Another horrific example about how damaging Donald Trump is to our national heritage! He is desecrating the Iwo Jima Memorial!

Donald rump will silence opposition to his crusade against diversity. It's sickening and outrageous❗ Echo opinion published in NewJersey.com by
Rob Miraldi

The evil Donald Trump administration supported by Republican cult removed Ira Hayes' Native American heritage from the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo website.

The Department of Defense cited "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs" as eroding camaraderie and threatening mission execution.

Books on sensitive topics like the Holocaust and racism were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy library.

Vice President J.D. Vance is tasked with removing exhibits from the Smithsonian that promote ideologies inconsistent with federal policy.
The author argues these actions are a violation of the First Amendment and exemplify authoritarianism.

Ira Hamilton Hayes, born in 1923, was a Pima Indian, raised on the Gala Reservation in Arizona. The 15,000 Pima who lived there were known to be peaceful and educated when many of the Native Americans out West were not. But the Pima were treated poorly, their land relentlessly used up by the settlers. Hayes was quiet — very quiet — but also very intense. His nickname was “Chief Falling Cloud,” his favorite game was solitaire and he was an avid reader. If he was a loner, it should not be surprising. Pimas were not allowed to vote or be citizens.

Hayes lived in a one-room adobe hut with his parents and five siblings. His mother, Nancy, was a devout Presbyterian; the Bible and the American flag prominent in their home. While attending the Phoenix Indian School, each day would begin with news about World War II. The students would then rise and sing the Marine, Navy and Army anthems.

Hamilton Hayes (born January 12, 1923 – died January 24, 1955) was an Akimel O'odham American and a United States Marine during World War II.

Nine days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hayes enlisted in the Marines. As a corporal in a parachute battalion, he fought with 60,000 marines in the great battle at Iwo Jima in the Pacific.

On Feb. 23, 1945, when the Americans took the island, Hayes was one of the six Marines who helped raise the American flag over Mount Suribachi as photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the image that has become one of the most iconic World War II photos.

After the war, Hayes suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He died in 1955, aged 32, of alcoholism and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. If Hayes, a hero, had any peace in the afterlife, it was disrupted last month.

On March 17, unceremoniously — as if Ira Hayes had not sacrificed for his country, fought for the freedom to believe what he wanted and be, proudly, who he was — the Trump administration ordered that any reference to his Native American heritage be stripped from the famous federal Iwo Jima photo website.

Declared the Department of Defense, “Efforts to put one group ahead of another through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

Ira Hayes is not alone in the era of Trumpism

Thus, the government reasoned, a “digital content refresh” demanded officials take “all practicable steps” to remove “improper ideology.”

Presumably the same henious ideology that led the Defense Department to take down baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s military record. Of course, on second thought the DOD said that was a mistake, not because of a change of heart but because the ensuing outrage forced its hand.

Meanwhile, at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, a presidential directive ordered the removal from its library of 391 “improper” books — on the Holocaust, civil rights and racism, the Ku Klux Klan, feminism and a wide array on gender. Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” was purged. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” remains on the shelf.

Not clear is where the volumes were taken, but thus far we have no signs of a book burning. They may just be waiting because Vice President JD Vance has been put in charge of cleaning up the venerable Smithsonian Institution. Its 157 million items at 21 museums and 21 libraries will offer him lots of possibilities.

Will Lincoln’s top hat and Harriet Tubman’s shawl go? Will he take a wrecking ball to the Museum of African Art, the National American Indian Museum, the African American History Center and the American Women's History Museum?

Vance will have a ball at those since his mission is to slash funding for exhibits that promote “ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy,” including those that recognize trans people, “degrade shared American values,” or “divide Americans based on race.”

A consistent, stark disregard for the First Amendment

I wish I could assure you that purging of websites are isolated incidents, but we are only four months into this administration. And we are seeing a consistent and stark violation of both the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

I thought Orwell’s “1984” was fiction. Then I read the list of words that are no longer allowed to be used on federal websites. It could be comical, if not so ominous — typical of authoritarians who try to control everyone’s thoughts.

Banned words and phrases include “biased,” “Black,” “climate crisis,” “equal opportunity,” “female,” “Gulf of Mexico,” “immigrants,” “inequality,” “LGBTQ,” “marginalized,” “Native American,” “pollution,” “abortion,” “prejudice,” “racism,” “social justice,” “transgender,” “traumatic,” “unconscious bias” and “women,” among hundreds of others.

The mushrooming fear is not that the party in power today will wreck the education department or bulldoze its way to deporting immigrants or covet Greenland. We can like or dislike those policies.

The fear is the route to getting their way — silencing anyone who opposes. They will purge ideas they dislike and so chill the speech of opponents that hope for reasonable dialogue in the public space will disappear. That is what authoritarians do.

Using public relations tools to win a debate is one thing. Being better at making your arguments is the way the game has always been played. The battle for public opinion is a nasty and cunning battle built into democratic life that takes place in the open.

But, censoring the views of those you disagree with, that is exactly what the First Amendment was meant to prevent, from both sides of the aisle. It is when those who have power to silence, muffle or intimidate opponents that we cross over into fascism.

And it is arguably unconstitutional❗ The Supreme Court ruled numerous times that government is supposed to be “content neutral” when it comes to speech. In another words, it can disagree with someone’s speech but not silence them because it doesn’t like the content.

What if the speaker is the government itself

What if the speaker is the government itself❓ Can it purge ideologies and ideas it does not like? Only if the ban furthers an important or substantial government interest. Claiming to seek to silence “ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy” is just bogus.

The Constitution guarantees equality. All I see in the government purge is racism, homophobia and intolerance, hardly bona fide government goals.

As for Ira Hayes, should a government website celebrate a man who left the seclusion of a reservation to risk his life and fight a war against the fascists? Does lauding his courage really threaten “mission execution”? Not if the mission is to enhance the equality the Constitution guarantees or to celebrate the freedom to embrace whatever ideology a citizen wants. Or to actually embrace America’s diversity.

The Constitution guarantees equality. All I see in the government purge is racism, homophobia and intolerance, hardly bona fide government goals.

As for Ira Hayes, should a government website celebrate a man who left the seclusion of a reservation to risk his life and fight a war against the fascists? Does lauding his courage really threaten “mission execution”? Not if the mission is to enhance the equality the Constitution guarantees or to celebrate the freedom to embrace whatever ideology a citizen wants. Or to actually embrace America’s diversity.

Oops, sorry Donald Trump, I am not supposed to use the word  “diversity.” I won’t say it, I will just applaud it. 

And thank Ira Hayes, Jackie Robinson and Maya Angelou. And remind them: This president does not speak for America.

Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards. He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com