HE'S BUILDING A BUNKER
On the anniversary of Hitler dying in one, let that sink in.
Eighty-one years ago today, Adolf Hitler shot himself on a couch underground.
Not in a palace. He ended his over twelve years long reign in a concrete hole beneath a ruined city, with Soviet soldiers close enough that if not for the thick steel-reinforced walls, they could hear those pistol shots.
The Thousand-Year-Great-Again Third Reich ended in a basement.
Remember that while you read the next part.
Donald Trump is building a bunker under the White House.
Not a rumor. His words, to reporters, March 29th:
“The military’s building a massive complex under the ballroom.
The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under.”
A shed. He called the ballroom a shed.
They tore down the East Wing — the historic East Wing, built in the FDR years — to put up a $400 million ballroom. Gold and bulletproof glass, big enough for a thousand guests. Magnificent, by all accounts, if you’re into that sort of thing.
But the ballroom isn’t the point. The ballroom is the lid.
Underneath it: bomb shelters. Medical facilities. Missile-resistant steel. Drone-proof ceilings. Protection against bioweapons. Communications systems. A complete underground world, paid for by the American military, currently under construction, kept going even after a federal judge stopped everything above ground.
The bunker goes on. The ballroom waits.
Now. You can call this a security upgrade. Perfectly reasonable president, perfectly reasonable precautions, nothing to see here.
Or you can ask a simple question: what does a man think is coming, when he builds something like this?
Hitler’s bunker had thick walls, a bedroom, food storage, a radio room. It was built for a man who believed the world outside had turned against him — and he was right, because he had made it that way. By the end, he was issuing orders to armies that had already been destroyed. He was screaming at generals for failing him. He was convinced of betrayal everywhere he looked.
The scene from the German film Downfall (Der Untergang), that has become so virally popular on YouTube, in all its original glory. Here, Hitler finally realises he is defeated in Berlin.
The bunker didn’t protect him. It just became the place where everyone finally ran out of lies to tell him.
You don’t build what Trump is building because things are going well.
You build it because you don’t feel safe. Because the enemies feel real and close. Because somewhere in the back of your head, you know that what you’ve set in motion doesn’t end quietly.
Think about who’s left in the room. Think about who got fired, pushed out, quietly disappeared from the orbit over the last few years. Think about what kind of information reaches a man when everyone around him knows the cost of bad news.
Hitler, in those last weeks, was commanding phantom armies on a map. The people in the room let him. Nobody wants to be the one to say it out loud.
There’s a joke available here about Melania — about how Eva Braun was in the Führerbunker for less than 40 hours before she took the cyanide, and about how Melania’s relationship to proximity is a little more flexible.
We’ll skip it. The straight version is dark enough.
Every strongman ends up in a room. It starts as a headquarters, or a retreat, or a perfectly sensible security measure. And at some point it becomes the last place. They never see it coming. That’s the thing about bunkers — you build them to survive what’s outside, and then the outside moves on without you, and you’re just a man underground.
Today is April 30th.
Eighty-one years ago, the man in the bunker ran out of options.
Trump is still building his.
Pay attention to what a man builds. It tells you what he fears. And what he fears tells you what he knows.
Being Liberal — the oldest liberal brand on social media, since November 5, 2009. #resisttogether