Trump's plunge into madness enters freefall in preposterous week

US President Donald Trump, riding inside “The Beast”, arrives at Gracie Mansion for a meeting with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York, September, 21, 2026. REUTERS/Bing Guan

The Spectacle Is the Cover; Institutional Power Is the Story

Racism With a Government Seal

Raw Story columnist Jason Miciak describes a September 2026 sequence in which Texas Republican candidate Bo French mocked a crowd of largely South Asian and Indian American students, Karl Rove called French a bigot, and the Department of Education subsequently posted “MAKE COLLEGE FOOTBALL GREAT AGAIN.” Miciak interprets the department’s message as an echo of French’s post. The reporting establishes the posts and Rove’s condemnation; it does not establish who authorized the department’s response or prove its intended meaning.

The power disparity is unmistakable even with that uncertainty preserved. Students appeared in a political candidate’s racialized attack; a federal agency then entered the same controversy using government communications infrastructure. French held the megaphone of a statewide campaign. The administration controlled an institution capable of shaping education policy and distributing an official message nationwide. The students controlled neither.

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Whether the department intended an explicit endorsement or cultivated plausible deniability, the foreseeable effect was the same: federal authority amplified the political frame surrounding French’s post instead of rejecting it. “Cute” ambiguity is not neutrality when the government chooses which slogan to circulate and which people to leave as targets.

The Administration Made These Choices

Miciak’s column repeatedly calls the administration “insane.” That language obscures more than it explains. The reported conduct consists of decisions: the Education Department published a slogan; Donald Trump promoted plans for a heavily defended arch; his administration sought recognition for its contribution to the Kennedy Center; and Trump appointee Richard Grenell reportedly directed its curator to return international gifts as part of replacing unwanted art with works reflecting “shared American values.”

Those are exercises of institutional power, not symptoms floating free of responsible actors. Officials selected the messages, commissioned the plans, issued the instructions, and attached the state’s authority to them. Calling the result madness risks converting accountability into diagnosis.

The source supplies no medical basis for Miciak’s claims about Trump’s mental health or “disorders.” Those assertions should be discarded. The documented political issue is sufficient: public institutions were reportedly being used to elevate the president’s name, aesthetics, cultural preferences, and grievance-driven messaging.

Personal Rule Paid for by the Public

The Kennedy Center dispute reveals the clearest pattern. According to Miciak, Trump insisted that his administration’s contribution be recognized, while Grenell sought art reflecting “shared American values.” The phrase sounds inclusive only until an appointee gets to decide which gifts are unwanted and which values qualify as shared.

That is cultural power exercised downward. The administration controls appointments and public resources; curators and foreign donors absorb the consequences. If presidential recognition is tied to public spending, taxpayers finance personal commemoration. If “American values” becomes a filter imposed by political appointees, a national institution becomes an instrument for ideological sorting.

The source does not establish what replacement works were selected or whether gifts were ultimately returned. Miciak’s imagined “MAGA art” is satire, not evidence. The reported directive itself is the substantive matter: an appointee proposed remaking a public cultural collection around a partisan administration’s definition of national identity.

Mockery Is Not Accountability

The column is strongest when it identifies the people and institutions deploying power. It is weakest when it retreats into jokes about sharks, batteries, dragons, burial, and imagined artwork. Those flourishes turn governing choices into an eccentricity reel.

That framing misdirects attention. The central conflict is not “normal” people versus a strange president. It is an administration using official channels, appointments, public money, and symbolic institutions to define who belongs, what counts as American, and whose name public achievements should glorify.

Miciak also invokes Barack Obama’s criticism of allowing AI companies to regulate themselves. Obama’s quoted comparison—to regulation of airlines, drugs, and food—raises a concrete policy dispute about corporate incentives and public safeguards. Yet the column quickly converts it into nostalgia for a “normal adult.” That substitutes personality for the harder questions: which rules were rejected, which companies benefited, and who would bear the harm if voluntary safeguards failed.

Exhaustion Is Part of the Advantage

The column opens with political exhaustion, but exhaustion is not merely an audience problem. A constant stream of provocation advantages officials who can act while critics chase each spectacle. One racist post, one agency slogan, one architectural fantasy, and one cultural purge proposal blur together until each becomes disposable entertainment.

The larger pattern is institutional personalization. Government agencies echo campaign language. Public monuments become vehicles for presidential branding. Cultural stewardship is subordinated to an appointee’s ideological standard. Policy debates are drowned in presidential spectacle.

The error is to treat this accumulation as chaos. Chaos suggests that no one is steering. The evidence presented here shows identifiable actors making identifiable choices through institutions they control. The jokes may be absurd; the distribution of power is not.

Thanks to Raw Story

Source: Trump’s plunge into madness enters freefall in preposterous week

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