Trump Arch

Meanwhile, just weeks ago, eight million people took to the streets and said: we will have no kings in this land.

Note to my future self.

On Friday the Trump administration unveiled plans for what they’re calling a Triumphal Arch. At 250 feet tall, with gold lions, golden eagles, and a gilded Lady Liberty on top, it would sit on a traffic circle just outside Arlington National Cemetery — directly across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial.

For comparison, the Lincoln Memorial stands 99 feet tall. The arch’s interior opening alone would be 110 feet high and 55 feet wide — room for four lanes of traffic.

Arches like this have a long history, beginning with imperial Rome, where rulers often built them to celebrate their own conquests. Trump said he wants this one to be the biggest of all, and he will get his wish if it is built. The current tallest is the Arch of the Revolution in Mexico City. Second place belongs to the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea, erected by the dictator Kim Il Sung.

This arch would join the new White House ballroom built on the ruins of the East Wing, the Rose Garden paved over in Mar-a-Lago stone, and the president’s name added to the Kennedy Center, the US Institute of Peace, and more, as a systematic remaking of civic space into a personal monument.

Kings build monuments to themselves and we are watching it happen in gold, 250 feet high.

Meanwhile, just weeks ago, eight million people took to the streets and said: we will have no kings in this land.