Giant Wieners, Drag Queens, and Curtis Sliwa at “The Most American Pageant Ever!” The absurdist performance art event at Times Square felt more like an elegy during this national moment. Watching Curtis Sliwa watch comedian Spike Einbinder get shot in a comedic recreation of the former New York City Republican mayoral candidate's infamous 1992 kidnapping and shooting was the kind of experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Even if you believe that the United States is the “greatest country in the world,” like both the Donald Trump impersonator — who was seemingly everywhere in the show and acted out the President’s infamous Butler assassination attempt not once but twice — and the real one, who continues to spew it like a truism even when evidence to the contrary is staring us in the face, you will have to admit that this crassly thrilling celebration in front of a giant wiener cannon was just what we needed at a time of deep sorrow. repose? regret?

The Most American Pageant Ever! was organized by artists Jen Catron, Paul Outlaw, and Abby Lloyd (playing Trump), who are wizards of the glittery stars-and-stripes variety of quintessential Americana, and their fete at capitalism’s commercial heart felt as unscripted as reality TV. The contestants ranged from a drag queen as Melania to a voguer named Relish, an alien, a primordial clay woman, a patriotic singer named Kenneth Youngblood, a hyper-capitalist entrepreneur, and a UPS delivery person who dropped off the top secret files from Mar-a-Lago before entering the contest and getting down for the talent competition.

In that idol-sized sculpture, the artists see a nation “built on enormous optimism and enormous contradictions,” according to Catron. Something has certainly been misplaced in the United States of America. But the question is really whether what was mislaid can ever be found again, or if this country is always only chasing after the money shot, and what was lost be damned.