Donald Trumpâs jaw-dropping autobiographical production of his final reign of terror is our collective living nightmare. Every day brings new horrors as the president and his minions wage a dystopian campaign to airbrush American history in his image.
At the National Institutes of Health, they literally scraped Dr. Anthony Fauci off the wall where he was depicted in a mural along with an inspirational quote honoring science, which no longer fits the vision of an administration skeptical of vaccines and which just cut research for pediatric cancer.
Even more petty and ridiculous, the National Park Service removed the âTâ from its LGBT description of the Stonewall National Monument in New Yorkâs Greenwich Village. Former President Barack Obama dedicated the park site to honor the pivotal civil rights uprising in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. The park serviceâs Stonewall web page now reads âLGB.â
Youâd think Trump would leave the dead alone, especially those resting in a military cemetery. But the purge extends to Arlington National Cemetery, where information about Black and female Medal of Honor recipients has been erased from the website; and links to ânotable gravesâ of Blacks, Hispanics and women have been taken down.
What is the point? Is Trump pretending we are a white country?
Trump and his ideological allies say that he is enacting Dr. Martin Luther King Jrâs vision of America as a country where the content of oneâs character matters, not the color of oneâs skin. Whatever the rationale, he is rolling back the real gains that we have made in trying to move this country toward a more perfect union.
During his first visit this week to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Artsâafter making himself chairman of the boardâTrump ruminated about giving awards to Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and Babe Ruth. (Never mind that Kennedy Center Honors are not given posthumously.)
Pavarotti was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2001, six years before he diedâand nine years before the legendary opera tenorâs family asked Trump to stop playing his famous aria âNessun dormaâ at MAGA campaign rallies.
âElvis sells better as a dead man,â Trump opined. Nixon had Elvis, so maybe Trump could get him, too.
As for the Bambino, the New York Yankees slugger might have given Trump the same response he gave Warren G. Harding in 1920: âHell no, Iâm a Democrat.â
Trumpâs motives are not benign. He is playing for power, and he is using the grievances of a dominantly white base that believes elites and Democrats care more about minorities and immigrants than they do about ordinary Americans.
When you take down references to a medal-of-honor winner who is a member of a minority or a woman, âyouâre taking away a good part of our history,â says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist and Trump critic. âInstead of celebrating, youâre erasing and trashing genuine American heroes whose intellect, bravery and accomplishments are at the highest level.â
Trumpâs rummaging through history, deciding what is valid and what is not, has gone mostly unchallenged because there is so much chaos and disruption that people canât keep up to process all thatâs happening.
Every so often a story breaks through that tugs the heart strings and illuminates what is happening. For me it was a story told by journalist Scott Pelley on CBSâs 60 Minutes Sunday night about 22 teenage musicians from around the country and the U.S. Marine Band founded in 1798 and dubbed âThe Presidentâs Ownâ by Thomas Jefferson.
The young musicians auditioned with a Chicago-based non-profit called Equity Arc for the honor of performing in Washington with âThe Presidentâs Own.â A concert was planned and a date set when the commanding officer of the Marine Band called to say that with the presidentâs directive on DEI in place, he was very sorry, but they could not go forward with the concert.
With active-duty Marine musicians having to stand down, veterans of âThe Presidentâs Ownâ and retirees filled in for those who couldnât be there. CBS picked up the travel costs for the student musicians, as they would do for any interview subjects, Pelley noted.
The concert went forward with musicians that looked like America, not the America that Trump may remember from his Queens upbringing. In 1960, the country was more than 88 percent white. Today, itâs more like 66 percent white, and a lot more diverse in cities.
American orchestras today are 80 percent white, 11 percent Asian, 5 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Black. It turns out the Marine Band had initially reached out to Equity Arc, which connects musicians of color to mentors to boost diversity.
That was before Trumpâs anti-DEI rampage, when the real America was a thing of beauty to be cherished and not relegated to the trash heap of history.
