American culture is in grave danger. Worse yet, its knowledge of its history, its very understanding of what America is and has been, is under attack.

It started with Donald Trump taking over the Kennedy Center, firing most its board and replacing the members with cronies. A previously bipartisan institution is now almost exclusively Republican. Trump lackeys accused the Center of being “woke and … broke.” The president is now the director.

There has been fallout: musician Ben Folds resigned as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra. Issa Rae, Rhiannon Giddend, and the musical Hamilton have all canceled shows.

The takeover seems to have been over the three drag shows the Center put on last year. Three out of 2,000. Apparently, giving representation to trans people at the nation’s preeminent cultural showcase was unacceptable.

Defining what is “acceptable” art is an early move for authoritarians. The Nazis didn’t just burn books, which are published by the hundreds and can often be smuggled out of the country. Books, as expressions of ideas, are hard to kill. No, the Nazis also burned paintings, singular and irreplaceable. Many lost masterpieces by modern artists, such as Klee, Picasso, and Dali. Even the often anodyne Impressionists were condemned by authorities as “degenerate.”

The history of a nation’s art is a history of its soul. And museums are the holder of that history, both in its art and in the physical reminders of the past. This is as true for America as anywhere else, possibly more so. The pictures and stories of the experiences of Blacks keep the unforgiving facts of slavery and Jim Crow front and center in ways that many whites feel uncomfortable about.

That is one of the functions of the National Museum of African-American Culture and History. Filled with stories of the pain, it also contains stories of hope and courage. It records not only the horrible history of Blacks in America but also responses to it.

It has the following the first page of its website:

Our mission is to capture and share the unvarnished truth of African American history and culture. We connect stories, scholarship, art, and artifacts from the past and present to illuminate the contributions, struggles, and triumphs that have shaped our nation. We forge new and compelling avenues for audiences to experience the arc of living history.

Trump hates that. He has taken direct aim at the NMAACH, and all the Smithsonian museums. In an Executive Order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” he has given J.D. Vance instructions to  Vice President JD Vance to review all properties, programs and presentations in the Smithsonian to prohibit programs that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race.”

His goal is to whitewash history — literally. He wants to sanitize all the bad parts of our past. He wants to pretend that all the horrors faced by Blacks during the life of our country — and by extensions the sometimes heroic responses to those horrors, as well as the accomplishments of people in the face of unrelenting racism — never happened. He wants to enshrine white supremacy by eliminating the story of Black experience.

Other Smithsonian museums will be affected as well, of course, to a lesser extent. The only museum likely to be left alone is the Natural History museum. (The Museum of the American Indian will face similar issues to the NMAACH, probably.) If they can only change their exhibits some, and keep other artifacts previously on display out of the public eye but still in their collections, they can be okay. But it’s impossible for me to see how the NMAACH will not be totally destroyed.

I have been to the National Museum of African American Culture and History. It was a deeply moving and inspiring experience. It makes me physically ill to think what Vance — and Trump — are going to do to it.

God help us.