This is also a couple of months old but remember when, about 400 news cycles ago, federal museums like the Smithsonian were told to dial it back on exhibits that cast slaveholders in a bad light? I don't recall hearing whether that was retracted in the meantime. Probably not, because so many closet racists have positively <i>soared</i> out of the woodwork and and are cheerily enjoying what I imagine is, even for them, a wholly unexpected moment in the sun that they will, characteristically, round up to a permanent hall pass, if at all possible. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VWGLiLcchw" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/6VWGLiLcchw" width="560px" source="YouTube" author="Hasan Piker" caption="TRUMP DOWNPLAYS SLAVERY"> <bq>Yeah. It's like, hey, uh excuse me. <b>How about you offer some praise to the good man Adolf Hitler? After all, he was responsible for killing Adolf Hitler.</b> That's the type of [ __ ] argument she's making here. It's crazy. What do you mean? The fuck is this? What are we doing? <b>This is on CNN, bro. This is not Fox News.</b> I feel like a decade ago, this would be the outlier on a Fox News panel. And even they would have other Fox News hosts be like, "Okay, maybe that's a bridge too far. You're saying the quiet part out loud. That's not supposed ... we're not supposed to say that."</bq> <bq>It's so funny because nobody ever says, "Hey, Trump, why are you too focused on how sad the history of slavery makes you feel?" People only turn around and go, "Why are you calling this racist?" Classic. <b>It's not the other person that's being racist that's a problem for you. It's the fact that someone is calling that out accurately for what it is.</b> That's the issue. Okay.</bq> <bq>I don't know what these guys think the purpose of a f@&king museum is. Like, what? Like, <b>museums are not supposed to be presenting like a future vision of what things are going to look like in the future.</b> It's the history of African-Americans in the nation that's doing its function.</bq> This is the main point here: these arguments about museums not being uplifting enough are profoundly stupid. They're not arguing about whether the information in the museum is accurate; they're arguing about whether it makes them feel bad or uncomfortable. It is an absolute tragedy that so many people are on board with this. The anti-intellectualism in the U.S. went up another level, which I really didn't think was possible. <img attachment="topographie_des_terrors_museum.webp" align="right" caption="Topographie des Terrors museum">You wanna see a museum that puts the blame squarely on the perpetrators? Check out the <a href="https://www.topographie.de/">Topographie des Terrors</a> museum in Berlin if you really want to see how it's done. No punches pulled there. Look at it. It's not dressing up anything. No gold trim there. The people in the U.S. who are positively <i>reveling</i> in the sun right now are a bunch of snowflakes who are too stupid or too venal to even see how snowflake-y their arguments are. They don't care because they're winning, for now. Luckily, everything they do is incredibly short-sighted so things will fall apart very, very quickly. Their center will not hold. The rough beast has slouched to Washington but its hour will come soon enough.