fox files

The big Arch is coming whether the pearl-clutchers like it or not

It’s amazing how angry everyone gets about Trump building things. Take the big new arch, for example. The massive new monument has drawn the ire of preservationists, but the National Park Service is planning to go ahead with it anyway. The New York Times makes no bones about their dislike of the project, saying that Parks is “brushing aside outside objections—and its own assessment—that the towering monument would alter the views and symbolism at dozens of historic sites around it.”

But the truly obtuse part of the Times’ critique is how they address the alleged harm the Arch’s existence will do to other memorials and historical sites in Washington, DC. It’s not just the sites that they mention, but the views from those sites, which suddenly are so sacred they cannot be disrupted—even as the Times and other legacy media outlets were all aboard the monument desecration train during the BLM era.

“The Park Service has acknowledged,” they write, “that the arch, given its massive scale, would ‘adversely affect’ more than 40 historic sites and districts around the capital. It would interrupt the visual link between the Lincoln Memorial and Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House that was meant to symbolize the reunification of the country after the Civil War.”

Did you catch that? All of a sudden, the Times is worried about the symbols that were erected following the Civil War as an attempt to unify the nation. Where was this concern for the symbols of unification when the Times seemed to endorse the tearing down of Civil War memorial equestrians such as Stonewall Jackson? Or the removal of Teddy Roosevelt from in front of the museum he commissioned? Or the destruction of countless statues around the country, including those of abolitionists, because statues of white men were just not acceptable anymore?

“It would loom over some parts of Arlington National Cemetery, and block views from John F. Kennedy’s gravesite inside the cemetery,” the Times wrote. “It would be visible from the Jefferson Memorial and alter views from as far away as the Capitol and the Washington National Cathedral.”

Oh! The horror! The Arch will be visible! If only Trump made the arch entirely invisible, the Times would not be quite so pearl-clutchingly concerned about it. Parks, they say, “will not consider locating the arch elsewhere or making changes to its design.”

Every notion from Trump’s critics is that he should minimize his impact, just in the interests of good taste. How dare he, you can almost hear them saying between the lines, leave no trace of himself or record a patriotic love of country? What the preservationists want to preserve is the era before Trump, so much so that they want him to disappear altogether.

Many are stoked for this big arch. It’s about time we in the present day contributed to the monumental architecture that is the legacy of our capital city.