Born under a bad sign
What do you do when you’re caught being complicit in a lie in partisan times? You can double down on the lie to confirm to everyone that your sense of integrity is wholly fungible, or you can fess up and possibly earn back a modicum of respect if not uncritical trust.
Last week, the National Archives and Records Administration fessed up and apologized for blurring images of placards photographed at the 2017 Women’s March critical of President Donald Trump.
The reality-distorting photograph was part of the “Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote” exhibit. This makes it particularly repugnant given the exhibit’s intention to celebrate women’s suffrage while noting democracy’s ongoing challenge to fulfill the mandate of gender equality in the century since women have been allowed to vote.
Some of the altered signs in the photo were references to female genitalia harking back to Mr. Trump’s recorded boast about his celebrity giving him the license to assault women at will. The most prominent sign was altered from “God Hates Trump” to “God Hates” in a more politically generic and nonsensical way.
Initially, the National Archives defended the indefensible by engaging in classic doublespeak that would’ve caused any competent bureaucrat’s head to explode in less cognitively dissonant times: “As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, we blurred references to the president’s name on some posters as not to engage in current political controversy,” a National Archives spokesperson said.
In other words, simply representing the event as it happened would’ve been embarrassing to Mr. Trump and, thus, politically inconvenient in an era dominated by arbitrary and spiteful budget cuts.
So, going against its own stated mission, the National Archives chose to represent a highly charged political event that occurred the day after the inauguration as if it were somehow politically neutral, which is the height of absurdity.
The millions of protesters who braved the cold weather in multiple cities across the country weren’t agnostic about Mr. Trump. They had a particular point of view. They focused their rage on the new president as if he were ground zero for a variety of social and political maladies that bedeviled the country. Their signs, full of irreverence and all of the scatological power they could muster, reflected this. The size of the crowd and the defiant signs were the first public manifestation of what has been called “the resistance.”
To pretend otherwise, even in a promotional display, was to do violence to the very meaning of what America’s biggest protest to date was all about. Blurring signs of protests for something as ephemeral as political expediency presents a history devoid of meaningful context, making the display nothing more than tacky administration propaganda.
After a short period of intense criticism, the National Archives acknowledged it had a problem over the weekend and attempted to set things right: “In a promotional display in this spot, we obscured some words on protest signs in a photo of the 2017 Women’s March. This photo is not an archival record held by the National Archives but one we licensed to use as a promotional graphic. Nonetheless, we were wrong to alter the image.”
This kind of apology is increasingly rare in an age when federal agencies, political institutions and an entire branch of Congress routinely scurry to show fealty to a president who, on his best day, operates like a mob boss.
Still, the National Archives provides a model, albeit a modest one, for the apologies that will surely have to be issued one day by agencies and institutions in and outside of government currently abetting the lies of the Trump administration.
One day, the National Park Service will have to admit that it erred by not strongly refuting Mr. Trump’s claim in real-time that he had a “bigger inauguration day crowd than Barack Obama,” no matter how the pictures were cropped. One day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will have to admit that it never believed Alabama was in trouble from a 2019 hurricane and that Mr. Trump used a Sharpie on a map to bolster his lie that it was. “We were wrong to uphold the legitimacy of the altered images,” both agencies will say.
One day, Mr. Trump’s personal physicians will have to admit he was never the “perfect” specimen of manhood they claimed he was after every physical. “We shouldn’t have withheld from the American people important information that Mr. Trump was always one cheeseburger away from a massive coronary.”
The nation’s pro-Trump religious leaders will issue something like the following apology: “How were we supposed to know Donald Trump was the antiChrist? He shaped the U.S. Supreme Court in ways we liked and stacked the federal judiciary with pro-life, pro-gun, pro-God judges. He may have been the devil incarnate to Muslims and Mexicans, but he was always good to us Christians.”
The nation’s Republican establishment will have to pen the biggest mea culpa of all: “Yes, we knew all along that Donald Trump was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, but we simply didn’t care because we put party affiliation above every other consideration. If
Mr. Trump were the leader of the opposing party, of course we would’ve agreed that abuse of power was an impeachable offense.
“If Barack Obama had done onetenth the things Mr. Trump did in a typical month, we would’ve had congressional hearings into his shenanigans every day the House and Senate were in session. Contrary to our cynical maneuverings during Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, we do believe in right and wrong when we’re not being craven partisan hacks.
“We know we have cheapened political discourse in this country by our readiness to constantly defend the president despite the fact that most of us had nothing but disdain for him personally. Because he was more popular with our constituents than we were, we were too scared to buck him despite our pledge to uphold the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
“Instead of rising to the challenge of the greatest constitutional threat since Watergate, we reverted to our long ago roles as passive supporters of all of the schoolyard bullies Donald Trump instinctively reminded us of whenever we were in his presence. We apologize to America for being such despicable cowards when we could’ve ended our national nightmare. We pray you’ll give our party another chance to govern one day. We’ve learned our lesson ...”