Apple, alongside another leading technology companies specified as Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and HP, was on the list of donors supporting the construction of a new, giant ballroom in the White House.
According to CNN, the task is simply a individual initiative by president Donald Trump. Construction work has already begun and the east wing of the White home has been demolished.
This is where a fresh building with an awesome area of 90 000 square feet (approximately 8 360 m2) is to be built. president Trump himself claims that the full task will be financed entirely by private donations.
The full cost of construction is presently estimated at $350 million. As many U.S. news services have noted, this amount has increased dramatically. Until recently, the publically reported sum was $150 million lower, but president Trump was expected to update the project's valuation Thursday evening.
At this point, the circumstantial amount Apple, or any of the another technological giants, has not been publically known to supply for the construction of the ballroom.
Editorial Comment
There are gestures that are barely called a demonstration of vanity. It is hard to defy the impression that this "initiative of president Trump" — the creation of a giant ballroom in the White House, financed by the world's largest technology companies — is simply a symbol of everything that power and large business like most: illusions of eternity and glitz.
This has nothing to do with philanthropy. due to the fact that philanthropy is helping people, not politicians dance under crystal chandeliers. Apple, Amazon, Google and the remainder of Silicon Valley could fund education, climate innovation and humanitarian aid programs for the same hundreds of millions of dollars. The financial impact on the common good is abundant. Instead, they build a monument of their own glory together with the president.
The ballroom, as it turns out, is not just a place to dance. It is an architectural manifestation of pride, an expression of belief that power and money deserve their separate kingdom of splendor. And the fact that donors are backing it doesn't justify the show. On the contrary, it reveals how close politics and corporations are today.
Until I remembered the words of Louis XVI, king of France:
‘S’ils n’ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche.’
Which is: “If they have no bread, let them eat cookies.”
And while historians argue whether or not Maria Antonina said this, both attributed to her words and the contemporary ballroom built in the White House, are a symbol of the separation of elites from reality, their heartless indifference to hunger, poorness and struggles with the everyday life of average people. The modern edition of this phrase could read: “Don't they have a roof over their heads? Let them admire the ballroom.“
Puta? past had already written it — Maria Antonina was cut off on the guillotine in 1793.
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