“He who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the future.” With the decision by the Smithsonian Institution to “temporarily” close its exhibit on presidential impeachments, the United States has taken another step back to George Orwell’s 1984.
We’ve all become numbed by Donald Trump’s one-man Ministry of Truth, lying about everything from the price of gasoline to the claim his tariff policies are aimed at countries that are “ripping us off.”
With the decision by the National Museum of American History to remove references to Trump’s two impeachments — equal to all previous presidential trials — as well as the likely impeachment of Richard Nixon, the United States has fully landed in Orwell’s fictional account of dystopian society where “War is peace, Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
A society ruled by Big Brother.
Officials at the institution charged with overseeing the nation’s historical and cultural heritage insist the removal of Trump’s 2019 and 2021 impeachments is part of a “content review.”
“In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The section of this exhibition covers Congress, The Supreme Court, Impeachment, and Public Opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”
The exhibit had carried a “temporary” label since 2021 — the year Trump was impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate for attempting to overthrow the duly elected government on January 6, 2021.
You know, that “normal tourist visit” where nearly 1,600 people were convicted, awaiting trial or sentencing for breaking into the Capitol and doing battle with police using tasers, bear spray, flagpoles and metal fencing —while waving Confederate flags and defecating in halls and offices.
People who were granted unconditional pardons by Big Brother.
Conservatives have long moaned about revisionist history, which attempts to take a new look at events of the past. The late Boston University historian and political scientist Howard Zinn was among its prime practitioners, authoring “A People’s History of the United States.” (Full disclosure: I was fortunate to take several courses with Zinn in my collegiate career.)
The right is now seeing success in fighting back:
“It turns out that laws against leftist indoctrination in schools are working. When parents and politicians hold teachers accountable, those teachers become more thoughtful with what they do in the classroom.”
Trump is the savior they were seeking. And it starts with Big Brother himself, who was simply a reality television star in 2008.
“The online companion for the display briefly mentions Trump’s impeachments, but does not provide any further information about the cases. And a search of the history museum’s collection for “impeachment” yields 125 results for Johnson, Nixon and Clinton — and a single “Impeach Trump” button from a 2017 environmental protest.”
The right’s whitewashing of history, on the other hand, is just an attempt to set the record straight: enslaved people were well treated; manifest destiny compelled the nation to expand westward, even if it meant occupation and annexation of Native American land and cowboy and Indian range wars that became popular 1950s television fodder.
Nor should we forget the Declaration of Independence, which averred “all men are created equal.”
Trump is overreaching into all aspects of society — naming himself chairman of the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts while his congressional sycophants suggest the center be renamed after him. They also talk of desecrating an iconic national landmark by carving his face into Mount Rushmore.
But Orwell isn’t the only person we should recall in Trump’s War on Truth. There’s also George Santayana:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
2008 is the new 1984.