I guess this is what we’re doing now.
The phrase “Platonic ideal” refers to the philosopher’s conception that real life and meaning exist on an abstract spiritual plain beyond our physical existence and comprehension. You think you have seen a donkey, say, but no, you have only seen a shadow of a donkey — a hypothetical representation. You cannot even begin to comprehend the real thing. All of us go through life like dogs seeing in muted colors, not knowing what we’re missing, except on Sunday night when anyone with a subscription to Paramount+ was allowed to experience the Platonic ideal of what it means to be an American in 2026, the real donkey, and it was a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
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“There’s only one person more incredible than the Incredible Hulk, and that’s my Lord and savior Jesus Christ,” brayed Josh Hokit in his victory speech after winning his heavyweight bout in the event labeled, insanely, Freedom 250. “And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man.”
Cool.
I feel the need, before continuing further, to make it clear that I actually have no problem with the concept of mixed martial arts at the White House. I don’t know where any of you were when Conor MacGregor challenged Floyd Mayweather in a landmark 2017 boxing crossover, but I was hosting a pay-per-view pizza party at my house. I have watched the early 1990s matches, the ones where a dude in a karate gi would challenge a dude in a sumo mawashi to ostensibly determine the best martial art. MMA is a deeply violent sport, and always has been. But there’s artistry to the fight, and discipline, a body pushing itself to limits that are simultaneously sickening and exhilarating.
But the Ultimate Fighting Championship event that happened on Sunday night was not a celebration of a sport, it was a celebration of slop. It was a pseudo-patriotic grift that tried to convince us that fighters wheel-kicking each other for the chance of $1 million in crypto deserved the same level of hero admiration as the boys who launched onto the beach at Normandy; it was an infomercial that paused every seven seconds to advertise Starlink internet or Starry soda or Ram trucks or flavors of Monster energy drink that God forgot.
It was “the next chapter of America’s fighting story,” an announcer intoned over footage and images of historic battles, as if the Declaration of Independence was brought to you by the less popular Musket company and a knockoff beverage everyone drank because they threw their tea off of boats. As if William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta and then raised his weary head to whisper, “It’s up to you, Bo Nickal. Go to Washington and use an arm bar. For the Union.”
The octagon ring — “The Claw” — was set up on the White House lawn. The president and first lady sat in the front row. The U.S. Marine Band, long known as “The President’s Own,” soundtracked the whole event, in what was surely its weirdest gig of the season, and bless Staff Sgt. Hannah Davis, a young Black woman, for listening to that disgusting statement about Michelle Obama and then immediately singing “Superstar” so Sean O’Malley could punch Aiemann Zahabi for five minutes.
The fighters all emerged for their bouts from various historic rooms in the White House wearing track suits or shower slides, each like a tourist who was just trying to catch up with their groups but who instead had to fight a man who had accused him, days earlier, of “sitting around and smelling his own farts.”
Throughout the night, announcers and commentators marveled out loud some variation of, “I can’t believe they let us in the White House.” It sounded boyishly enthusiastic the first time or two, but by the eighth or ninth time you really started to wonder if there was something they weren’t telling us. Should you be in the White House? Did your background check miss something?
At one point the program involved a rebroadcast of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Flag Day address played along with what certainly looked like AI depictions of American historical events, including a baby’s hand sewing an American flag.
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What do we make of any of this other than that this is America? Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses advertising Bud Light and trucks. “In Loud We Trust.” Bring me your ring girls dressed skimpily in sequined stars and stripes, and your men with cauliflower ears, and a bunch of sailors dancing to “YMCA.”
Make this all happen at the beginning of Washington, D.C.’s pride celebration so that you can watch two men wrap their legs around one another, press their sweaty, heaving chests together and wonder whether you are ticketed for the correct event.
The problem isn’t the fighting on the lawn. People who love the UFC have had to sit through decades of presidents inviting poets and cellists and opera singers to the White House, and turnabout is fair play.
The problem with Sunday’s broadcast wasn’t the fighting. The problem was the tonally incoherent emulsion of patriotism and bloodlust, history and buy-this-crap, an event happening for the people but tucked behind a Paramount+ paywall. We have always been a violent country, but have we always been such a shameless one?
The final fight of the evening was a title match between American Justin Gaethje and Georgian-Spanish Ilia Topuria. It was an absolute massacre. Blood poured from Topuria as he staggered around the octagon, eyes nearly swollen shut, as announcers ecstatically shouted phrases like “Absolutely battered!” and “Huge protrusion.”
When Gaethje was declared the winner, the octagon was swarmed with Trump progeny, Ivanka and Baron and Don Jr., impeccably dressed and meandering around a ring saturated with spilled blood.
Gaethje eventually wandered into the Green Room of the White House and plopped down in his sandals, naked from the waist up except for his prize belt and an American flag, to talk about his hometown in Arizona as a portrait of Edith Roosevelt looked down upon what the 21st century hath wrought.
The Marine Band played “Stars and Stripes Forever.” There were fireworks. This is America. “It was better,” an announcer declared. “It was better than I actually could have imagined.”
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