOD!” she said. She informed me that there had been something of an uprising on The National Mall: as the police and Secret Service tried to get these people somewhere where they wouldn’t be struck by lightning, they were met with chants of USA! USA! USA!, invocations of constitutional rights and even the Holocaust. It was nice to see the no-masker spirit was still alive and well.
I gravitated towards a large group of people gathered around a DJ, Gen-Z MAGA bros forming a mosh pit and chanting USA! USA! USA! to decidedly un-moshy music. They were having fun, and fuck it, so was I. Otherwise people sat or scuffled about in their red, white and blues.
No one knew what was going on and information came in the form of rumour. Freedom Square began to take on the feel of a camp for those newly displaced by some cushy disaster….which in a sense was exactly what was going on.
At some point, it was figured that the storm wasn’t going to fully manifest after all and people were herded up Pennsylvania Ave and down Constitution. It soon bottle necked probably half a mile from the security checkpoints, and Gareth and I, slowly becoming delirious from dehydration and a lack of rest decided we weren’t going to bother with the Mall. We patrolled this vast queue thousands strong trying for pictures amongst this endless host.
Eventually Trump took the stage for his speech, but because of the way the sound bounced off the buildings, no words could be made out- only the sound of his voice reduced to abstracted noises.
And then finally, on the 5th of July (Gareth and I’s birthday no less) came the fireworks. They promised they would be big and Jesus H they weren’t kidding. Dazzlingly apocalyptic would be an appropriate description. That night, Washington DC would briefly experience the worst air quality of any major city in the world.
Eventually we decided we were spent and headed home. The fireworks kept going and going, echoing off the buildings of downtown. It sounded like we were being carpet bombed. In fact, between this, the screaming warplanes and the crowds wandering around like newly minted refugees, this most ultimate of 4th of July’s had the feel of some surrealist Disneyfied war simulator. It’s not one I’ll soon forget, nor will it be easy to top. I think we did well in choosing DC over Philadelphia. The manic and chaotic strangeness of it all made for a rich and unforgettable experience. We’ll try for Philly next year.
As an epilogue to all this semiquincentennial madness, I decided to pay one last visit to the Great American State Fair on it’s final day, mostly because I thought I had blown it photographically the first time around. Alas, barely an hour into it, did deja vu strike and everyone was once again evacuated off the Mall because of an incoming storm- which, just like with the UFC and the 4th, threatened but never actualised.
I hung with my fellow fair goers outside the fences waiting to be let back in. I could not help but smile at the irony of hundreds of mostly Trump voters crowded at the armed and patrolled border of this ill conceived simulacrum of America, desperate for passage through. Pure poetry. Alas, that was it for me. I had a train to catch and as my brother says, I was all 250’ed out.
Where is this country 250 years later? A plethora of opinion exists, but I think it’s safe to say it’s in dire existential straits. Looking back at the 1976 Bicentennial and imagining what could have been had the last election gone differently, it’s sad to see America’s 250th handed off to the most malign custodian imaginable. Instead of a dignified celebration of America for all Americans, we get this lumpen deformity of partisan bread and circuses. But that’s not to say I didn’t find the experience of it compelling…and dare I say even a little fun.
I sometimes think that I returned to America at bad time as a citizen, but a good time as a photographer. Freedom 250 embodied that dichotomy.
Good lord! *slaps forehead* Dwayne Camacho would stage a classier affair.. Great work as ever Gavin.