If you don’t like the history, just rewrite it.

The Trump administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks,according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.

The individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media, said the removals were in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans.

Those two sentences don’t quite go together. The first says Trump ordered the specific removals, the second says the removals are in line with the broad order. It’s not clear which one is the truth.

National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.

Why? Why not interpret it more narrowly until/unless told otherwise?

Anyway, the overall idea is obvious enough: pretend Our Grate Counntree has never done anything bad.

But then does Trump even think slavery was bad? I doubt it. I doubt he thinks about it at all, for one thing, and for the other thing I doubt he thinks about it very hard when it’s brought to his attention. He’s not a thinking guy. He’s a reactive guy and a boastful blabbermouth guy.

Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz said in a statement that all signage is under review.

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Pawlitz said.

Who decides what’s “disproportionate”? What’s the “broader context” that makes slavery not all that bad and wrong?

Trump won’t have heard or read much about slavery and genocide when he was in school, because the US was shamefully slow about acknowledging the depth and breadth of what the pallid invaders did to the indigenous population and to the Africans they abducted for the purpose of enslavement. Because he’s stupid and incapable of thought, he sees the correction of that failure as an intrusive ideology as opposed to a correction of complacent neglect and denial.

H/t What a Maroon