Here Is Something Very Briefly Gratifying

Just before a New Jersey Trump Hotel and Casino was demolished for good, former events manager Bernie Dillon told NBC News that “we put Trump Plaza and the city of Atlantic City on the map for the whole world.” But this particular blight, closed in 2014 and left behind by the twice-impeached former president, has now been forcefully imploded.

But does the taint remain?

In footage captured by NBC10, workers detonated thousands of sticks of dynamite at 9:07 a.m. Wednesday morning, which caused a massive internal collapse in the ruins of the old casino as it swiftly sunk back to hell in a cloud of sulfurous dust.

This is surely a moment of symbolic gratification! Or maybe that’s irony or poetic justice. Do they call this a metaphor still? Or maybe it’s a parable or even just a scary story to tell in the dark.

Watching this, I know I’m supposed to feel something. But I don’t! I feel nothing. Sure, his decrepit casino now exists as a pile of rubble, its mark on the Atlantic City skyline now gone forever. Yet it could be said that the real story of his presidency was not the finish line, but the scars it inflicted on our bodies and souls along the way.