Unless you have a New Yorker subscription, you won't be able to read her article. So I'll give you a few high points. Lepore says:
"Make America Great Again" is a four-word argument about American history, and one of the movement's aims has always been to press the teaching and writing of American history into the service of that argument." Trump wishes "...to make American history great again by removing all evidence of anything that ever happened that wasn't so great..."
"In the Trump era, government censorship of American history has been used against not only classroom teachers but also against writers and publishers and librarians and booksellers..."
Gift shops at national parks and National Historic Sites are now supposed to review what they offer for sale for conforming to the "President's preferred account of American history."
Not so great things have happened in America. And everywhere else. Does pretending they didn't happen make it so? Will pretending these things didn't happen make life better now or in the future?
History vs Politics
I've just started reading Lepore's The Story of America: Essays on Origins. In the Introduction (I read introductions these days) she says she wrote these essays "because I wanted to try to explain how history works, and how it's different from politics." They are both interested in stories about the past, but
"Politics is a story about the relationship between the past and the future; history is a story about the relationships between the past and the present."
"Politics is accountable to opinion; history is accountable to evidence."
But more on The Story of America after I've read beyond the Introduction.
In the meantime, in Lepore's article Writing the Trump Years Into History she writes about how difficult it is to write historically about the very recent past, because you can't get much perspective on it. And writing a history of our recent past is complicated by what you might call the legal restrictions being placed on history. She brings up the issue of books purchased by Florida public schools, libraries, and universities requiring stickers that indicate the federal name for "Gulf of Mexico" is "Gulf of America," though the term "Gulf of Mexico" first appears in documents from the sixteenth century.
Does the whole "Gulf of America" thing mean that governments today can change history? Yes, it's only a name, but it's a name that's been in use for four hundred years.
"...sometimes," Lepore says, "the only thing to do is to fight. And the only way I know how to fight is to write."
Is Reading History a Political Act?
I am going to argue that those of us who don't write can also fight the political takeover of history. We can do it by reading.
No, don't just say "Those executive orders about history are ... " whatever outrageous term comes to mind. Don't just complain. Don't just make jokes about the President sleeping through history class. Jokes aren't doing anything these days.
You know what does do something? Educating ourselves.
Read history. Any history. Any group's history. Just by reading it, you're helping to preserve it. Support the historians you read by buying their work or by asking libraries for it or by reviewing it on-line. Spread your new-found knowledge any way you can.
My somewhat shallow knowledge of history suggests to me that someday we will come out the other side of what's happening now. Groups don't stay in power forever, and the kinds of groups in power now have not held on for long periods in the past.
We are not powerless. We can retain historical knowledge for the future. Perhaps that is a political act.