FlaglerLive

the Trump administration is mobilizing heritage and architecture as tools of ideology and control. He is seeking to roll back inclusive historical narratives at U.S. parks and monuments. And he is reviving sanitized myths about America’s history of slavery, misogyny and Manifest Destiny, for use in museums, textbooks and public schools. Dictators, tyrants and kings build monumental architecture to buttress their own egos, which is called authoritarian monumentalism. They also seek to build the national ego – another word for nationalism.

Mark Twain would have found Trump the showman – the pre-2016 version – a fascinating figure. He would have been appalled, however, by much about Trump the president. Imagining how Twain would view Trump is timely because when some have tried to look to history for an equivalent political moment, they’ll sometimes point to two decades – the 1880s and the 1900s – that happened to also be important in Twain’s life and career.

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground, the largest burial ground for enslaved and free people of color in the United States, has witnessed deliberate acts of violence. As the historian Ryan K. Smith writes, Shockoe “was not, as some would say, abandoned – it was actively destroyed.” In recent years, similar threats to Black cemeteries and questions about preservation have been reported at the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, the Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 in Maryland and a rediscovered graveyard in Florida, among many others.

On Sunday October 19, criminals managed to steal eight pieces of extremely valuable jewelry from the Louvre Museum’s Gallery of Apollo, in Paris. The robbery highlights long-standing issues for criminology in the field of cultural heritage, as museum security has to address traditional and emerging threats as well as a range of symbolic visions and criminal dynamics. From a security point of view, there are five key ideas that can help us understand what the flaws were in the Louvre, as well as how, and why, criminals target museums.

The spectacle of a Spanish-speaking rapper performing during the most-watched sporting event on American TV is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to paper over the country’s diversity. Beyond that, there’s his gender-bending wardrobe. He has slammed the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies. He has declined to tour on the U.S. mainland, fearing that some of his fans could be targeted and deported by ICE. And his explicit lyrics – most of which are in Spanish – would make even the most ardent free speech warrior cringe.

Throughout modern American history, reporters who cover the Pentagon have played an invaluable role shining a light on military actions when the government has not been forthright with the public. Free press advocates warn that recent changes in a Pentagon policy threaten journalists’ ability to cover the Department of Defense. That’s because it could curb their rights to report information not authorized by the government for release. That’s a big step toward outright censorship.