🏛️ A Republic—Can We Keep It?
It began with a lie.
We were told the East Wing would be “untouched.” That this grand piece of American history — the people’s wing — would remain preserved to build a new ballroom. Don’t worry, they said. Don’t listen to the “hysterics.” Everything’s fine.
And then, one morning, it was gone.
The East Wing of the White House — the home of public tours, of First Ladies’ history, of art and diplomacy and continuity — leveled. Erased like an inconvenient truth. In its place: a massive private ballroom, sprawling nearly the size of the entire White House itself. Built without approval, oversight, or shame.
He did it because he could.
The Metaphor We’re Living
If you want to understand what Donald Trump is doing to this country, you don’t need to read a policy paper — just look at that gaping hole where the East Wing once stood.
That’s our Republic. That’s our Constitution. That’s centuries of norms, balance, and accountability — bulldozed for ego and spectacle.
The ballroom is his monument to power — not service.
He’s replacing the people’s spaces with his stages.
He’s replacing transparency with velvet ropes and donor lists hidden behind shell companies and “friends of the project.”
No bids. No oversight. No accountability. Just a shrug and a smirk: “What are you going to do about it?”
The Lies Behind the Rubble
They told us it was adding a ballroom.
Sound familiar? That’s how autocrats operate — destroy first, justify later, and let their followers chant about “strength” while the rest of us gasp in disbelief.
But it’s not just a building. It’s a template.
When he rewrites law with executive pen strokes, when he shields donors behind patriotic slogans, when he installs loyalists instead of experts, he’s not remodeling America — he’s demolishing it.
Each lie becomes a blueprint for another unauthorized wing, another private ballroom, another affront to the idea that government belongs to the governed.
Shielding the Donors
And the money — always the money.
Who’s funding this colossal ballroom?
No one will say. We’re told “private benefactors.”
Translation: political investors expecting ROI in deregulation, contracts, pardons, and influence.
What are they buying? Access. Immunity. Silence.
When power goes unexamined, it metastasizes. When donors become invisible, democracy becomes ornamental — a gilded frame around a gutted house.
The Sound of a Bulldozer
It’s the sound of democracy dying not with a bang, but with a backhoe.
It’s marble and history reduced to dust because one man couldn’t stand to share the stage.
The East Wing was the people’s side of the house. He’s turned it into a ballroom for his coronation.
And if you’re not angry yet, you’re not paying attention.
The Only Blueprint That Matters
We were given one fragile instruction at the nation’s founding.
Benjamin Franklin, stepping out of Independence Hall, was asked:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got — a monarchy or a republic?”
His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We are failing that test. Not because one man swings the hammer, but because too many stand by watching the dust rise and call it “progress.”
A Republic cannot survive on nostalgia or tweets. It survives only if enough of us say:
No. Not this time. Not this wing. Not this country.
Final Thought
When future generations tour the ruins of what we once called democracy, they may ask what happened to the East Wing — the place where the people once entered freely.
And we’ll have to tell them the truth:
It wasn’t destroyed by enemies.
It was bulldozed by arrogance.
And it was allowed by silence.
So I’ll ask again — as Franklin did:
A Republic — can we keep it?
Or will we dance in the ballroom while the foundation caves beneath our feet?
My take: NONE OF “US“ WILL DANCE IN THAT FUCKING BALLROOM!!!!
Julie Bolejack, MBA
juliebolejack.com
mindfulactivist.etsy.com
