Lonnie Griffith Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
This popped up in my emails today. So why would Lonnie Griffith Bunch III be so special as to have been called out?
The Smithsonian said today (that being August 2), it would restore the information about Trump’s two impeachments to an exhibit about impeachment, in the National Museum of American History, a division of the Smithsonian.
Here’s the background: In March, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate “divisive narratives” and “anti-American ideology” across the Smithsonian museums and “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
In May, Trump announced that he fired the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet. The Gallery is another division of the Smithsonian.
“She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI,” Trump asserted, “which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”
If you were called out and or fired by Tr__p, you are not partisan, you are brave and true to your beliefs. Which Tr__p can not take from an individual.
It’s unclear if Trump had authority to fire Sajet. The Smithsonian’s programming is not under the purview of the executive branch, and personnel decisions for senior-level Smithsonian museum positions are made by Bunch, not the White House. But when has lack of legal authority stopped Trump?
In July, the National Museum of American History removed a placard from a display of presidential impeachments. The placard included Trump’s two impeachments. The placard that replaced it stated that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”: Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton.
The former placard including Trump’s two impeachments had been on display since September 2021.
A person familiar with what occurred told The Washington Post that the former placard had been removed following pressure from the White House and the firing of Sajet.
But today the Smithsonian held firm. It said in a statement today, “The section in question, Impeachment, will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history.”
It’s obvious that Lonnie Bunch is standing up to Trump, trying to protect the integrity of the Smithsonian even as Trump tries to destroy it . . . as Trump has destroyed the integrity of so many other institutions (such as, just this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
In his second term, Trump is trying to exert influence over all American cultural institutions.
Trump has forced the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to terminate arts and humanities grants that fall “outside of the priorities set by the president,” telling grant recipients that “funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.”
Now that he’s made himself chairman of the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, House Republicans — presumably at Trump’s urging — have proposed renaming the Center for Trump, and its opera house for Melania Trump. (The measure, sponsored by GOP Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, is now part of legislation to fund the Interior Department, but would still need to pass through the full House and the Senate to become law.)
And so on.
All this, those actions, comes directly out of the authoritarian-fascist playbook: Control the arts. Rewrite history. Force the culture to celebrate its strongman as a heroic figure.
Art and history are vehicles for telling the truth. Museums are our means of conveying truth across generations. We must never sacrifice the truth to an authoritarian-fascist who demands it be altered to suit his malignant narcissism.
“How did they let it happen?”
Future generations will ask, “How did they let it happen?” Historians will try to explain that the citizens of the time [that would be us, now] did not heed, understand, or believe the many warnings from the Founders and leaders of the great American experiment that spelled out clearly the destructive issues that could arise from the political parties.
George Washington, as he left office in 1796, was probably the most prophetic when he uncannily and most accurately said. . .
I, “warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. . . The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
To avoid the “ruins of public liberty,” Washington, with eyes looking far into the future, hoped for a “wise people” to see and prevent the destruction of the democracy that they had worked and died for to create. He said:
“the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”
Washington was not alone in his concerns and warnings of the threats to democracy posed by political parties. John Adams, the man who would become our second President, made a similar warning over 15 years earlier in 1780 when he said:
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil. . .”
Extending the warnings to the new century, Thomas Jefferson, indicated to James Monroe, in March 1808, the threats of misinformation, “mischief-makers,” and the divisive nature of political parties:
“You will soon find that so inveterate is the rancor of party spirit among us, that nothing ought to be credited but what we hear with our own ears. If you are less on your guard than we are here, at this moment, the designs of the mischief-makers will not fail to be accomplished, and brethren and friends will be made strangers and enemies to each other.”
There were many other similar warnings back in the day from our esteemed forefathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others throughout the years.
Then in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, issued one of the most ominous warning when he said:
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
It now appears that this is where we are. One conspiracy disguised as a political party. The historians will say, apparently, the Americans didn’t see it for what it was, or they were just too distracted with the day-to-day rigors of life that they were caught off guard. The Constitutional protections and Rule of Law guardrails that they relied on failed them.
JPMcJefferson