MAGA History Police Seek Citizen Informers at National Parks
If you don’t like the truth of things, wipe the memories and the memorials clean. Then get folks to tell on other folks who question the cleansing. That’s what authoritarians do
Amid the seemingly endless flurry of executive orders Trump has issued like ukases flowing from the pen of a demented Romanov czar, this one may have escaped your notice. Executive Order 14253 is entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It sounds innocent and uncontroversial. It is in fact neither.
The order begins:
Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.
Trump blames the Biden administration — well, of course — for advancing “this corrosive ideology.” And as with all things Biden, the president resolves to crush it.
After launching into the Smithsonian for pointing out the disconcerting realities of institutional and scientific racism in American history — think slavery and eugenics — Trump’s order commits to cleaning up all the DEI falsehoods:
It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.
The order concludes with a specific charge to the secretary of the Interior to ensure that national parks, monuments, and historic sites
… 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 or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.
Make the story pretty, in other words, even if it isn’t. And if it’s in a spectacular landscape like Yosemite Valley, call attention to the rock walls and the waterfalls, not the genocidal raids against the valley’s tribal people that rendered the place “pure” and “pristine.”
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum put out a follow-up order to ensure compliance with the president’s directive:
Each land management Bureau shall conduct a review of all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties on lands within its jurisdiction to identify whether any such properties contain images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), or, with respect to content describing natural features, that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of said natural feature.
And just in case any land managers try to slip one past Burgum and the MAGA history police, the order also requires site signage to encourage visitors to rat out offenders:
Please let us know if you have identified … any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.
The required signs include a QR code to make filing a complaint only a smartphone scan away.
The import of Trump’s and Burgum’s orders is that a great many of the National Park Service’s 440+ parks, monuments, and sites by their very existence conflict with the demand to expunge “images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.” With two-thirds of NPS sites dedicated to fulfilling the requirements of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, some of the stories they tell run right up against the new prettifying requirements.
Consider Manzanar National Historic Site in California, which memorializes the unconstitutional mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Or the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. It tells the story of 14-year-old Emmett’s abduction, torture, and murder for purportedly offending a white woman and Mamie’s insistence on an open-casket funeral, a bravely gruesome truth-telling that catalyzed the civil rights movement. And then there’s Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, which its own website names “an American atrocity.” What other word describes the willful 1864 slaughter by the U. S. Army of hundreds of Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos who were at peace with the United States?
Dozens upon dozens of similar historic parks, monuments, and sites by their very nature cannot comply with Trump’s and Burgum’s orders. Which opens another way to be rid of these embarrassments, one spelled out in the plan for the One Big Bad Bill now being considered by the U. S. Senate.
The proposed budget hacks $1.25 billion from the NPS allocation, a reduction of 40%. The lion share of that cut, $900 million, comes from park operations, leaving far too little money to operate all 440+ NPS sites for the next fiscal year. The solution to the shortfall, according to the budget summary Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought sent to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins in early May, is obvious: hand the lesser, historical parks over to state, local, and tribal governments. In other words, if you can’t sweep an atrocity under the rug, dump it off on someone else.
“The executive order asking for feedback is ****.”
Already, though, there’s evidence that Trump’s assault on historical truth-telling is running into considerable opposition from the American public. As reported on the Government Executive website, the first responses via QR code expressed varying degrees of outrage, from “The entire purpose of parks like this one is to learn from the mistakes of the past so we can avoid repeating them” to “The executive order asking for feedback is ****.”
Responding to a request for comment, an Interior spokesperson warned truth tellers inside the department that “leaks will not be tolerated.”
Well, of course not. Because that’s what authoritarians do.
Such a compelling argument, Bob. Now how can we get them to LISTEN???