A designer's misstep

US Navy to Alter "Swastika" Building Due to Web Maps

Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:13PM EDT

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Your tax dollars at work: The US Navy will be spending about $600,000 to redesign or camouflage a 1960s barracks building in San Diego because of complaints that it looks like a swastika when viewed from the air. In the past this might have been a problem only for the occasional air traveler who happened over Coronado island, but with the advent of aerial mapping and visualization tools like Google Earth, everyone can see anything from the sky. In fact, many people have made a game out of finding oddities in satellite photos.

Now it's one thing to see landmarks like this and snicker over a designer's missteps 40 years ago (the Navy says it noticed the shape but that it didn't think anyone would see it from above), but it's another thing altogether to complain to the Navy about the shape of a building when viewed from space. But people really seem to have the time on their hands: The Navy says it's been inundated with complaints; enough, I suppose, to justify spending that much money on new structures and extra bushes. It's the first known case of its kind.

So what will the building look like when the job is done, I wonder? A set of four connected squares? A pinwheel formed from triangles? Post your ideas for what the Navy ought to do out of the wayward swastika here and we'll see if we can't pass them along to the powers that be
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My two cents:

The article mentions complaints that the building LOOKS LIKE a swastika when viewed from the air. Looks like? It fucking IS a swastika! You never read "some neighbors complained that the enflamed t-shaped wooden structure in the Smith's front yard resembled a burning cross", do you? Is it possible that the building's shape was overlooked, that from design on down no one noticed the swastika? Nope, because the article states that the Navy knew about it, but didn't think anyone would see it. It would be akin to a church structure that reads 666 from above (obviously, this would be a hard task to accomplish, but you see what I'm getting at), and the clergy saying "well, no one's going to see it, except from above. We can live with it." And the fact that the building was built forty years ago, not so long after the Holocaust, makes it even more revolting that they chose that design.

Even if the swastika wasn't intentional, why go ahead with the design plans? Aren't the Nazi's and what they represented anathema to the American way? So even if it was an accident that the building took the form of maybe the most reprehensible symbol in the free world, it probably would have been in their best interest to try something else less evil, like, I don't know, maybe a square or a rectangle. You'll never be able to convince me that the swastika was an oversight, caught only until after the building was completed.

They knew what they were doing. Ever hear of Operation Paperclip? Look it up--pretty interesting stuff. Basically, we recruited Nazi scientists after the war to work for us. Instead of being hanged like they should have been, some of these monsters were rewarded for their sins with jobs! I'm not claiming there's a grand Amerinazi scheme in our country, even though I have my suspicions, but I know what a swastika looks like and I know our military does as well.

The article doesn't question the Navy's use of the swastika, but instead takes the people who complained about it to task. This sums up the state of our media. Calling the shape of the building " a designer's misstep" and "something to snicker over" is an enormous insult to every man, woman, and child who's lives were taken from them under the Nazi regime. Disagree with Israel's stance towards Palestine and you're an antisemite. But if you complain about a military structure built in the shape of a swastika, you've got too much time on your hands. And to bitch that it's going to cost $600,000 in tax dollars to alter the shape of the building is ridiculous. I'd much rather see my tax dollars go towards the removal of something repulsive, instead of it joining the billions of dollars that are being eaten up by the war machine. I'd rather the Navy pick up the tab, though, for that misstep in design, but that's not going to happen.