Time Magazine reported in June 2017 that the National Park Service had to drain and clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after discovering that a parasite in the water killed eighty ducklings. Necropsies on the poor little things conducted by the US Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center found that a parasite growing in snails living in the pool had been killing the ducklings since May of that year. Why did President Trump allow snails to invade the reflecting pool?
The 2017 Time Magazine story has faded from the memory of the handful of people who happened across the short article at the time. I never knew about it. I stumbled upon it looking for something else (I will get to that in a moment). Now, with the 250th Anniversary of the Republic rapidly approaching, algae has become a problem at the reflecting pool, and finally, the media is paying attention.
Why Trump’s killing of ducklings at the reflecting pool was not on a continual “Breaking News” loop is the only mystery I discuss in this essay. Of course, Trump didn’t kill ducklings. The parasite is common to snails. Snails are common in water. Swimmers have long suffered itchy skin from swimming in bodies of water where the snails are present. I framed the episode at the start to bring to the fore the absurdity of the media frenzy over algae at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after Trump renovated the attraction in preparation for America’s 250th anniversary.
Algae have also been a problem at the reflecting pool. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool controversy is indeed absurd, but, sadly, predictable.
Obama’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was far more costly ($44 million in today’s dollars) and was soon plagued by algae. There were no scrolling “Breaking News” alerts about Obama’s “green reflecting pool.” I did locate a story about the algae in a Google search, but there was no hint of a scandal. Perhaps it was a slow news day. As with the death of eighty ducklings, the reporter simply noted the presence of algae in a short article.
Today, Obama’s presidential library, a work of brutalist architecture, is the toast of the town. What one may gather from the open house is that the public is supposed to pine for the good old days when Americans were sleepwalking through life. Just look at the photos of Obama’s perfect family. No scandals, we’ve been told.
That’s not what I remember. I distinctly remember Obama’s 2011 drone killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen in Yemen. A year earlier, Obama joked during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner that, if the Jonas Brothers got near his daughters, he had “two words” for them: “predator drones—you will never see it coming.” Abdulrahman never saw it coming.
Then there was the 2011 torture murder of Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi. Remember when–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted in her notorious cackle to the news of Gaddafi’s murder with, “We came, we saw, he died”?
The MSM cannot be bothered to report that the Obama Presidential Center was built on Jackson Park, altering historic public space, or that subcontractors are owed money (Trump is dogged for stiffing subcontractors).
I thought we would never hear the end of the temporary UFC structure on the South Lawn of the White House. Obama’s monstrosity is a glorious, permanent reminder of the days of a scandal-free presidency.
In addition to the algae, the blue paint coating the bottom of the reflecting pool is peeling. President Trump blames vandalism. The algae and peeling paint come with the chemical etching of “8647”—a sign to kill the president—on the Washington Monument grounds (West Lawn area). That nefarious forces were behind the peeling is plausible. More than plausible, actually, considering that there are vandals with tools at the pool, hauling up pieces of it. Law enforcement is investigating, there are many witnesses, and several arrests have been made.
A prebunking campaign circulated a hoax that Antifa dumped aggressive Georgia algae in the pool to sabotage the Trump Presidency. This framed Trump’s claim of vandalism.
If all this feels orchestrated, don’t be too quick to dismiss that feeling. However, sabotage by left-wing activists is hardly necessary when the corporate media stands ready to turn everything Trump does into a scandal.
I don’t recall whether the reflecting pool was green the last time I traveled to Washington, DC. That was when George W. Bush was president. There were more concerning developments at the time, like the Second Persian Gulf War and the entrenchment of the Surveillance State. I was more interested in the monuments and American history. My visits to the Pentagon and the Vietnam Memorial were remarkable. I will never forget the vigilant owl in the courtyard of the home of the War Department. Algae at the reflecting pool would not have stuck me as remarkable.
Speaking of the War Department, how about some reporting on transnational corporate power and the degradation of military readiness by outsourcing industrial production to the Chinese Communist Party under previous administrations? Americans might be interested in hearing about that and other developments important to their lives.
I am confident that they would be interested in this (not unrelated matter): On her last day in office at the Office of National Intelligence, Director Tulsi Gabbard shared documentation confirming what I already knew: that COVID-19 was fabricated in the Wuhan bioweapons lab under the direction of Anthony Fauci. The Biden administration sought to conceal this by granting Fauci a preemptive pardon, framing the matter of protecting those Trump would pursue as part of his “Retribution Tour.” (Biden justified pardoning his family using this frame.)
I have only seen short news briefs or wire-service summaries about Gabbard’s revelation wrapped in muted language: “Gabbard alleges…,” “Documents purport to show…,” “No independent verification…,” etc. There is no viral narrative about the revelation, even though, alongside Trump pressuring the state of Israel to stop defending itself from Iranian proxies in south Lebanon, Gabbard’s revelation is the biggest news story of the day.
As I documented in my last essay on this platform, delegitimizing Israel is useful to the Establishment. Exposing Fauci’s involvement in producing a bioweapon that shut down the world and led to Biden being installed as president is not.
What should be breaking news occurs at the same time the legacy media and social media accounts have organized the viral media campaign about an algae bloom at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, even though algae have plagued the pool since it was completed in 1924, more than a hundred years ago. The narrative persists. It remains among the top stories in the Google news aggregator this morning.
The ODNI revelation is news. The COVID-19 pandemic affected everybody’s lives. People were told to stay in their homes, stay away from others, avoid crowds (except those rioting over the long-debunked myth of “systemic racism” in lethal civilian-police encounters), not travel (my wife could not be with her dying mother in Sweden), and wear cloth masks over their faces. They were, moreover, shamed for not submitting to an experimental mRNA shot—and worse, employees were fired. Those who objected were censored and deplatformed. Doctors lost their privileges and reputations for refusing to valorize the Pandemic narrative.
An algae bloom at the reflecting pool is not news. Photosynthetic microorganisms, such as cyanobacteria (often called blue-green algae), have existed for at least 2.5–3.5 billion years. Eukaryotic algae (the organisms most people think of as algae) have been around for at least one billion years and probably longer. Few things are as common to the experience as algae in standing pools of water.
As I noted above, there was no prominent MSM coverage of the algae bloom that followed Barack Obama’s renovation of the reflecting pool. That is because algae blooms in the reflecting pool are commonplace. It’s why I don’t remember algae when I visited Washington, DC, more than two decades ago. Here’s the point: Obama is an Establishment operative. Donald Trump isn’t.
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Reporters are present at the reflecting pool covering the algae bloom, yet the vandalism commands very little of their attention. It’s not because they cannot be bothered with it. It’s because they’re there for algae and peeling paint and placing the responsibility for these developments squarely on Trump’s shoulders. I know about it because right-wing accounts on X are covering the vandalism, and there are police records of detentions and arrests. Vandals are being charged with crimes. The vandals are damned lucky they don’t live in North Korea.
Remember the burning police cars and precincts behind reporters covering the George Floyd riots described as “mostly peaceful”? Remember Lieutenant Frank Drebin standing in front of an exploding fireworks factory in the comedy Naked Gun, telling onlookers, “Nothing to see here”?
The George Floyd riots would be comical if not for the dozens of people murdered by “protestors.” As for the reports of violence that did break through, Chris Cuomo, then with CNN, demanded, “Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” Never mind that the First Amendment to the US Constitution protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” (emphasis mine).
The MSM is not news. It is Establishment propaganda. If you cannot see this, then your eyes are wide shut. The business of the MSM today—indeed for the last decade—is to delegitimize Donald Trump because Trump is not an establishment figure. He is an outsider whose policies disrupt globalization and the progressive agenda. Fauci was an operative of the Establishment. Any revelations about his involvement in the manufacture of a lethal virus that affected our lives must be marginalized.
There’s more to the Wuhan story that the MSM is not reporting. In October, 2014, the Obama White House announced a “pause” on funding for gain-of-function research. Experiments that potentially increase the transmissibility or virulence of certain pathogens were deemed too dangerous to conduct in the United States.
But the weaponization of viruses did not stop. Gain-of-function experiments were moved to China under the direction of Fauci and a network of interested parties. It was in China, at the bioweapons lab in Wuhan, overseen by the Chinese military, that COVID-19 was manufactured. It “escaped” from the lab just in time for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.
A coincidence? The hysteria over the overdose death of George Floyd, fueled by the Democratic Party and the MSM, was organized just in time for Trump’s 2020 reelection. Was that a coincidence, too? How many “coincidences” does a person need to detect a pattern?
You are not to think about any of that. If you talk about it, you risk being labeled a “conspiracy theorist.” You are to focus on an algae bloom and peeling paint at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Pay no attention to vandals. And don’t forget the ducks and their babies.
Some have suggested that chlorine might address the algae problem. But Chlorine is harmful to ducks. I can see that. Chlorine stings my eyes and makes me see halos around everything. Why do we use this chemical in our pools if it is so harmful to animals? Why do we let children swim in chlorinated pools?
In addition to algae, Chlorine also keeps ducks out of pools (but not those snails). Do we really want ducks swimming in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? Ducks are indeed cute, but there are several ponds and wetlands in Washington, DC, where ducks can safely swim and preen. The ponds are public, so if people want to see ducks, they can. Those are much better places for our web-footed friends to deposit their slippery turds. At least when I go for a walk on the trail at the river near my home, I know to step over them. It’s part of the deal. More objectionable is charging and hissing geese.
But I digress. To get back on point, to those who have not yet been awakened by the obvious, how much longer are you going to walk zombie-like through the world with your eyes wide shut?
freedom and reason 