Winners & Losers | Trump's Censorship Czar
Fascism is here. Here's how.
Welcome back to your weekly inventory of Winners & Losers. I’m writing this on Friday, August 22, and if you’ll try and think back past the weekend we just had, you’ll remember that this morning — Friday morning — we woke up to learn that Trump’s FBI was sifting through John Bolton’s home in Maryland.
The Losers are winning, my friends.
John Bolton isn’t exactly Alexei Navalny or Malala Yousafzai. Still, the fact that Trump has turned his back on exclusively making bad policy in favor of a more direct path toward fascism should send chills down your spine. The persecution of political rivals is his promise of vengeance made good.
I’m not picking John Bolton as my winner this week, in case you’re wondering. I was one of those who took to the streets in 2001 and 2003 to oppose his and the Bush administration’s warmongering.
And that’s exactly why this move toward Bolton is a bright red flashing light. First, Trump will purify his own party, and then he will come after the rest of us.
But raiding the homes of rivals isn’t the only fascist move Trump has made in the past week or so. Today, I’m drawing my Loser from another story that highlights just how far down this path we currently find ourselves, and my Winner from a story that demonstrates that resistance is still possible.
Lindsey Halligan, Loser
On August 12, Lindsey Halligan signed her name — along with the names of Russell Vought and Vince Haley — to a letter addressed to Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
The letter announced a review of materials contained in the museums of the Smithsonian — Phase I of the review will focus on eight collections, including those of the National Museums of American History, Natural History, African American History and Culture, and the American Indian.
If you’re a regular reader of this column, you probably already know what’s going on here. You’ve seen Trump’s Truth complaining that the Smithsonian spends too much time talking about how bad slavery was. At first blush, it appears that they would like to eliminate non-white, non-Christian, non-straight historical narratives from our historical institutions. They want to erase everyone and everything that isn’t them.