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The “Obamalisk”: A monument to a lost America

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Posted By: NorthernDog, 6/13/2026 6:38:20 PM

Chicago’s South Side has an unusual new neighbour. It is 70-metres tall, dressed in grey granite and largely faceless. Rising from verdant Jackson Park, this mass of stone is capped with a message in tall concrete letters: “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, because you’re ready to seize what ought to be.” (Snip) This glitch is symptomatic of the Obama Center, a place that’s encumbered with its own contradictions. The lavish US$850-million project stands apart from the surrounding low-income neighbourhoods. It honours a leader whose career began with community organizing, but delivers architecture that

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Author is straining to be complimentary. He tries to heap praise but calls it oppressively monumental, a shaft of grey stone, and a tombstone.

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Reply 1 - Posted by: Philipsonh 6/13/2026 7:20:12 PM (No. 2116227)
Cannot read the tombstone and cannot read the article. Zero for two.
13 people like this.

Reply 2 - Posted by: seamusm 6/13/2026 7:24:49 PM (No. 2116229)
Please do not post articles behind a paywall.
14 people like this.

Reply 3 - Posted by: Strike3 6/13/2026 7:39:03 PM (No. 2116232)
So THAT's where Kamala got that "unencumbered" mumbo jumbo for her campaign. The article can be read on Firefox but don't bother, it's not worth your time and is rather frustrating. The fact that the library contains none of Obama's actual records is deliberate. He doesn't want anybody to know the truth about his past and present because what he has published is all lies. America got hoodwinked by this illegal alien gay communist muslim and it will all come out some day. Ron Klain, Nancy Pelosi, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder and various Deep State vipers were running the government. Michelle was just the icing on the cake.
16 people like this.

Reply 4 - Posted by: JHHolliday 6/13/2026 8:06:13 PM (No. 2116236)
The poem by Shelley, "Ozymandias" fits perfectly. Soviet architecture at its finest.
8 people like this.

Reply 5 - Posted by: downnout 6/13/2026 8:39:17 PM (No. 2116238)
If there was a contest for the world’s ugliest building the Obamalisk would be in the top five.
12 people like this.

Reply 6 - Posted by: enemyofthestate 6/13/2026 8:45:07 PM (No. 2116242)
It's a firefighters training tower...... an UGLY firefighters training tower. It's soulless, too, and that part fits 0bama perfectly.
10 people like this.

Reply 7 - Posted by: PChristopher 6/13/2026 8:56:29 PM (No. 2116250)
It looks like a gross mausoleum from the Flintstone's city of Bedrock.
7 people like this.

Reply 8 - Posted by: DVC 6/13/2026 10:56:20 PM (No. 2116276)
Klingon prison.
6 people like this.

Reply 9 - Posted by: JimBob 6/14/2026 12:26:19 AM (No. 2116286)
It reminds me of "The Mask of Sorrow", a monument in Magadan, Russia. It was built to remember and honor the thousands of people who died in the Soviet Gulags, and who died building "The Road of Bones", one end of which is in Magadan. See what you think. Link: https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-the-mask-of-sorrow-in-magadan-the-capital-city-of-kolyma-which-remembers-168107137.html
1 person likes this.

Reply 10 - Posted by: jalo1951 6/14/2026 1:34:46 AM (No. 2116292)
Look up butt ugly in the dictionary. There will be a picture of this mess. Seriously why the hell does any one of these guys need a library anyway?
6 people like this.

Reply 11 - Posted by: mifla 6/14/2026 7:34:36 AM (No. 2116345)
I suspect that most of the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods would rather have the green park space back that this edifice obliterated.
4 people like this.

Reply 12 - Posted by: Strike3 6/14/2026 8:44:46 AM (No. 2116384)
I can imagine archaeologists three thousand years in the future, finding this thing lying on its side by the lakeshore, digging it up and saying, "what the hell?"
2 people like this.

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