Coverup
The Smithsonian must present US history as one long list of Very Excellent Things.
Trump issued an executive order Thursday evening promising to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, markers” that have been removed over the past five years.
There can’t be anything “divisive” in Smithy museums. Hmmm. That means Smithy museums have to be empty. Everything is “divisive” to someone. People aren’t clones of each other, so their thoughts can differ, so there is never any guarantee that not one single person will say No.
The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846. The order comes as the institution has been expanding over decades to include a wider, richer and more diverse telling of the nation’s history.
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the executive order says. “This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
You mean slavery? You mean slavery, don’t you. And you mean the genocides and removals of indigenous people. And you mean the exploitation of workers. And you mean the generalized contempt for women. And let’s not forget the internments of WWII.
There’s a lot to admire in our history, sure, but there’s also a lot to deplore. Pretending there’s nothing to deplore is just fatuous, and won’t fool anyone. Locking murderous rapist Uncle Harry in the attic won’t make his family look better.
It’s not so much that Uncle Harry is being locked in the attic as we’re being told that reports of his “crimes” are vicious lies spread by evil people with axes to grind, or that they weren’t actually crimes, or that they weren’t really his fault, or that they only “happened” to people who had it coming, and he’s fine to leave unattended with the kids. Besides, he’s been “pardoned”. We’re not supposed to notice that these rationalizations are contradictory because SHUT UP OR WE’LL SEND YOU TO EL SALVADOR.
Part of Trump’s power tripping is the bullying of everyone into denial of the ugly parts of American history, and the denial of current abuses. As with trans activism, reality must be denied to allow their program to move forward in the way that they wish to proceed. The Trump junta wants to whitewash all this criminal, abusive history is because they want to be able to do more of the same themselves.
A lot of what they want to restore are Confederate monuments. It’s hard to imagine anything more divisive than an attempt to literally divide the nation in two.
Perhaps a bronze statue of him in every park and on every street corner would be enough to satisfy his ego and shut him up.
Worth a try, surely.
Omar, please, no. I live RIGHT ON a street corner. I would hate to look out my window every day and see that mug staring back at me…or have to drive by him on the way to dinner. I would probably retch, and that wouldn’t enhance my dinner.
Ah well. Back to the drawing-board.