National History By Executive Order
Photograph Source: Sean Spicer – Public Domain
On 27 March 2025, President Donald Trump did one of his favorite things: he issued an Executive Order (EO). He is drawn to issue these proclamations because doing so reinforces his sense of “self-importance, control and perceived superiority, which, in turn, are features of [his] narcissistic personality.”
Past Trump EOs have resulted in real time destruction such as depriving millions of people of their livelihood, damage to the environment, destruction of parts of the national health grid, etc. All of those proclamations ate away at the American quality of life, while allegedly preparing the nation for revival of past greatness. How such national masochism is supposed to make the USA “great again” is a mystery only Donald Trump seems capable of unraveling. Nonetheless, while these past EOs constituted an official blitzkrieg on the present, they lacked that special Orwellian commitment to bending future generations to the will of our present empowered narcissist.
However, now we have the 27 March EO. Why is it different?
Entitled, “Restoring Truth and sanity to American History” this EO seeks to assure control of future American perceptions by putting a stop to any reexamination of the nation’s aging batch of “justification myths”.* Hence, quoting this most recent EO: “Section 1. Purpose and Policy. Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” My italics.
It is fascinating to witness Donald Trump’s ability to project onto his opponents pretty much what he himself is doing or intends to do. For instance, he is asserting that revision (based on historical evidence) of an idealized, self-glorifying U.S. history is creating a “distorted narrative.” When, in his opinion, someone else is allegedly “replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative” it is a monstrous fault, maybe even a crime. When Trump himself does this same thing, it is heroically redemptive.
What is going on here?
First of all, we should realize that it is quite possible to propagandize a population into believing that a foundation myth or justifications myths are historically factual. It is done by taking as nearly total control of a national narrative as is possible. The Chinese have done this, the Russians did it for nearly a hundred years, believing Christian, Muslims, Hindus have done this relative to their religions. Jews of the Zionist persuasion have done it when it comes to Israel. Finally, a large subset of Americans has bought into their nation’s idealized myths as fact. Yet, now we find that, in the case of the USA, there has been substantial slippage. Where did that come from?
It has been much more than a decade that a large number of historians of U.S. history have been examining America’s various justification myths. This effort has been largely motivated by taking seriously the experience of America’s non-white minorities and colonized people. As a result, such claims as the USA represents to the world an “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” has been called into question. We are thus presented with the choice: (1) To take seriously the work of hundreds of historians over decades exploring such subjects of American history as slavery; a persistent post-Civil War practice of deep-seeded racial bigotry resulting in segregation and persecution; the destruction of the American Indians; the imperial adventures of the 19th and 20th centuries, and so on. (2) Or, accept Trump’s claim, made in his March EO, of America’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty …” as a statement of “objective fact.” Both positions cannot be simultaneously true.
It is option (1) representing an effort to introduce the stories of those long excluded from American history that Trump finds “sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” Putting the cart before the horse, he charges that the result of “the widespread effort to rewrite history also deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame. It seems to me that this is the equivalent of accusing the little fellow who proclaimed “the emperor has no clothes” of pornography.
There is no doubt about it, Donald Trump and those pushing this message have taken a stand that belief in a simplistic, ethically skewed idealization of national history is the only acceptable foundation of patriotism. No doubt millions of patriots in hundreds of other countries take the same stand. But Trump seems to want to go further suggesting that to challenge the myth is itself undermining truth. That might sound like a contradiction based on denial and confusion—but it is obviously a confusion President Trump has taken to heart.
Looking beyond the Tapestry
Why would Trump and his supporters, including some very well educated people: (1) insist that myth is really “objective truth.” (2) That a second look at the historical record will only distort the truth. Specifically, (3) why characterize that second look as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or an otherwise irredeemably flawed”? This is what is being said in recent attacks on the Smithsonian Institution, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, and American Women’s History Museum. Again, quoting from the 27 March EO:
“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. For example, an exhibit representing that “societies including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement” …. The National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that “hard work,” “individualism,” and “the nuclear family” are aspects of “White culture.” The forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum plans on celebrating the exploits of male athletes participating in women’s sports.”
The Trump administration attack on the Smithsonian and other federal institutions is a good example of Confirmation Bias—the habit of selecting what evidence supports your point of view and ignoring or dismissing all the rest. In our case this use of confirmation bias facilitates turning the Smithsonian and other institutions into shrines—like so many Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.
Such an effort implies real fear of a balanced view. More specifically, what these attacks suggest is that Trump and his backers are seriously afraid of the “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive” facts that happen to be truthful parts of American history. They refuse to countenance any program of revision based on evidence. Why? Perhaps because these facts represent aspects of history that are incompatible with the claim that we can “MAGA” our way to recovering alleged past glory. As such, historical revision is seen not just as an attack on the national image, but what Trump imagines to be the collective ego of the white America. Denial is the only alternative.
The Fact of Prevailing Ignorance
It is hard to believe that any broadly educated American would believe Trump’s doublespeak—and, indeed, maybe most such people would not. But one must realize just how few folks are broadly educated, and how the majority of even college graduates are narrowly educated because their schooling has been compartmentalized into occupational specialties. That means that unless they have taken it upon themselves to supplement their education with broad reading, your typical engineer, accountant, businessperson, as well as carpenter, plumber, electrician, etc. will know no more about the historical background of current events than he or she reads in the newspaper. And, newspapers are not well known for presenting objective truth or, for that matter, even paying for fact-checkers.
You can carry this theme of compartmentalization further. A society like the U.S. has always been and remains racially segregated. That means the subset of the white population that voted for and continues to support Trump has no sociological context for understanding why charges of “institutional racism” or the notions of “woke culture” would make sense to socially aware African Americans. Nor can they historically understand the essential role of immigrants in the history and economy of the U.S. Existing in what essentially has long been a self-imposed ethnic ghetto, these white Americans have been easily manipulated. This, in turn, has allowed the present government to summarily shut down every federally funded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program in the country.
The Tale’s Present Consequences
First, the broad attack on DEI, followed up by the near erasure of public recognition of historical events such as the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, the deletion of photographic records of the contributions of American Indians during World War II, and others constitutes no less than a denial that non-white Americans have any role in the nation’s history except as well-treated supplicants.
Second, once you publicly assert such a mythologized version of your own history as the unassailable, you will be forced to continuously lie to support it. In other words, once you set foot down that path you will be forced to increasingly rely on official censorship and propaganda to maintain the unreal image. Simultaneously, you must claim that any attempt at revision using evidence based research is itself an attempt at distortion. This is a complicated maneuver, even for someone as devious as Trump, and can only be maintained through denial and sustained ignorance.
Third, there is no nation on the planet whose actual history is beyond sin and guilt. The only way you can create that image is by turning history into a fairy tale. Strangely, as far as one can tell, President Trump constantly seeks to present his own history/biography in just this fashion. Now he seeks to do the same with the United States—perhaps as part of a narcissistic process to make the country conform to the notion that, history is just what President Trump says it is. And, if you contest that claim, you must be some sort of traitor.
* Justification myths are like foundation myths which, usually growing up around a few actual events, set in place a self-glorifying narrative to explain the nation’s founding, and then, periodically, enhance the narrative with compatible myths justifying subsequent national actions.
