He has decimated the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has threatened universities that do not comply with his anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ+ mandates. And he is going after the venerable Smithsonian Institution to alter its honest, unbiased, heretofore unfettered presentation of history, science and the arts.

Having lived most of my life in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, I have spent countless hours in its vast complex of museums, absorbing history and culture in ways that even the best textbooks could not fully impart. And now I fear that the current generation of children may be deprived of an enormous segment of the true history of our great nation because of the changes being wrought as a result of an irrational fear of the truth that eats away at one man in the Oval Office.

My greatest fears revolve around the Museum of American History:

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the Museum of African American History:

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and the National Holocaust Museum, which — while not part of the Smithsonian complex — was created and is funded by an Act of Congress, and is therefore vulnerable:

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As with any country, there are parts of our history that are difficult for us to face: the years of government-endorsed slavery, denial of equal rights to minorities, the “Red Scare” of the 1950s, and participation in international conflicts that we should have stayed out of, to name just a few. But they happened; and they tell the story of who we are as a people, and of how we have struggled and the progress we have made toward overcoming and correcting our mistakes.

They happened. And you do not change history by pretending otherwise; instead, that pretense opens the door to the likelihood of making the same mistakes again.

We must fight to retain the honesty and inviolability of these objective institutions of learning. They are among the finest in the world, and to lose them — or to see them bastardized by one who would erase history to suit his preferences — would be unbearable and unforgivable.

So if you are, or plan to be, in the D.C. area, please be sure to visit as many of the museums as possible . . . before someone finds an excuse to take a wrecking ball to them.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/16/26