The National Park Service reviewed Trump's proposed 250-foot arch and determined it would adversely affect historic sightlines and visual relationships among nearby landmarks. Then they backed it anyway.
This is the bureaucratic equivalent of your doctor telling you the surgery will kill you but he's scheduled you for Thursday at nine.
Adverse effects. That's the phrase they went with. Not ruinous. Not catastrophic. Adverse. Like the arch is a mild side effect you discuss with your pharmacist. May cause nausea, dizziness, and the complete obliteration of centuries-old visual context that defines the cultural meaning of surrounding monuments.
The Park Service exists to protect historic sites. That's the job. The whole job. It's not a complex mandate. Don't let people f*ck up the old important stuff. They had one task and they filed a report explaining in technical language why they were about to fail at it on purpose.
Somewhere a retail trader is reading this headline and thinking it's bullish for construction ETFs. He's already downloaded three apps that gamify cement futures. He's texting his cousin about rebar. He thinks adverse effects means the stock goes up because controversy drives engagement and engagement drives revenue and revenue drives—no. Stop. The arch is not a catalyst. The arch is a monument to the fact that institutional credibility is a performance art piece we all agreed to take seriously until we didn't.
Historic sightlines. What a way to describe the problem. As if the issue is that tourists might have to crane their necks at a slightly different angle to see the thing they drove nine hundred miles to look at. The sightlines aren't the victim here. The victim is the pretense that anyone involved in this decision respects the reason the Park Service was invented.
They wrote adverse effects on the form and checked the box that says approved. That's not a policy failure. That's a f*cking punchline.
Photo by maria razon on Unsplash
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