Our country’s magnificent National Park System has been called “America’s greatest idea.”

These 433 treasures – along with our rich diversity of national museums and historical sites – each have their own stories to tell. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, for together they express America’s egalitarian sprit and “little-d” democratic possibilities, urging us to keep pushing for economic fairness and social justice for all.

And that’s exactly why Trump and his cabal of moneyed elites and right-wing extremists are out to purge, erase and officially censor the parks’ historical presentations. After all, it’s hard to impose plutocratic autocracy if such tangible examples of historic truth and democratic rebellion are openly displayed!

Thus, as dictated by the GOP’s secretive anti-democracy clique, Project 2025, Trump’s ideological Thought Police have set themselves up as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” to sanitize and Disneyfy the telling of our people’s real history. For example, Trump complains that parks and museums hurt America’s self-image by telling “how bad slavery was.”

Hello, Donald – that’s not an image, it’s reality, as central to our national character as our historic commitment to equality. And the explosive conflict between ugly repression and flowering egalitarianism is ever present today. Consider the push by Sen. Eric Schmitt and others in the GOP’s Christian Nationalist movement to deny the unifying principle that “all men are created equal.”

There’s not enough whitewash in the world to cover up the deep ugliness of slavery, and it’s self-destructive for government to try. The fundamental purpose of recording our shared history is to learn from it.

Do something!

You might’ve heard about the Alt National Park Service, but they might not be quite who they say they are, as it turns out. To support park rangers fighting the good fight in their work and off-duty, check out Resistance Rangers.

On the museum front, AFSCME and the American Library Association are actively fighting to block the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

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