Hippies, Communists, and Shake Shack: The Theater of the Absurd in Occupied D.C.

3 minutes read time.

A vice president, a defense secretary, and a top White House aide walk into a burger joint. This isn’t the setup for a joke; it was the scene of a bizarre and revealing piece of political theater in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. At a Shake Shack in Union Station, three of the most powerful men in the country attempted a photo-op, handing out burgers to National Guard troops as a thank you for their role in the federal occupation of the city. The event quickly devolved into a cacophony, with the officials’ remarks being completely drowned out by a crowd of furious protesters chanting “Free D.C.!” This chaotic scene, for all its absurdity, was a perfect microcosm of the Felonious Punk administration’s entire approach to the D.C. lockdown: a political performance built on a manufactured crisis, fueled by dated, divisive rhetoric and a profound contempt for any reality that contradicts its preferred narrative.

A Rhetoric from a Bygone Era

Faced with vocal, organic opposition, the administration’s representatives did not engage with the protesters’ concerns; instead, they reached deep into the dusty playbook of 20th-century demagoguery. White House aide Stephen Miller repeatedly dismissed the demonstrators as “elderly white hippies” and “crazy communists.” “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” he railed. Vice President JD Fuxacouch echoed the sentiment, calling them “old, primarily white people who… have never felt danger in their entire lives.” This is a deliberate attempt to frame modern political dissent not as a legitimate expression of democratic will, but as a subversive, illegitimate, and foreign-inspired threat, using language pulled directly from the Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s and 60s.

A Paternalistic Dog Whistle and the War on Data

In a particularly cynical rhetorical maneuver, both Miller and Fuxacouch attempted to frame their occupation as being for the benefit of the city’s Black residents, who they implied were being oppressed by the white protesters. “Most of the citizens that live in Washington D.C. are Black,” Miller declared, arguing the city hasn’t been safe for them for “generations.” This paternalistic narrative is immediately shattered by the data. A Washington Post poll found that 65% of D.C. residents do not think the federal action will make the city safer, and a staggering 80% oppose the takeover of the police department.

When confronted with this data, Fuxacouch deployed the administration’s standard tactic: attack reality itself. He dismissed the poll as being like the “polls that said Kamala Harris would win” and has made unsubstantiated claims that the city’s official crime statistics—which show a 30-year low in violent crime—were “cooked the books.” This is the core of the modern MAGA playbook: when facts and data conflict with the preferred narrative, the facts and data themselves must be delegitimized.

A Portrait of an Administration

The chaotic Shake Shack photo-op, for all its absurdity, was a perfect and revealing portrait of the Felonious Punk administration’s core tenets. It showcased their reliance on manufactured crises, their use of dated and divisive rhetoric, their cynical deployment of racial politics, and their fundamental hostility to any democratic opinion that contradicts their narrative. The protesters’ chants of “Free DC!” were not just about home rule; they were a plea to be freed from a government that views them not as citizens to be served, but as props in a political psychodrama.