Francine Prose: After Trump's attack on Smithsonian, what's next? [View all]

[Tanuki]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/22/trump-slavery-bad-smithsonian

"Donald Trump's critique of the Smithsonian Institution for its focus on “how bad slavery was” might seem like a joke, except that, like so many of the ignorant, mean-spirited and flat-out racist opinions and directives issued by the White House over the last six months, it’s not even remotely funny.

What makes it even more absurd and disturbing is that the president and his minions (JD Vance, the vice-president, sits on the Smithsonian’s board) are determined to micro-manage the exhibits and wall texts on view at the 21 museums that operate under the Smithsonian’s aegis and to replace the truth about history with “unifying and constructive descriptions”. Among the proscribed images are a picture of the former NIAID director Dr Anthony Fauci (one of the president’s perceived enemies) and a photo of immigrants watching fireworks through a gap in the border wall.
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The point is to create a national identity that mirrors the president’s own view of himself as a model of moral purity, an angelic being who has never made a mistake that merits an apology or even a moment of regret. If white America has never harmed, disenfranchised, enslaved and slaughtered our Black and Indigenous American populations, then clearly there’s no reason to take the measures – such as the establishment of DEI programs – designed to remedy the inequities and cruelties that the powerful have inflicted on the weak.

Like many “ideas” that have been issued from the Oval Office, this one doesn’t seem to have been thought through with any clarity or even common sense. Even the most diehard Maga supporters would probably agree that slavery is, by definition, “bad”. It’s not a delusional fantasy of woke ideologues to suggest that it’s wrong to whip and shackle, to buy and sell our fellow human beings...".....(more)