The meaning of Mount Rushmore

The monument in South Dakota was designed to inspire awe at the greatness of American democracy. Today, there's something poignant about the sculpture's self-confident grandiosity.

The Shrine of democracy.
(Image credit: Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Nothing about our trip to Mount Rushmore went according to plan. Our flight was delayed. We found ourselves stranded in the Minneapolis airport for four hours. "Minneapolis airport four hours," we typed into Google, and the internet responded by persuading us to take a train to the Mall of America. It was not just a mall but an elaborate fun house of malls, at the center of which was, somehow, a gigantic amusement park. I could see my kids' minds recalibrating the relative scales and possibilities of American experience.

"It's like Disney World," my son said, "but inside of a mall."

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