The Totalitarian Philistine
The Wicked Seeds of Donald Trump's Lifelong Desecration of the Arts Are Now Blooming into an Authoritarian Garden of Thorny Grotesquness. We Must Throw Salt on the Roots and Not Water It.
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Yesterday Useful Idiot Krasnov, the self-appointed chair of The Kennedy Center who never attended any ceremonial inductions of Kennedy Center honorees during his first administration, and his board's merry band of Blackshirts held their first public meeting. These new board members include the journalistic hack Laura Ingraham and second lady Usha Vance who, like her husband, the Kennedy Center audience booed last week.
At the end of the meeting, Useful Idiot Krasnov took a tour of The Kennedy Center, which won accolades for its physical renovations. But of course, Useful Idiot Krasnov saw problems in the once venerable artistic institution.
He declared he would “fix” all he found “disappointing,” so The Kennedy Center would no longer produce or showcase “woke” art.
This was not Useful Idiot Krasnov’s first attack on the arts nor will it be his last . Before Useful Idiot Krasnov eradicated the Kennedy Center and its bipartisan board, the Mump-Nazi Reich targeted federal funding for the arts when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) cancelled its “Challenge America Grant.”
Why? Because the grant funded arts organizations and their programs in underserved and marginalized communities. They did not align with the Mump-Nazi Reich’s demolition of DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) and its white supremacist codification. Torey Akers in his The Arts Newspaper article wrote:
Small arts organisations around the country fear what these reprioritisations might mean for the future of their programming. Roger Schmidt, the executive director of Sitka Fine Arts Camp, which serves students from rural Alaska, called the change “a political and ideological stunt” in a statement to The Washington Post, adding: “If I were to tell the kids that this summer was going to be about the Constitution … I think that narrow focus would be really devastating.”
Schmidt’s observation mirrored what legendary poet, essayist and novelist Erica Jong and former Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs commissioner Mark Kelley told me for my 2017 Huffington Post commentary about Useful Useful Idiot Krasnov’s initial plan to eliminate the NEA.
Jong had emphasized that the NEA mostly supports smaller arts organization and their projects; the larger NEA grant is often “cheering interest” when those organizations apply for smaller grants and private funding. Using the very same word as Schmidt, Kelly had said eliminating the NEA “would have a devastating impact on Chicago’s arts and culture scene.”
Because he's a gelatinous-brained vulgarian who has never valued or appreciated art (in the early 1980s when he razed the Bonwit Teller store for his ostentatious Trump Tower, he destroyed the legendary building’s art deco friezes that he had promised to donate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art), I am not at all surprised that Useful Idiot Krasnov cancelled an NEA grant or named himself head of The Kennedy Center. Nor am I surprised that he “fire[d] federal employees who care for the more than 26,000 artworks and artifacts owned by the US government, potentially imperiling the collection, which contains pieces dating back to the 1800s.”
Ravishing and cynically using the arts are totalitarian leaders’ modus operandi. These actions satisfy their viciousness and fulfill their evil desire to eliminate truth and choice and brainwash a country. Doing so allows totalitarian regimes to restructure government and infect the populace with mediocrity, propagandistic slop and bigoted bile.
By demolishing art, culture and literacy, these regimes dumb down and weaken its citizenry. Those same totalitarians then use artists who share their putrid political viewpoints (Mel Gibson, Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Lee Greenwood are recent examples) and the artists who cravenly obey in advance to accomplish their authoritarian goals.
Artists are cynically used to further indoctrinate society at large with toxic and violent lies. As a result, fear increases, independent thought atrophies and critical and creative thinking become eradicated.
The NEA and the Kennedy Center are the early sacrifices in the Mump-Nazi Reich's mission to turn the United States into a full white supremacist Christian theocracy nourished by cruelty and vileness. People who choose the Mump-Nazi Reich at the ballot box or have chosen to remain uninformed and uninvolved will not be immune when this noxious garden's thorns break their skin as well.
Because of this, it is necessary that all Americans become vigilant and active right now. Those of us who are aware of how the Nazis consumed Germany, a country that gave the world Beethoven, Goethe, Freud, Einstein and F.W. Murnau but fell under the spell of a frustrated and failed artist, know that along with the German Jewish community, Black Germans, the disabled and the LGBT community, intellectuals and artists were attacked and oppressed.
Laurence W. Britt in his Free Inquiry commentary “Fascism Anyone?” had “[d]isdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts” at number 11 on his list of 14 signs of fascism:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scape-goats as a unifying cause.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.
When I went though Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership last year, I looked for its stance on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Council for the Arts that advises the NEA and the National Council for the Humanities that advises the NEH.
When I could not find any mention of the NEA or NEH specifically in Project 2025, I reached out to my former editor at RANTT News
. He is an expert on Project 2025 and wrote numerous articles about it on his Substack Ahmed Baba’s Newsletter and his column for The Independent.Since I was “staying in my lane” when addressing Project 2025 on this Substack, I only focused on chapters that dealt with education, communication, media and health. This made me wonder if I missed the NEA and the NEH in my strategic reading of Project 2025’s other chapters.
Ahmed told me I didn’t, but like me, he was certain those independent agencies along with culture and the arts would not be safe from Project 2025 and Useful Idiot Krasnov. Since January 20, Ahmed's and my educated guess has been proven correct.
Nearly a week before Useful Idiot Krasnov and his Blackshirts befouled The Kennedy Center, the ever-affable and quick-witted Nathan Lane appeared on The Late Show. He told host Stephen Colbert what upcoming productions the new fascist Kennedy Center has planned. Between the laughs though firmly sat horror. Lane addresses The Kennedy Center at the 05:35 mark.
I mean, you know, The Kennedy Center. He just couldn’t keep his teeny-tiny baby hands off it. Who knew Trump could cause more damage to the Kennedy name than RFK Jr?
And the new season that he’s preparing is very troubling. Like tomorrow night they have a youth choir made up entirely of Elon Musk’s children. Because “Hamilton” canceled its engagement, they are producing Lee Greenwood’s all-rap musical tribute to Ronald Regan staring Kanye West. It’s called “Trickle Down.” That is followed by a new production of “The Sound of Music” told from the point of view of the Nazis. [. . . .] Trust me. You don’t want to hear the list of their favorite things.
And if that wasn’t enough, he just cancelled an appearance by The Gay Men’s Chorus, which upset a lot of people, especially all those conservative Republicans on Grinder. Shockingly, I was approached [to host] their grand reopening gala. They didn’t offer to pay me, but they did offer not to send me to Guantanamo Bay.
And of course RFK, Jr. wants an all unvaccinated audience, which means everybody goes home with a gift bag and rubella.
Bleeped out before Lane began his comedic monologue was his response to Colbert’s question about how culture will fare under Useful Idiot Krasnov. I am not a lip reader, but I am certain Lane said, “We’re totally fucked.”
Though Lane and I are white and have that racial privilege, we remain marginalized and in the crosshairs of the Mump-Nazi Reich. Lane is a gay man, and I am a disabled woman.
We also sit in the crosshairs because we are artists. I am submerged by Lane’s remarkable shadow, but we have enough of a footprint with our work for Big Balls and other Mump-Nazi stormtroopers to track and target us if they don’t like what we produce, especially our criticisms of this deplorable rul.
Countless times I've said the United States needs to go full punk rock on the Mump-Nazi Reich. Punk rock is an ethos as well as a rock music style. This ethos makes throwing sand in the gears and jamming a spoke in the wheel fun.
An example of going full punk rock is Nirvana's performance on Top of the Pops. For decades, Britain’s popular music show forced musicians to lip sync their greatest hits. Top of the Pops marked the start of Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd pulling away from the music industry and fame.
Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl took a different route from Barrett. They not only threw sand in the gears but overturned the commercial machine for one night.
Use your own creativity and brilliance to go full punk rock against the Mump-Nazi Reich. This is our moment.