Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the U.S. past

In 1976, celebrating its bicentennial in the United States, Donald J. Trump, thirty, Leonine and three-piece Trump, hitchhiked on Cadillac and “DJT” plates in Manhattan, while talking and trading in his thermal car. “He can sell sand to Arabs and refrigerators to the Eskimos,” an architect told era. That architect is working on plans for the convention center Trump hopes to build in Midtown. Trump calls it “the miracle on 34th Street,” a cultural exhibition that includes a fountain, a swimming pool, a huge cinema, half a million square feet of exhibition space and rooftop solar panels.

Cultural Industry: Centennial
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On July 4 of that red and white and blue year, tall ships (a fleet of more than 200 ships from more than a dozen countries) entered New York Harbor. Three days later, Trump introduced his plan to the city’s reconstruction committee in Washington, D.C., to the city’s Redevelopment Commission, which set up another Gargantuan Convention Center, near the U.S. Capitol. according to Late Stara clear “mockery” Trump left the meeting with anger.

The paper does not report whether Trump was stopped by the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology before leaving DC to visit its 35,000-square-meter exhibition, “One Country.” For five years, it has told stories of American alliances and groupings with five thousand objects, from Utt flute and Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves to Crane robes, and a slogan that says “japs avoid rats.” The show aims to show people “from prehistoric times to the present” and “how the experience of new lands has changed them.”

Whether Trump walked along the National Mall to see Smithsonian’s American Folk Life Festival, whether Trump’s Huffy and Miff’s Trump walked along the National Mall, the product of years of field work that hadn’t seen since he was 19. For example, a field worker found a Cajun crayfish peel in Louisiana and suggested giving her a stall: “She can peel it quickly.” The festival described as organizers as a “sea of ​​culture” for chefs, dancers and artisans. Musicians, from the band Fife and Drum to Gonje player in Ghana; and the truck driver’s “Roadeo”. Margaret Mead calls it a “celebration between people,” which reveals Americans “through people’s connections to the world.”

Trump’s luxurious two-centenary project has not been passed. In September 1976, the Trump family business filed a lawsuit for more than a year, claiming it refused to rent rent to Black and Puerto Ricans in Brooklyn and Queens housing, marking their rent application for “non-ferrous” (the company was subjected to misconduct in time, arrested soldiers in Maryland, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, once arrested, imprisoned, imprisoned, mostly black tenants. (Elder Trump did not admit the game and was fined.) DJT seeks tax cuts and municipal subsidies, losing the bid to establish a conference center in New York in his bid, while the tall ship sailed away. That moment passed.

This summer, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the independence announcement next year, the Trump White House sent a letter to the Smithsonian agency secretary announcing the intention of conducting a broad review of all semi-annual plans. The review will require the museum to provide information to the President, including “internal guidelines for use in exhibition development”; “exhibition text, wall teaching, websites, educational materials, and digital and social media content”; and “proposed artworks, descriptive placards, exhibition catalogs, event topics, and lists of invited speakers and events”. The government deployed the same strategies it used in threat and ransomware universities, but did not specify in the letter how it intends to review the material or the standards it will adopt. It does say that the purpose is to “ensure that American exceptionalism is celebrated with the President, to eliminate the instructions of division or partisan narratives, and to restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions” and to “a portrayal of historically accurate, uplifting and inclusive American heritage”, especially “Americanism” – people – people, principles and progress our nation”. The President of the United States has not decided what is true and what is not these principles.

Even before the White House announced the review, the presidential purge of American cultural institutions had begun. Trump fired the National Archives, Librarian of Congress and the Kennedy Center board and said on social media that he fired the National Portrait Gallery director. (He lacked the power to do so, but she later resigned.) His administration killed the company for public broadcasts, harassed the National Humanities Foundation and the National Arts Foundation, and cut federal funding to thousands of state and local programs that support children’s arts and music education.

The Smithsonian letter follows an executive order called “restore the truth and sanity of American history,” one of which is “save our Smithsonians” by “seeking to eliminate improper ideology from the museum.” The role of the Smithsonian twenty-one institutions in the national culture is invaluable, unparalleled, and has been a part of the exhibitions and programs of the lass feet for years, including some of the ideologically phobic minorities, like any museum or cultural organization. That is the essence of culture. But it is not the nature of democracy that governments intimidate and censor curators have spent years preparing to do an always difficult and critical work to tell the story of the country.

“Perhaps our most important achievement as a country is that we are one person,” the Smithsonians announced in a press release in spring 1976. “So many ancient and modern nations made up of conflicting tribes, languages ​​and religious sects failed to unite and remain intact.” How did this country last for so long? The Smithsonian asked. “How do people representing cultures and traditions around the world see themselves as an American country?” These questions will not be connected to the White House. They are still great, though. how have This has lasted for so long? ♦