FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2026
Our stay in the Little Boxes: We start today, as we often do, with the latest expressions of the madness—rather, of the dueling madnesses—which now threaten the nation and the world. (We're using a colloquial term.)
Trump to Break Ground on Arch Before Getting Approval
President Trump is breaking ground on his 250-foot-tall triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, even before a federal review panel has approved the project.
Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, on Thursday announced plans for the excavation work.
“After a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch” he wrote in a social media post...
The rush to push ahead with work on the arch follows a familiar pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently embarked on large-scale changes to historic properties in Washington without approvals from Congress or anyone else.
Trump officials say work will start on triumphal arch within two weeks
[...]
The administration plans to build the arch in Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries near Arlington National Cemetery. Trump has said that the arch will honor the nation’s 250th anniversary, vowing that it will be the largest triumphal arch in the world — about 86 feet taller than France’s famed Arc de Triomphe.
Historical preservationists, Democratic lawmakers and some Washington residents have opposed the project, calling it an oversize and inappropriate structure that will disrupt the historically solemn corridor between the military cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
Until this year, we didn't know that the space between those two national sites is viewed as an "historically solemn corridor." That said, building will proceed as the clinically nutty sitting president seeks to transform the capital as a tribute to his own greatness.
The announcement that construction will proceed calls attention to our nation's dueling madnesses:
First, to the madness of the sitting president, a "madness" which may quite likely be clinical. Also, to the (purely colloquial) madness of a Blue American press corps which refuses to discuss the possibility that something is (clinically) wrong with world's most powerful person.
At any rate, we start today with the Lincoln Memorial for a particular reason.
We first went there in the mid- to late-1970s with a group of fifth grade kids from the Baltimore City Schools. We ourselves were something like 27 at the time. ("Just a kid like you.")
It became a seminal day in our life, such as that life has been. It became a seminal day when we read the text of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which is engraved on one of the memorial's inner walls.
We recall being stunned by what we read. Included was the text shown below, including one of the most astounding assessments ever produced in English.
In this passage, Lincoln is speaking about the Civil War
—about who was responsible for it, about the price which was being paid for the practice which was its cause. Without wasting much time,
the rail-splitter told the world this:
Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865
[...]
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 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."
Yikes! Lincoln was supposing that God was giving the war to both North and South "as the woe due to those by whom the offense" which caused the war had come!
That was part of what Lincoln had said! Surrounded by (very good) Baltimore kids, we recall our instant reaction. It involved the thought that Abraham Lincoln hadn't been human—that no actual human being had ever expressed such a thought.
We did this too, the rail-splitter said. Knowing the war was about to end, he even added this:
If we in the North are forced to pay the ultimate price in life and treasure, no one can say that God's judgments aren't righteous and true forever.
That was the astounding extent to which he was willing to say, to those on his side:
We did this awful thing too. ("We are not enemies, but friends.")
We still find it hard to believe that a human being ever delivered such an address. We offer this to bridge a gap for us over here in Blue America, in our current situation.
We refer back to the overview offered by Michelle Goldberg, who we regard as unusually lucid. Dreaming of another civil war, she said that we in Blue America are more abused than abuser at the present time:
Why Do We Keep Imagining a New Civil War?
[...]
For at least the last decade, a florid, aggressive contempt has been a constant in our politics. Donald Trump, after all, doesn’t just shower liberal cities and states with insults (and, in a demented A.I. video he posted, with excrement). His presidency has been devoted to punishing the places that didn’t vote for him, including by withholding health care and disaster funding. One of the things his voters have long loved about him is the humiliation and despair he causes their fellow citizens.
Many of those Trump partisans are still smarting over Hillary Clinton calling some of them “deplorables.” For decades they’ve been seething at the disrespect they feel emanating from America’s cultural capitals. It seems obvious to me that blue America is more abused than abuser, but that doesn’t really matter; the impossibility of coming to any agreement about the commensurability of our grievances just underlines the toxicity of the relationship.
We agree! In these ongoing days of rage—in the age defined by "The Rage of Trump," supplanting the earlier Rage of Achilles—we agree that Blue America is, on balance, "more abused than abuser."
Over a broader sweep of time, we'd say that assessment's less obvious. We'd start with the astounding insult delivered in the well-loved song of the liberal 1960s, "Little Boxes."
We liberals loved that song! This was Malvina Reynolds (and Pete Seeger) describing the lesser beings found inside those comically small abodes:
Little Boxes
[...]
And the people in the houses
All went to the university...
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
The people "were all made out of ticky-tacky?" Yes, that's what our troubadours sang as we insulted our tribal inferiors.
The little boxes which inspired the song filled the hillsides of Daly City, just south of San Francisco along the Pacific coast. They were, in fact, very small, and they were set quite close together.
Uh-oh! Here's the problem:
At the time the song was written, our Aunt Connie lived in one of the Little Boxes with our younger cousin Diane. (Today, they would perhaps be dismissed as Karens.)
When our family moved from Massachusetts to California in the summer of 1960, the three of us stayed with them in their "little box" until our mother, concluding a whirlwind search, bought a house in San Mateo.
(For the record, the little boxes were quite likely lower middle-class housing. Their residents hadn't "all gone to the university," as the song rather oddly claimed.)
Unfortunate insults, Blue to Red, are common within our nation's modern history. We Blues aren't always able to see the way our comments sound to the many deplorables who aren't part of our own tribe—the way our sneering may persuade some people to vote the other way.
Beyond that, our imperfections as a tribe frequently take other forms. At present, the foolishness of various parts of the DSA platform are keeping MAGA hopes alive for November's elections. As they do, they remind us that peculiar assessments can emerge from well-intentioned human beings in every conceivable tribe. No one has perfect insight.
In various ways—President Biden's still unexplained border policy?—we Blues helped send the current president to his current term in the White House. As with every human tribe, this fact can be hard for us in our own tribe to see.
"Woke One was crazy," AOC has now said. In the future, should we possibly think about speaking up in real time?
