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“Hey, kids, brush your teeth, we’re going to the museum!”
“Yay! What’s it like, Daddy?”
“Well, it’s chock-full of inaccurate information, presented by folks who don’t want you to love your country!”
“Yippee! Will there be doughnuts and clowns?”
A few days ago, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order directing federal officials to post signs outside the National Museum of American History, warning visitors about incorrect information awaiting them inside.
A 162-page White House report on the Smithsonian, released on July 4th, actually recommended signs at every entrance warning visitors that “The exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”
I’ve read large parts of that report, and boy, if you like turgid, you’ll love reading this!
It helps if you have a huge chip on your shoulder. The report warns us that at the Museum’s displays, “White, male, and Christian Americans are regularly denigrated as the alleged embodiment of oppressive power structures.”
Oh, one other thing about the report. The word “didactic” shows up 145 times.
I am not making that up.
Trump himself has said he believes the Smithsonian’s current leadership “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude.”
He specifically complains that the Smithsonian “has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.”
I think he probably has a valid point there. Only 41 of those signers owned slaves, so we should be proud that 15 of our Founding Fathers did NOT purchase human beings to work on plantations.
Last August, Trump posted this on Truth Social:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
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Regarding Trump’s annoyance over the Museum reminding him “how bad Slavery was,” it seems like white folks in the South are pretty sensitive about that. They keep trying to make like it was just a tiny blip in our history. Move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Look, I’m as patriotic as the next guy, so if Trump wants to create the Happy Museum of Upbeat Brightness, I’m here to help out. It’s just a matter of putting the right spin on history.
For instance, you take women in the U.S. They only had to wait from 1776 until 1920 to get the right to vote! That’s 144 years, and speaking as a man, that seems pretty reasonable to me.
And what about that famous Equal Rights Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in, um, let’s see… Oh, I’ve just been informed that it never made it into the Constitution, after all.
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I’m having a little trouble putting a good spin on how we’ve handled the indigenous people who were here when we arrived. You know, the ones who cooked us our first Thanksgiving dinner.
For example, how should I present the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre?
Let’s see. “Massacre” sounds too judgmental, so we’ll just call it the “Wounded Knee Thing.”
U.S. Army troops killed 250-300 Lakota people, including many women and children. They used rapid-fire cannons to fire explosive shells directly into the Lakota camp, inflicting devastating casualties.
I did find one upbeat angle. It turns out, 20 of the U.S. soldiers who participated in the “Wounded Knee Thing” were awarded Medals of Honor, so there’s that.
I’m serious. Twenty Medals of Honor. You can look it up.
Wait. Hold on, what’s this? A whole list of massacres that I need to spin. Bear River Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, Biscari Massacre, Bud Dajo Massacre, Mai Lai Massacre. Crap, I’m going to run out of euphemisms long before I run out of massacres!
Meanwhile, this afternoon, I’m hard at work whitewashing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers.
(A 19th century Levi Strauss ad)
That law grew out of intense anti-Chinese sentiment, particularly in the West, where Chinese workers were accused of depressing wages and taking jobs.
Gosh, that sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?
Note to self: Let’s have an exhibit dedicated to ICE, applauding their restraint whenever a week goes by without them killing an innocent person on our city streets.
To be honest with you, this Happy Museum of Upbeat Brightness spin-doctoring is a little harder than I expected. I’m dreading next week, when I need to design our exhibit on grade school shootings.
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