Screw the Smithsonian!

President Trump is so worried that the truth about American history will make little kids hate their country that he now wants to install signs outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington which will clarify or correct the narrative within the museum’s halls. This is so pathetic.

First, let’s be real here. The poorly educated dunces who form the base of Trump’s MAGA movement are unlikely to be regular museumgoers in the first place. I mean, c’mon! “Look Billy Bob, here’s the exhibit on George Washington Carver you’ve been bugging me about going to see.”

I don’t think so.

No, Trump wants a sanitized history to be on display. No dwelling on the bad parts, like um, slavery, the mass displacement of Native American tribes, Jim Crowe, or that idiot of a president who was impeached twice.

Trump and his minions complain that the Smithsonian, which I used to visit from time to time when I lived in D.C., is a cesspool of extreme political activism which does not accurately reflect our national story. The Trump signs will rebut — if not refute — the radical activist ideology spewed by the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, who Republicans have accused of teaching “national self-loathing.”

She testified to Republican critics a rather simple truth: “When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it. We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story.” Alas, MAGA sees that as “woke.”

History is history, right? Digging further might turn up embarrassing information.

According to a story I read in the New York Times, the suggested signage will point tourists to places where American history is better presented, perhaps including those showing Americans and dinosaurs living in Flintstone-style harmony.

The Smithsonian was accused, for example, of not doing enough to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary. But how much is enough? Certainly, it would be hard to compete with the Great American State Fair — that almost no one attended. That was Trump’s idea, and it sure looked and sounded like it. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” still rings in my ears, and I didn’t even go. And who could forget Trump’s speech? Better still, who could remember it?

Friday’s executive order ordered several government officials to “restore trust in the Smithsonian Institution” and seek its compliance with what the president wants. Among those who should do the president’s bidding is Russell Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, and a man who would give Samuel Alito a run for his money as most aggrieved partisan in Washington.

Vought has apparently never forgiven civil servants for getting paid to keep the government working. He’s talked about his simmering rage that the taxpayer had to foot the bills for these workers. Taxes meant Vought’s parents consequently had a hard time making ends meet, and that made him feel bad as a kid. Now that he has power, Vought relishes cutting off these workers and their progressive programs. Soft underbellies like the Smithsonian are just too easy a target.

Some of the possibly objectionable items on current display in the museum are George Washington’s military uniform, Maya Angelou’s manual typewriter, and Judy Garland’s ruby slippers. What?

Next week the museum will hold Smithsonian Sleepover late night (7 to 11 p.m.) for kids 8 to 14, accompanied by an adult. They get to wander the museum’s galleries “in a memorable evening adventure” (and socialist indoctrination!)

And you can see how fragile feelings might be hurt if a kid sees a part of the actual lunch counter and stools from Greensboro, North Carolina where four Black college students asked for service at the “white’s only” section back in February 1960. They were, of course, refused service. Racial segregation was legal back then. But who needs to be reminded of that? Sit-ins shmit-ins. Haven’t we moved on as a country? We’ve already had a Black president, so shut up already!

Do we have to listen to those who rose up against the (all White) police?

Better to dwell on Abraham Lincoln’s top hat — the one he wore to Ford’s Theater the night of April 14, 1865. But we don’t have to get too deeply into the whys and wherefores of the Civil War, do we? I mean, don’t some still call it the war of northern aggression? And why rub it in?

You can find Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves. But do we really have to get into why he was stripped of his title as heavyweight champ? That would just bring up the whole Vietnam War mess, and who wants that? There’s also Julia Child’s kitchen (and all the elitist mushrooms she used to crow about.) Miss Piggy is somewhere inside, and C-3PO, too. Just asking, were they trans?

There’s Thomas Jefferson’s portable desk, the one he used to draft the Declaration of Independence. And I suppose it’s only fair that the desk of the guy who wrote “All men are created equal” is balanced by the inkstand Lincoln used to draft The Emancipation Proclamation.

The museum offers courses for kids in elementary, middle and high school, though I could see some problems with one part entitled “What Does the President Do,” especially since our current leader seldom gets to the Oval Office before 11 a.m. and stays up much of the night shitposting and whining about the 2020 election he lost overwhelmingly. A presidential role model, hmmm.

From the Smithsonian’s website, “The office of the presidency has evolved over more than 200 years, founded in the debates of the Constitutional Convention, influenced by the model of George Washington, and shaped by subsequent presidents and the public.

“As a nation, we place no greater responsibility on any one individual than we do on the president. The most successful chief executives thrive at balancing the numerous roles they must play; others stumble because they cannot master one or more of the many duties. (I’ll say!) And all of this is done within a framework of constitutional and political constraints which limit presidential power.”

How quaint.

From “I cannot tell a lie” to “I cannot tell the truth.” You can see why you-know-who would object. Treasonous! Put up those signs quick as you can. Call out the guard!

But let’s be serious. This is a play to the basest instincts of Trump’s awful base. Screwing the Smithsonian tells the knuckle draggers he has their backs and won’t kowtow to those pointy-headed know-it-alls who collect history and stuff.