By Molly Wallace
Earlier this week, President Trump was anointed chairman of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees—but only after firing all of the Democratic appointees on the board and handpicking their replacements to join the remaining half of the board (all Republican appointees), bucking the decades-long norm of a bipartisan Kennedy Center board. After this new, entirely Republican-appointed slate of trustees voted him in, he posted, “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees.” Then he fired the Kennedy Center’s president and installed someone loyal to him to run the Center.
I have to admit, I knew zero about the Kennedy Center’s governance structure before a few days ago when Trump first declared his intention to become its chairman. But somehow, amid the torrent of executive actions and chaos coming out of the White House these past few weeks, this act has stood out to me as particularly chilling.
Put aside for the moment whether you enjoy watching Shakespeare or drag shows (sometimes one in the same!) or reality TV or ballet or country music or avant-garde theater or action movies. It should bother us, as Americans, that the president just did away with a bipartisan board of trustees and installed himself chair of the most prominent cultural institution in the nation’s capital.
One of the few things that unites us as Americans these days amid our important policy disagreements is the value we place on individual freedom and on the importance of upholding the Constitution—notably, the checks and balances that prevent the president from becoming a king. Without those values, who are we? When Americans stand at ballgames with our hands on our hearts, listening to the National Anthem, or when we adhere to a peaceful transfer of power every four or eight years, even if grudgingly (because we disagree vehemently with the new president’s platform), these values are what hold us together as a nation.
But right now we have a president who, in addition to violating the Constitution on a daily basis, is now hell bent on determining what American culture will look like.
This sounds familiar.
We saw it in communist China under Mao Zedong, whose Cultural Revolution aimed to rid the country of any forms of cultural expression that did not adhere to his idea of the revolutionary aesthetic.
We saw it in the Soviet Union under Stalin, where only art and culture that glorified the communist party was deemed acceptable.
We saw it in the Third Reich, where Nazis banned what they saw as “degenerate” music and art and burned books thought to be subversive, instead only celebrating art and music designated as “Aryan” or that depicted German strength.
This does not happen in the United States of America. Or, rather, it should not.
This only happens when autocrats are trying to consolidate their power, as they know that creative expression can be powerful and subversive. Creative expression is also one of the clearest manifestations of personal freedom and is protected by the First Amendment in the U.S.—so, surely the examples above are not relevant to us here, right?
As hard as it is to believe though, this sort of autocratic takeover is precisely what we’re seeing: Currently, two billionaires with a perverse sense of entitlement think they can do whatever they want with our democratic and cultural institutions, treating the Constitution as a pesky inconvenience that doesn’t apply to rich people. President Trump and Elon Musk—who was not elected and who did not go through the democratic nomination process in the Senate—are firing inspectors general who were investigating Musk’s business practices; they are gaining access to our private data; they are firing government employees who are carrying out the mandates they were given by a democratically elected Congress and freezing federal funds allocated by Congress that serve Americans of all stripes—veterans, farmers, schoolchildren, the elderly—as well as the national interest. The president appears to be flagrantly disregarding his oath of office, and Musk never even took one. Unfortunately, our Republican representatives and senators in control of the House and Senate have been unable to muster the courage to stand up to this autocratic takeover, seemingly more concerned about reelection than they are about safeguarding our freedoms and our Constitution—despite acknowledging that what President Trump is doing is, in fact, violating the Constitution.
We can’t stand for a king or a party chairman or any other sort of tyrant or autocrat here in the U.S.—so it is up to us to stop this, together. We will not be lulled to sleep. We see what they’re up to, and, whatever our political affiliation, we are united by our commitment to freedom and to the Constitution. As research on nonviolent resistance in authoritarian regimes has shown, autocrats only have the power that we give them when we obey their orders and their edicts. If we refuse to cooperate with their unconstitutional or autocratic demands—if we refuse to change the names of trustees on that website, if we refuse to leave our jobs when unjustly fired, if we refuse to spend our money at institutions or companies that have bowed down to the “king,” if we refuse to compromise our professional integrity when asked to do so—their ability to steamroll the Constitution begins to evaporate. If everyone in Congress starts to hear overwhelmingly from their constituents that this autocratic takeover won’t stand—and if they begin to understand that those lacking the courage to defend the Constitution will be voted out of office—then we may start to see them do their part to safeguard our democracy.
My daughter, who has been trying to figure out some of the main ideological differences between the two primary political parties, was listening to the news with me the other day and asked quizzically, trying to sort it all out: “But I thought Republicans were for small government. How is the president controlling what the Kennedy Center puts on ‘small government’?” I wasn’t sure what to tell her.
I sure hope our Republican representatives and senators in Congress can clarify where they stand, defend our American values, and have a clear answer for her and the kids across the country who are just now learning what it means to be American. Does it mean celebrating the lively array of cultural forms that comes from Americans being free and expressing themselves freely? Or is it starting to mean something else: Looking over your shoulder to make sure a party member doesn’t see how you express yourself or, worse yet, ratting out a classmate or neighbor who is listening to music or reading a book that is not deemed acceptable?
Let’s choose freedom, in all its messiness and nonconformity, and stand up to those who think we won’t notice them taking it away. Who would we be otherwise?
Molly Wallace, Ph.D., teaches in the conflict resolution program at Portland State University, writes and edits for the Peace Science Digest. She’s interested in nonviolent approaches to security and resistance and is engaged in dialogue and bridge-building efforts at the local level. Perhaps more importantly, she’s a concerned citizen and a mom.
