The State Department decided it needed a new embassy in London because the existing embassy wasn't secure enough.  So it purchased land and built a fortress, blending diverse architectural styles from George Orwell, Joseph Stalin, Robocop, the "Borg" from Star Trek, and others to produce this visual monstrosity.

Why did State have to spend a billion dollars on a building?  We are told not to worry about it, because the American taxpayer didn't pay a penny for it!  Not a cent!  The proceeds for the new building came from the sale of the old embassy.  The fact that hundreds of millions of dollars could have been returned to the Treasury while still building a perfectly adequate embassy never occurred to the bureaucrats at State.  Since it was the sale of "government" land, the money was obviously the "government's," never having come from taxpayer pockets.  Instead, State used the billion dollars as an architectural slush fund, producing a tribute replete with themes of Orwellian control and big government.

Note the intricate design on the exterior of the building.  Not only does it block views, but it features an enormous network of non-operational solar panels!

In another fitting analogy, this frilly wrapping isn't really doing the job it was supposed to. It was originally intended to act as solar shading and provide energy from photovoltaic cells in the skin, but the technology proved too complicated to integrate. 

The building has many different milieus within.  There is the cold, sterile waiting area that is clearly a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In the next photo, enormous steel beams combine with lush gardens give this part of the embassy a "Venezuelan Strongman" vibe.

This next photo shows the uniform, homogenized way the building is designed to make people conform.

If there is a common theme to all these photos, it is that architecture is designed to overwhelm the individual, to showcase the raw power of big government.

No expense was spared.

The building sports frosted- glass walkways, inspirational quotes from the Constitution, neon sculptures, reclaimed teak benches, Cornwall granite, its own subterranean wastewater treatment plant and a dozen gardens in the sky, one representing the flora of the American Midwest. 

The State Department deserves to be recognized not only for blowing a huge sum of taxpayer money (and yes, this was ultimately taxpayer money), but also for creating an architectural tribute to authoritarianism and big government that represents liberals' fondest ideal for the modern American state.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.