Trump wants to rewrite history

Letter to the Editor 8/26 by Barbara Jatkola, Jaffrey

Is the Smithsonian “out of control,” as Donald Trump contends? Does it focus too much on, for example, “how bad slavery was”? 

Trump wants to rewrite history according to his own warped, racist, misogynist view. So now he’s ordered his lawyers to review all the Smithsonian’s exhibits for anything that might cast the United States in a negative light. 

Just as he’s ordered national park personnel to report any interpretive signs that do the same. Just as his henchman Pete Hegseth earlier ordered the Pentagon’s website to be scrubbed of anything that hinted at “DEI,” including pages on Jackie Robinson’s service in World War II and the Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo Code Talkers and women’s contributions to the war effort. 

Don’t these people realize that an important part of American “exceptionalism” is learning from our mistakes and correcting wrongs committed in the past? Celebrating the triumph of the American spirit in securing civil and constitutional rights for all people, not just the white Christian men Trump and his cohort seem to favor? Honoring the sacrifices and contributions made by our forebears at home and abroad to protect our democracy and freedom? 

Trump is a willfully ignorant bully who embraces revenge and violence, who sees war heroes and civil rights activists as suckers, who is currently waging war on the American people. He is using his power to deny us and our children the right to study all of American history, the good and the bad, and to use that knowledge to continue to advance the American experiment. 

Are we going to let him not only destroy our social safety net, infrastructure, environment, and democratic institutions, but also wipe out our history? Who supports this whitewashing of the past? And why? And how will we ever restore what’s been lost?