Monuments Now, Dust Later

Keith Raffel
Tue, 23 Dec 2025 21:00:00 -0800
Opinion

With only three years left in his presidency, Donald J. Trump does not want to be forgotten, not ever. Like an emperor of olden days or a 20th-century tyrant, he is engraving his name on both old and new monuments wherever he can.

At the beginning of December, he had his name carved on the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace to render it the Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace. Clearly, the current administration has no sense of the absurd. According to a federal judge, Trump's team ousted the staff of the institute using "the force of guns and threats against American citizens and those who served our country for years."
Updated: Wed Dec 24, 2025

With only three years left in his presidency, Donald J. Trump does not want to be forgotten, not ever. Like an emperor of olden days or a 20th-century tyrant, he is engraving his name on both old and new monuments wherever he can.

At the beginning of December, he had his name carved on the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace to render it the Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace. Clearly, the current administration has no sense of the absurd. According to a federal judge, Trump's team ousted the staff of the institute using "the force of guns and threats against American citizens and those who served our country for years."

Overall, Trump's record as a man of peace is far from stellar. He promised to bring an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War "within 24 hours" of taking office. Hostilities rage on. He has ordered deadly attacks on boats in the Caribbean that legal scholars and former Republican executive branch officials have described as violations of international law.

There's historical precedent for the current administration seeing its belligerent leader as a peacemaker. Two thousand years ago, the Roman Senate had a coin minted to honor Pax Augusta, the Emperor Augustus' Peace. Peace in this case meant Rome continuing to wage foreign wars and brutally crushing domestic rebellions. As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

In October, Trump showed reporters a model of an arch to be built across from the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's Capitol. He said it was to commemorate "me" and that "it's going to be beautiful." The monument is clearly inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris built by Napoleon to celebrate the great victories of his armies. In fact, the potential shrine is already nicknamed the "Arc de Trump." Another Arch of Triumph, purposely built far taller than the Paris version, was erected in Pyongyang by North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung in 1982 to celebrate Korean resistance to Japanese rule.

So here we have two arches to commemorate wartime victories, one erected by a bellicose emperor and the other by a murderous tyrant. Trump has no comparable military triumph to theirs to claim credit for. However, he has ordered the U.S. Navy to build and commission "Trump-class" battleships. Doesn't he know that the fate of almost all naval ships is to be sunk or scrapped?

History shows that rulers obsessed with perpetuity often turn to grandiose architecture. Trump is enlarging the White House in order to make a "big, beautiful" addition which senior administration officials are already calling "The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom." During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler demolished much of Berlin's existing Chancellery in order to replace it with a far larger and grander complex. This headquarters for the "Thousand Year Reich" was almost completely destroyed by Russian troops in 1945.

Passed by Congress in 1964, Public Law 88-260, established "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts" as "the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs." Despite the statute, on Dec. 18, the largely Trump-appointed board voted to rename it "the Trump-Kennedy Center." Allegedly, the vote was unanimous, but board member Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, reported, "I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition." No matter. The next day, signage reflecting the change was added to the building's facade.

Trump is not the first ruler to put his imprint on a memorial honoring a predecessor. Over 3,000 years ago, the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II had a statue at Luxor Temple originally carved for a predecessor recut to create a likeness of himself. He didn't destroy the Temple; he simply rebranded it. There is something inherently pathetic about glomming on to a predecessor's glory.

During the Christmas season of 1817, Percy Bysshe Shelley penned his most famous poem, "Ozymandias," the Greek name for Ramesses II. In it, a traveler comes across a "vast" toppled stone statue in the desert. The "sneer of cold command" can still be seen on the carved face of its subject. The pedestal reads, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" The traveler recognizes the arrogance of the inscription. The poem concludes, "Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."

Shelley's masterpiece reminds us that political power, no matter how immense it seems at the moment, is fleeting. It will always be eroded by the sands of time.