The pearl-clutching in Washington has reached deafening decibels this week over President Donald Trump’s casual, perfectly reasonable suggestion that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be reduced to a pile of twisted rebar and pulverized concrete. The usual chorus of coastal elites is screaming about historic preservation and the rule of law, treating the mere prospect of high-yield explosives detonating inside the Opera House as some sort of democratic crisis.
Let’s be honest. The building has always looked like a regional distribution hub for a mid-tier cardboard box manufacturer. Anyone who claims to feel a deep, spiritual attachment to that sprawling, windowless monolith is either lying to themselves or holds a season subscription to the National Symphony Orchestra purely to punish their spouse. If we are finally going to have a national conversation about urban renewal, we must be brave enough to admit that a smoldering, sixty-foot-deep impact trench on the banks of the Potomac is a massive aesthetic upgrade.
The legal community, naturally, is trying to spoil the fun. A flurry of self-appointed experts has spent the last forty-eight hours citing obscure zoning codes, federal property statutes, and congressional mandates to argue that a sitting president cannot simply back a Caterpillar D11 bulldozer over a federally funded theater. They fundamentally misunderstand the moment. Voters did not send Donald Trump back to the White House to fill out demolition permits in triplicate. They sent him to clear the rot, and sometimes the rot happens to be a multi-level marble box hosting a revival of Cats.
The coastal media is obsessing over the structural integrity of the Concert Hall, but they are entirely ignoring the sheer kinetic beauty of three thousand tons of Carrara marble collapsing in on itself.
Furlong is absolutely right. What the critics fail to grasp is that demolishing the Kennedy Center is, in itself, the most profound piece of performance art this city has commissioned in decades. Think of the acoustics. The booming resonance of a wrecking ball shattering the Grand Foyer’s crystal chandeliers will carry all the way to Arlington. It is an immersive, multi-sensory experience that is finally accessible to the everyday working-class Americans who have historically been priced out of the mezzanine.
I spent yesterday afternoon at a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, and the mood among the caucus is quietly jubilant. Lawmakers who have spent their entire careers pretending to enjoy three-hour modernist ballets are practically weeping with relief at the prospect of the venue’s total annihilation. The political capital to be gained here is staggering. Imagine the optics of the commander-in-chief standing on a pile of crushed velvet seating and shattered French horns, pointing triumphantly toward the river. It projects strength. It projects decisiveness. It projects a total unwillingness to sit through another experimental jazz recital.
The whining from the artistic community is especially rich when you consider how easily their programming could be relocated. The National Symphony Orchestra does not strictly need a federally subsidized acoustic shell to play Beethoven. They can perfectly well set up folding chairs on the National Mall or busk outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station like true working artists. If their music is genuinely compelling, commuters will throw dollar bills into their violin cases. Capitalism is the ultimate peer review.
Naturally, the hand-wringing over the logistical challenges is already out of control. Analysts warn that safely imploding a structure of that size without damaging the adjacent Watergate complex or the Rock Creek Parkway would require months of careful engineering. This is precisely the kind of defeatist, bureaucratic thinking that has paralyzed American innovation. If the Army Corps of Engineers cannot figure out how to strap enough C-4 to the presidential box to vaporize it in a single afternoon, then perhaps we need to rethink the entire defense budget.
Think of the sheer volume of raw materials that will be liberated from their current, elitist prison. We are talking about thousands of tons of premium stone currently trapped in the form of sweeping staircases and donor-recognition plaques. The administration could repurpose that marble to build something truly useful for the American people, like a magnificent, impenetrable border wall, or perhaps just a very large, beautiful ramp to launch the rubble directly into the Potomac.
We are told that the loss of the institution would be devastating to the local economy, but consider the immediate job creation. We are talking about hundreds of union contractors operating excavators, dump trucks, and industrial rock crushers. For months, local diners will be packed with hard-hat workers covered in the pulverized dust of the Eisenhower Theater. This is an infrastructure project in its purest form.
People are crying over the loss of the ballet, but nobody is thinking about the incredible sightlines we are going to open up for the incoming fleet of heavy-duty debris haulers.
Furthermore, the panic over the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is completely detached from reality. We do not need a three-hour televised gala to celebrate comedy when the administration is actively providing the funniest possible visual gag: watching the panicked faces of tuxedo-clad lobbyists as an industrial wrecking ball swings directly through the bronze bust of John F. Kennedy. That is physical comedy on a scale Buster Keaton could only dream of.
The left loves to talk about dismantling elitist institutions. Yet the moment a Republican president actually proposes turning the literal physical embodiment of cultural elitism into a gravel parking lot, they suddenly discover a deep reverence for the performing arts. It is staggering hypocrisy. The Kennedy Center has stood for over fifty years as a monument to the idea that politicians deserve a special place to wear formalwear and avoid their constituents. Flattening it is the ultimate populist victory.
The experts can whine about legal feasibility all they want, but history will not remember the zoning lawyers who tried to save the Millennium Stage. It will remember the bold visionaries who looked at a bloated, taxpayer-funded marble rectangle and saw the breathtaking potential of a perfectly empty crater.