Trump's Cultural Purges in Progress

Scrubbing Historical References Online Is No Different Than Burning Books

The great erasure is upon us. The Trump administration wants it all gone. The great purge of books and other media that includes words and truths that can no longer be spoken is on.

There have been no government sanctioned book burnings yet, but trust me on this, they will happen, particularly once the Trump administration takes over our nation’s great universities.

I can see it now in my mind's eye, vigilantes wheeling carts of books and documents out of UCSD’s Geisel Library with the aim of expunging knowledge gathered during a time when the quest for scholarship was an honorable pursuit.

The destruction of knowledge is a commonality among tyrants throughout history. In our hemisphere, the libraries of pre-Columbian Mayan civilization were destroyed by Spanish Friars in their effort to eradicate the existing culture. From this period only four books, known as the Maya Codices exist. Although these volumes dealt with subjects as varied as astronomy and religious rituals, they mainly serve as a reminder of how much of a great civilization disappeared.

Almost faster than we can keep up with it, our history, our literature, our drama, our comedy, our performances, our art, our science, even the language we speak is being repurposed in the service of self anointed potentates imbued with the certainty that they know what’s best for humanity.

As is true with just about everything in Trump 2.0, this isn’t happening in a subtle manner, and the people tasked with reshaping our reality are more loyal than literate. There are heroic efforts to preserve data among the citizenry, even as amoral tech bros are seeking to create a giant storehouse of cross referenced data on Americans to make social reconstruction of the worst sort feasible.

It won’t be too long before true truths are considered undesirable, subversive, banned, and even illegal. The Trump administration is already referring to the concept of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as illegal in its pronouncements.

Banning books came into full-blown fashion as the MAGA movement incorporated Christian Nationalist thinking into its program. The only thing you need to know about these folks is that the notion of empathy is categorized as sinful weakness.

What you’ll find with all the cultural attacks is they’re aimed at downgrading certain types of people or beliefs. Social, legal, and political ‘norms’ are abused to discredit their voices and even their existence. Exclusion is the ultimate goal.

What started with school boards seeking to eliminate titles, has now grown to include statewide bans, and they’re all focused on the same subject areas; sex, race, and history. They say they want to protect children, but when you strip the hypocrisy away, it’s only certain types of children they care about. And more often than not, the real targets are people who’ve achieved a degree of equality and/or acceptance.

Nationally, President Trump’s edicts have had the effect of purging everything from scientific data to performances at the Kennedy Center. Millions of files have either been erased, censored line by line, or rewritten stripped of anything remotely considered woke.

Public school systems that refuse to reorient their curricula to the standards of the administration are being threatened with financial and legal consequences. California and Massachusetts are among the states who’ve told the Trump regime to shove it.

Red states are adopting and incorporating teaching materials that not long ago would have been considered outright falsification. Accordingly, the Civil War is to be portrayed as a struggle for states rights rather than a conflict over the practice of owning and using slaves. Climate change isn’t endangering societies, it’s just weather being weather.

This is about more than censorship; it’s state sanctioned amnesia aimed at making oppression and repression palatable to the public.

In recent times the imagined evilness of “woke” has been expanded to include Palestinians. Children’s show superstar Ms. Rachel, (The New York Times called her “this era’s Mister Rogers.”) who’s advocacy for Save the Children’s emergency fund for children in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan has triggered a campaign of on-line harassment.

A right wing group is demanding that she be investigated by the Department of Justice for “being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers”. Showing empathy for the more than 13,000 children who have died, the estimated 25,000 injured, and the at least 25,000 hospitalized for malnutrition is apparently enough to have her accused of breaking the law.

The US Naval Academy has eliminated Maya Angelou’s memoir from its library, but kept two copies of Mein Kampf, along with white supremacist tomes like The Camp of the Saints and The Bell Curve.

The American Library Association reports that 2024 saw 1,247 attempts at library censorship with 4,240 unique titles challenged. Some states have and are considering laws making librarians liable for criminal prosecution if certain titles are available for checkout.

Julia Angwin and Ami Fields Meyer interviewed activists from around the world and penned the timely essay So You Want to Be a Dissident - A Practical Guide for Courage in Trump’s Age of Fear for the New Yorker.

Much of what they had to say was common sense, like not doing stupid shit that can be used to discredit or silence an activist and basic security hygiene for devices. What’s important for me in this essay was the advice about finding a community of support.

• Even in their darkest hours, in the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties, when the K.G.B. sent many Soviet dissident leaders to forced-labor camps and psychiatric institutions, the activists continued writing their books, making their art, and publishing their newsletters. And, when they gathered, they raised their glasses in the traditional toast: “To the success of our hopeless cause.”

• In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

It’s all too easy for the hollowness of the internet to make the notion that hashtags/clicks are proof of a willingness to fight the power. Looking at Amazon storefronts isn’t the same as buying.

A successful resistance will include community building. As much as it terrifies me to appear in situations where interaction is expected, I’m making the effort to show my face, even if my (lack of) voice can’t be heard.

Don’t Miss the Book Release Party for Sunshine Noir III

Since I’ve got you reading this far, it’s time for me to promote an event related to the publication of Sunshine Noir III, an anthology of writings of and for people in this region on both sides of the border.

• It explores San Diego and Tijuana’s border culture; the city’s multiple identities and lost history; the region’s natural beauty and endangered ecologies; its role as a center of the culture of war; and San Diego and Tijuana writers’ attempts to explore the meaning of place.

Twenty years ago, City Works Press, a tiny non-profit publishing collective, published the first version of Sunshine Noir, an anthology giving a new perspective to life in and around San Diego.

From the City Works Press Mission Statement:

• Our purpose is to publish novels, collections of short fiction and poetry, and creative nonfiction by professional and nonprofessional writers. We are not bound by commercial considerations nor are we looking to mimic the world of academic publishing. City Works Press is committed to creating a literary culture in a city where no press dedicated to the publication of local writing exists.

• We are a "collective" in that we all contribute part of the funds and labor that go into each publication and the money made from our sales goes toward the publication of subsequent books. Hence the press is based on an ethic of reciprocity. Each manuscript that we receive is reviewed by a group of people other than the author and is chosen for publication on the basis of its quality and whether or not it fits our mission of promoting innovative, progressive, ethnically diverse local writing.

Since that time the CWP has published more than two dozen titles, representing a diverse range of San Diego's emerging voices in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

And yes, it’s true; I am part of this group. At least it says so on the website. There was a chapter about my time in the underground press in Sunshine Noir II. Version III includes a bit about living in an OB hippie house in 1969, where dope got you through times of no money better than money getting you through times of no dope. True fact!

The Big Release party for Sunshine Noir III will be 5-8pm on May 3 at the Centro Cultural de la Raza (2004 Park Blvd, Balboa Park, https://centrodelaraza.com

As AOC and Sanders Draw Crowds, 72% of Democrats Want Party to Abandon Centrist Approach to Trump by Julia Conley at Common Dreams

• A survey taken by Harvard's Center for American Political Studies and Harris between April 9-10 found that 72% of Democratic voters supported politicians like Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), "who are calling on Democrats to adopt a more aggressive stance towards Trump and his administration and 'fight harder'," rather than leaders who are willing to "compromise" with President Donald Trump.

• Just 28% of Democratic voters said they support a so-called "moderate" approach. Across the political spectrum, 53% of respondents said they favored politicians who are willing to work with Trump—down two percentage points from the Harvard/Harris March survey.

• The poll was released as Ocasio-Cortez joined Sanders at a rally in Nampa, Idaho, where they spoke out against insider trading by members of Congress, billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency—whose federal job and spending cuts have hit Idaho's recreation industry and veterans' healthcare in the state—and the need for government-run healthcare, which also is supported by the vast majority of Democratic voters in the U.S., even as party leaders refuse to prioritize the issue.

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Paris said au revoir to cars. Air pollution maps reveal a dramatic change. by Naema Ahmed and Chico Harlan at The Washington Post

• Air pollution heat maps show the levels of 20 years ago as a pulsing red — almost every neighborhood above the European Union’s limit for nitrogen dioxide, which results from the combustion of fossil fuels. By 2023, the red zone had shrunk to only a web of fine lines across and around the city, representing the busiest roads and highways.

• The change shows how ambitious policymaking can directly improve health in large cities. Air pollution is often described by health experts as a silent killer. Both PM 2.5 and nitrogen dioxide have been linked to major health problems, including heart attacks, lung cancer, bronchitis and asthma.

• Paris has been led since 2014 by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a Socialist who has pushed for many of the green policies and has described her wish for a “Paris that breathes, a Paris that is more agreeable to live in.”

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A Top Democratic Official Plots to Take Down Party Incumbents by Shane Goldmacher at the New York Times

• A generational divide has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most contentious rifts in the early stages of the Trump administration, as younger officials press their elders to toss aside deference for more confrontation.

• “What we are not saying here is, ‘Oh, you’re old, you need to go,’” Mr. Hogg said of older officials. “What we’re saying is we need to make room for a new generation to step up and help make sure that we have the people that are most acutely impacted by a lot of the issues that we are legislating on — that are actually going to live to see the consequences of this.”

• Mr. Hogg said Leaders We Deserve would focus heavily on House races and back primary challengers only in safe Democratic districts, which are not at risk of falling into Republican hands in 2026. The group also plans to spend on contests for state legislatures. He said the central issue was not ideological but rather how capable and active lawmakers were at pushing back on the Trump administration.