With pretensions of grandeur.King Trump gilds everything. The White House is getting the trappings of a King...a great hall/aka ballroom. All castles have them. Our founders should have been turning over in their graves as they said goodbye to kings who needed to show their success in terms of gold. Plain cloth coats replaced brocades with gold threads. Our founders' architecture harks back to the less adorned classics of Rome and Greece, the first democracies. The White House is just that: a house; it is not a fortress/castle. It has, until now, personified a country governed by a democracy. He is replacing it with this monstrosity, the sign of a nouveau riche with a terrible inferiority complex and a bad case of gold envy, with no understanding of what democracy is all about, its traditions and purpose, and not caring a whit about it.
The metaphor is more than just Trump's destruction of governmental norms and forms; it is a metaphor that reveals a deeply flawed narcissistic personality who sees gold and grandeur as a way to compensate for a lack of respect and a deep-seated sense of being persecuted.
It looks like Trump must be trying to keep up with his Russian peer, retrofitting as much as he can, coating woodwork with gilt, and now the gold ballroom. The Czars, which Putin replaces in many ways, hark back to a long tradition of centuries, and Putin draws on these historical references to rally the citizens he rules as he tries to restore past glories. The Kremlin is a historical edifice with roots deep in the centuries. Trump is not restoring 250 of past glories; he is destroying its trappings, purpose and memories of accomplishments, and replacing it with his own version of personal glory. and power.
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