We need to stop framing this ongoing “review,” ordered by the Trump administration of the National Park Service’s interpretive assets, as a disagreement over history.
there is no logical reason to start the Civil War "memory" anywhere else but as South leaders own insane boasting over illing to spread slavery for GOD- spread it to all of the US North South East and West
to murder anyone who preached or published anything against slavery
And they DID they made good on their invasions murders and torture
and they bragged about it UNTIL THEY LOST
They arrested and tortured men who just owned a book SUGGESTING slavery was evil
You could be arrested--arrested- put in jail for OWNING THE WRONG book
Hung to death if the judge said so
Or tortured in public if the judge said so
That is where all this started. WE dont even teach it in an candid way --as the very start of South murder sprees, paid killers, and invasions
For example where are you -- or any highschool or college history text book showing what SOUTH leaders - themselves-- themselves -- bragged about. As they killed, invaded and tortured to spread slavery for GOD--they bragged about it.
Not sorta, not kinda- they boasted of killing anyone who published anti slavery papers, long long before Lincoln was in White House
Lincoln exposed this over and over -- Lincoln exposed, correctly, that South was at war to SPREAD slavery FOR GOD, South leaders (davis and Lee for eg) bragged that slaves must endure pain, that slavery is a "divine blessing" Both agreed that just because 95% of Kansas citizens were against slavery---Davis was justified to send three groups of paid killers there/
Did you learn in highschool and college that 95% of Kansas citizens hated slavery --BEFORE Kansas act. And when Atchison and Davis pushed the lie of "Kansas ACt" to give the people the " perfect liberty" to decide to have slavery or not. It was a damnable lie.
As planned South leaders used Kansas Act to in advance justify paid killers to invade torture and kill to SPREAD slavery
When Lincoln exposed it -South leaders did not deny it -- they BOASTED about,
Nothing was more basic--nothing, as South leaders sending thousands of paid killers, bragged about it, and vowed to keep killing to spread slavery North South East and West.
there should be no debate about any of this, South leaders THEMSEVLES in context, in detail, during and after their killing sprees, to cheering crowds and to future generations BAGGED about it Bragged! No dispute is needed-- j ust let SOUTH leaders at the time tell you. And they did tell you in detail. In context, in detail
They were not coy -- they did not mumble--they had a duty to almighty GOD, to enslave and PUNISH blacks in perpetuity-- not keep it-- SPREAD is SPREAD slavery to all of US and all of the world
All our text books should start 1831 showing the exact boasting to kill anyone who published anti slavery newspapers. Which is exactly what they went ahead and did-- paid killers invading even in the NORTH to murder folks who had anti slavery newspaper
After all it was Lee famously who sent thousands of men to invade North --doing to under orders from Jeff Davis himself (as revealed in Davis's letter to people of the SOuth.
Already since 1856 South leaders boasted of invading and killing to spread slavery for GOD-- specifically invading and killing to SPREAD -- not keep SPREAD slavery specifically for GOD.. Specifically kill anyone who published anti slavery papers, That would continue -- the murder and killing of others for having an antislavery paper exist and publish
Furthermore since 1831 South leaders boasted they would kill anyone who published anything against slavery. To make it more clear--they DID exactly that -- they did kill people who dared to publish anything against slavery, and indeed people in Kansas especially were invaded torture and killed because they allowed an newspapers in Kansas to publish things against slavery. Killing to spread slavery for GOD was the very center murder and violence -- and South leaders were proud of it. South leaders continued to order people killed who published anti slavery papers. Let them tell you ! They spoke clearly, in context and officially. They did not mumble, they were not coy.
Muir Woods is an incredibly popular grove just a few minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. In 2023 it had only 800,000 visitors because the parking lot is so small. Alcatraz got 1.2 million in '23, but tourists have to buy a boat ticket after finding a place to park. Both are under threat from you-know-What.
I like the idea of toting Post-Its and Sharpies for such purposes. Reminds me, I still have to choose my "I Stand with Park Rangers" merch. But in the meantime, a half-dozen competitors have sprung up. Etsy's is nice (lots of sole proprietors!); it features the Distress Flag that was hung in the wildcat demonstration at Yosemite:
Muir pretty much established the redwoods franchise, requiring a notable struggle against the logging companies. (Yosemite was born as a result of Muir lobbying TR: he took the president on a long camping trip!)
It is clear from his writings cited by modern historians that he thought badly of minorities. I would interpret his life as preferring redwoods to humans of other races. Muir was an anchor baby from Scotland. But his racial attitudes were pretty much in the main-ocean of his times. Also, with the probable exception of Ronald Reagan, everyone loves a redwood. (RR, when governor of CA, snorted: "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.")
Then again, all POCs were in the underclass. Just when I was getting used to living on the level, the GOP tilted the table again. I gotta look up Sisyphus, maybe there's some modern re-interpretation with new light on the topic. You-know-What is trying to activate a facility across the Bay into a detention/deportation prison; a group of Nikkei held a protest demonstration against that happening.
Nearly forty years ago, a group of activists from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team built an exhibit of their arms and tactics in France for the Smithsonian's 'More Perfect Union' exhibit on how the Constitution was shredded. Watching them build it, we realized our task bestowed by future history: like the Jews from Eastern Europe, be sentinels. Is 'Never Again' a Sisyphean assignment from Clio, goddess/muse of History?
If you are near a national park site, please consider supporting the Save our Signs initiative from the University of MN. It may help those who come after put the pieces together when this is finally over.
I can't wait to see what the new books and markers have to say at the Brown v. Board of Education site in Topeka, Kansas, and Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Major Civil Rights sites.
I believe every federal employee from the newest Intern to the most senior staff person all take the same oath I did as an Army officer. That said I was never in a position, and most of us never are, where we have to decide if something we are told/asked to do conflicts with that oath. Does carrying out a controversial Executive Order issued by the President conflict with that oath? I can see how it could, but I am not sure this one does. And even if it does I think the NPS staff we are talking about can be fired for not complying and even if they aren't supposed to be fired who is going to stop that action under this administration? The Federal Courts? Maybe, maybe not. A great many of these folks are in their dream jobs and the only viable option is to go into name tag defilade and try to stay out of the way of incoming rounds. I think it is up to us to try to get between NPS employees and the actions Kevin sites in his post. When you can post positive stuff about the parks and exhibits you visit.
I was a federal civil servant from 1965 to 1990 in various classes of work in many agencies. I never took the same oath as a uniformed, arms-bearing (actual or potential) military or paramilitary person. That included tours in the 1970s on a CG's staff in Okinawa and at a MedCen in SF. Possibly, NPS rangers who carried guns might have had your oath. Otherwise, I agree with you.
On the topic of coercion and the imposition of fear among national park staff:
The National Parks Conservation Association has a press release that parallels other coverage of the destructive and anti-American Trump assault on the national parks. It contains a statement by an NPCA executive, which in turn contains this paragraph:
“If park staff don’t comply with this directive, they may lose their jobs. Policies like these do not help Park Service staff protect these incredible places. The administration is making their jobs harder and killing their morale, at a time when Park Service staff numbers dwindle near historic lows.”
This threat over the NPS employees (and now most other civilian feds) is the same as any federal employees work under: you follow orders and if you fail or refuse, your "corrective action" will be according to the level of the offense.
The problem here is that our guy at the head of the federal government (gets more and more difficult to use standard, ordinary, terms) is taking each rule to its illogical extreme and ordering his execs (executives? executors? executioners?) to enforce draconian (and add adjectives for 'a thousand variants of stupid') interpretations out of his overheated cranial chamber.
During the Reagan administration, James Watt was made head of the Interior Department. He was an unspiritual ancestor of Steven Miller.
Watt diced and sliced the Geological Survey into sausages, some sausages making sense and others were faint forebodings of 2025. Watt's minions chopped up the USGS so that my wife, a low-level drone in the personnel office, was reassigned to Colorado. She turned it down, and was re-reassigned to Anchorage. The agency's regional mission had not changed to require her presence at either of those minor field sites.
That was a difficult decade for us, as I'd been driven out from the Office of Special Counsel's regional office, too. Reagan appointed a brilliant but anti-federal lawyer as our agency head. Alex Kozinsky was so full of himself he expected to be the first right-winger Jew appointed to the Supreme Court! At first he liked me for entirely stupid reasons (we played the same video game, Ms Pac-Man, and I knew where to get Green Tea ice cream, his favorite). Then, Reagan nominated him for a judgeship, and was later promoted to supervising judge of the San Francisco judicial district. His decisions were written like a modern Mozart, and often were soundly reasoned. Like that pseudo-judge in Florida whose writing resembles, gee, NTITOI, another Floridian, Pam Bondi.
That was then, this is -- far over the cliff from then.
This is so infuriating and alarming. And honestly, I cannot understand the compliance in advance on the part of some NPS employees.
I was at Arlington House today, my first time there since COVID times. I was surprised to hear a ranger delivering a ranger talk including what really hit me as apologia about Robert E. Lee, likening him to George Washington not as a slaveholder, but as someone who was no different than George Washington in terms of leading armed rebellion against his country. True...but WE are the country Robert E. Lee led rebellion against. You don't see the government of Great Britain funding and staffing a museum to "honor" George Washington. I of course believe a full and true history of Robert E. Lee should be included at Arlington House (and honestly I think the new Junior Ranger book erases the Lees, Custises, and Parkes TOO completely by only really including facts about the enslaved people at Arlington House, so that young visitors like I brought there today really couldn't contextualize the house and property using their prior knowledge about George & Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, etc.) but the idea that Lee should be "honored" is still abhorrent to me. He was a traitor, by definition. Learning more about his life and the context of his choice to support the Confederacy is important to a full and true understanding of Arlington House, the creation of Arlington National Cemetery, absolutely. But "honoring" him? No. Telling ALL of the stories, yes.
Could you please explain a bit more about what you mean when you learned that the Rangers at Arlington House can talk about slavery but not individual examples of enslavement?
First, thanks for the comment. I can't say much more than what I've already shared. Rangers are permitted to acknowledge that people were enslaved, but beyond the exhibits on ground, they are not encouraged/permitted to discuss specific cases of torture or public sale.
For the life of me I cannot understand why the staff are VOLUNTEERING to send in anything. Who is going to go site by site to check? And then if someone does see something they want to squash, well ok. But why volunteer anything? Or why volunteer anything important? Sure they were told they had to scrub all their material. But who in the world is going to check? I know it’s not my job at stake but where’s the resistance?
They are not volunteering anything. They've been ordered to review material that might violate the president's Executive Order and Interior Department directive. They are being cautious. This is exactly what the Trump administration hoped to instill in NPS staff: FEAR.
My point is why send in anything? Why respond? Or if they have to send in something, why send in actual material? Who’s going to check? Make up stuff, send in inaccurate stuff, send in innocuous stuff, send in blurry photos. Respond w/o responding. Coordinate with other sites to bury whoever’s asking with reams of material that they’ll never look at. Miss the deadline, make up excuses, exercise incompetence. There are ways. But again, it’s not my livelihood on the line and these folks are just doing what they think they need to do to survive another day.
Totally get that. And the stakes are incredibly higher now than when I worked Civil Service. And these folks in NPS likely aren’t steeped in the ways of Civil Service appeasement/avoidance/resistance that was just how we did business back in the day when we wanted to avoid doing something. I wish them all well and thank you for bringing their plight into the light.
This entire year has been my nightmare...pardoning jan 6 participants, firing anyone who worked against him and destroying aid for families who need it. And then he attacked history...Stonewall. I wish I could tell him to his face that he is wrong. I will defend history... slavery, women, Trans and gay, black, white or purple. I have no problem with correcting those who have it wrong.
> ‘Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil
> War,’ one Park Service official noted ... ‘This is both historically correct
> and legislatively mandated, but we ask for further review to confirm it is
> aligned’ with the executive order, the official wrote.
In other words: Golly, sir, am I lying acceptably?
Jeeze. I hope that official didn't beclown himself as badly as is conveyed there. Or maybe that's not fair of me, sitting safely at my desk at home. Maybe the official is drowning in the Trumpist squalor, and is doing the best she or he can. In any case, yes, just as you say, this is not about history; it's about ruthless, post-truth politics.
In a 7-minute May 1 interview on PBS’s News Hour, David Blight challenged the president and the administration to debate this stuff, and called on others to challenge them too. True, you can't really debate history with people who aren't even doing history, but you can challenge forthrightly the nonsense that they ARE spreading. I hope decent, inventive Americans look for ways to follow Professor Blight's advice. The fascists aren't actually serious, but they're speaking up and taking action. Challenge them forthrightly--and directly on the merits (even though merits is the wrong word).
Count me among those who are viscerally offended by the Trumpite morons' attempt to bend our knowledge of the past to suit their prejudices. When a truer account of the past is driven underground (it's not going away) we will have lost the thread that might, someday, if bravely followed, lead us to a more perfect union.
Thank you. Great take. So angry. I want to visit all of the historical NPS sites just to get into spirited convos with the rangers and visitors about the value of sincere historical inquisitiveness. Not that it would change anything, but it would at least scratch a very serious itch…and maybe, just maybe, spark someone to think differently, or even more courageously
there is no logical reason to start the Civil War "memory" anywhere else but as South leaders own insane boasting over illing to spread slavery for GOD- spread it to all of the US North South East and West
to murder anyone who preached or published anything against slavery
And they DID they made good on their invasions murders and torture
and they bragged about it UNTIL THEY LOST
They arrested and tortured men who just owned a book SUGGESTING slavery was evil
You could be arrested--arrested- put in jail for OWNING THE WRONG book
Hung to death if the judge said so
Or tortured in public if the judge said so
That is where all this started. WE dont even teach it in an candid way --as the very start of South murder sprees, paid killers, and invasions
Forget MEMORY in the face of FACTS
For example where are you -- or any highschool or college history text book showing what SOUTH leaders - themselves-- themselves -- bragged about. As they killed, invaded and tortured to spread slavery for GOD--they bragged about it.
Not sorta, not kinda- they boasted of killing anyone who published anti slavery papers, long long before Lincoln was in White House
Lincoln exposed this over and over -- Lincoln exposed, correctly, that South was at war to SPREAD slavery FOR GOD, South leaders (davis and Lee for eg) bragged that slaves must endure pain, that slavery is a "divine blessing" Both agreed that just because 95% of Kansas citizens were against slavery---Davis was justified to send three groups of paid killers there/
Did you learn in highschool and college that 95% of Kansas citizens hated slavery --BEFORE Kansas act. And when Atchison and Davis pushed the lie of "Kansas ACt" to give the people the " perfect liberty" to decide to have slavery or not. It was a damnable lie.
As planned South leaders used Kansas Act to in advance justify paid killers to invade torture and kill to SPREAD slavery
When Lincoln exposed it -South leaders did not deny it -- they BOASTED about,
Nothing was more basic--nothing, as South leaders sending thousands of paid killers, bragged about it, and vowed to keep killing to spread slavery North South East and West.
there should be no debate about any of this, South leaders THEMSEVLES in context, in detail, during and after their killing sprees, to cheering crowds and to future generations BAGGED about it Bragged! No dispute is needed-- j ust let SOUTH leaders at the time tell you. And they did tell you in detail. In context, in detail
They were not coy -- they did not mumble--they had a duty to almighty GOD, to enslave and PUNISH blacks in perpetuity-- not keep it-- SPREAD is SPREAD slavery to all of US and all of the world
All our text books should start 1831 showing the exact boasting to kill anyone who published anti slavery newspapers. Which is exactly what they went ahead and did-- paid killers invading even in the NORTH to murder folks who had anti slavery newspaper
why disagree about Lee and the Civil War?
After all it was Lee famously who sent thousands of men to invade North --doing to under orders from Jeff Davis himself (as revealed in Davis's letter to people of the SOuth.
Already since 1856 South leaders boasted of invading and killing to spread slavery for GOD-- specifically invading and killing to SPREAD -- not keep SPREAD slavery specifically for GOD.. Specifically kill anyone who published anti slavery papers, That would continue -- the murder and killing of others for having an antislavery paper exist and publish
Furthermore since 1831 South leaders boasted they would kill anyone who published anything against slavery. To make it more clear--they DID exactly that -- they did kill people who dared to publish anything against slavery, and indeed people in Kansas especially were invaded torture and killed because they allowed an newspapers in Kansas to publish things against slavery. Killing to spread slavery for GOD was the very center murder and violence -- and South leaders were proud of it. South leaders continued to order people killed who published anti slavery papers. Let them tell you ! They spoke clearly, in context and officially. They did not mumble, they were not coy.
You said: "why disagree about Lee and the Civil War?"
I'm not exactly sure what exactly you think I said in this post. Can you be clearer? Thanks.
And: from The Left Coast, one of NPS's smallest franchises is under attack. Here is a hurriedly-published article in today's San Francisco Chronicle.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/muir-woods-trump-directive-20782554.php?utm_content=img&sid=53baff61a256abe7320003fa&ss=A&st_rid=a48d6128-e939-4c2e-888b-57632094e9cc&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_politicalpunch
Muir Woods is an incredibly popular grove just a few minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. In 2023 it had only 800,000 visitors because the parking lot is so small. Alcatraz got 1.2 million in '23, but tourists have to buy a boat ticket after finding a place to park. Both are under threat from you-know-What.
I like the idea of toting Post-Its and Sharpies for such purposes. Reminds me, I still have to choose my "I Stand with Park Rangers" merch. But in the meantime, a half-dozen competitors have sprung up. Etsy's is nice (lots of sole proprietors!); it features the Distress Flag that was hung in the wildcat demonstration at Yosemite:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1866547528/i-stand-with-the-nps-t-shirt-national
Muir pretty much established the redwoods franchise, requiring a notable struggle against the logging companies. (Yosemite was born as a result of Muir lobbying TR: he took the president on a long camping trip!)
It is clear from his writings cited by modern historians that he thought badly of minorities. I would interpret his life as preferring redwoods to humans of other races. Muir was an anchor baby from Scotland. But his racial attitudes were pretty much in the main-ocean of his times. Also, with the probable exception of Ronald Reagan, everyone loves a redwood. (RR, when governor of CA, snorted: "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.")
Then again, all POCs were in the underclass. Just when I was getting used to living on the level, the GOP tilted the table again. I gotta look up Sisyphus, maybe there's some modern re-interpretation with new light on the topic. You-know-What is trying to activate a facility across the Bay into a detention/deportation prison; a group of Nikkei held a protest demonstration against that happening.
Nearly forty years ago, a group of activists from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team built an exhibit of their arms and tactics in France for the Smithsonian's 'More Perfect Union' exhibit on how the Constitution was shredded. Watching them build it, we realized our task bestowed by future history: like the Jews from Eastern Europe, be sentinels. Is 'Never Again' a Sisyphean assignment from Clio, goddess/muse of History?
If you are near a national park site, please consider supporting the Save our Signs initiative from the University of MN. It may help those who come after put the pieces together when this is finally over.
https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/save-our-signs
I can't wait to see what the new books and markers have to say at the Brown v. Board of Education site in Topeka, Kansas, and Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Major Civil Rights sites.
I believe every federal employee from the newest Intern to the most senior staff person all take the same oath I did as an Army officer. That said I was never in a position, and most of us never are, where we have to decide if something we are told/asked to do conflicts with that oath. Does carrying out a controversial Executive Order issued by the President conflict with that oath? I can see how it could, but I am not sure this one does. And even if it does I think the NPS staff we are talking about can be fired for not complying and even if they aren't supposed to be fired who is going to stop that action under this administration? The Federal Courts? Maybe, maybe not. A great many of these folks are in their dream jobs and the only viable option is to go into name tag defilade and try to stay out of the way of incoming rounds. I think it is up to us to try to get between NPS employees and the actions Kevin sites in his post. When you can post positive stuff about the parks and exhibits you visit.
I was a federal civil servant from 1965 to 1990 in various classes of work in many agencies. I never took the same oath as a uniformed, arms-bearing (actual or potential) military or paramilitary person. That included tours in the 1970s on a CG's staff in Okinawa and at a MedCen in SF. Possibly, NPS rangers who carried guns might have had your oath. Otherwise, I agree with you.
Thank you, Norm, for that clarification.
On the topic of coercion and the imposition of fear among national park staff:
The National Parks Conservation Association has a press release that parallels other coverage of the destructive and anti-American Trump assault on the national parks. It contains a statement by an NPCA executive, which in turn contains this paragraph:
“If park staff don’t comply with this directive, they may lose their jobs. Policies like these do not help Park Service staff protect these incredible places. The administration is making their jobs harder and killing their morale, at a time when Park Service staff numbers dwindle near historic lows.”
https://www.npca.org/articles/9947-park-service-forced-to-report-information-on-slavery-climate-change-for
This threat over the NPS employees (and now most other civilian feds) is the same as any federal employees work under: you follow orders and if you fail or refuse, your "corrective action" will be according to the level of the offense.
The problem here is that our guy at the head of the federal government (gets more and more difficult to use standard, ordinary, terms) is taking each rule to its illogical extreme and ordering his execs (executives? executors? executioners?) to enforce draconian (and add adjectives for 'a thousand variants of stupid') interpretations out of his overheated cranial chamber.
During the Reagan administration, James Watt was made head of the Interior Department. He was an unspiritual ancestor of Steven Miller.
Watt diced and sliced the Geological Survey into sausages, some sausages making sense and others were faint forebodings of 2025. Watt's minions chopped up the USGS so that my wife, a low-level drone in the personnel office, was reassigned to Colorado. She turned it down, and was re-reassigned to Anchorage. The agency's regional mission had not changed to require her presence at either of those minor field sites.
That was a difficult decade for us, as I'd been driven out from the Office of Special Counsel's regional office, too. Reagan appointed a brilliant but anti-federal lawyer as our agency head. Alex Kozinsky was so full of himself he expected to be the first right-winger Jew appointed to the Supreme Court! At first he liked me for entirely stupid reasons (we played the same video game, Ms Pac-Man, and I knew where to get Green Tea ice cream, his favorite). Then, Reagan nominated him for a judgeship, and was later promoted to supervising judge of the San Francisco judicial district. His decisions were written like a modern Mozart, and often were soundly reasoned. Like that pseudo-judge in Florida whose writing resembles, gee, NTITOI, another Floridian, Pam Bondi.
That was then, this is -- far over the cliff from then.
Thanks for . I don’t think people realize just how much pressure NPS staff are working under.
This is so infuriating and alarming. And honestly, I cannot understand the compliance in advance on the part of some NPS employees.
I was at Arlington House today, my first time there since COVID times. I was surprised to hear a ranger delivering a ranger talk including what really hit me as apologia about Robert E. Lee, likening him to George Washington not as a slaveholder, but as someone who was no different than George Washington in terms of leading armed rebellion against his country. True...but WE are the country Robert E. Lee led rebellion against. You don't see the government of Great Britain funding and staffing a museum to "honor" George Washington. I of course believe a full and true history of Robert E. Lee should be included at Arlington House (and honestly I think the new Junior Ranger book erases the Lees, Custises, and Parkes TOO completely by only really including facts about the enslaved people at Arlington House, so that young visitors like I brought there today really couldn't contextualize the house and property using their prior knowledge about George & Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, etc.) but the idea that Lee should be "honored" is still abhorrent to me. He was a traitor, by definition. Learning more about his life and the context of his choice to support the Confederacy is important to a full and true understanding of Arlington House, the creation of Arlington National Cemetery, absolutely. But "honoring" him? No. Telling ALL of the stories, yes.
Could you please explain a bit more about what you mean when you learned that the Rangers at Arlington House can talk about slavery but not individual examples of enslavement?
Hi Maura,
First, thanks for the comment. I can't say much more than what I've already shared. Rangers are permitted to acknowledge that people were enslaved, but beyond the exhibits on ground, they are not encouraged/permitted to discuss specific cases of torture or public sale.
For the life of me I cannot understand why the staff are VOLUNTEERING to send in anything. Who is going to go site by site to check? And then if someone does see something they want to squash, well ok. But why volunteer anything? Or why volunteer anything important? Sure they were told they had to scrub all their material. But who in the world is going to check? I know it’s not my job at stake but where’s the resistance?
They are not volunteering anything. They've been ordered to review material that might violate the president's Executive Order and Interior Department directive. They are being cautious. This is exactly what the Trump administration hoped to instill in NPS staff: FEAR.
My point is why send in anything? Why respond? Or if they have to send in something, why send in actual material? Who’s going to check? Make up stuff, send in inaccurate stuff, send in innocuous stuff, send in blurry photos. Respond w/o responding. Coordinate with other sites to bury whoever’s asking with reams of material that they’ll never look at. Miss the deadline, make up excuses, exercise incompetence. There are ways. But again, it’s not my livelihood on the line and these folks are just doing what they think they need to do to survive another day.
They are responding to a directive.
Totally get that. And the stakes are incredibly higher now than when I worked Civil Service. And these folks in NPS likely aren’t steeped in the ways of Civil Service appeasement/avoidance/resistance that was just how we did business back in the day when we wanted to avoid doing something. I wish them all well and thank you for bringing their plight into the light.
I have to agree. Why are they sending in comments or questions?
See my comment above.
https://x.com/whitehouse/status/1947462498564673995?s=46
When they are posting things like this I don’t know how we make it. I genuinely weep for my country.
This entire year has been my nightmare...pardoning jan 6 participants, firing anyone who worked against him and destroying aid for families who need it. And then he attacked history...Stonewall. I wish I could tell him to his face that he is wrong. I will defend history... slavery, women, Trans and gay, black, white or purple. I have no problem with correcting those who have it wrong.
> ‘Text addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil
> War,’ one Park Service official noted ... ‘This is both historically correct
> and legislatively mandated, but we ask for further review to confirm it is
> aligned’ with the executive order, the official wrote.
In other words: Golly, sir, am I lying acceptably?
Jeeze. I hope that official didn't beclown himself as badly as is conveyed there. Or maybe that's not fair of me, sitting safely at my desk at home. Maybe the official is drowning in the Trumpist squalor, and is doing the best she or he can. In any case, yes, just as you say, this is not about history; it's about ruthless, post-truth politics.
In a 7-minute May 1 interview on PBS’s News Hour, David Blight challenged the president and the administration to debate this stuff, and called on others to challenge them too. True, you can't really debate history with people who aren't even doing history, but you can challenge forthrightly the nonsense that they ARE spreading. I hope decent, inventive Americans look for ways to follow Professor Blight's advice. The fascists aren't actually serious, but they're speaking up and taking action. Challenge them forthrightly--and directly on the merits (even though merits is the wrong word).
Why are park workers doing this? That part makes no sense. General public maybe but n9t park employees.
They were ordered to do so.
Count me among those who are viscerally offended by the Trumpite morons' attempt to bend our knowledge of the past to suit their prejudices. When a truer account of the past is driven underground (it's not going away) we will have lost the thread that might, someday, if bravely followed, lead us to a more perfect union.
Thank you. Great take. So angry. I want to visit all of the historical NPS sites just to get into spirited convos with the rangers and visitors about the value of sincere historical inquisitiveness. Not that it would change anything, but it would at least scratch a very serious itch…and maybe, just maybe, spark someone to think differently, or even more courageously