Another vanity plan from a self absorbed boy-EON
Written by Bruce Fanger
Posted by Richard Romine
Memorial Day is supposed to be the day we shut up long enough to remember the people who did not come home.
Not the politicians.
Not the billionaires.
Not the flag-huggers with bone spurs and grievance speeches.
The dead.
The young men and women who missed the rest of their lives because this country asked them to stand in places most Americans could not find on a map.
So naturally, here comes Donald Trump, the draft dodger, the man who avoided Vietnam with “bone spurs,” now wanting a 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery.
Not a statue of himself inside Arlington, to be precise.
Something almost worse.
A giant imperial arch at Memorial Circle, right beside the sacred approach to Arlington, on the line between Lincoln and the graves of the war dead. A monument dressed up in patriotic language, wrapped in gold, and sold as national remembrance.
Of course he wants that.
Because for Trump, nothing is sacred unless it can be branded. Not the White House. Not the courts. Not the flag. Not even the quiet ground near Arlington, where the living are supposed to feel small in the presence of sacrifice.
He cannot stand smallness.
He cannot stand humility.
He cannot stand a place where the dead outrank him.
That is the obscenity.
Arlington is not a backdrop. It is not a stage set. It is not a prop for a man who thinks patriotism is measured in gold trim, crowd size, and how many people clap when he enters a room.
The stones at Arlington do not brag. They do not campaign. They do not sell hats. They do not call themselves geniuses. They do not whine about unfair treatment.
They simply stand there, row after row, saying what real service looks like.
That is exactly why Trump’s monument instinct feels so wrong. Not because presidents should not honor the fallen. They should. Not because America cannot build memorials. It can. But because a man who has spent his life confusing self-worship with leadership should approach that ground barefoot in spirit, not dreaming of a Caesar gate.
Memorial Day is not about making America look powerful.
It is about remembering the cost of power.
It is about the mother who got the folded flag.
The wife who heard the knock.
The child who grew up with a photograph instead of a father.
The buddy who came home and never fully came home.
It is about the ones who were twenty years old forever.
A nation with any moral memory at all would understand that Arlington needs less ego, not more architecture. Less gold. Less spectacle. Less imperial cosplay pretending to be patriotism.
The dead do not need Trump’s monument.
Trump needs theirs.
That is the difference.
The fallen gave everything and asked for silence.
Trump avoided the war, inherited the wealth, mocked the weak, used the flag as a costume, and still wants the skyline to bow.
On Memorial Day, that should offend every veteran, every military family, and every American who still understands that service is not a brand.
It is a debt.
And some debts are too sacred to be paid in gold paint and vanity.