The Origins of Trump's Slapdash, Last-Second '1776 Report' - The Bulwark
Tweet text:Charlie Sykes
@SykesCharlie
·
Jan 24, 2021
"It is a self-plagiarized mishmash of sanitized history, high school civics, right-wing gripes, and authoritarian gestures"
https://thebulwark.com/the-origins-of-trumps-slapdash-last-second-1776-report/
via @BulwarkOnline
The Origins of Trumps Slapdash, Last-Second 1776 Report - The Bulwark
It can be understood as the other side of the coin to Michael Antons angry Flight 93 argument.
thebulwark.com
Charlie Sykes
@SykesCharlie
"The overall effect is that of an undergraduate paper slapped together quickly by copy-pasting pre-existing text, stitching it together with clichés, and amply padding it to meet the required page count."
9:32 AM · Jan 24, 2021
https://thebulwark.com/the-origins-of-trumps-slapdash-last-second-1776-report/
On Monday, a presidential commission that Donald Trump established last year to promote patriotic education issued its report.
On Wednesday, the commission was disbanded by Joe Biden and its report wiped from the White House website and re-hosted by the National Archives.
In the 48 hours between, the report was panned by historians and criticsvery likely the only people who will take much notice of the blink-and-its-gone document.
Ostensibly a rejoinder to the New York Timess 1619 Project, the 1776 Report asserts the timeless values of the American founding and the exceptional goodness of the American past. Building on Trumps professed desire to clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country, the reports authors say they believe that a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future.
The world will little note, nor long remember, the 1776 Report. But before it passes entirely from memory, it is worth taking a moment to examine what it is and how it came to be, not because it is intellectually seriousin fact, it is a self-plagiarized mishmash of sanitized history, high school civics, right-wing gripes, and authoritarian gesturesbut because of what it reveals about the rise of a certain strain of conservative ideology: fundamentalist West Coast Straussianism.
*snip*