Tom Cruise declined Trump’s offer of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center … He cited a scheduling problem …
As Trump takes more and more control of our Cultural Institutions … We need to push back hard and say … NO … to the Remaking and the Sanitizing of our history and our culture !!!
What can I DO about it? Do I write to the Smithsonian begging them to store the old displays to bring back when we have taken him out? I live in a blue state where my letters are agreed with but have no real impact on the big picture. WHAT and HOW do we protect our beloved museums? Who do I appeal to? I'm willing to fight, but I don't know HOW.
Writing the Smithsonian won't do; they already agree! Write to your local newspaper, post on sites that you think might be open to it, etc. Make sure all your friends understand. Also, follow a woman named Melissa Dalton-Bradford on instagram. She talks about keeping the stoy alive, in the national consciousness. I'm trying to contact her for an interview.
This is awesome, what you’re doing, Marianne Williamson. Thank you, and thank you for this tip. I’ve just hit the follow button on Melissa Dalton-Bradford’s Instagram page.
I agree - we need to wake up - and I think we are, but what does that mean? What can I do? I live in a new co-op community that is a micro of the macro. We have a band of residents who want their way as they do to other people what they don't like being done to them. The best that I can do for the country is learn how to not get overrun by the bullies and at the same time not match their energy with the same war-like mentality. It's learning to respond instead of react. Maybe as we learn how to do this in our community, it will be a model for other communities that are popping up that will eventually influence the bigger world around us. This is what I see I can do.
I wasn’t sure about that either so I searched it and the following came up. (I think she might have misspelled propaganda):
"Staatspropaganda" translates to "state propaganda" in English. It refers to the deliberate dissemination of information, often biased or misleading, by a government to influence public opinion and promote its own agenda, particularly during times of conflict or political tension.”
“Here's a more detailed explanation:
Purpose:
“State propaganda aims to shape public perception, rally support for government policies, and demonize opponents or enemies.
“Historical examples:
“Nazi Germany: The Nazi regime used propaganda extensively to promote its ideology, glorify Hitler, and demonize Jews and other minorities. Films like "Hitlerjunge Quex" served as propaganda tools.
“World War I Germany: Germany utilized propaganda to portray its war effort as a defensive one and to denounce enemy atrocities, including alleged starvation plans for German civilians, according to Wikipedia.
“The Stasi in East Germany: The East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) engaged in extensive propaganda campaigns, including those against Israel.”
I recently watched a movie on Amazon prime called Mr. Jones. It’s based on a true story about Russia’s relationship with Ukraine during WW 2 and it’s eerily similar to what’s occurring now, except much, much worse. Gareth Jones was a young journalist who traveled to Moscow to write about what was happening in Ukraine. So he travelled to Ukraine to see firsthand what was happening. But he discovered that what Moscow was reporting was propaganda and Ukrainians were literally being starved to death.
It was a difficult movie to watch, but it was eye-opening.
“Gareth was a meticulous note-taker and he recorded everything he saw and all the conversations he had. His diaries were the basis for his articles and, such was the success of Soviet concealment, those from his journey to Moscow and on to Ukraine in 1933 are considered the only reliable eye-witness accounts of a famine that killed millions. Historians disagree on whether this was genocide, but for many Ukrainians it was a deliberate attack on the Ukrainian people. This man-made famine has become known as the Holodomor. Thanks to Gareth and his diaries it is a famine that cannot be denied.”
The movie: The 2020 film "Mr. Jones" is a historical drama directed by Agnieszka Holland, focusing on the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones and his investigation of the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The film highlights Jones's journey to Moscow to uncover the truth behind Stalin's propaganda and the devastating famine, a story that would later inspire George Orwell's "Animal Farm". (Which is revealed in the movie.)
“1933. An ambitious young journalist, Gareth Jones, travels to Moscow to uncover the truth behind Stalin's Soviet propaganda that pushes their "utopia" to the Western world. When he gets a tip that could expose an international conspiracy, Jones' life and the lives of his informants are at stake. Based on a true story that would later…”
Your "search" missed identifying the propaganda efforts in the US begun after WWII and running ever since. These were exposed by the once-famous Church congressional committee in the '70s about how the CIA and FBI were neck-deep in government subversion of the counterculture, and even messing with ordinary Americans.
The same "intelligence" agencies that resurrected themselves, in stealth, in the decades since then. You might start with the bipartisan 2013 NDAA vote and signing explicitly authorizing domestic influence activities in violation of the Bill of Rights.
Oh, regarding the (establishment-supported) AI you apparently used generating the above "history", as well as your watching Amazon and other mainstream media: If you remember the 1960s, you'll recall the protesters' advice "Throw your TV in the trash". It's just as apt today.
"If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you'll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies." --Malcolm X
The reality is that many or most exhibits are promoting untruths of the kind put forward in the now discredited "1619 Project." Imagine an entire museum based on woke 21st century propaganda in order to miscast the altruism of the founding of this country-- as if the slave trade were conceived by the British and solely existed in North America and only enslaved black men. The word "slave" is derived from "slav" as in Slavic. Not many blacks in the Baltics now or 500 years ago. Slaves exist prior to the turks enslaving white Slavic men and women for service in the ottoman empire. The Sub-Saharan black slave trade by blacks of black out numbers the NA slave trade exponentially AND continues to this day!!! Also NOT underscored sufficiently at the museum are the first parties in the entire world to risk their lives and treasure to end the NA slave trade -- white men and women-- all while the rest of the "UNEXCEPTIONAL " rest of the world continued on there marry slave trading ways .. I'm glad someone has the stones to shift the anti American woke BS that underscores every exhibit in that museum. I'll leave it here .. Ms. 4% ..
I don't agree with much of what's above, but if we can't examine genuine beliefs in good faith and be willing to debate every time they are brought up -- perpetually and publicly and fully, in permanently locatable posts -- we are doing the exact same thing we accuse them of, and worse, being patsies for the divide-and-conquer operations and psychopaths. The ones that you don't know about. Just replace the asterisks in the *isms.
Because I'm just as much for transformation to sanity as Marianne, however, jihad is not the way.
We need to initiate a concerted effort to preserve this content, and to restore it when the American people rise up and throw the fascists out of power.
Why do our elected officials have such difficulty in saying NO to the overreaching and often unconstitutional executive orders produced late at night or before dawn by a thin-skinned child acting as the President of this Country. Have these officials no boundaries? Are they poorly educated men and women who slept during American History classes while attending High School and College. Who are they representing in their congressional seats. When will their constituents realized that they are not being represented, that the electees are representing their wallets and not who elected them.
I'm not entirely sure that I feel complacent. What I honestly believe is that in one form or another people have been voting for this ever since 1980. I believe you correctly identified that election and the rise of Ronald Reagan as the beginning of the end of our democracy.
The trouble is that people mostly didn't get what they voted for when they voted for these racist propagandists, until they voted for Donald Trump.
It may be wrong with me to say this, but I honestly believe that a monster like Trump *had to be elected and this "Project 2025" needs to be attempted before the Americans who have been voting for racist privileged policies suffer enough that they realize the error of their thinking.
I'm waiting for the s*** to hit *their fans, because until that happens I don't think an awful lot of people are listening or thinking about this. They're not going to listen better at me or think harder about the situation until their comfortable lives begin to collapse from the inside out.
I know that's cold and cynical. But it also feels realistic to me right now.
How fine you tell the processen of manipulation in politics Marianne. It touches me very much. Thank you for transformaties the politic factts into understandable language
Museums are where the dead still get a voice. Chains in a glass case speak louder than any politician’s press release. Which is exactly why tyrants can’t stand them. Trump doesn’t want history told. He wants it airbrushed until slave shackles look like rustic jewelry and Jim Crow reads like a zoning dispute. That isn’t patriotism. That’s propaganda.
Every dictator starts the same way: control the memory, control the people. Call it Gleichschaltung, call it “review boards,” call it “unity.” It’s all the same hustle. If they erase enough exhibits, you won’t just lose history, you’ll lose the imagination to resist.
Don’t kid yourself. This isn’t about museums. It’s about memory. And if you let liars curate your memory, you’ll wake up one day with no past left worth defending.
I was so pleased to read this piece! We CAN do something about this action! Inspired by the work of Rev. Robert Tanner of Baltimore, I am reaching out to the spiritual/religious communities here in Portland OR and inviting them to support the National Museum of African American History and Culture. My intention is to ultimately, have this be a national movement. You can do the same locally!
"History is written by the victors"; truth has nothing to do with it. Moreover, "truth" about things as complex as human behavior is most often elusive if not impossible, no matter how powerful the illusions. (That's the main reason Right and Left politics continue in perpetuity.) Especially as we've now made an art of conflating the normative with the positive.
Even the modern idea that a diverse group now writes history evades the point: It is *still* based on power, illusions notwithstanding. Power has simply shifted; it always abhors a vacuum. Who chooses in what forums, with their power, which kinds of diversity counts and which does not, must always be part of the examination. No sources can be excluded from the spotlights and microscopes. Thus examination by others, and recusals, by all evangelizers are perpetually necessary.
The battle is really about being the might in might-makes-right. Let's not fool ourselves then about what is "obviously right", but instead retain humility about what we are doing. That's what democracy is about. Then we have a prayer of being able to communicate with each other. Otherwise, we simply have holy wars between religious zealots.
Tom Cruise declined Trump’s offer of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center … He cited a scheduling problem …
As Trump takes more and more control of our Cultural Institutions … We need to push back hard and say … NO … to the Remaking and the Sanitizing of our history and our culture !!!
What can I DO about it? Do I write to the Smithsonian begging them to store the old displays to bring back when we have taken him out? I live in a blue state where my letters are agreed with but have no real impact on the big picture. WHAT and HOW do we protect our beloved museums? Who do I appeal to? I'm willing to fight, but I don't know HOW.
Writing the Smithsonian won't do; they already agree! Write to your local newspaper, post on sites that you think might be open to it, etc. Make sure all your friends understand. Also, follow a woman named Melissa Dalton-Bradford on instagram. She talks about keeping the stoy alive, in the national consciousness. I'm trying to contact her for an interview.
This is awesome, what you’re doing, Marianne Williamson. Thank you, and thank you for this tip. I’ve just hit the follow button on Melissa Dalton-Bradford’s Instagram page.
I agree - we need to wake up - and I think we are, but what does that mean? What can I do? I live in a new co-op community that is a micro of the macro. We have a band of residents who want their way as they do to other people what they don't like being done to them. The best that I can do for the country is learn how to not get overrun by the bullies and at the same time not match their energy with the same war-like mentality. It's learning to respond instead of react. Maybe as we learn how to do this in our community, it will be a model for other communities that are popping up that will eventually influence the bigger world around us. This is what I see I can do.
Greetings Marianne please advise what this means in the text- not sure if typos or simply something I don’t understand “Staats popoganda is …”
German for State Propaganda
I wasn’t sure about that either so I searched it and the following came up. (I think she might have misspelled propaganda):
"Staatspropaganda" translates to "state propaganda" in English. It refers to the deliberate dissemination of information, often biased or misleading, by a government to influence public opinion and promote its own agenda, particularly during times of conflict or political tension.”
“Here's a more detailed explanation:
Purpose:
“State propaganda aims to shape public perception, rally support for government policies, and demonize opponents or enemies.
“Historical examples:
“Nazi Germany: The Nazi regime used propaganda extensively to promote its ideology, glorify Hitler, and demonize Jews and other minorities. Films like "Hitlerjunge Quex" served as propaganda tools.
“World War I Germany: Germany utilized propaganda to portray its war effort as a defensive one and to denounce enemy atrocities, including alleged starvation plans for German civilians, according to Wikipedia.
“The Stasi in East Germany: The East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) engaged in extensive propaganda campaigns, including those against Israel.”
I recently watched a movie on Amazon prime called Mr. Jones. It’s based on a true story about Russia’s relationship with Ukraine during WW 2 and it’s eerily similar to what’s occurring now, except much, much worse. Gareth Jones was a young journalist who traveled to Moscow to write about what was happening in Ukraine. So he travelled to Ukraine to see firsthand what was happening. But he discovered that what Moscow was reporting was propaganda and Ukrainians were literally being starved to death.
It was a difficult movie to watch, but it was eye-opening.
“Gareth was a meticulous note-taker and he recorded everything he saw and all the conversations he had. His diaries were the basis for his articles and, such was the success of Soviet concealment, those from his journey to Moscow and on to Ukraine in 1933 are considered the only reliable eye-witness accounts of a famine that killed millions. Historians disagree on whether this was genocide, but for many Ukrainians it was a deliberate attack on the Ukrainian people. This man-made famine has become known as the Holodomor. Thanks to Gareth and his diaries it is a famine that cannot be denied.”
The following website tells the story…
https://www.garethjones.org/mr_jones/true_story.htm
The movie: The 2020 film "Mr. Jones" is a historical drama directed by Agnieszka Holland, focusing on the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones and his investigation of the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s. The film highlights Jones's journey to Moscow to uncover the truth behind Stalin's propaganda and the devastating famine, a story that would later inspire George Orwell's "Animal Farm". (Which is revealed in the movie.)
“1933. An ambitious young journalist, Gareth Jones, travels to Moscow to uncover the truth behind Stalin's Soviet propaganda that pushes their "utopia" to the Western world. When he gets a tip that could expose an international conspiracy, Jones' life and the lives of his informants are at stake. Based on a true story that would later…”
Amazon Prime
Thank you Merry!
Your "search" missed identifying the propaganda efforts in the US begun after WWII and running ever since. These were exposed by the once-famous Church congressional committee in the '70s about how the CIA and FBI were neck-deep in government subversion of the counterculture, and even messing with ordinary Americans.
The same "intelligence" agencies that resurrected themselves, in stealth, in the decades since then. You might start with the bipartisan 2013 NDAA vote and signing explicitly authorizing domestic influence activities in violation of the Bill of Rights.
Oh, regarding the (establishment-supported) AI you apparently used generating the above "history", as well as your watching Amazon and other mainstream media: If you remember the 1960s, you'll recall the protesters' advice "Throw your TV in the trash". It's just as apt today.
"If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you'll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies." --Malcolm X
I agree that it’s an extremely complex issue.
And I’m significantly more aware of the various shortcomings and the sordid history of the US than you presume.
And for the record, I supported Malcolm X’s ideology during the upheavals of the 1960’s.
Yet I still believe in the idea, the value of what this country stands for.
So I don’t need or desire your self-righteous lectures.
If you prefer another form of government, like Russia for instance, have at it.
You do you and I’ll do me.
First step to ethnic cleansing, destroy their history!
The reality is that many or most exhibits are promoting untruths of the kind put forward in the now discredited "1619 Project." Imagine an entire museum based on woke 21st century propaganda in order to miscast the altruism of the founding of this country-- as if the slave trade were conceived by the British and solely existed in North America and only enslaved black men. The word "slave" is derived from "slav" as in Slavic. Not many blacks in the Baltics now or 500 years ago. Slaves exist prior to the turks enslaving white Slavic men and women for service in the ottoman empire. The Sub-Saharan black slave trade by blacks of black out numbers the NA slave trade exponentially AND continues to this day!!! Also NOT underscored sufficiently at the museum are the first parties in the entire world to risk their lives and treasure to end the NA slave trade -- white men and women-- all while the rest of the "UNEXCEPTIONAL " rest of the world continued on there marry slave trading ways .. I'm glad someone has the stones to shift the anti American woke BS that underscores every exhibit in that museum. I'll leave it here .. Ms. 4% ..
"Black people invented slavery and white men and women tried to end it.
Oh.
I don't agree with much of what's above, but if we can't examine genuine beliefs in good faith and be willing to debate every time they are brought up -- perpetually and publicly and fully, in permanently locatable posts -- we are doing the exact same thing we accuse them of, and worse, being patsies for the divide-and-conquer operations and psychopaths. The ones that you don't know about. Just replace the asterisks in the *isms.
Because I'm just as much for transformation to sanity as Marianne, however, jihad is not the way.
We need to initiate a concerted effort to preserve this content, and to restore it when the American people rise up and throw the fascists out of power.
Why do our elected officials have such difficulty in saying NO to the overreaching and often unconstitutional executive orders produced late at night or before dawn by a thin-skinned child acting as the President of this Country. Have these officials no boundaries? Are they poorly educated men and women who slept during American History classes while attending High School and College. Who are they representing in their congressional seats. When will their constituents realized that they are not being represented, that the electees are representing their wallets and not who elected them.
What the heck are you guys creating over there? What an incredible opportunity to think about and create what YOU want.
It's about twisting the historical truth that Trump was talking about. The left ideology actually destroying American values.
And he’s doing all of it with the lights on!
People are becoming too complacent, like there's nothing we can do. We have to flood the field with the information!
Agreed! Complacency is not an option!
I'm not entirely sure that I feel complacent. What I honestly believe is that in one form or another people have been voting for this ever since 1980. I believe you correctly identified that election and the rise of Ronald Reagan as the beginning of the end of our democracy.
The trouble is that people mostly didn't get what they voted for when they voted for these racist propagandists, until they voted for Donald Trump.
It may be wrong with me to say this, but I honestly believe that a monster like Trump *had to be elected and this "Project 2025" needs to be attempted before the Americans who have been voting for racist privileged policies suffer enough that they realize the error of their thinking.
I'm waiting for the s*** to hit *their fans, because until that happens I don't think an awful lot of people are listening or thinking about this. They're not going to listen better at me or think harder about the situation until their comfortable lives begin to collapse from the inside out.
I know that's cold and cynical. But it also feels realistic to me right now.
How fine you tell the processen of manipulation in politics Marianne. It touches me very much. Thank you for transformaties the politic factts into understandable language
One in hart from Belgium and Europe!
Museums are where the dead still get a voice. Chains in a glass case speak louder than any politician’s press release. Which is exactly why tyrants can’t stand them. Trump doesn’t want history told. He wants it airbrushed until slave shackles look like rustic jewelry and Jim Crow reads like a zoning dispute. That isn’t patriotism. That’s propaganda.
Every dictator starts the same way: control the memory, control the people. Call it Gleichschaltung, call it “review boards,” call it “unity.” It’s all the same hustle. If they erase enough exhibits, you won’t just lose history, you’ll lose the imagination to resist.
Don’t kid yourself. This isn’t about museums. It’s about memory. And if you let liars curate your memory, you’ll wake up one day with no past left worth defending.
I was so pleased to read this piece! We CAN do something about this action! Inspired by the work of Rev. Robert Tanner of Baltimore, I am reaching out to the spiritual/religious communities here in Portland OR and inviting them to support the National Museum of African American History and Culture. My intention is to ultimately, have this be a national movement. You can do the same locally!
"History is written by the victors"; truth has nothing to do with it. Moreover, "truth" about things as complex as human behavior is most often elusive if not impossible, no matter how powerful the illusions. (That's the main reason Right and Left politics continue in perpetuity.) Especially as we've now made an art of conflating the normative with the positive.
Even the modern idea that a diverse group now writes history evades the point: It is *still* based on power, illusions notwithstanding. Power has simply shifted; it always abhors a vacuum. Who chooses in what forums, with their power, which kinds of diversity counts and which does not, must always be part of the examination. No sources can be excluded from the spotlights and microscopes. Thus examination by others, and recusals, by all evangelizers are perpetually necessary.
The battle is really about being the might in might-makes-right. Let's not fool ourselves then about what is "obviously right", but instead retain humility about what we are doing. That's what democracy is about. Then we have a prayer of being able to communicate with each other. Otherwise, we simply have holy wars between religious zealots.