“American Gothic,” the iconic portrait that became the face of America in a time of crisis, is touring the world, once again.
But this “American Gothic” is Donald Trump’s new one, not Grant Wood’s Depression-era masterpiece. And the reviews the new American Gothic is getting — overseas and back in the USA — are hardly rave. Rage is more like it.
“American Gothic,” 1930: You know it by sight. It is the portrait of a hardscrabble, stern-faced Iowa father and adult daughter standing their ground in front of their house — and most famously, the man’s right fist is holding an upturned pitchfork. When the painting traveled to Britain in 2017, The Guardian hailed it as “the most famous painting in American art …instantly recognizable to millions of people from Oregon to Osaka who hardly know its name.”
America Gothic, 2020: You know this new one by sight too, having seen it on your news screens again and again after this horrific week of protests and police clashes on America’s strife-torn city streets. It is the photo-portrait of a jut-jawed, glaring, politically panicked president struggling to find a way to be reelected. He is standing in front of the historic St. John’s Church, just across the park from the White House — and most famously, his right hand is holding skyward a Bible he was just handed so he could use it as a prop for his fake news photo op.
Grant Wood couldn’t have posed President Donald Trump any better than he posed himself in the daylight of early Monday evening. Trump went to church not to pray, just pose — and maybe prey. For his troops had just violently forced peacefully protesting fellow citizens to leave so he could stage what may be history’s most unpresidential presidential photo op.
For days, Americans everywhere had been protesting the slow-motion murder by Minneapolis police of an unarmed black man, George Floyd. Meanwhile, Trump was reportedly infuriated when the news leaked out that he and his family had been rushed into a White House bunker by Secret Service agents because some individuals had gotten onto White House grounds. Trump raged that it made him look weak. So he plotted to stage his own reality TV-like fake news event where he would look tough again.
It was a three-step/three-stop process. First, on Monday Trump blasted America’s state governors for being weak by not preventing protesters from looting, trashing and burning. He demanded that governors “dominate” their city streets. Then, in his Rose Garden, he talked about his plan for sending troops to fight American protesters — words that our military elites find reprehensible.
And he also proudly declared: “I am your president of law and order, and an ally of all peaceful protesters.” But as he spoke those words, his military was proving he was lying.
Troops suddenly launched a violent assault upon totally “peaceful protesters” just across the park from the White House. Why? They were in front of a church Trump wanted to use for his photo op backdrop. So troops charged violently into protesters who heard no warning to leave the street and fired what civilians said felt like tear gas and pepper bullets. But Trump officials denied using tear gas.
That denial is testimony to the twisted emptiness of Trump’s reign. The San Diego company PepperBall, which makes pepper ball pellets the government fired, says its product produces a cloud that “affects the eyes, nose, and respiratory system.” And a fact sheet issued by Trump’s own Centers for Disease Control classifies those pepper balls as “riot control agents” that are “sometimes referred to as ‘tear gas.’” Team Trump’s blanket denials are deliberately deceptive and downright deceitful.
Meanwhile, after Trump was done posing as the Law-and-Order Dominator, a new hope emerged clear across the continent that millions of Americans may have begun painting the American people’s own self-portrait.
Video shot Wednesday night in Seattle showed us thousands of protesters peacefully packing downtown streets. They were so massive, yet so peaceful that the city rescinded its curfew. And peace reigned through the night.
Maybe the smart set in the nation’s capital needs to look 2,761 miles west of the White House to figure out what the face of a truly united states should look like. Not one stern-faced man with a pitchfork or glaring man with a Bible — but thousands of very real faceless people, protesting peacefully as one. Maybe their unity of peaceful protests are the secret sauce that can empower us to forge a genuine era of nationwide police reform.
A rooftop in Seattle may be the perfect place for us to capture the thousands of expressions that must become the selfless self-portrait of our Ultimate American Gothic, 2020.
Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at martin.schram@gmail.com.
