Trump Administration Finds History It Wants Erased. Surprise, It Is Slavery!

If we don't acknowledge slavery, maybe it never happened?

The President’s House in Philadelphia, where the cheesesteak was invented, probably.

If we are getting the Trump administration’s view of American history correct, the sequence of our nation’s first 250 years went something like this: Benevolent white people showed up on the continent. Through their own grit and determination, they bloodlessly carved out a great nation all by themselves. Okay, maybe a few slaves helped here and there, but geez, how long do we have to keep hearing about it?

Then some other stuff happened. Then America’s liberals got all woke and demanded we remember that other stuff. Then Donald Trump came along and made that other stuff go away so we — and by “we” we mean the white supremacists currently in charge of the country — can feel better about ourselves. All hail Great Leader Trump.

In line with their view of America as a tenderhearted empire, the Trump administration on Thursday removed an exhibit on slavery from the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Because that park is going to play a huge part in festivities celebrating America’s 250th birthday in a few months, and we can’t have anything less than festive hanging on the walls. It’s right in the word!

There is no need to make the big jamboree uncomfortable. If your dad was turning 100 and you and your adult siblings were throwing him a party, would you invite the secret family he kept hidden for decades? Of course not, that might be awkward!

Park Service Goes Full Stalin, Literally Takes The 'T' Out Of sTonewall

The removal stems from an Executive Order Trump signed last March called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The EO complained that there has been a decade-long effort to replace “objective facts [about American history] with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This means America’s “unparalleled legacy” of pursuing liberty and equality is recast as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” It is this “corrosive ideology” that the Trump administration seeks to cast out.

This crap about national pride and America being nothing but a glorious beacon unto all people, at the expense of acknowledging that the country might have ever once been wrong about anything, is such textbook fascism that we can’t believe there has ever been a debate about using that word. And yet.

The EO has specific instructions to the Secretary of the Interior and cup of lukewarm wheat germ Doug Burgum to spruce up Independence Park. This includes taking action, there and elsewhere

...to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.

Also, everyone in America gets a lollipop. All the lollipops will taste like freedom.

Last July, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a review of Independence Park’s monuments flagged several items for review. One of those items was the slavery exhibit, which had been hung at the President’s House Site. This was where America’s first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, lived (and kept slaves) at the beginning of America when Philadelphia was the capital.

As it happens, we were at the President’s House Site last summer for the first time, and it’s very cool. Though the house is gone, some walls and chimneys have been preserved and restored in the house’s approximate shape:

It was on these walls that the panels on slavery hung. This exhibit, according to the National Park Service, was supposed to highlight the “paradox of liberty and enslavement in one home.” At least that was the case until Thursday, when park workers took them down, leaving gaping and empty spaces that will probably be filled by July with gilt-edged pictures of Donald Trump, because we live in hell:

As you can guess, the removal was met with outrage, particularly by the founder of the group that had advocated for the slavery exhibit in the first place. This was a pretty big fight back in the early 2000s. The panels that were removed even covered the fight, which is part of what got them flagged: One panel described NPS’s initial reluctance for a slavery exhibit, which led the Trump administration to slam it as having shown “negativity” to the NPS.

The Inquirer preserved images of the panels if you want to read some of them. In a classic case of the Streisand Effect, way more people will see them if they are online than would actually travel to Philadelphia to see them in person. So great job, Trump team.

The city of Philadelphia slapped the federal government with a lawsuit over the removal on Thursday, practically as the panels were being taken down.

It is at this point that you might be saying to yourself: Hey! Wingnuts spent years complaining that taking down Confederate statues was some sort of erasure of history that should not be allowed in a free society! Isn’t this basically the same thing?

Ah ha, that’s where you are wrong, libtard! Taking down statues celebrating people who fought a war to defend the right to own humans is woke! Also, a museum exhibit implying that owning humans was a moral evil is woke as well. Ergo, any point of view that tells people slavery sucked is bad, because then racists like Trump and Stephen Miller and the rest of this merry klavern masquerading as an American presidency might feel bad about themselves. And that is the greatest evil of all.

[NPS / NYT / Philadelphia Inquirer]

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