Trump’s Revitalization of DC Monuments Shows That Decline is a Choice

“All D.C. needed was President Trump!

That was Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on X celebrating the renovation of the Columbus Circle fountain in the District of Columbia after decades of neglect and more recent abuse.

Maybe this seems like a small thing. It’s just an old fountain. What is that compared to the state of the economy, or matters of war and peace?

But I’d argue that the Trump administration’s attempted revitalization of Washington is essential to the success of the “Make America Great Again.”

It’s not just one fountain. What President Donald Trump is doing is clearly part of a larger effort to show America that our capital city doesn’t have to be a crime-ridden dump, that it can maintain something more enriching and worthwhile than blocks of hideous millennial housing for swarms of lobbyists and NGO staffers.

The other projects taking place around Washington are equally if not more impressive than the fountain at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station.

I lived a few blocks away from Meridian Hill Park in the northwest part of the city for years. It was pleasant enough, but it was also notable that the beautiful fountains modeled after classical Italian parks and architecture never worked. Now they’re back and flowing.

Over a century ago, this park and many others were projects of a progressive political movement to beautify American cities. What a far cry from modern “progressive” governance that shrugs at the idea of beautification in favor of dumping countless taxpayer dollars onto jobs programs for woke, NGO activists and crooked recent arrivals looking to sponge their new country.

President Trump has looked into fixing the even more famous reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial too.

And after a few weeks of construction, the long-festering reflecting pool looks like it might start, well, reflecting again.

That didn’t come without a bit of drama in the meantime as some Democrats and left-wing media types tried to argue that the administration was somehow making a hash of the restoration.

Here’s California Gov. Gavin Newsom taking a shot at Trump back in May taking a shot at the project mid construction.

This is a man who seemingly can’t even begin to build a bullet train route or even an overpass in his state without wasting countless years and billions of dollars. His post aged like milk.

Here’s the reflecting pool now.

I can’t remember the last time I looked into the water of that thing and didn’t see something resembling the creature of the black lagoon looking back at me. I may not have Hollywood looks, but I don’t look that bad.

Now the reflecting pool is starting to look how I imagined it in movies when I was growing up.

Bergum was right to compare these projects to the state of things in the city during the Biden years.

At that time everything seemed broken. Washington was beset by a historic crime wave. Large parts of it seemed outright abandoned. It all seemed reflective of a country just giving up.

The statues and monuments that weren’t falling further into decay were being literally torn down by mobs, assumedly never to be replaced except maybe by grotesque modern “art.”

Now the statues are going back up, not just in D.C. but around the country. Crime is dropping.

After Trump announced he would deploy the National Guard all over Washington to crack down on crime, crime has plummeted. In fact, the city is witnessing historic low crime rates, outpacing other crime declines throughout the country.

The projects around D.C. demonstrate a return to the “can do” ethos that built this country.

They represent an attitude, seemingly lost, that we don’t settle for second-best or mediocre in America. From that very moment we set forth on our own in 1776 we expected greatness and nothing less.

In the last few years, we lost our way a little bit. We got lost in a fog of malaise, were convinced by cultural pseudo-elites that self-loathing and deconstruction were better ways forward than building on what was great and ironing out our flaws.

For too long, America has felt like it’s been in decline, that our best days are in the past. Sure, we’re still rich, at least in aggregate. Yet, it’s been hard to escape the feeling of erosion that could literally be seen all around us.

In a sense, Trump is applying the “broken windows” policy to the whole nation.

He’s improving public spaces, demonstrating that the government is in the business of creating order and quashing chaos, and showing that “MAGA” is not just an empty slogan.

Decline is a choice. Here in America, we’ve decided to turn around and march back up the hill.

Maybe this moment will come and go. It was a transient vibe shift and nothing more.

But at the very least the physical reminders of American greatness are being restored. It’s up to us to decide if we wish to live up to what they symbolize or sink back into decay and hopelessness.