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In the mid-twentieth century, it was understood that the leaders of a coup would reliably seize media outlets first<\/strong>, commandeering radio and later television broadcast apparatus as a quick and efficient way to stop the flow of unwanted information and discourse, flooding the people with a message that made it crystal clear who was in charge and what the new bosses offered and demanded. The internet has of course changed all that. Too many networks, outlets, means of communication to entirely drown out countervailing voices. <\/p>\n So Trump must be content with his little communication ventures<\/strong>, the pallid Twitter imitator Truth Social first among them\u2014though perpetually last in comparison with major social media, with about six million users versus Facebook\u2019s three billion. For now, his best shot at a mass audience is to keep flooding the zone with outrageous pronouncements and actions and hope news sources don\u2019t get tired of reporting them.<\/p>\n Something else is happening, though<\/strong>. Trump is taking a leaf from notable twentieth century dictators. He is setting out to convert the institutions created to support art to temples dedicated to his own glory, evidently hoping, as his role models did, to plaster his face and words across the landscape. To wit:<\/p>\n Yesterday, it was announced that Trump had fired the remaining 18 trustees and the president of Washington\u2019s Kennedy Center<\/a>, the flagship national performing arts institution. He filled their seats with his pals and toadies, even tipping a few by appointing their wives (Elaine Chao and Usha Vance), and doubling up on some seats, for instance by appointing Attorney General Pam Bondi. You can see the whole list here<\/a>. Don\u2019t miss Melania Trump as Honorary Chair. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s Trump\u2019s statement on the occasion of his self-appointment to the chair<\/strong>: \u201cIt is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!\u201d This is kind of a low-rent version of Napoleon at Notre-Dame de Paris crowning himself Emperor in 1804, while the Pope, whose task coronations had been, stood looking on. <\/p>\n A few days earlier, the revamping of the National Endowment for the Arts began with a group of placeholders standing in for departing officers. American Theatre<\/em><\/a> magazine has a nice compilation of the news that has followed. A few highlights:<\/p>\n The Challenge America progra<\/strong>m, which recently gave 272 grants of $10,000 each to small arts organizations in underserved and low-income communities, was canceled. There\u2019s always been an imbalance in federal arts funding, with the haves receiving far larger grants than community-based organizations. This program was a very modest effort to address that longstanding problem.<\/p>\n The only grant criterion mentioned in the Endowment\u2019s announcements<\/strong> concerned projects supporting its partnership with America250<\/a>, started in 2016 to support commemorations of the semiquincentennial in 2026. This has led some people to wonder whether patriotic spectacle will be a chief focus of the NEA going forward, especially since Trump has also made an executive order to create a \u201cNational Garden of American Heroes\u201d containing 250 statues (the executive order<\/a> lists them all, and no, it is not satire), then appointed himself head of a White House task force to plan what he says will be a \u201cgrand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence.\u201d <\/p>\n There are new provisions on the \u201cAssurance of Compliance<\/a>\u201d page<\/strong> of the NEA\u2019s guidelines, adding to longstanding anti-discrimination clauses new prohibitions against DEI and against violating the \u201cbiological truth\u201d that there can be only two immutable genders. Given the degree to which arts organizations include and represent racial diversity and equity, and given the representation of sexual minorities in every corner of the art world, we can assume that future grants will lean ever more heavily toward artists and projects characterized by white, straight, and right-wing participants and views.<\/p>\n One likely effect is to shift private sector funding, particularly by foundations, to take up some of the slack thus created, rescuing projects rooted in communities of color and projects portraying gender and sexual diversity from draconian cuts. That will have a knock-on effect in making funds scarcer for others too. So even though the National Endowment for the Arts is a pathetically small agency which has never allocated more than a few cents per capita to support arts projects of all kinds across the U.S., redirecting those funds to Trump\u2019s orgy of self-glorification will have far wider impact.<\/p>\n There are protests and worries, of course:<\/strong> Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds, and Renee Fleming, artist-advisors to the Kennedy Center, have resigned; artists express fear <\/a>for their futures. And we\u2019ve already seen some of the predictable mealy-mouthing from advocacy groups, such as this statement from Americans for the Arts<\/a>: <\/p>\n \u201cAmericans for the Arts remains committed to the fundamental principle that the arts and artists from all backgrounds enrich every community and should be accessible to all. As cultural leaders across the country have noted, excellence in the arts is enhanced when we embrace the full spectrum of American creativity and experience.\u00a0Regardless of political changes, our mission remains steadfast: to support artists, arts organizations, and advocates in protecting and expanding access to the arts for all.\u201d<\/p>\n It remains to be seen how Trump\u2019s plans will unfold over time<\/strong>. Ronald Reagan zeroed out the NEA in his proposed first-term budget, but Congress demurred. Ditto in Trump\u2019s first term. One enduring problem for eliminationists is that rich Republican donors don\u2019t want the opera, museum, symphony, and ballet boards they serve on to lose public funding, and what they want carries political weight. Trump seems to be trying to solve that problem by maintaining funding for the agency while repurposing as much of it as possible as a monument to himself. <\/p>\n If the way that Mussolini\u2019s cultural policy has looked with the passage of time is any indication, history will remember Trump as a spectacularly self-regarding buffoon, and all this nonsense as a passing bad smell. May it be so. I\u2019ve been listening to a lot of Joshua Redman lately. Here\u2019s \u201cWhere Are You?<\/a>\u201d sung by Gabrielle Cavassa.<\/p>\n
I was clicking around my website to see what I\u2019d written at the beginning of Trump\u2019s first term<\/strong>, and came across this essay\u2014Machiavelli Nailed It!<\/a>\u2014from January 2017. I was surprised to recall how many quick and alarming actions were undertaken soon after his first inauguration, and how appalled I was that he was then facing so little Congressional opposition to his actions and appointments. He seemed to be trying to follow the playbook set down 500 years earlier in Niccolo Machiavelli\u2019s political treatise, The Prince<\/em>, which helped me put the whole mess into perspective. If you have time, give that essay a read.<\/p>\n