Why Trump is really tearing down the White House

Adam Gopnik tells the New Yorker that Trump destroying the White House is a performance display broadcasting his unbroken power over the presidency.“After months marked by corruption, violence, and the open perversion of law, to gasp in outrage at the loss of a few tons of masonry and mortar might seem oddly misjudged,” said Gopnik. “And yet it isn’t. We are creatures of symbols, and our architecture tells us who we are.”A nation writes its history in books, but its buildings is a kind of enduring book itself. The Eiffel Tower is an expression of a nation’s history, as is the...