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.”
.
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.
.
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.
Damnatio memoriae certainly feels like an excellent response to the orange scourge.
The current Democratic leadership -including Obama – enabled the growth of the tumor that has taken over the Republican party. They will always vote for status quo. They will never go beyond small temporary patches to get an antiquated system to work.
And -with the exception of Bernie Sanders – all the senators are millionairies. They have no ‘dog in the race’.
One of Trujillo’s (Dictator of Dominican Republic 1930-1961) many self-glorifying acts was to rename the capital (the oldest european city in the Western Hemisphere) as Trujillo City. And one of the first acts of Trujillo’s sucessor, was to name the city back to Santo Domingo. It was the only one of his acts that was universally applauded.
The next president of the USA will have many such opportunities. I never thought I would see the day! Renaming something after yourself, is so tinhorn dictator! I thought we were above that, at least.
Trickster Goddess #14: “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.”
So Trump qualifies!
Oh, sorry, you meant physically, not morally.
Trickster Goddess #14:
I would vote for such a law (in jurisdictions I’m eligible to vote) applicable to any person, not just a politician.
Does Trump really intend to build this at the site of the capitol?
It would be very decent, positive and productive if EVERY reference to tRUMP was wiped of the face of the earth after he is gone. It must be soon or his destruction of what is left of this country he is murdering will be beyond recovery.
The sad thing is that if there is any inscription on it, he won’t be able to read it.
Another thing that has to be done in addition to destroying every Trump physical legacy is to have the collaborators pay for all of it: destruction, repairs and restoration in addition to some potential penalty fee. The rich people and companies need to feel the consequences of enabling the destruction of the institutions that benefit normal people. And it needs to hurt, not being simply the cost of doing business.
I know if won’t happen because whoever gets in power after this clusterfuck will also benefit from the same donors. The US politics is forever tainted by money.
Most of Trumps defacements could be massively improved by the careful application of explosives.
Damnatio memoriae by blowing stuff up. :-)
Since we have a wish list, how about dynamiting Mar-A-Largo? Trump’s dementia will likely be highly advanced, and his entire family is over their heads in grift, meaning having to sell off their wealth to keep paying the lawyers.
The level of pardons Trump would have to issue in advance of his long awaited exit, will hopefully be knocked down for being the obscenity towards the law and the presidency that it is.
And I gave up on social media years ago. I am hoping that people are crossing out the names of Trump properties on a map, and giving them new labels.
Excellent!!
Still… lemons and lemonade. Funny fodder.
@25. shermanj :
Problem is that forgetting how horrifically bad Trump was in his first term was one of the things that got the world his second term.
Trump shoul;d be remembered – NOT glorified – and things should be chanegd to prevent any recurrence of any more Trump like characters ever getting power again.
The USA should not be allowed to simply memorty hole him given too many of them enabled him to seize power.
.
Thsoe who enabled Trump.s coming to power must also be held accountable and people should remember how those like Stein and West – twice in Stein’s case – & their traitor to their supposed ideals followers helped him and NEVER let them live it down or be allowed to advocate for any sort of Bothsiderist / OnlyUnicornist bullshit again.
Doing anything other than VOTING BLUE no matter who should be condemmned as the irresponsible, uttterly counter–productive rubbish it is and those promoting it condemned and told where to go in no uncertain terms.
The USoA’s system desperately needs major reforms and overhauling to prevent any more Trumps.
Really hope its not too late but realistically seems like it is.
StevoR, again you speak in extreme generalities and slogans, not allowing for special circumstances.
Spoken like a true ideologue. ‘No matter who’ is most revealing.
cf. https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2026/09/09/the-fetterman-problem/
Were that the case, it would be most gameable.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column
Anyway.
I really really doubt that your exhortation to vote blindly, no matter the candidate, is not an optimal strategy for achieving the outcomes you seek.
@rsmith, re: ‘blowing stuff up’
I seem to recall a few years back someone who was the new owner of a piece of land that held one of Trump’s previous (and now condemned) buildings auctioned off the rights to press the plunger on the demolitions charges. For a not inconsiderable sum of money, at least some of which was donated to charity.
@ 33 StevoR
Dude, “vote for the team no matter who” is what got us into this mess in the first place you lunkhead! You have learned nothing!
Seriously, that’s exactly how a narcissistic, racist, misogynist, real estate huckster with no political experience of any kind became POTUS. Twice. Because of your idiotic ideology of blindly voting for a team with no thought whatsoever for their actual policies or what they actually stand for. This is why you continue to slavishly support pro-billionaire, pro-genocide candidates who wouldn’t piss on you if you on fire. You’re a textbook “useful idiot”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Where is that, exactly?
@ ^ The troll with Trumpian levels of delusion Silentbob : Dude, in reality where you clearly are not, it is the exact fucking opposite here!
Multiple Genocides plural Don Trump the narcissistic, racist, misogynist, real estate huckster with no political experience of any kind became POTUS. twice because too many Bothsiderists, Only Unicornist counter-productive, toxic, “useful idiots like the Trumpist troll you support did NOT Vote Blue No Matter who! Because too many refused to vote for Kamala Harris and the Democratic party which is the ONLY alternative to Trump’s and his Fascist Repug party.
Fact.
Just for you, troll let’s do the maths and run through the logic here.
The USoA has two and ONLY two parties that actually win Presidential elections and Congress. It is a binary two state nation where it is either Democratic party or the Repug Trump cult party that will govern.
That is a fact whether you, I, or anyone else likes it or not. (I don’t as it happens.)
The ONLY way to peacefully electorally stop the Trump fascist Party & Trump himself from winning an election is to VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO. To vote for the Democratic party.
That is the factual reality.
Not enough People voting for the Democratic party and specifically Kamala Harris got you Trump and his Fascism.
Voting third party got you Trump and Fascism.
Not voting gets you Trump and his Fascism.
The ONE and ONLY way to prevent the USA and world getting Trump and his Fascism was to VOTE FOR KAMALA HARRIS & The DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
What part of this basic reality do you fail to understand?
What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously Silentbob, Trump trolls support troll.
Quite seriously, no kidding Silentbob do you have dementia? Alzheimers or similar?
(Or are you just blatantly trolling which I thought was meant to be frowned upon here. Bannable offence even..)
Because I have already repeatedly debunked your obscene lie, which you have repeated yet again despite knowing it has been proven false :
Specifically referring to Kamala Harris who, in fact, OPPOSES genocide as do all other Democratic party politicians. See my & others debunking of that lie when it comes to genocide here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/09/01/i-almost-completely-missed-the-meteoric-career-of-joe-schmid/comment-page-1/#comment-2311197
Plus here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/08/05/good-news-from-michigan/comment-page-1/#comment-2308545
In addition to :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/18/what-politics-can-do-other-than-enriching-the-rich/comment-page-1/#comment-2301004
Also basic logic would tell you that if a party and nominee e.g. Democratic Party & Kamala is being opposed by billionaires like world’s richest man Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, the remaining Koch brother, etc.. then there are the less pro-billionaire one or even the anti-billionaire one.
Just like how Netanyahu campaigning for and cheering on Trump should have made the Abandon Bidem-Harris crowd wake the fuck up and stop doing their pro-Trump undermining of the pro -Palestine candidate which was in fact Kamala.
The question of whether or not Kamala supported genocide has been long resolved in the negative. She does NOT. Fact. She found the Gaza genocide “heart-breaking” and “outrageous” in her own words.
@38. Dishonest Trumpist troll “Beholder” : “Where is that, exactly?”
They should be told to go fuck themselves, fuck off forever with that toxic Trump helping bullshit and go rethink their lives.
(Bothsiderism and OnlyUnicornism are far worse and more deadly than any deathsticks.)
Do all of that, certainly, but let’s not delude ourselves that it is anything but the bare minimum.
Indeed, it was not enough for Germany or Europe at large.
Unless you attack the whole damn system of power, you’ll get fascism every few generations.
I believe the Smithsonian or some history museum, should collect and preserve a copy of the Trump oval office, and keep it on display in case the US ever recovers culture and taste.
@33 A vote not cast for Harris/Democrats was a vote against reining in Israel.
Their plight in on your head.
@41
Many people on this blog decrying the cRUpPt dUoPoLY fail to understand the following:
The current insanity is the culmination of a 50+ YEAR project by the American Right. There is NO easy way back from this. Roll up you shirt sleeves cuz it’s gonna be a long slog, and many readers here won’t be able to see the end result.
We live in a representative Democracy. Thus, we have the government we deserve. Enough American voters in enough places that mattered wanted this, and they got it.
The Right had a plan. They started with School Boards and Town Aldermen, and worked up from there.
They got control of the judiciary by seeding it with young wingnuts and Federalist Society trash.
They need to do the same, or learn to love Fasciusm.
Could you please spell out what you mean by “the whole damn system of power”? Do you mean capitalism? The state? The electricity grid? What?
indianajones@17,
I suspect you’re right – and that Vance is already looking for the “Antifa” patsy to do the deed: Trump would be much less useful to him as a discredited and dementing pile of shit than as a martyr, and an excuse for the real, deadly-to-dissident-members-of-the-elite-not-just-ordinary-Does crackdown to begin. I also suspect that, one way or another, the Republicans will still have majorities in both houses. If they can’t cheat sufficiently to win in November, recall that Vance as VPOTUS swears in new senators, and the Clerk of the House, one Kevin McCumber reads out the roll of elected members of the House of Representatives. He was appointed as Acting Clerk by Kevin McCarthy, remained as such until January 2025, when he was elected Clerk by the Republican majority. If the Democrats have a majority in either house, Trump will order Vance/McCumber to exclude enough of those elected to give the Republicans majorities (on spurious grounds of electoral fraud). To his credit (I can hardly believe I’m writing those words) Pence refused such an order in January 2021. Vance would obviously follow it (unless he decides this is the moment for the stab-in-the-back, which is not utterly impossible). Of McCumber I know nothing, except who appointed and elected him, but his integrity and courage look like a very slender reed to rely on.
Instead of simply asserting that, why not try to produce a good argument for it? Because that’s what, as far as I recall, I’ve never seen. And if you’re going to claim that doing so would have forced the Democrats to choose a better candidate next time, you’re going to need some actual evidence for that claim. Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 did not, after all, lead them to choose Sanders (oh – but maybe he fails your purity test as well) instead of Biden in 2020.
At no time since I became at all politically aware – 1964 would be the first presidential election where I had even an inkling of what was at stake – has it not been the case that the Democratic presidential candidate was significantly preferable to the Republican – vile though some of them and far from ideal though all of them have been. Nor in that time has there been a viable third party candidate better than the Democrat. So at the presidential elction, if I’d had a vote and was in a state where there was the slightest doubt about the result, I’d have voted and campaigned for the Democrat. At other times, or in a state in which the result was effectively certain, I might have voted third party. In primaries, I’d have voted for the most viable left candidate among the Democratic hopefuls – where the balance of “most viable” and “left” might well have required considerable deliberation. At state/local level, I might well have tried to build a viable third party (and one not led by stooges of Putin or similar); or else worked for a “left tea-party” takeover of the Democrats.
All this, of course, would have taken thought, and often making difficult and even very distasteful choices. It’s much easier, as you do, to refuse to vote for any candidate who doesn’t come up to your moral standards – and sod those who will suffer as a result if enough people make the same stand.
“Purity test” is a meaningless phrase to me. From my point of view, it’s the mainstream that demands purity.
John Morales@34,
I don’t think Fetterman is a good example. When he was elected in 2022, he was almost certainly preferable to his Republican oppoonent. He has since had both a stroke and some sort of psychiatric crisis, and his switch to being in effect the Republican Senator for Tel Aviv may have been at least in part an effect of one or the other, and was almost certanly not predictable. That you can vote for someone who subsequently turns out to be quite different to how they presented themself for election is one of the hazards of democracy.
Do you realize you contradicted yourself within that one sentence?
Sorry – it was two sentences! My bad.
KG @50, I was addressing what I quoted, not being retroactive.
Should Fetterman remain a ‘blue’ candidate, it applies to him next voting cycle.