Monuments and men

What is the most beautiful building crafted by the hands of human beings that you have ever seen?

For me, it is the United States Capitol. It has no peer. President Biden referred to it as the “citadel of democracy” after it was assaulted by a horde of disloyal Americans, who were incited by a faithless president who wanted power over constitutional preservation. The building has been the target of three major attacks, two of which were successful over its long history.

The British burned it to the ground in 1814, and MAGA insurrectionists desecrated the chambers of the US Senate, US House and Rotunda in 2021.  The 9/11 attack of 2001 would have destroyed the building, one of the world’s most iconic and the most important symbol of the American Republic. The United States Capitol survived because of the heroism of ordinary citizens who fought back and died for America in a desperate battle none had planned on that beautiful Tuesday morning.

During the darkest days of the Great War that destroyed slavery in America, Abraham Lincoln insisted that the great dome, modeled after St. Paul’s Cathedral in London be completed. During the most desperate hours — when the survival of the Union seemed unlikely — he had the vision and strength to foresee victory, but also what would come next. He saw the necessity for a reconsecration of government that would reconvene under that dome when the war was won and the nation saved. This is why he said these words at the end of our nation’s greatest catastrophe and most important war:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

He showed mercy, compassion and wisdom in an hour during which the calls for vengeance were ringing loudly. Lincoln was not focused on revenge, but rather reconciliation.

This should not be construed as weakness. Lincoln was unshakable and determined that there would be no compromise. The United States would not break. He would not allow it, which is why he sent this message of determination at the edge of victory that there could be no compromise with an evil that had been long accommodated. Lincoln made clear a new age was at hand.

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Many people seem to hold a simmering anger and contempt towards their country, and hold it responsible for the consequences of human imperfections and a fallen world.

America’s founding document was not a ‘declaration of perfection,’ and it was not free from profound hypocrisy against the mores of the latter 20th century and early 21st. It was a Declaration of Independence that held within it the expression of an idea in words that would break history and unleash a tremor that would shake the world.

These simple words built on centuries of human progress towards understanding the unique divinity of each individual person. The words were undeniable in their truth, and ultimately could not be denied to all human beings as a matter of basic inclusion. Human beings have certain rights that transcend the powers of government to grant and take away.

Hear these words. Feel them and understand that there has been too much blood, too much suffering, sacrifice, courage, fear, death and progress to ever allow for their rescission under the yoke of an old dogma that has come back from the past to declare that power demand obedience, and the state stands above the human being.

This is the American creed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These are the words that reconsecrated that creed on a bloody battlefield:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Across Washington, DC, between the Capitol Building and Robert E. Lee’s hillside mansion lies America’s story told in marble, bronze and granite. What each monument shares is virtue.

The Washington monument celebrates the great wisdom and restraint of the nation’s founding father, who walked away from power twice when he could have been a king.

The Lincoln Memorial is a monument to reconciliation, hope, peace, union and fortitude.

MLK and Franklin Roosevelt symbolize justice, humanity, peace and courage.

The World War I, II, Korean and Vietnam War memorials honor service, sacrifice and courage in defense of freedom.

Across the river beneath the Confederate traitor’s confiscated home lies America’s most hallowed ground, Arlington National Cemetery.

What is it that we honor? What do we remember? What do we celebrate in the United States?

Where are the monuments to the Salem witch trials, KKK, Confederacy, fascists, McCarthyism, and all of the other collective abuses, degradations, injustices and cruelties?

They will never exist on the National Mall because they represent evil. They are unworthy, despicable and corrupt chapters in our history. We remember them as warnings, lessons and examples of danger. There is no honor or love to be celebrated within the movements that manifested the weakness of the human soul and gave it life. Americans understand what justice means. We know how long and how hard it has been fought for, and that is why the majority will not relinquish it to the demands of a mob that has decided power is something to be taken as opposed to temporarily bestowed.

Why is it we seem perfectly clear about what is worthy to honor from our past and so utterly lost about what to do about the threat in the present? It is strange indeed to be blind to what is gathering, while simultaneously knowing the story of those who we honor for first seeing the danger long ago. Perhaps we are trapped in a cosmic farce doomed to repeat the past in vicious cycles because we lack the capacity to remember suffering unless it is experienced.

Certainly it is the case that there are no great monuments in America to vengeance, hate and all the afflictions of the human heart. There is no cathedral to political revenge, punishment and brutality. There are no marble columns that support temples of lying, cheating, abusing and raping. We seem reluctant to remember and celebrate greed, fraudulence and corruption, while being startlingly indifferent towards its spread in our time, and more importantly, that of our children.

Does Trump mean what says?

Or, is he a political performance artist who says what is needed to run the China of his angry base?

It’s hard to know, but it doesn’t really matter in the end because one thing is undeniably true. There has never, ever been a political leader who promised concentration camps, vengeance, retribution, punishment for dissenters and payback against enemies both real and imagined who didn’t deliver on the promise when they took power.

Tomorrow’s monuments like those of yesterday will be built to honor the unfathomable, which is the cost of virtue when the darkness arrives.

The extremism in America is real, and it is very dangerous for a very simple reason. There has never been a harmless strain of fascism. It is the deadliest disease in human history, and it is fueled by a darkness of the soul.

History is a teacher and she sends forward her participants as messengers and prophets to future generations.

Avner Less was such a man. He was a German Jew who became an Israeli police captain, and was Adolf Eichmann’s principal interrogator. Many years after the execution of the Holocaust’s most notorious living criminal, Less was asked about his takeaways from the experience.

Here is what he said:

There are Adolf Eichmann’s everywhere. They are all around us. He said they are “latent in a democracy,” but that in a “dictatorship of the left or right, they become deadly in an instant.”

Please understand something. Democracy keeps you safe because it is the only system of government that has ever existed in all of human history in all of its forms that places the rights of the human being above the power of the state.

Democracies of the 21st century recognize the innate dignity of the human being and soul without regard to race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. At long last, freedom has come to mean freedom for everyone under the law.

When MAGA extremists deny election results, lie about election conspiracies, deliberately confuse, mislead and spin for the purposes of taking power at the expense of preserving the constitution and liberty, they stand on the other side of a rubicon from which there is no return.

The question of liberty is not negotiable, nor is the idea of an American Caesar or dictator if only for a day.

Most things in life are not absolutes, but the choice between liberty and fascism is.

Please know this. Fascists only ask for political power once. When they do, they campaign in an election promising three things: a restoration of national greatness and security, a restoration of prosperity, and punishment for all the many traitors, villains, and opponents of the fascists. It is the same today as it has ever been. When they achieve power, their commitment to holding it at all costs should not be dismissed.

We celebrate freedom in America. We build great monuments to its preservation. Why then are so many content to watch a virulent minority seething with rage and radiating anger burn it all down. For what reason? Trump?

It is an unacceptable proposition for a great nation on the eve of the 250th anniversary of its independence.

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