A Monumental Offense

If you build it, we won't come

One of the many struggles of these challenging times is the difficulty of finding one’s bearings, the need to discern points of focus so as not to be overwhelmed by the onslaught and confused by the chaos.

One worthwhile strategy is to concentrate on the biggest injustices and the gravest threats to the future of our precious democracy. The harm this regime is causing can be measured in terror, in pain, and even in death, from the thuggish tactics of its immigration crackdowns to the dismantling of our public health systems to the wars and decimation of our foreign aid.

But there are other offenses that are far less consequential when measured by their impact on humanity, yet they somehow strike symbolic chords that bring the madness of this era into clarifying relief.

Offenses like distorting the beauty and grandeur of our nation’s capital with an ungainly, grotesque, egotistical tribute to a weak, insecure, and deeply pathetic man whose very being is in conflict with what Washington, D.C. should stand for.

If you haven’t heard already, and consider yourself fortunate if you fall into this category, our oh-I-wish-I-could-be king, Donald of the House of Orange, now wants to erect a triumphal arch in Washington. If you are a student of history, you will recognize these arches as the preferred vanity projects of Roman emperors, built to glorify their military victories and, more importantly, themselves. If you’ve ever been to Paris, or have simply seen it in movies and on television, you know the most famous of these constructions is the Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon and completed by Louis Philippe I, the last French monarch to call himself “king.”

If you’re picking up on some serious imperial energy in these arches, it’s not your imagination. It is often the point.

It should also be noted that these kinds of arches have fallen a bit out of favor with, you know, democracies existing in modernity. It is probably not a coincidence that the last major one was built by the North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung in the 1980s. That one is the second largest ever built. Only Mexico City’s is larger. But Trump is intent on making his the biggest, an obsession I will leave to the psychologists to analyze.

As for the design and placement of this mammoth monstrosity, I am sorry you asked. It will sit on Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout between Arlington National Cemetery and the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which leads to the Lincoln Memorial.

To be fair, there is a kind of wicked irony to this location. Arlington National Cemetery is where those who protected our democracy are buried. And the Lincoln Memorial is a shrine to the man who saved our democracy, inscribed with some of his most poetic words. Trump has said, with his usual candor, that the arch would really be a tribute to him; that’s right, a man who avoided serving in the military with made-up bone spurs and then tried to spur an armed insurrection, the greatest threat to the continuation of our republic since the time of Lincoln, and the men first buried in Arlington.

That the arch would be so large that it would eclipse one of the most cherished views in all of Washington, the Lincoln Memorial from Arlington, seems to be part of the point. It is, after all, the brainchild of someone who is always trying to push others out of a spotlight he thinks should be reserved for him. And who better to try to overshadow than Honest Abe, of whom Trump once said, “I’ve done more for Black Americans than anybody, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. Nobody has even been close.”

To give you a sense of the scale of this proposed edifice, it will be 250 feet tall, deliberately designed as one foot for each year of this improbable republic’s existence, which is now being threatened by the very man building the thing. That makes it nearly as tall as the Capitol, though likely more impervious to violent insurrectionists. It has grown so large and ungainly that even some of its earlier supporters now decry it.

Many news reports credulously repeat that it was “inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris,” which is akin to saying White Castle was inspired by Versailles. It carries, unsurprisingly, the design sensibilities of President Gaudy McGoldplate himself. It will be topped by gold eagles flanking a gold, winged woman holding a torch and wearing a crown. Many have noted her resemblance to Lady Liberty, who Trump probably sees as an old maid whose green patina now betrays her envy of his new creation.

The only text on the arch will read “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All.” Not exactly Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. More like an intern on a deadline armed with the Pledge of Allegiance and ChatGPT.

It would be, as with all things Trump, an affront to good taste and good sense, a misshapen, misbegotten, and misguided stain on our landscape.

And thanks to rubber-stamped approval from Trump’s handpicked members of the now ironically named U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the arch is one step closer to becoming real, although many groups are suing to stop it from being built.

From his unknown plans for the newly renamed Kennedy Center, to the demolished East Wing of the White House, there is a reason Trump’s efforts to impose his will on the physical realities of Washington are very unpopular. Because the entire idea of the presidency, the reason presidents are elected by the people for a limited time, the difference between a republic and a dictatorship, is this: those we elevate to this position of power are caretakers of our national story. They don’t get to own our future. And their role should never be to overshadow the real source of power, the real definition of our polity, we the people.

What Trump is doing, through his construction and destruction, is quite literally vandalizing our national identity. His instincts are the antithesis of the responsible leadership our Founders envisioned and wrote into our Constitution, what our heroes like Washington and Lincoln embodied. Yes, we have erected memorials and tributes to these men and others in Washington, but that was the decision of the people and our elected representatives, never the decision of the men themselves. We don’t want kings, never have, and never will.

That is why it is essential that whatever Trump builds is torn down when he leaves, or at least rebuilt or restored in a way that eliminates what he wants most, to leave his mark as he defines it. We must not allow our physical landscape to be desecrated by the poisonous fruits of his autocracy, just as we will have to purge his rot from our politics, our democracy, and our society at large.

What exists in Washington represents all of us and the values we hold dear. We get to choose his legacy. And it damn well better not be a McMansion version of some ludicrous arch, a tribute to a corrupt, bitter, selfish little punk cosplaying as a Roman emperor on the banks of our Potomac.