What you should know about the Kentucky Derby in the age of Trump

Many news programs, including the one for which I write and produce, interviews historians, professors and authors who can move according to parallels between the past and the present to context a certain moment or a certain experience. In the relentless news cycles of recent years, it is helpful to orientate yourself in Nixon's catastrophic politics in the cultural discord of the 1960s – or even in the Kentucky Derby, which celebrates the 151st year on Saturday.

On this year's run for the roses, as the Kentucky Derby is lovingly called, thousands of spectators from all over the country will gather on the well-kept lawn areas in Churchill Downs and set up at the competition to throw their money for journalism, the Bay Fern Colt prefers to win. Or maybe they try their luck in a betting app and pray to the gambling gods for Sandman or NeoEquos or a foal or another foal with worse opportunities and a higher payout. Women in tailor-made widths and men who wear colorful pants drink after a bottle of Veuve Clicquot made of silver mint-julep cups and an open bottle. It will probably be chaotic in the Infield, as is often the case. The event has been the case for 151 years and will be the case for 151 more, for good or bad.

The Kentucky Derby has always glorified the good old boys in the American south, a bastion of American conservatism. It makes sense that Donald Trump sold $ 75,000 tickets to a “Maga, again”! Fundraiser event in the derby in 2022; It now fits Trump's branding and ethos perfectly.

It was as early as 1970 when the Kentucky Derby was not special or remarkable for some reason, except that Hunter was S. Thompson there. Thompson, who has attributed the subjective and literary writing style of the so -called new journalism and who is best known for “Fear and rejection in Las Vegas”, wrote a piece about the Kentucky Derby this year. The “The Kentucky Derby is decadent and spoiled” in Scanlan's monthly publication is an outstanding metaphor for Nixons America. It also reads a parallel between the past and the present.

The article examined the culture of moral decay, Thompson believed that Nixon increased. Today the effect is different. The Trump government was in its wish to rewrite American culture. At the end of March, Trump signed a command that claimed to restore American identity and history. In the Smithsonian institution, the order directed the fact that “the unprecedented legacy of our nation, freedom, freedom, individual rights and human happiness, is racist, sexist, depressing, or in other words irrevocably incorrectly reconstructed.” And it works. The conservative ideology is now safer, with Trump's lawful protection. It is even preferred in many American rooms; Trumps could soon be taught in the classrooms in some countries. Politics and the Trump government were largely not available in the last very progressive Oscars.

But in contrast to records on historical figures from Jackie Robinson to Harriet Tubman, the Kentucky Derby, at least according to the standards of the Trump government. Doesn't need to rewrite. The outfits, the party and the festival are in contradiction and were historically contradictory in contradiction to the realities of the event. “The story, as I see it,” wrote Thompson, a Louisville native, “is mainly in malignant southern Bourbon-horse-s mentality, which surrounds the derby than in the derby itself.”

The Kentucky Derby is notorious, often unaffordable and expensive. A general ticket tickets start at 366 US dollars. However, if you do not make the derby privacy through Churchill Downs in general. They are in a box that begins at 1,765 US dollars. This is a high price if more Americans are exposed to economic uncertainty Under Trump's unwieldy tariff plan. The clubhouse seats have a significant social seal of approval. “Together with the politicians, society Belle and the local trading captains, every half -mademy Dingbat who ever had anything in 500 miles from Louisville will appear there to make themselves drunk and generally make themselves open,” wrote Thompson in his piece.

The gambling, as central for the derby as the horses itself, is a full-fledged crisis in America, in which it is increasingly permeating the mainstream sports space. According to the NBC News, “210.7 million US dollars were set to the race last year, compared to $ 188 million in the previous year.” It is also not easy to win a lot of money for a horse. “The favorite has won the race since 1908 (40 times) and not in the past five years almost 35% of cases,” said the NBC News.

Towards the end of Thompson's piece, he describes how it is in the Infield: “Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the route … Nobody takes care of it.” This also sounds true today. The race is run by 3-year-old thoroughbreds exclusively young moneyings and colts, who are constantly cruel and twisted deaths. According to PETA, at least 15 horses died in track-related deaths last year, but the Watchdog website horsepage errors estimated that this number is almost 100 per year. Only last week a Kentucky Derby candidate, Valley of Fire, broke both front legs during the morning training and had to be put to sleep.

In Trump's second term, the culture is already revised by those who long for an America that has long passed, or maybe never really. The Kentucky Derby Mythologized this, a story that started the second time long before Trump. Hunter S. Thompson saw it in 1970: “The decadent and the spoiled”. Then it warned of a culture of excess, corruption and moral expiration. Today it is cultural teaching.