“Trump will do to this land what he has always done in his life: destroy things. The ideals of living in harmony with nature and the belief in the spiritual essence of untouched and protected natural beauty and wildlife is completely absent from the MAGA philosophy of unchecked industry and unbridled greed.

In many ways, we are the inheritors of what thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson warned us about with the rapid industrialization and westward expansion of 19th century American life.

A monochromatic aspect of our history that Trump celebrated in his speech last night by name-checking a first grader’s list of cultural figures and leaving out the complicated reality and deleterious effects of our national story and its impact on both indigenous populations and our ecology.

Donald is feeding his base a cartoon version of America - where only the dubious achievements of a pre-approved list of heroes is lauded and our true reality is ignored and suppressed. His efforts to remake our cultural institutions, such as the Smithsonian, bear this out: we must recognize how dangerous this is for the health and wellbeing of our nation. His dogma is a weapon - and his rambling speech on the National Mall was an assault on our ethics, not an invocation of greatness; more blasphemy than benediction.“