Blowhard, Esq. writes:

• Despite only beginning their investigation, French officials do not suspect arson. That is strange considering that France has seen a rash of church desecrations over the preceding weeks, including Saint-Sulpice, and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem caught fire the same day.
• As I predicted yesterday, The Powers That Be have decided that Notre Dame needs “improvement.” The French government has announced a competition to possibly replace the spire:

“The international contest will settle the question of whether we should build a new spire, whether we should rebuild the spire that was designed and built by (Eugene) Viollet-Le-Duc, in identical fashion, or whether we should… endow Notre-Dame cathedral with a new spire adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era.”

Gosh golly, I can’t wait to see what our rootless neoliberal global elites come up with. It’s too bad the entire cathedral can’t be rebuilt from scratch, after all, to quote an esteemed Harvard architecture historian, it “was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation.”

• Some people are really upset that rich people have pledged money to repair the building:

Nevermind that people in the West have given billions (trillions?) in charity over the decades. Nevermind also that people in the West have given billions (trillions?) in foreign aid over the decades. Nevermind that real estate development already costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in major Western cities. For example, here in NYC, it cost $4b to build the WTC Transport Hub and $25b to build Hudson Yards. Hatred of the rich is so acute that we’re going to begrudge them giving money to restore one of the most historic buildings in Western history, a building that generates hundreds of millions (billions?) in tourist revenue every year? I guess all of that goes out the window so long as there is a War on Poverty to “win.”