The setting for President Trump’s early Fourth of July celebration was magnificent, as the Black Hills of South Dakota tend to be. The scene was also full of painful history, willful ignorance and deliberate fearmongering.
Friday night, in an amphitheater in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, a military band played smooth jazz on snare drums and trumpets as the country sank under the rising number of coronavirus infections. Thousands of unmasked guests, awaiting the arrival of the president, sat shoulder-to-shoulder in black folding chairs tethered together in a kind of coronavirus chain of denial. The VIPs would, of course, be seated separately onstage — not six feet apart but not amid the storm of exhalations, coughs, vociferous cheers and sneezes. And just to add to the upside-down, inside-out madness of the mass gathering, Ivanka Trump, the president’s adviser and daughter, tweeted a reminder to be safe over the holiday weekend by social distancing and wearing a mask. Her nearest and dearest did not listen to the plea.
Mount Rushmore is painfully complex — much like America itself. The faces of four revered but profoundly flawed presidents were carved into the stone by a talented sculptor who sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. The majestic monument — a testament to human tenacity — scars land considered sacred by Native Americans. Continue reading.
MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL, SOUTH DAKOTA — At the foot of Mount Rushmore and on the eve of Independence Day, President Donald Trump dug deeper into America’s divisions by accusing protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.”