President Donald Trump has the opportunity to do de-fund one of the worst, most useless, and most propagandistic institutions that is kept alive by the sweat of taxpayers: The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Kennedy center is nothing but a playground for the wealthy and their friends in various entertainment industries.
That would be their business and none of my concern were it not for the fact that the Kennedy Center is propped up by taxpayer dollars. It is, to use a favorite phrase of the governing elite: a “public-private partnership.”
From its very beginning, it was built upon funds stolen from taxpayers. The center was originally constructed with millions of dollars of federal funds and federal debt. From 2016 to 2021, the Kennedy center received 270 million dollars from Congress. The Center paid its president five million dollars in the process. Each year, the Center receives about forty million more dollars.
What is the justification for handing over all this taxpayer loot, year after year? The last time I checked, there was nothing in the US constitution about funding the careers of actors and other performers. The “justification,” of course, is nothing more than the fact that the ruling class likes it. The Kennedy center is a convenient way for the wealthy technocrats of Washington, DC to hobnob with famous entertainers and to funnel dollars to favored government contractors involved in “the arts.” Even more importantly, “the arts” in this context are usually just propaganda favored by the wealthy oligarchs behind organizations like the Ford Foundation. This publicly subsidized art pushes the values of those who control the dollars. A lot of the most objectionable “modern art”—the type of thing particularly beloved by people at the Kennedy Center—is known to have been funded by the CIA.
In a free country, however, the arts are funded totally by the private sector. In a free country, the central government does not engage in Soviet-style funding of artists as means of spreading the values of the ruling class.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump has decided that while he tries to slash budgets from other areas, he’s going to keep throwing taxpayer money at what is essentially the federal government’s Department of Court Jesters.
It was clear right away that Trump was getting it all wrong when he posted on his social media account:
“Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP … The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”
First of all, the Kennedy center is not “an American Jewel” and if it were such a jewel, it would be unnecessary to keep it afloat with taxpayer dollars. Secondly, if the Kennedy center engaged in repugnant antics like drag shows for children, shouldn’t it be severed from the federal government entirely? It seems that Trump’s plan is to keep the Kennedy Center alive so that one of his successors can easily start throwing money at drag shows for kids again.
The responsible thing to do would be to get rid of this unnecessary drain on taxpayer dollars altogether. Trump, unfortunately, is apparently too enamored of “the brightest STARS”—as he puts it—to stop ripping off the taxpayers. Trump’s agents are no different, of course. His designee to be the acting executive director of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, yesterday writes:
“We must fix this great institution. The people working hard at the Nation’s premier performing arts center deserve better – and so do all Americans.”
Wrong. What Americans deserve is to not be forced to pay for bureaucrats at a “cultural center” when there are literally thousands of private-sector theatres, music venues, and recording studies all across the nation.
If Americans are clamoring for “more Kennedy center,” then I’m sure they’ll be happy to voluntarily give millions of dollars to fund it.
In fact, let’s find out just how much Americans “deserve” or “need” the Kennedy center. Let’s cut off all federal funds and then see if the Kennedy center can continue to exist. If it can, great, and we will have proven that it doesn’t need taxpayer dollars. If the Kennedy center goes under without federal funds, then that’s proof that there was never enough public demand to sustain it.
At that point I guess America will just have to go back to that dark age before the Kennedy Center opened in 1971. t’s hard to believe that Americans were producing and funding performing arts before 1971, but my great-grandfather tells me it was a thing.
