Historian: "It's like the barbarian sack of Rome..." [View all]

He was specifically talking about the impending sabotage of the Smithsonian, but it seems an equally apt simile for the entire Musk-Trump-Project 2025 regime.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/30/smithsonian-institution-trump-executive-order

..."The sentiment was echoed by Raymond Arsenault, a professor of southern history at the University of South Florida, St Petersburg. He said: “What is written in that order sounds almost Orwellian in the way Trump thinks he can mandate a mythic conception of American history that’s almost Disney-esque with only happy endings, only heroic figures, no attention at all to the complexity of American history and the struggles to have a more perfect union.

He added: “It’s so chilling. Everything I’ve worked on in my career is simply ruled out by this one executive order. It’s like the barbarian sack of Rome in the level of ignorance and ill-will and anti-intellectualism.”

Arsenault, a biographer of John Lewis, who was instrumental in creating the African American museum, said the late congressmen would be “shocked” by Trump’s order: “It’s totalitarian. It does remind you of a fascist state and makes us a laughingstock around the western world. I have to confess in my worst nightmares I didn’t think it would proceed this far in terms of willful megalomania.”...(more)