One of President Trump’s latest executive orders, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” targets the Smithsonian Institution, which includes 21 museums, libraries, research centers, and the National Zoo. Needless to say, if there’s anyone who is no position to tout truth and the virtue of sanity it’s Donald Trump, the mad king himself. Does he ever tell the truth? Is there any evidence that he’s still sane? (Economists and financial markets certainly don’t think his tariffs are the work of a sane person!) Judging from all his outlandish behavior since taking office, it’s scary to think where his head is at. Even scarier, he wants to remove anything from the Smithsonian that reflects an “improper ideology.” But who decides what’s proper or improper? That sounds a lot like authoritarianism to me.
The president’s order claims the Smithsonian has advanced “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.” More specifically, it claims the Smithsonian has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” which we might assume is code for his intention to target the National Museum of African American History and Culture. As we know, the MAGA version of “divisive” is anything that is opposed to their beliefs, which are often dead wrong. In other words, in MAGA world, “divisive” is often used as a synonym for what the rest of us consider the truth.
Trump wants the Smithsonian to be “A Symbol of Inspiration and American Greatness,” which Means Erasing the Unpleasant Realities of American History.
The order also directs the Secretary of the Interior to determine what “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the department’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.” The “American history” he’s referring to, of course, is his version of American history, what he and his MAGA base want to be true, regardless of facts to the contrary. Time and again they’ve demonstrated they have no respect for the truth, and more often than not they refuse to accept it.
The irony is that many of the monuments, memorials, and statues he’s seemingly referring to are themselves “false reconstructions of American history,” most especially the Confederate monuments erected across the South to glorify the “lost cause,” the ultimate example being Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, GA. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people, many now calling themselves MAGAs, who want to believe that myth. As I say on my website:
The Lost Cause is nothing but a myth portraying the Confederacy as noble and its leaders as chivalrous. The myth conveniently omits the fact that the true cause of the war was slavery—the greed of the Cotton Kingdom and its slave-holding class. People who still believe in the Lost Cause are euphemistically called “apologists” and accused of engaging in “historical revisionism” but if you ask me, they’re nothing but a bunch of out-and-out lying fools. . .
Make no mistake, Trump and his MAGAs are the ones engaged in trying to change history, while the Smithsonian, especially in recent decades, has been trying to educate Americans about the truth.
No cause is more important to this humble spirit than refuting the ridiculous lies manufactured about the times in which I lived and the terrible Slave Power for which I foolishly sacrificed my young life. So suffice to say, nothing gets up my ire more than Donald Trump and his MAGAs working to promote “false reconstructions of American history.” And as someone whose own portrait by famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady now resides in the Smithsonian’s Portrait Gallery I make no secret that I feel I have a personal stake in helping to maintain the Institution’s high standards!