Trump’s arch is atrocious. Don’t build it.
The meanings of words such as honor, sacrifice, and humility have been leaking away from American civic life like red blood cells from an anemic. But if there’s one place where they retain their rich, sticky, life-giving force, it’s surely in the air around the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The cemetery is where Americans remember those who sacrificed their lives for the nation. The memorial is where they remember their greatest president—the man who proclaimed an end to slavery and kept the union intact, though the cost was staggering. The air between these two places is the medium through which Lincoln gets to speak with his war dead, and vice versa. If President Trump’s ambition is realized, a triumphal arch will thrust its way into this murmuring conversation like a boastful bore crashing into a huddle of friends swapping stories about a loved one at a wake. Heavy-handed and overbearing, it would pervert the significance of this uniquely meaningful place, forcing visitors to see these two sites through a crass and generalized assertion …
