A Time for Worry?

Should I be concerned? Two recent media reports that were pretty much glossed over started me thinking about what might be really happening in our country.  Last week the Smithsonian Institute removed from its display about the history of American Presidents all references to Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings that occurred in 2019 and 2021. The impeachment proceedings reporting for former presidents Bill Clinton and Andrew Jackson were left in place. To make matters worse, some of the text elsewhere in the exhibit still mentions that 3 U.S. Presidents went through impeachment proceedings, but the factual historical information detailing who they were now includes only two.

So are we now to the point of countries like China and Russian who forbid the mentioning of any historical events that run counter to the image the ruling power wishes to advocate.  China did this when it removed all references to its 2019 slaughter of pro-democratic demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.  All references to this incident are forbidden and lead to immediate arrest if mentioned publicly.  Additionally, in Russia, officials who opposed Joseph Stalin’s agenda were not only removed from their government positions but also from all photographs and history books.  And others just quietly disappeared entirely.

While Smithsonian Officials have denied that they received any pressure from the White House to make this change, Trump’s officials do control the funding for this institution, and in March, the US president signed an executive order to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s properties and deny funding for exhibits that “degrade shared American values.”   Whatever that means!

The other media reporting that caught my eye was the abrupt firing of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after her reporting of the latest monthly job figures.  These figures indicated, contrary to what the present administration has been advocating, that the economy is back sliding, not flourishing.  This information comes from surveys returned by actual employers. The commissioner simply reports the numbers tabulated from these surveys, and contrary to what the present administration would like us to believe they are not simply pulled out of thin air. There is a factual paper trail. And often the previous month’s figures are revised due to the late submission of the employers’ surveys.  The commissioner has little control over this. So the fact that the two previous months’ job figures were revised downwards further showing continued back sliding doesn’t support the excuse that the commissioner was fired due to previous errors made because she changed the figures.   No errors were made, just 3 months of backsliding after late submissions were included.

I can only guess this was just too much for the present administration to bear, so as is usually the ‘persecuted soul ‘ game plan, Trump called the figures ‘fake news’ and ‘politically motivated’ just to make him look bad, and sought to remedy the situation by putting someone in there that will issue (manufacture) the "correct" positive ones that support  his claims.

In closing, should I be concerned that more and more instances of dictatorial, authoritarian tactics are being implemented by our President on our American institutions? After all, just look what has happened to my beloved "Sesame Street."