Construction has begun on a mixed martial arts octagon for a UFC fight scheduled to take place on the White House's south lawn on June 14. Although this is ostensibly part of a variety of celebrations to commemorate the United States' 250th anniversary, it also happens to be President Donald Trump's birthday and Flag Day.
The June 14th event will feature five fights. Trump said that as many as 100,000 people will be able to watch the fights on the White House lawn either directly or on big screens.
It seems odd to invite a small city's worth of people onto the White House grounds to watch men pummel each other to commemorate America (and the birth of our president). Does raw, physical violence really embody what we value most about this country?
One cannot help but be reminded of the infamous use of bread and circuses in ancient Rome as it transitioned from a republic. As the Roman poet Juvenal wrote,
For that sovereign people that once gave away military command, consulships, legions, and every thing, now bridles its desires, and limits its anxious longings to two things only—bread, and the games of the circus!
Ancient Rome famously decayed over centuries from a Republic of dispersed political authority into a dictatorial empire. As this occurred, powerful Roman figures (and eventually the emperors) began to put on grander and more expensive gladiatorial games, and the Roman government began to offer Roman men free grain/bread. It was a way for powerful figures to gain or secure more political power and to distract and pacify the lower classes. As noted by Juvenal, the populace was all to content to focus on the entertainment and free, reliable food while it gradually ceded its political liberty.
The United States was founded as a nation of fragmented and mostly decentralized government with great emphasis placed on inviolable individual rights and freedoms. But over the last century or so, the federal government (and especially the president) has slowly gobbled up more and more authority, despite the limits imposed on it by the Constitution. This president in particular has engaged in unprecedented and lawless exercises of authority.
And so it is that on the country's 250th anniversary, the president is not putting on a celebration of the principles on which our nation was founded or its great accomplishments, but instead is putting on the modern equivalent of Roman gladiatorial games on the lawn of the White House. It is a transparent use of the people's house glorify the president and to distract from the president's unprecedented corruption, incompetence, and erosion of what actually made this nation special--the rule of law and strong protections for individual rights.
And like the Romans of Juvenal's time, many Americans seem supportive or indifferent to the erosion of their political power and rights. And to add insult to injury, unlike the Romans, the American people aren't getting bread.