One Metaphor to End Them All

So long, metaphor. We had a good run. Goodbye, “All the world’s a stage.” Farewell, “She’s a brick house.” See you later, the swamp (drained or undrained). Now we have a symbolic black hole in the middle of Washington, D.C., that is pulling all other symbols into its orbit and devouring them, one by one.I am, of course, talking about the Reflecting Pool. That is what everyone is talking about, even and especially the president. Nothing is ever going to top it except, of course, the thin green coat of algae that Greenwater Solutions—seems nominally determinative, in a bad way—is trying to spritz with nanobubbles. (“It’s magic!” the man operating the hose assured me yesterday when I walked by.)The Reflecting Pool is a metaphor so perfect, it feels almost valedictory, as though symbolism as a whole gave up and decided to sign off. On its way out, it killed a duck.“Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers,” Trump boasted a few weeks ago. With a chart! This is one of those things that, living in 2026, you get inured to but shouldn’t. Imagine, if you will, any other president or world leader holding up a sign that says, “Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers.” You would say, “This man’s brain is bad.” You would say, “What is this man talking about?” You would say, “Is this a riddle? If I get this right, will I wake up?”This is the kind of shallow, surface-level concern (a bit on the nose, isn’t it?) that the president loves to fixate on. He has never seen a problem so intractable that he cannot pay one of his cronies to make it immediately and obviously worse. That is why the pool is full of ozone and tax dollars, forming a thick slurry in which algae can grow more vigorously. If they become sentient and we play our cards right, they might even be prevailed upon to perform at Freedom 250!Go home, everyone! We are all full up on symbolism, thanks. Trump is building a triumphal arch that will effectively frame Robert E. Lee’s mansion? No, no thank you. We have all the metaphor we