I'm in my public testimony era

Also, Ben > Will. Times a million.

I’m on various list serves and pages of grassroots democracy activists, mostly retirees who dominate the protest scene. It’s a flurry of issues and actions and initiatives, and especially lately, I don’t have time to do a whole lot.

But for whatever reason, because there are so many outrages, I’ve been seized with Trump’s proposed 250-foot arch he wants to build on Memorial Circle, between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery.

I mean, HONESTLY.

Partly because it’s such a uniquely dumb idea, partly because it’s especially ugly, partly because it’s yet another vanity project. But mostly because it is a visual representation of how he wants to portray American history, as some kind of super hero comic book.

And of course the arch, like everything done in his preferred aesthetic, is white and gold (he’s also wanting to paint the granite of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House white). I don’t think that color palette is accidental. Trump’s preferred era is the post-Reconstruction Gilded Age, when racial equality got stopped in its tracks and greed ran rampant). A time of white men with lots of gold. And lots of tariffs!

So when an email comes in with “arch” in the subject line, I usually read it. The one earlier this week said the National Capitol Planning Commission would be considering the arch at the monthly meeting this week and the public was welcome to attend and testify.

I mentioned it to Benjamin Wittes on our podcast, and his immediate response was, “I think you have to go!” And I was like, “I do? Yeah…I think I do.”

I went online and signed up, not knowing whether it was difficult to get a speaking slot (apparently not). Then our core audience of Ben’s paid subscribers, which he calls the Greek Chorus, brainstormed what I should say. I wrote up my remarks and sent them in.

Almost thirty other people also spoke against the arch, ordinary citizens and those representing various stakeholder organizations. There were multiple architects, multiple veterans, random retirees, and a weird dude who just got up there and read a bunch of Bible verses before saying he was against the arch, too. (Ben perkily pointed out that I was now “teammates” with the weird dude.)

The veterans were the most affecting. While other speakers talked about the poor design and planning, the snarling of traffic and the endangerment of pedestrians, the circumvention of law and proper procedure, and the destruction of sightline and skylines—all valid points—the veterans spoke emotionally about their comrades and family members buried in Arlington, whose graves would now be overshadowed by this gaudy, massive structure (it will be the largest arch in the world, eclipsing the current largest in…Pyongyang).

One marine came from three generations of service people, with great-grandparents and grandparents buried in Arlington. A 76 year-old Vietnam veteran said he had he had never protested anything before but knew he could not sit out this time and allow the sacrifice of his friends disrespected.

And here is what I said (and the pauses by the way, was applause from the rather boisterous audience, who seemed undivided on their contempt for the arch):

In written form:

My name is Holly Berkley Fletcher, I hold a Ph.D. in American History, specializing in the Civil War era. I strongly object to the building of the proposed arch because it is an affront to the history and meaning of the site.

In 1864, General Montgomery Meigs made a deliberate decision to bury Union dead at the Arlington estate of his former friend and mentor, Robert E. Lee, whom he considered a traitor to the United States. Meigs wanted to send a message, both to Lee personally and to the nation, about the rebellion’s high moral and human cost.

Decades later, the Macmillan Commission approved a long overdue architectural plan for Washington based on the original design of Charles Pierre L’Enfant, who, notably, is also buried at Arlington, in the section visible from Washington.

The Lincoln Memorial was purposefully placed in the direct sightline of Lee’s home and the graves of the first Union soldiers buried there, with the Memorial Bridge connecting the two, as a symbol of union, reconciliation, and the high price of freedom. This site was never meant to be triumphal, but rather somber, reflective, and profound, much like Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural and Gettysburg Addresses, which are etched into the walls of his memorial.

In light of other actions this administration has taken, I can’t help but conclude the arch is part of an intentional revision of history, in which the gravity of insurrection is minimized, the violence of white supremacy is sanitized, and the anniversary of our hard-won democracy becomes an occasion for cowardly avoidance of the painful lessons of the past.

Our triumph as a nation isn’t represented by an over-compensating, imperial-looking arch. Our triumph is and ever will be embodied only in our commitment to becoming a more perfect union. The accurate, reverent remembrance of the tragedy of the Civil War and the racial oppression that caused it, as well as our more general allegiance to the truth, is vital to our republic’s endurance.

I am also a former CIA Africa analyst who was raised in Kenya under a dictatorial regime. This arch reminds me more of the bombastic, self-aggrandizing displays of the African strongmen I have observed than the expression of a mature, dignified democracy whose greatness has been proven over time through the fulfillment of and fidelity to its founding principles.

Thank you.

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Now that I’ve involved myself to this degree, I think I am going to have to keep going. The committee (dominated by Trump people) voted to move the issue to the next phase of the process, whatever that means. It’s not a done deal yet, and there are some lawsuits pending that are more likely to stop this thing than an unemployed historian/former CIA analyst. But I do what I can.

I do what I can. And you do, too. That’s all we can do.

This was yet another new experience for me of so many in the last year and a half, yet another occasion when I’ve said Why Not, not really knowing what I’m doing. It always feels a little scary, and sometimes things work out better than others.

But mostly it feels like I’m shifting into another whole gear I didn’t even know I had. I think of all the times in my life when I sat it out or didn’t speak up or politely declined or was afraid to ask or didn’t think I could keep up. I’m having a harder and harder time remembering why I was ever so afraid.

I think most of it is getting old. But I also want to acknowledge all the people cheering me on in this phase of my life. My friends and family, all my new “Democracy Co-workers,” the Greek Chorus, and the Stripe-less Zebras.

But I especially want to take a beat and say a proper thank you to Benjamin Wittes, mainly because he will absolutely hate being singled out like this, and it’s fun to torment him a little bit. Ben has been such a gift to me and so many others who are starting new chapters and wanting to get plugged in somewhere and hoping to make a difference. Ben is one of the most generous people I have ever met. He shares his connections, experience, and anything else he may have to spare. But mostly he is generous in the way he shares his notice of your potential and plenty of confidence and enthusiasm for whatever leap of faith you really do need to take. Ben’s fearlessness and joy is contagious. He can make the prospect of failure seem exciting and even fun, and it loses its fearful power.

There’s no telling what kind of cringe thing he’s going to talk me into next. I can’t wait.

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Last thing for today. I want to tell you about the chairman of the Commission, William Scharf. This is just part of his job. He is, more generally, a staff secretary at the White House.

Watching and listening to him, he seems like a decent person. A smart person—he went to Princeton and Harvard. He’s polite, articulate. friendly. After our testimonies, he thanked each of us who had federal or military experience for our service. Everything he said sounded reasonable and thoughtful on its face.

But Mr. Scharf, who I am sure is a good father/husband/friend/brother/whatever he may be, is enabling the most dangerous, foolish, maniacal person in American history. This arch is just another case of that. Before this, Scharf was a member of Trump’s legal team, defending him in the election interference case. He proudly highlighted this work in a campaign ad in 2024, when he unsuccessfully ran for Missouri Attorney General. He’s been profiled in the media as the “man with all the binders” of Executive Orders for Trump to sign.

His entire job is to turn Trump’s fever dreams into something workable, to clothe the Emperor in invisible finery, to shove batshit and bullshit into a leather-bound portfolio. To make us think we’re the crazy ones.

He was specifically put on the NCPC to push through all of Trump’s bananas construction projects. He already was instrumental in the destruction of the East Wing. It was clear from his perfectly pleasant sounding remarks today that he’s all set to muscle this arch through as well.

He started the meeting with a recitation of all the fascinating research he had done, the “rabbit holes” he had gone down, looking into objections that the arch would violate the Height of Buildings Act. In an “aw shucks would you look at that!” tone, he said in his reading of things, the act didn’t apply to federal projects, even without a Congressional waiver because there was one case, in 1930, of a federal building higher than the law allows that was built without a waiver (the National Archives).

His credentials, demeanor, and tone make you think this is someone trustworthy. I found him likable even, if I didn’t listen too carefully to his words.

But this is exactly the type of person who I think bears the most responsibility for the entire travesty of the Trump administration (other than the voters, and I think you know how I feel about them). Because while Trump is completely insane, Steven Miller is a sociopath, and Pete Hegseth and Russ Vought are a loathsome religious zealots, Will Scharf clearly has the capacity to be someone different. Someone better.

I honestly don’t know what he’s thinking. It’s not like he couldn’t make a good living or achieve influence another way. I don’t know how you decide this is the way you’re going to make your living. I don’t know how you conclude you will devote your life and your considerable gifts to empowering a madman and his destructive movement in a (still) free country. I don’t know what you think you’ll ultimately gain or how you figure you’re doing anything good in the world.

He’s pretty much the polar opposite of Ben.