For years, when I lived in Washington, I made the same pilgrimage. I would run or bike across the Potomac on the Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery and find my Uncle Bob.
First Lieutenant Robert P. Casey, a 25-year-old navigator from Bellevue, Pennsylvania, was killed in a plane crash in North Africa on December 29, 1944.
My father's own father died six months before my dad was born in 1926, and Bob, eight years older, became his father figure. My dad never recovered from his death. I never got to meet Uncle Bob. But I spent hours at his grave, in the hush of that cemetery, getting to know him the only way I could.
Everyone who tells me about Uncle Bob says the same thing: he was kind and decent to a fault, and he served with pride. He surely did not think of himself as a warrior or a man with a warrior ethos. Nobody ever described him counting push-ups or fretting about his testosterone.
The men and women at Arlington did not die worrying about their “T” levels, how much they could bench-press, or “woke” culture. They died for their country, and they came from everywhere.
Up the hill from Uncle Bob, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy rest where the whole city spreads out below, and the Lincoln Memorial stands grandly across the river. Anyone who has stood at their graves knows why it moves people.
And anyone who has stood at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier knows the rule that governs it. It is the quietest place in Arlington and the quietest place in Washington, a town otherwise addicted to noise and, in recent years, the screaming, vile language that emanates from the Trump administration.
This week, that disrespectful noise followed Pete Hegseth in.
On Veterans Day, after a ceremony at the Tomb, Hegseth’s entourage stopped to pose for photographs. A loud laugh rang out, and the sentinel on duty had to do what no soldier should ever have to do. He scolded the Pentagon's leader — an atrocious one — instructing that all visitors maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect.
A spokesman said the soldier handled it professionally, and I'm sure he did. The shame belongs to the people being corrected, not the young soldier who corrected them. Hegseth gave him a medal on Thursday, which was the smart thing to do, and completely opposite to the way Hegseth usually handles someone who goes against him. But still.
Anyone with a sense of decorum and a modicum of decency knows that you don't giggle at the Tomb. You don't hold a conversation as if you're strolling through a crowded mall. I’ve seen children on school trips at that grave. They understand that. The man who runs the Department of Defense and his staff are obtuse to it, as they are about many things important to the military.
Hegseth has spent his tenure treating the military like a mob hit squad and a Tough Mudder workout. He has insulted Black officers, women, and transgender and queer troops, many of whom are not only serving but are buried at Arlington.
When he disrespects them, he disrespects all of them. Those above and below the hallowed ground where they are buried.
He is hardly alone in this vulgarity. His boss once called fallen soldiers “suckers” and "losers" and mocked John McCain for being captured. And that is the man whose vision for Arlington's surroundings is all about a 250-foot triumphal arch abomination.
Trump’s atrocity would rise at Memorial Circle, directly across the river from the Lincoln Memorial. It would interrupt the line of sight that connects the memorial and the cemetery, a line meant to symbolize the reunification of the nation after the Civil War. It would stand more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial itself, roughly the height of a 25-story office building, topped with golden angels and a flame.
According toThe Washington Post, a website promoted by the White House on November 6, 2026, debuted new designs showing "Golden Age of America" emblazoned in large gold letters on the arch.It replaces "Liberty and Justice for All," and the more reverent "One Nation Under God."
Scores of people and groups are coming forward to try to stop the building of this travesty. Veterans are suing, along with a historian, the District of Columbia, Virginia and Arlington County. Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan has already barred the administration from beginning site work for 14 days.
And this week, nine members of theKennedy family asked the court to stop it, arguing that the monument would cast a shadow over the graves of their relatives. Of course, the loathsome Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who serves in Trump's Cabinet, did not join them.
They are not asking for a favor. They are asking that a grave and the memory of a fallen president not be darkened. It’s the ultimate insult directed at the Kennedys by Trump.
He has tried to put his name on the Kennedy Center, a monument to a murdered president's love of the arts. Now he wants a monument to himself looming over that president's grave. Whenever there is something beautiful, quiet and revered, Trump tries to find a way to make it about himself.
Arlington belongs to my Uncle Bob, to the Kennedys, and to hundreds of thousands of people who never got to come home and who are owed our silence, reverence and utmost respect.
Hegseth can't keep his mouth shut. Trump wants the loud hum of cranes and bulldozers. But when I think of Arlington, I will always think of Uncle Bob, and the quiet, dignity and decency that he and everyone buried there deserve.