Blecch.
The latest architectural horrors dictated at us by a man with no taste is the Trump Arch, which is being built real soon now with no authorization from any of the officials in charge or preserving the city and its history.
The proposed arch is one of several projects the Republican president is pursuing to leave his lasting imprint on Washington, including renaming and renovating the Kennedy Center, building a huge new White House ballroom, refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and rebuilding a golf course in East Potomac Park that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths.
“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on X, “befitting the most powerful Capital in the World.”
Along with the announcement on X, Burgum posted artistic mockups of the planned 250-foot-tall (76-meter) memorial arch, which will stand between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
Those capitalization choices were Burgum’s, which should put you on alert. Morons think that capitalizing Crap makes it majestic.
The administration really is just rushing ahead with Trump’s nightmare vision.
Historic preservation experts have long criticized the Trump administration for seeming to rush the arch approval process, including by moving to weaken protections for historic sites altogether. This latest development raises concerns that the White House seeks to sidestep the process, which it denies.
“Work will begin that does not require approval, but rather helps in the process,” the White House told NPR in a statement on Friday. “We will of course continue on our path of seeking final approval from all applicable entities.”
Surprise: they won’t. You know it and they know it.
Our capitol is going to be wrecked and left with cheap glittering gilt garbage, demolished historical sites, and hideous monuments to an asshole’s ego. He is going to die, eventually, and we’re all going to be left with the clean up. What shall we do?
Simple solution: BLOW IT ALL UP.
The author has been touring Germany, and seeing what the German solution to the ugly history of the Third Reich has been. Hitler’s bunker has been paved over and is a parking lot. The site of the Nuremberg rallies has been allowed to crumble and “looked like garbage.” They dynamited the Berghof and “flattened Göring’s house, Bormann’s house and the rest of the Nazi colony, hauled away the rubble and planted trees over the site.” And, of course:
Unfortunately, the latest German elections suggest that there’s more yet to be done.
Blundell has specific recommendations for what the next administration must do. Unfortunately it’s a long list.
Believe in the Directive. Not a review. Not a blue-ribbon commission on the future of the ballroom. A firm belief, stated in the campaign and executed on day one, that a monument built by a President to himself is not a public work and does not get grandfathered in as one. Germany was handed this belief at gunpoint. America has to choose it.
The arch comes down, or never goes up. If it’s excavation, fill the hole. If it’s steel, cut it. If it’s finished, do what the Seventh Army did at Nuremberg and let the cameras roll. It sits between Lincoln and the war dead. It was built for “me.” There is no version of American reconciliation that leaves it standing.
The name comes off everything. The Trump Kennedy Center reverts to the Kennedy Center before lunch on inauguration day. Any ballroom, any coin, any banner, any federal building, any portrait hung by executive fiat. Street signs came down across Germany in 1946. This is the American version, and it takes a pen.
The ballroom is the Eagle’s Nest. Ninety thousand square feet of gold leaf where the East Wing used to be, with a bunker underneath. You can raze it and rebuild the East Wing. Or you can do what Bavaria did and turn it into something so ordinary it can’t be worshipped. A visitor centre. A public cafeteria. A daycare for federal workers. Serve the pretzels in it. Either way, no one is ever allowed to say his name in that room with reverence.
Restore the referees. Reinstate an independent Commission of Fine Arts and a National Capital Planning Commission that doesn’t answer to a staff secretary. Repeal the beauty order. Write into law that no sitting President may initiate a monument to himself, ever, which is a sentence nobody thought America would need.
Preserve the evidence of the victims. The detention records ICE stopped publishing. The names of the people who died in custody. The facilities. The Germans preserved Dachau’s ovens because the alternative was letting grass grow over them. Keep the camps as museums and tear down the arch. That’s the whole formula.
Trump’s people will scream that it’s petty. That it’s revenge. That it’s erasing history. It isn’t. Germany erased Hitler’s monuments and became the country with the best memory in Europe. You erase the shrine so there’s room for the museum. Nobody in Bavaria is confused about what happened on the Obersalzberg because the Berghof is gone. They know precisely because it’s gone, and there’s a documentation centre where a tour bus used to park.
I approve. Let’s elect people who will have the stamina to implement this plan.
If I was campaign speechwriter, I would have the lead Democratic candidate say the following loud and clear on the campaign trail:
“On day one, I will begin to erase this embarrassing shit (sic) stain from all of our national institutions, and scrub his name and all of his crap from our buildings, our websites, our documents and to the best of my ability, our memories. When I am done, he and his cult will be nothing more than a footnote in our history books, and relegate this horrible period to the scrap heap of history.
And I will prosecute to the full extent of the law all those grifters who have pillaged our finances, institutions and values. There will be no rock under which they can hide.”
That will get votes. None of that mealy-mouthed move-along, get-along acquiescence that we got from the Obama administration post 2008 financial crisis. People are going to expect some getting-medievel-on-their-asses.
No, and it doesn’t get godfathered in either.
Trump speaks a truth:
Trump says ‘nobody will’ build monuments for him once he’s gone
Next he should ask himself why.
A big victory arch. Victory! Victory in Vietnam. Victory in Iraq. Victory in Afghanistan. Victory in Iran. Victory!
Love it. The only thing I can think of against it is that announcing it beforehand might scare the horses. Then again, if Project 2025 didn’t do it…
“Let’s elect people who will have the stamina to implement this plan.”
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I see the flaw right there. Since Tip O’Neill left congress during the Reagan-Bush era the Dem leadership has been yellow corporate lickspittles that worships status quo and regard the Bill Clinton era as the ideal to strive for, the way the GOP thinks the 50s was when America peaked.
They will NOT appoint extra judges to SCOTUS. They will NOT block big corporate donations.
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It is not enough to pull down Trump and his statues. You have to pull down the complacent Dem leadership who stayed asleep from when Dubya stole the election to when DJT surfed to power on a wave of disappointment.
Bill Clinton lost an opportunity to reset USA. Barack Obama lost another.
If you lose this one, the next fascist will be a competent one, like Puton or Orban.
Yannow, were I the owner of one of the construction companies erecting Dear Shitlord’s abominations I’d be sending out feelers to various Gumint agencies about de-constructing their own projects. They make bank coming & going. Construction Keynesianism if you will.
Kelsey Grammer may be developing some form of dementia. He says Trump will be considered one of the greatest presidents ever.
@8
By whom?
Have they planned for his tomb yet? A mile high pyramid perhaps.
A monument to what?
A triumphal arch for which triumph?
There is no reason to build this monument.
As of today, we have almost certainly lost the Iranian war.
Things are a lot worse now then when Trump started the war and diesel fuel has hit a record high and gasoline is close.
The next elected administration, assuming there is a next elected administration and it isn’t MAGA, should simply destroy the fake Arch without spending a lot of time deliberating over it.
What went up without the necessary approvals, can also come down just as fast.
It is now obvious that Trump is deep into dementia and a matter of time before he gets sidelined as a danger to the USA.
The signs are so obvious and we see them everyday.
A few of the highlights.
.1. Trump is thinking about sending the US military to fix the US bond market.
.2. The trade war with Canada has zero reasoning behind it.
He is just a hostile kook who is bullying a smaller neighbor because it is a smaller neighbor.
Let’s be clear, nothing is going to happen before the midterms at the earliest. Even then, assuming we get the blue wave we’d all like, I don’t have much confidence that the current Democratic leadership has the spine to do what needs to be done to erase Trump and MAGA from our culture,
Actually, “erase” is probably too strong a word. Tear down the tacky monuments and rename buildings and airports, yes, but we need to own the fact that the whole Trump/MAGA phenomenon was a manifestation of an ugly, racist bigotry that is endemic in American and, more generally, human society.
As a Trekkie, I’d love the future to be something like the Utopian vision of Star Trek but I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future, certainly not while human nature is the way it is. We dare not just relax and assume everything will turn out right in the end. MAGA is a warning that is a disastrous assumption. As the Wendell Phillips maxim goes “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”
I would like to go even further and make a law, in any country, that you cannot name anything after a politician until they have been dead for at least 50 years.
@10. submoron : “Have they planned for his tomb yet? A mile high pyramid perhaps.”
A giant urinal. There’ll be a lot of people wanting to use it!
Unfortunately when Trump goes it’ll be, yuk, Vance and then other Repugs as POTUS-es.. (POTi?)
Shoguns and Shadow Shoguns equivalents I fear with Musk and Thiel, etc.. filling the Shadow Shogun roles much as Miller is Shadow POTUS currently.
Predict that the Supreme Court will suddenly issue shadow docket rulings to stop any deconstruction of the Trump monuments.
Late January Trump is gone. By whatever means of impeachment or 25th Amendment or assassination or or or, but not before then. Vance wants a chance at 10 years – one day. I already have one steak dinner riding on it and am actively looking for more.
Also, our current leadership of the Democratic party will work against any candidate who makes clear and bold promises to erase the Trump monuments.