Larger than arches of antiquity

Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post on Trump’s self-aggrandizement project:

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.

Of course. What’s the point of it if it’s not bigger than everyone else’s? Big dick, big brain, big arch – whatever. It all has to be the biggest.

It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives toprotect 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.

It will be grandiose and ugly, in line with everything Trump does and with Trump himself.

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.

But there is no lack of gilding in other places, including the ornamental relief on the face of the attic, with lettering spelling out “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All,” and on the four sculpted lions that flank the arch.

But “one nation under god” contradicts “liberty and justice for all”. It’s neither liberty nor justice to impose a dictator god on 350 million people. I don’t consider myself “under god”; it’s not liberty or justice to enroll people in such a theology from the top down.