Cage-fighting seems an odd way to celebrate the USA’s 250 years of independence. And displayed on the South Lawn of the venerable and much respected White House, it seems almost irreligious.

I have to say I knew very little about the sport, apart from the fact that it is violent and involves two half-naked men battering each other, with – as I understood it – almost no rules to confine their brutality. So I Googled it, and found this: https://ucmma.tv/the-rules-and-regulations-of-cage-fighting/. Well, I suppose it’s comforting to know that ‘eye-gouging’ is disallowed. But otherwise cage-fighting seems pretty uncivilized; a bit like bare-knuckle boxing in Britain’s olden days. (And apparently being revived there today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bare-knuckle_boxing. Perhaps Keir Starmer might like to set up a bout in Downing Street?)

The display yesterday was the idea, of course, of President Trump; meant as a birthday present to himself (he turned 80 the day before) as well as to the 250 year-old American Republic. Other presidents would have engaged an opera singer or two; or a choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner (the tune cribbed originally, of course, from a British drinking song); or a theatrical recitation of the Declaration of Independence; or Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man; or a ‘Negro’ Spiritual; or a jazz classic. Or at the very least a scene from Hamilton, the Musical. – But no. Trump chose instead two sweaty heavily-muscled men pummelling and kicking each other into submission (here’s a few examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rY26BxpylE); as a celebration of – what? the American Constitution? Democracy? Equality? Justice? Unity? Christian values? Trump’s values?

Obviously it’s the last of these. As well as the clear Trumpian characteristics it reflects – cruelty, brutality, conflict, lawlessness, amorality, coarseness, individualism, machismo (that above everything) – it also symbolises his view of the whole of life as a contest, from which there are only two outcomes: you’re either a ‘winner’ or a ‘loser’ in it. Hence Senator McCain was a ‘loser’ because he was captured by the Vietcong; the patriotic military personnel buried in Arlington Cemetery were ‘losers’; journalists he dislikes are all ‘losers’; women – one suspects – are losers by virtue of their gender; and Jesus Christ would have been a ‘loser’ if he hadn’t been miraculously resurrected to serve Trump.

I wasn’t interested enough in Trump’s extravaganza to find out who emerged from it as the winners and losers: thumbs up or thumbs down, to employ the symbolism of the ancient Imperial Roman gladiatorial contests which – as many have pointed out – Trump’s cage-fights so closely resemble. Nor do I know what their prizes were. Congressional Medals, perhaps?

What I do know, however, is that the whole show demeaned the American Republic, or at any rate the best of that country; which as a former resident I have long admired (the best of it, that is), and still cling to a sliver of hope that it may emerge from this dark Trumpian tunnel soon.