SPONSORED

A completely AI and algorithm-free approach to music discovery.

Break out of your bubble by shuffling all of the music in the world, totally at random! Link your Apple Music account to listen to the full songs, otherwise listen to 30-second previews.

Download now

🏛️ Please refrain from removing your MAGA-tinted glasses

By Baron Ursin de Paresse

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

There’s an infamous photo of Joseph Stalin posing next to a river with either two or three other men, depending on which version of the picture you’re viewing.

The third man, Nikolai “The Vanishing Commissar” Yezhov, played a significant role in the Great Purge, which saw nearly 1 million political dissidents and others killed over a two-year period. Eventually, though, Yezhov fell out of favor with Stalin and was executed in a room he himself designed for easy clean-up.

After his execution, Yezhov was removed from the official photo—an attempt to completely remove him from Soviet history.

Stalin wasn’t the only world leader to edit history. Mao Zedong of China destroyed cultural artifacts and had historical documents either rewritten or burned. The Kim Dynasty in North Korea regularly edits out individuals who have fallen out of favor from photos featuring the dear leader. Saddam Hussein of Iraq also oversaw the removal of people from media and public archives while revising history books.

If I need to draw out the similarities of these world leaders, I fear we’re already too deep to be saved. Instead, let me also draw your attention to more recent happenings right here in the United States of America.

On July 31, The Washington Post reported that the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History had removed a placard covering Trump’s two impeachments from its “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden” exhibition. The exhibition also featured the other three presidents in US history to have been impeached: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.

According to the Smithsonian, the changes were made because the plaque mentioning Trump’s impeachments “did not meet the museum’s standard in appearance”, nor was the museum “asked by any Administration or other government official to remove content from the exhibit.”

Last week, the Smithsonian unveiled an updated exhibit, including mentions of Trump’s impeachment. Along with tickets to the 2019 and 2025 impeachment proceedings, the exhibit now features updated information on the events that caused both incidents.

Here’s an example of one of the changes:

The charges focused on the president’s solicitation of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election…” has been changed to “the charges focused on the president’s alleged solicitation of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Language strongly connecting Trump to the events of January 6, 2021, was also changed. The move appears to be the opening salvo in the administration’s quest to paint history with MAGA-approved colors. 

This week, the White House sent a letter to the Smithsonian ordering a comprehensive review of eight museums. 

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” states the letter, which was addressed to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, signed by White House officials Lindsey Halligan, Vince Haley and Russell Vought, and reprinted on The White House’s website.

In the greater context of this administration’s volley of bullshit unleashed on the American people, this brief moment of erasure, followed by edits favoring Trump at several museums, does not seem to be worth paying much attention to. We should just trust that no one in the administration pushed the Smithsonian to reframe history in a more positive light, right?

If this were a lone example of MAGA attempting to shape the past, present, and future to meet its worldview, then sure. But it is just one of many, many examples.

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently put out a jobs report that didn’t fit MAGA’s worldview of a reinvigorated economy under the Orange Man, Trump simply fired the commissioner of the nonpartisan governmental agency. He recently announced the nomination of E.J. Antoni to head BLS.

Antoni, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and MAGA die-hard, is known in economic circles for his utter lack of understanding of the basic tenets of economics. He’s been ridiculed for error-filled reports and has never worked in statistics collection, which seemingly makes him the perfect man for the job of reporting MAGA-truth to us little folks.

When former DOGE employee “Big Balls” was jumped by a 15-year-old girl and several other teens in an alleged carjacking, Trump described crime in Washington D.C. as “out of control” and said D.C. needs to “get its act together”.

Does it matter that crime rates in the nation’s capital are at 30-year lows? Well, of course not. This picture of lawlessness that the Trump administration painted feels so real to MAGA that they all applauded when the president announced he was seizing control of D.C. and ordering in the National Guard.

Also, I typed “Trump remarks on the Big Balls carjacking” into Google to get news reports about the above. Like, what the fuck are we even doing here, folks? Apologies… back to the matter at hand.

When Congress is questioning Trump’s nominees, they frequently ask a simple question: “Who won the 2020 election?” Do the nominees answer the question honestly and state that Joe Biden won the election?

Well, of course not, you silly, naïve human. Instead, time and time again, they dance around the question and give some sort of word salad remark about how Joe Biden was sworn in as president. But they would never dare to question Trump’s long-held belief that the election was stolen.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, Trump and those in his orbit are attempting to reshape our past, present, and future. They bend the truth, sometimes in small ways and other times in areas that cause real-world harm to those who need help the most. They move goal posts and belittle those who dare question their reality until we’re exhausted, at which point they move on to the next “issue” at hand. They claim we’re being dramatic when we compare what’s happening in our country to what authoritarian leaders did in the past.

And they never fucking let up. By the time this column comes out, there will be a dozen more reality-bending talking points and policy decisions in the ether.

But, at least for now, we still have a choice.

We can refuse to believe the sky is green, we can refuse to agree to disagree with those who tell us what we’re seeing isn’t reality. We can keep getting up when the torrent of shit spews toward us from a fire hose and never submit to wearing the MAGA-colored glasses they want us all wearing.

—Baron