Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
America fought to defeat fascism. This 'triumphal arch' reeks of it.
Detailed renderings of President Donald Trump’s proposed victory arch near Arlington National Cemetery reveal a confused and offensive symbolism.Donald Trump’s giant victory arch appears to have an official name. Since October, when the president showed preliminary designs for a gigantic arch proposed for a traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery, the monument has been referred to variously as a triumphal arch, the Independence Arch and the Arc de Trump. The last of these isn’t entirely a joke. When asked whom the arch would honor, Trump said: “Me.”
But renderings of the arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts in advance of its discussion of the project Thursday, refer to it as the Triumphal Arch. And it will be as big as feared — 250 feet high — larger than arches of antiquity, taller even than ghastly monuments to authoritarian triumphalism, including the victory arch in Pyongyang, North Korea.
It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.
The main body of the arch will rise 166 feet from an elevated base. Atop that will be a 60-foot-tall gilded statue that looks like an AI-mash-up of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, resembling in its glittering ostentation the statue atop a victory column in Mexico City erected by the brutal dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910. The design of the arch is a little simpler than some of the more garish proposals Trump floated earlier. Gigantic Corinthian columns have been removed, and there are no longer gilded statues in the niches on the two main supporting legs.
https://wapo.st/4mkWrmZ
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
that's a big swinging dick if I ever saw one. 
after igniting years of warfare that cost millions of European lives and drained the coffers of the French Republic. If Trmp's arch gets him similarly exiled, I'm all for it.
Triumphal arches are for egotists and fascists. Trmp sits right in the middle of that Venn diagram.
BTW, Mexico's Monumento_a_la_Revolución is the tallest memorial arch in the world, even without a statue. It was originally a statue honoring the dictator Porfirio Diaz, who was turned out of office after the Revolution. His successor continued the project but was murdered. The design was then altered to commemorate a revolution in favor of democracy. Not exactly good omens for Trmp. 