SerpApi.Org
WASHINGTON, D.C. — I had to see it for myself. The Reflecting Pool, currently d/b/a the National Driveway. Apparently this thought also occurred to a number of my fellow tourists. There was a great spillover of gawkers from the Lincoln Memorial, taking pictures of the long, wide, blank expanse of what was supposed to be the reflection of the Washington Monument. After all, it’s not often that you can see before you a perfect metaphor for an entire presidency. Destruction out of some dark whimsy and attended by a bodyguard of lies, as Churchill once put it. A no-bid contract for nothing. The National Driveway. The least he could do is tape off a 94 by 50 area. Lay down some lines and a three-point arc. Put hoops at either end. And let the Urban Coalition League play its season there—outdoors, the way the Rucker does it in New York. It is evidence of heroic incompetence, of delusional hubris, of counterfeit expertise in all things, large and small. A very stable genius, always aimed steadily at the bottom of a dark ravine.
And the sight of it is funny as hell. The happy families who gather at the edge of the fence point and laugh and have their pictures taken.
And the administration’s attempt to criminalize this kind of disrespect is the funniest thing of all. From Idaho Public Press:
A judge warns that a Trump DOJ plan to fix the Reflecting Pool could undermine its own prosecution in Washington, D.C., turning a repair job on the National Mall into a legal conflict over the Reflecting Pool repair effort. The warning matters because prosecutors may need the damaged site as evidence, not just scenery. The core issue is prejudice: if federal agencies alter or repair the pool before defendants can examine alleged damage, defense lawyers could argue the government changed key evidence while still seeking punishment. That is how a Trump DOJ Reflecting Pool fix meant to restore a landmark could complicate, or even weaken, the prosecution.
If you attempt to misuse the Department of Justice to cover up your grotesque incompetence and manage to screw up your own case through grotesque incompetence, well, that’s just comedy gold. On the other hand, any time this administration spreads happiness and joy, even through its own bungling, is worth celebrating.
Only a short walk away, a more respectful crowd walks silently along the Vietnam Memorial wall. Passersby reach out and touch the names carved into the black granite. When the plans for the wall were originally revealed, official Washington was inflamed as only official Washington could be. Secretary of the Interior James Watt denied the project’s building permit. However, almost since it was finished, the wall has been invested with a kind of solemnity that turns it into something very like a shrine, a place of pilgrimage to those of us who were touched by that misbegotten war, which is practically everyone alive in America during that time. The contrast between the profane National Driveway facing the Lincoln Memorial and the reverence that surrounds the wall is so striking as to be almost obscene, a tribute to a man who doesn’t recognize any heroes except himself.
