What Trump’s decree contains – Diepresse.com
His opponents wanted to « rewrite the story », explains Trump – and conjures up « objective facts ». What is his new decree on? Will he threaten the most important museums? Restore overthrown monuments? Try an assessment.
A « revisionist movement » wants to « rewrite the history of our nation », it replaces « objective facts » with « a distorted narrative that has been driven by ideology instead of truth ». The decree (« Executive Order »), which US President Trump published on March 27, already clears his thrust in the title: « Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History ». Trump apparently counts the term race to this “truth and reason” that he feels called to restore. In his decree, he accuses an exhibition in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, she takes « the view that breed is not a biological reality, but a social construct ».
Many biologists would also sign this view. In contrast to the term type, the term breed is blurred and difficult to define, it certainly has less « biological reality », whatever that should be than the term gender. The fact that it has been and is constructed, not least of the American history. Just one example: In the state of Virginia, marriages were banned between a white and non -white (or vice versa) in the state of Virginia, whereby it was defined as white who had white ancestors to seven eighth.
The “wealth of American history”, which Trump summons, also includes slavery and systematic, legally fixed oppression of people due to their descent. So it sounds almost cynical when Trump’s decree now forbids the Smithsonian Institution « Exhibitions or Programs » that « separate Americans because of their breed ».
Two thirds subsidized by the state
Why can the president go into this research and educational institution? Because two thirds of their annual budget of $ 1.25 billion come from subsidies from the US federal budget. Trump simply threatens to delete this « appropriations » to the traditional institution, which was founded in 1846 with money from the legacy of the English scientist James Smithson, who, incidentally, was never in America himself. The Smithsonian runs over 30 research institutions and museums, including the natural history and the art historical museum, both in Washington, DC on the National Mall.
Around 1913 the final rally of the « Sift Hike » for women’s voting right took place on this national promenade – probably a central theme of the planned Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, which is to open at the earliest. But now Trump is assuming that it wants to « celebrate the heroicism of male athletes who take part in women’s sports competitions ». The Museum of African American History and Culture is also explicitly called in the decree: it has described hard work, individualism and the core family as aspects of white culture. Trump is based on a debate in 2020 in which many sides criticized that in a representation of the museum, even « rational linear thinking » was mentioned as typical of « Whiteness ».
« Americans inappropriately disparaged »
Which of course was not a central statement of the museum. But Trump uses such excesses of the “Critical White Theory” to struggle against the occupation with racism. And to demand an idealized representation of American history. Also in monuments, monuments and statues that will no longer « accidentally disparage Americans » in the future. Those that have been « removed or changed to immortalize the wrong reconstruction of American history » are to be set up or restored. This could affect the monument to the Confederation General Albert Pike, who had fallen in 2020 in a « Black Lives Matter » demonstration. Or the statue of Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, which was thrown into a lake in the same year by anticolonialists and is now kept in an unknown place.
In his love for the striking striking, Trump’s actions can be expected. « Anyone who controls the past controls the future. Those who control the present control the past, » says George Orwell’s « 1984 ». Even if Trump shouldn’t have read that, he is aware of it. As well as his opponents. This played a role in his first election campaign. « American history became a wound in those years that was bleeding again and again, » writes historian Jill Lepore in « Thesis Truths. A History of the United States », and: « Each of the truths on which the nation had been founded and for which so many people had fought was questioned. » Trump was not alone on his side. His supporter Phyllis sleep, for example, accused Obama in 2016 that he wanted to « change the character of our country ».
Today Trump serves his vice, J. D. Vance, as a chief ideologist, he explicitly commissioned him in the decree with the task « Saving Our Smithsonian ». It is not mentioned in the decree that the US newspaper « Politico » reports: since Trump’s second term in the term, five laws have been brought to the honor of Trump in the House of Representatives.
For example, the naming of the Dulles Airport to Trump, which was previously named after a Republican (!) Senator, the introduction of a new $ 250 banknote with Trump’s portrait and the incorporation of his face into the Mount Rushmore. Sounds absurd? In 1999 Republicans proposed to add to the Steinernen Quartet Washington/Jefferson/Roosevelt/Lincoln Ronald Reagan. At the time, however, it was no longer in office.
