1776 Report: Trump Releases "American History for Idiots" on MLK Day

Historians responded with a mixture of anger and laughter yesterday after the Trump White House’s “1776 Commission” released a report it claimed would provide Americans with a "patriotic" understand of the nation’s history.

Washington Post: “It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association president Jim Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.” ...

“I don’t know where to begin,” said public historian Alexis Coe. “This ‘report’ lacks citations or any indication books were consulted, which explains why it’s riddled in errors, distortions, and outright lies.”

"Any indication that books were consulted," might be the funniest line ever uttered by a historian.

Perhaps the egregious errors [lies] concern the institution of slavery in the United States. And, of course, the Trump administration released the report on MLK day. No, that probably wasn't a coincidence.

The report claims that the nation's founders really hated slavery, despite owning slaves and enshrining the institution within the Constitution. It goes on to argue that teaching our history of slavery and Jim Crow is unfair and unpatriotic because "the institution of slavery has been more the rule than the exception throughout human history.” Everyone was doing it, so why even mention it?

NBC News: Scholars assailed the report, with one comparing it to a “bad middle school civic textbook from 1955” and another dismissing it as “racist nonsense from the early 20th century, accentuated by some Southern Strategy and culture war paranoia.”

“Don't open it, delete the file, burn your computer, and make sure to salt the earth wherever the people on the Commission go,” added another.

Trump and his conservative allies have long argued that our history texts shouldn't lean so heavily on facts and evidence. And so the "1776 Commission" was created to restore "patriotic education,” in American schools, without all the messy facts about our treatment of Native Americans, Asians, and blacks.

In the future we can look forward to the commission's "patriotic science report" which will explain that greenhouse gases cure asthma and that pesticides are the perfect spice to enhance your Tex-Mex chili recipe.

#news #education

By: Don Lam & Curated Content