Forty One Million Names, One Corporate Logo

What a USAA-branded digital display says about how Washington honors its veterans now.

Scaffolding for temporary exhibit at Lincoln Memorial

This morning I headed out for my early run to the Lincoln Memorial. I took a different route than I did yesterday, hoping to avoid the clutter and fencing that now lines most of the National Mall.

I was relieved to find the Lincoln Memorial itself still intact. The same cannot be said for the Reflecting Pool, which is now completely fenced in. The only remaining view of it is from the steps of the memorial, and even that will soon disappear.

At first I assumed the scaffolding I saw was left over from the massive fireworks display on July 4. I quickly learned otherwise after talking with a National Guardsman stationed nearby. Workers are constructing a massive temporary digital monument, sponsored by USAA, for the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It will display the names of more than forty one million Americans who have served in the military since the Civil War.

At first glance there may seem to be nothing wrong with this. But take a step back and the timing looks conspicuous. USAA only announced the project a few weeks ago. It could have gone anywhere in Washington, DC. Instead it now covers the last open view of the Reflecting Pool.

Let me be clear. The National Mall does not lack for memorials to the military. The Reflecting Pool is already ringed by them. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, you can see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with all fifty eight thousand names of the fallen. The Korean War Veterans Memorial sits nearby, and straight ahead is the National World War II Memorial.

Foot traffic is light, but there is also a memorial to the soldiers of the First World War. And the newest addition, opening just next to the Lincoln Memorial, will honor those who served in the Iraq War.

This new project is not simply redundant. It is a distraction from the real problems now plaguing this city, problems that trace directly back to President Trump’s incompetence.

I learned about all this, in fact, from one of the National Guardsmen who now patrol the city around the clock. He had been stationed here for about a month and had no idea when he would get to go home. I disapprove of why he is here, but I said hello and thanked him anyway. He did not design this monument or choose this deployment, and he is as much a part of the surrounding absurdity as anyone.

That absurdity is worth sitting with. USAA is, by its own description, an insurance and financial services company built around serving military members and veterans. A company selling policies to service members funding a monument to service members, unveiled with this kind of speed and placed in this particular spot, does not read as an act of pure gratitude.

It reads as a marketing opportunity dressed up as a tribute, timed to a moment when the military’s visible presence in this city is already being contested and debated. The plaza in front of Lincoln, one of the last unobstructed sightlines left on the Mall, was apparently available for exactly this kind of use.

If this monument is only temporary, why did it need to happen now, on this timeline, in this location, ahead of the ordinary process that usually accompanies anything permanent or semi permanent added to the Mall?

Forty one million names is a real number and a real history, one that deserves serious treatment. It deserves better than a rushed digital display wedged into the only remaining view of the Reflecting Pool, competing for attention with the Vietnam Wall, the Korean War Memorial, and the World War II Memorial that already surround it.

When everything is honored at once, on a screen, sponsored, and unveiled within weeks of being announced, it starts to feel less like remembrance and more like noise.

The people whose names will scroll across that plaza deserve a monument built with the same care given to the ones already standing around it, not one that arrives overnight and doubles as an advertisement.