The Final Solution: Down With Mount Rushmore

                                                                     photo: Simontyo 

President Trump signed an executive order aimed at reviewing monument status for 24 sites preserved since l996 under the Antiquities Act of 1906 in order to in his words “end another egregious abuse of federal power” ("Trump orders review of national monuments, vows to 'end these abuses and return control to the people,'" The Washington Post, 4/26/17). The order covers monuments which use more than 100,000 acres of land. Too bad Mount Rushmore only takes up a little over 1278 acres or it might qualify for demolition. It’s tiresome to have to look up at faces of former presidents like Washington and Lincoln, who no one has ever heard of and it sends a message to both allies like NATO and enemies like North Korea that we’re lost in the past. Why not knock down Rushmore and put up the faces of our current White House: President Trump, Ivanka, Jared Kushner and Sean Spicer or Kellyanne Conway. Even Steve Bannon, who President Trump described as "a guy who works for me" would be an improvement over Jefferson and Roosevelt who are totally passé. The new  Rushmore need not be sculpted into a cliff but could be like the Hollywood sign in LA, perhaps even something in neon whose faces could be changed like the latest act on a marquee, with old fashioned sculpture replaced by high tech holograms. How’s that for infrastructure improvement which will put more people to work and increase the GNP?