By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
There are occasional times in history when an event perfectly encapsulates the time in which it occurred. The “Freedom 250” UFC fight staged on the White House lawn on June 14 was one such event.
Like a bubonic plague boil coming to the surface, this engorged spectacle of “freedom” for President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday saw a cage erected for MMA fighting, synchronized motocross bikes jumping in front of the same White House where FDR once saw us through the Great Depression and World War II, and drunken fistfights in the audience. It’s like we’re purposely speedrunning straight into Idiocracy at this point. I half-expected to see President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho burst from a Brawndo banner waving an American-flag and firing his machine gun into the air.
On over to the Lincoln Memorial, where tens of thousands lined the reflecting pool to protest the Vietnam War in the 1960s and hear Martin Luther King proclaim “I Have a Dream,” UFC heavyweight Jake Hokit faked a drunken vomiting episode during weigh-in, leaving his 12 fans cringing and the rest of us confused. Maybe he drank some of the green algae bloom that has taken over the Reflecting Pool after Trump’s $14 million renovation left it in disarray. As they say in Thailand, “Same same, but different.” The algae got so bad, there were photos of government workers dumping jugs of hydrogen peroxide into the pool to beat back the actual swamp that Trump has created.
At the main event on the White House lawn, where former-first lady Michelle Obama once planted a vegetable garden to symbolize her commitment to policies encouraging healthy eating for American children, Hokit won his fight and, at the conclusion of his victory speech, shouted, “Michelle Obama is a man.” And the crowd went wild.
This is where we are, folks. This is America.
Meanwhile, Trump is spitting on our backs and telling us it’s raining as he congratulates himself for “ending” yet another war. It doesn’t matter that he started it. It doesn’t matter that the “deal” he reportedly got with Iran amounts to a reset to pre-war conditions — except our pockets were properly emptied and Iran now realizes it has a huge bargaining chip against the rest of the world by controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz.
Never mind all that, folks, just watch the circuses. And here, have some bread, too, and wash it down with some Brawndo.
