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It's still in April, but President Donald Trump already lets you know that October day widely recognized as Columbus day will actually be the Columbus Day, thank you very much.
The move, announced during the weekend as the new dish of support on the buffet of the cultural war, is only the last signal at the base of Maga of Trump that it will not bend to politically correct or the progressive ideology which promotes the day of Aboriginal peoples, which, under President Joe Biden, coexisted on this date. Christopher Columbus – who Never Base in the United States, but is nevertheless taught in schools as having “discovered” America-is up there among the American icons “canceled” with Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee. For Trump and his basic understanding of the story, Columbus is also at the heart of the DNA of the United States as the apple and Betsy Ross pie, and the day of the Aboriginal peoples interlope is a pernicious effort to divert it as a cancer.
“The Democrats have done everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation and all the Italians who love him so much,” posted the president on Truth Social on Sunday, his alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter. “They demolished his statues and only put” wake up “or worse, nothing at all! Well, you will be happy to know, Christopher will make a major return. I re -examine by the present Columbus day under the same rules, dates and places, as has had during the many decades before! ”
To be clear: Trump does not have the power to unilaterally declare a national holiday. No one has “destroyed” the holidays either; Biden published proclamations recognizing Columbus day per year. At the same time, he recognized the day of indigenous peoples, but the congress did not designated in a federal holiday. Similar measures would be necessary to set up the Columbus day of the ranks Federal holidays. Congress did not do so. Congress members try a couple times To demarcate Columbus by changing the name of the holidays, but these efforts failed. Several columbus statues have been deleted In recent years, but it is not as if Ohio has been going to rename its capital Anytime soon. Even in the real blue Manhattan, Columbus Circle always has its homonym 76 feet high in its center, a monument Developed in response to the violent lynchings of Italian-American immigrants.
October 13 was always going to be Columbus Day, no matter what Trump said or did or tweeted. And, while implicitly saying the day of indigenous peoples is no longer, the president did not go technically so far. But her base heard what she wanted.
The presidency has always been a largely performative task, undertaken while waiting for the public -oriented aspect of employment requires a show. The concert is an act 24/7, but Trump carries it to a new level while he informs the grievances and feeds the division for the gain of his own movement. His latest announcement is a naked call for voters who feel a new era of politics exclude them by descending a colonizing explorer who, according to the understanding of the elementary school, in 1492 “navigating the blue of the ocean”. The reality is much more complex For a figure that opened the door to a European expansionism which led to the decimation and slavery of the Americans born in the country. No less than 56 million Americans born in the country deceased Following the arrival of Europeans here between 1492 and 1600, but the poem of the elementary school is still as catchy.
Likewise, political memory has always been ripe for armaments. There is a dark link between history and nationalism, the two feeding on each other to paint an ideal that can sometimes become violent to defend both an imaginary and systemic inequality. It is enough to look at the rise of white Christian nationalism during the last half century which accompanied the increase in civil rights and the violence which it sparked. It is almost impossible to imagine the mag present in the absence of a nationalist nativist history.
But the irony is that Columbus has never held on what is today in continental North America, although it has become a rallying point After Italian-American immigrants were lynché In the 1890s. Columbus was a replacement for the country's hagiographic origin, just like the Mayflower or its Western pioneers. As Stephen Sondheim so wisely observed it, the children will listen to the stories that tell them, and these myths are difficult to shake once they settle. This is why everyone is Irish on the day of Saint -Patrick, and next Monday will see the lines of our local Taquerias for Cinco de Mayo – two holidays that are barely ranked in their alleged landscapes.
All this suggests that Trump is less interested in correcting the story or justifying a sale of mattresses of the week of vacation than preventing his faithful from feeling injured – then embraced. With a wink and a megaphone, Trump teaches at his base never to go back from their dug positions, even those based on invented stories that have been taught in kindergarten.
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