Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has discussed “totalitarian gothic” in the past here on this site. The first time was back in 2006, and again earlier this year in reference to the Martin Luther King Memorial.

On the balance your Maximum Leader has a soft spot in his heart for totalitarian gothic. In the right situation he likes it… In this stream of thought… Your Maximum Leader has often thought that if he was going to build a huge skyscraper in a dense urban area he might build something similar to the Moscow State University or the Warsaw Palace of Culture.

Speaking of the Warsaw Palace of Culture, it turns 55 this year.

Your Maximum Leader didn’t realize that the Warsaw Palace of Culture was still up. He sort of figured that it was torn down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Surprisingly it was not, in fact now it is a protected historic site. Your Maximum Leader can’t speak to the feelings of Poles about the building. He suspects that the population is split on the building (as the linked article suggests). Your Maximum Leader knows that if he was oppressed by a foreign power for 50 years he’d be disinclined to want to preserve such a huge symbol of that oppression. As an outside observer it seems like a nice building (with a high degree of utility) to keep around…

Carry on.