The Rude Pundit: Conservatives Are Cowards About American History

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2026/02/conservatives-are-cowards-about.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
2/22/2026
Conservatives Are Cowards About American History


Over in Munich a week ago, Secretary of State and man who looks like what an old sweat sock smells like, Marco Rubio, gave a speech where he related a fantasy version of the history of immigrants in the United States. He lied about Columbus, he lied about the first European settlements, he lied about how German immigrants were treated, he lied and lied and lied some more. He turned a complex, often dark tale that hinges on slavery and genocide into a happy little story of white people doing everything right and good and noble. Seriously, he didn't even mention the role that Black people played in the actual building of the nation. He didn't say the word "immigrant." It was like listening to some guy tell you that he's fucked all these women, but he leaves out that he's a rapist. (For more on Rubio's speech, head over to my Patreon.)

This isn't just a different perspective on American history. It's not looking at it and emphasizing the good over the bad or some such shit. It's not even revisionism because then you'd expect some remnants of the previous draft of history there. No, this is erasure. It's a bleaching of the complicated, racially-diverse journey this country has been on. It's like the Epstein files, with entire blocks just retracted, like we're not allowed to know or discuss what's really there. The Trump administration, along with the right-wing fucknut ecosystem, is in the midst of a spree of neutering, eliminating, or otherwise transforming the way in which history is presented and discussed, and, goddamnit, they're gonna force all of us to learn it like the good little Nazis they want the remaining population to be.

They're defacing memorials and museums, making them jingoistic and masturbatory. A federal judge this week called out Trump's fuckery in removing information panels that were displayed at the President's House in Philadelphia. The exhibit talked about the lives of the enslaved people owned by George Washington when he lived there. The bastards had taken the panels down in January and the city sued, saying, among other things, the contract the federal government had with the city said that the house couldn't be changed without the city's permission. U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia Rufe (it shouldn't need to be said, but she's a Republican appointed by W. Bush) compared Trump's actions to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984. Excoriating the defense attorneys for saying, in essence, that the government can control any message it wants, Rufe writes, "The government...asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power...An agency, whether the Department of the Interior, NPS, or any other agency, cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims or the whims of the new leadership, regardless of the evidence before it."

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See, Trump and his MAGA cretins don't get that what makes America great isn't how white people did a bunch of shit. It's how all of us did a bunch of shit, good and evil, and somehow, at least prior to this vile administration, we were able to progress towards a more perfect union. What's patriotic is not to say you've gotta get down on your knees and blow Uncle Sam all the time. No, it's admitting that we've fucked up and we're trying to do better and we're gonna fail sometimes but at least we try. Or we did.

Of course, that's the opposite of everything these absolute pieces of garbage in the aptly-named White House believe. They can never admit error or complicity or guilt. They can never be held accountable, even in the telling of the story of what really happened. And that's why we cannot let them get away with gutting our past like they're gutting the present and murdering the future.