trump Destroying Heroes

Update: Thank ye, Steve in Manhattan for adding this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up! Please remember to support your public libraries as trump and his lackeys are nuking library funding outright through shutting down the IMLS agency. (posted at my writing/librarian blog) /rage

If there's any good news is that millions of us are rising up in protest, if the turnout at the Hands Off rallies are anything (of course, the mainstream media barely paid notice).

There's been a lot of bullshit happening in this second round of trumpian destruction, but this is something that drew my ire. trump continues his war on American history - and on our education and literacy - by getting his fellow racists to purge our libraries to straight-up whitewash everything (via Lolita C Baldor at AP News):

The U.S. Naval Academy has removed nearly 400 books from its library after being told by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to review and get rid of ones that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, U.S officials said Tuesday.

Academy officials were told to review the library late last week, and an initial search had identified about 900 books for a closer look. They decided on nearly 400 to remove and began doing so Monday, finishing before Hegseth arrived for a visit Tuesday that had already been planned and was not connected to the library purge, officials said. A list of the books has not yet been made available.

As a librarian, this enrages me. NO LIBRARY - be it public, be it school, above all a university library - SHOULD EVER PURGE A BOOK ON POLITICAL ORDERS.

The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, had not been included in President Donald Trump’s executive order in January that banned DEI instruction, programs or curriculum in kindergarten through 12th grade schools that receive federal funding. That is because the academies are colleges.

Pentagon leaders, however, suddenly turned their attention to the Naval Academy last week when a media report noted that the school had not removed books that promoted DEI. A U.S. official said the academy was told late last week to conduct the review and removal. It isn’t clear if the order was directed by Hegseth or someone else on his staff...

Hegseth has aggressively pushed the department to erase DEI programs and online content, but the campaign has been met with questions from angry lawmakers, local leaders and citizens over the removal of military heroes and historic mentions from Defense Department websites and social media pages.

In response, the department has scrambled to restore some of those posts as their removals have come to light.

The confusion about how to interpret the DEI policy was underscored Monday as Naval Academy personnel mistakenly removed some photos of distinguished female Jewish graduates from a display case as they prepared for Hegseth’s visit. The photos were put back...

While the AP News weren't able to confirm in that story which books were getting removed, follow-up reports got out that some of the books under fire were biographies on Martin Luther King Jr, and WWII soldier - and major league baseball Hall of Famer - Jackie Robinson.

In short, Hegseth and trump and the rest of their anti-woke racists were desperate and eager to purge books on American heroes.

This is indefensible. Former congresscritter Steve Israel makes the case (via The Hill):

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I took on the issue of professional military education. It may not have garnered many headlines, but education was viewed as critical from the top echelons of the Pentagon to the remote operating bases I visited in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We sharpen our warriors’ effectiveness when we develop their skills in critical thinking, languages, cultures and history. But we are now going dangerously backwards.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. Naval Academy is identifying books in the school’s Nimitz Library that may be pulled from circulation because they relate to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion. Among the 900 potential offenders: a biography of Jackie Robinson, “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.” and “Einstein on Race and Racism.”

The Chinese military is expanding. Russia is threatening Europe. But you can sleep better tonight knowing that the Navy is keeping its men and women safe from Jackie Robinson...

The irony in this move is rich. In the name of freedom, we mustn’t let our future leaders do things like, oh, read what they want to read. We must treat them like snowflakes, so brittle and sensitive that they must be protected from the offensive views of Robinson, King, Einstein and whoever else is on the blacklist of the Navy Blue and Gold.

Our warriors need body armor, not censorship. The best of them want to build their intellectual resilience. When I visited them in Iraq, Afghanistan and our military academies at home, many consistently told me that they fought better when they had time not only to drill, but to learn. To read...

It was a Marine who later explained to me why military education was so important: “If you know how to think, you realize you don’t have to kick in the door and start shooting; sometimes, you can find a safer way — for yourself...”

Instead of supporting our warriors with libraries that will give them an unvarnished telling of history, the Pentagon has decided to whitewash it. Instead of encouraging critical thinking skills, the Navy has decided to dull them...

There was nothing offensive in what Martin Luther King represents even as a man of peace who stood for civil rights. MLK may have spoke against the Vietnam War, but so did others of his era, and there is no shame in letting our military schools offer his biographies to highlight the man's overall commitment to justice.

There was nothing offensive in what Jackie Robinson represents even as a veteran of the Second World War - one of the few "good" or Just Wars humanity's ever known - who faced court martial during his service over refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus, and who broke the racial barriers in professional baseball to make it truly America's Game.

But these men - and many other men and women who impacted our nation's history over the centuries - offend trump and Hegseth and others among trump's ranks of hate-driven lackeys all because the likes of King and Robinson were heroes who dared to confront and bring an end to the institutionalized racism that scarred the United States since our nation's birth... and clearly still scars us to this day.

MLK offends the likes of trump because Reverend King dared to win the Nobel Peace Prize fighting for our nation's soul, sacrificing his own life in the pursuit of equality, justice, and economic fairness not just for Blacks but for the poor.

Jackie Robinson offends the likes of trump because Robinson suffered years of public attacks by haters while proving racists wrong that Black players were just as good as Whites, helping his Brooklyn Dodgers make playoffs and even a World Series championship. Jackie entered the hallowed Hall of Fame - notorious as one of the hardest sports halls to join - and his jersey number retired by all the major league teams in honor of what he endured.

King and Robinson and dozens if not hundreds of other American heroes - those who are Black, or Latino, or Natives, or Asians, or Women - offend trump and his ilk because King and Robinson and those hundreds of Blacks and Latinos and Natives and Asians and Women all defy the white supremacist myth that only White Men are capable and worthy of respect (that even the most mediocre White Man is superior to all others).

Rather than step away from an easily disprovable lie - that Whites can be mediocre and ought to live with the reality that We Are All Human capable of both greatness and failures - trump and the patriarchal racists would rather whitewash - literally - every fact and human face from our history books, from any form of information and knowledge that can inspire our generation and those who follow us.

trump will erase the fact we have heroes who aren't him - that there are heroes with different faces and different skins and different genders than him - just to make himself a false god.

Damn him.

Do not purge our heroes from the shelves, America.

Do not let these tiny, broken, hollow men erase everything good about our nation.