Kennedy Center: Inside the World’s Most Elegant Weapon of Mass Distraction

The Kennedy Center: Marble Mausoleum of American Soft Power, Now Streaming to a Planet Near You

From a satellite’s-eye view—roughly the same altitude from which Washington habitually lectures the rest of us—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts looks like a moated palace built to outlast the empire that commissioned it. The Potomac laps at its marble skirts like an aging courtier still currying favor long after the king has forgotten his own edicts. To foreigners, the building is less a cultural venue than a diplomatic weapon upholstered in red velvet: the smiling, velvet-gloved side of the same hand that sometimes closes into a fist around trade agreements and military bases.

Every season, the Center ships its jazz ensembles to Jakarta, its ballet troupes to Bogotá, and its Broadway ghosts to Baku, all under the cheerful banner of cultural exchange. Translation: here’s some tap-dancing to distract you while we renegotiate your lithium contracts. The Europeans, who invented the idea of high culture as statecraft, watch with the weary amusement of an older sibling seeing the kid finally discover opera. The Chinese simply build their own mega-halls twice as fast and with twice the surveillance cameras. Meanwhile, the Russians—ever the moody poets—send a Bolshoi detachment just to remind everyone that they, too, once cornered the market on tragic grandeur.

Inside the main hall, the programming is a perpetual exercise in soft-power triangulation. One night, Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach, which is German, on a cello strung with Italian sheep gut, introduced by a speech praising universal values—delivered in the accent of whichever swing-state electorate most urgently needs reassurance. The next night, a K-pop megaband headlines, the better to persuade Seoul that the U.S. still cares about something other than semiconductor chokepoints. The audience applauds on cue, blissfully unaware that the same playlist is simultaneously being simulcast to U.S. embassies worldwide, where local staffers watch with the desperate gratitude of hostages given an extra pudding cup.

Of course, no global power can operate without its internal contradictions. The Center’s grand foyer features a quote from JFK about welcoming all artists, “without regard to station or race or religion.” This noble sentiment is carved into stone just steps from security barriers that scan every bag for the modern heresies of liquid containers over 100 ml. Some evenings, the line of international visitors stretches so far that the Potomac appears to be backing up like a clogged imperial artery. One imagines the ghost of Kennedy himself gliding past the metal detectors, murmuring, “Ich bin ein… oh for Pete’s sake, just take off your belt like everyone else.”

The funding model is another exquisite piece of geopolitical theater. Congress begrudgingly chips in a pittance—roughly the cost of three F-35 bolts—while oil-rich sheikhs, Chinese tech moguls, and European luxury conglomerates race to slap their crests on foyer walls. The resulting donor plaque resembles a NATO summit roll call sponsored by LVMH. Each name purchased is another quiet admission that even American cultural sanctuaries now run on the same transnational oligarchy that keeps the rest of the planet’s lights flickering.

And yet, cynicism only gets you so far before the music starts. When the lights dim and a 120-piece orchestra dives into the first chord of Rhapsody in Blue, even the most hardened Eurocrat feels something suspiciously like optimism. The sound is undeniably alive, a sonic immigrant that left Brooklyn a century ago and has been naturalizing audiences ever since. For three minutes and forty-seven seconds, the marble mausoleum becomes a spaceship, proving that the empire’s greatest export might still be its capacity to dream, however selectively and at whatever cost.

Will the Center still matter once the Potomac rises another foot and Congress relocates to higher ground? Probably. Culture has always been the last lifeboat on a sinking ship, and the Kennedy Center just happens to be the most gilded one afloat. Until the waters reach the mezzanine, it will continue to beam concerts to military bases, refugee camps, and living rooms from Lagos to Lahore—reminding us that even a waning superpower knows how to throw a memorable farewell party.