Yes, Mr. President - Slavery Was, in fact, Bad

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States as quoted in The New York Times today:

The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post. 

The President of the United States, in an effort to whitewash American history as presented in the Smithsonian, which is essentially our national museum of record, as well as other museums, has chastised the leadership of these museums because they are focusing on “how bad Slavery was.”

As an English teacher, I tend to still rely on things like dictionaries as an authority on the meaning of specific words. With that in mind, I share with you, dear reader, what the Webster dictionary defines as “slavery”:

1a: the practice or institution of holding people as chattel involuntarily and under threat of violence; b: the state of a person who is forced usually under threat of violence to labor for the profit of another; c: a situation or practice in which people are coerced to work under conditions that are exploitative;

2: submission to a dominating influence

So,by the very definition of the word, as shared in what is a highly respectable dictionary, it pretty much looks like slavery was, to say the least, BAD.  I mean,I can’t think of anyone on this planet at any time in the history of humankind, who would think that being held as property under the threat of violence and forced to labor for the profit of another person would be THE JOB OF THE CENTURY AND ONE THAT THEY CAN’T WAIT TO FULFILL!! 

It’s fucking slavery, for God’s sake.  It’s dehumanizing. It’s. . . . .BAD!!!  So yes,  Mr. President, at the Museum of African American History, slavery is going to be presented as a pretty bad thing - what else could it be????    A great job-training program (as Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, has in essence described it in defending a new history curriculum that teaches as much, pointing out that some slaves became blacksmiths, tailors, and other manual tradesmen)??? 

It’s time to call out this President for what he is - a deranged individual who is slowly but surely pushing this country toward what can only be described as a collective state of imbecility.  

Slavery WAS bad, Mr. President. And I don’t need a damned museum to tell me that.

Edison, New Jersey