Old Man Shouts At Building

Concerns grow over what Trump will put on display at his presidential library: report https://t.co/hdIMm1RRYe

— Raw Story (@RawStory) April 7, 2021

If Trump leaves any benefit to the county, may it be a break that is absolute in the chain of "Presidential libraries." They are a blight. We don't need them.

The only one I have any regard for is LBJ's, in Austin.  It's a center of scholarship and historical records.  Mostly, though, I don't have much use for them.  Bush I has one, but I don't know anything about it.  Bush II has one, whose notable feature seems to be the giant sized statue of him and Poppy, mini-collosi not quite bestriding the world.  Clinton's library is equally a cipher.  When I think of it, all I think of is Shrub at the library's opening:

Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where secret service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: "Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could take this place out."

Was the president warning of an al-Qaida submarine, sneaking undetected up the Mississippi, through the locks and dams of the Arkansas river, surfacing under the bridge to the 21st century to dispatch the Clinton library? Is that where Osama bin Laden is hiding?

Or was this a wishful paranoid fantasy of ubiquitous terrorism destroying Clinton's legacy with one blow? Or a projection of menace and messianism, with only Bush grasping the true danger, standing between submerged threat and civilisation? Perhaps it was simply his way of saying he wouldn't build his library near water.

And this:  I always remember this (especially in the restoration of Shrub as "Presidential" after 4 years of Trump):

That's when Shrub was President; and he didn't want Clinton upstaging him at the opening of Clinton's library.  Classic Shrub; and prelude, not antidote, to Trump

Reagan's library is notable largely (pun intend) for it's life size replica of Air Force One, under a roof.  I wonder if Trump would want one with the new paint job he said Melania came up with (and everyone who believes that she even had a hand in the proposal deserves to buy the first tickets to Trump's library).  Last I heard, Obama's library is looking for a place to land, and pissing people off in Chicago that will be displaced by it.  Ultimate irony for a man who spent a short time as a community organizer there (more trainee than not, per his memoir).  It raises the question, again:  who needs these things?

It's not even clear Trump will get a library.  I sincerely hope not.  Not only would it be empty of records (or full of records painstakingly taped back together.  Accounts agree Trump reflexively destroyed papers handed to him, the better to ensure no paper trail stuck to his shoes.  Accounts disagree on whether or not a flunky was employed full-time taping those papers back together; or was fired once news of the work was public; or was kept on, actually; or what happened.  Somebody knows by now, but obviously it's not (yet) headline news.), it would likely include the statue of Trump from the last CPAC.

Yeah, that one.  I mean, unless we could get Congress to require this be floated above the building, as a permanent installation:

The whole thing's not worth it.

Even with the blimp, it's not worth it.  Well...maybe....no!  Be strong!  Resist! It's not worth it!  Period.

And if we break the chain, maybe it can stay broken.  Although a Biden library already has the attractiveness of the LBJ library, to me.  Same mood, as the kids say.