Say one thing for the once august Smithsonian Institution: when they decide to do something, they go big.  The Smithsonian didn't settle for a replica of the Wright Flyer; it would accept only the real thing, and that's what's hanging in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington. 

Reality used to be the Smithsonian's prime directive.  Now?  They're now building a new collection, but it's not devoted to science, history, industry, or anything so unifying and uplifting.  The Smithsonian's new collection is nakedly political and linked to lies.  And it's not the first time.

The Smithsonian is going big on a date that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, CNN, and Chuck Schumer want to live in infamy because they want to take permanent control of all of our elections, but the rest of America has mostly gotten past January 6.  The once prestigious museum is collecting "artifacts" from the day a mob got into, mostly walked into, and many were invited into by the Capitol Police, the U.S. Capitol building.  Remember — the day a Capitol Police officer shot an unarmed American veteran woman dead, it was captured on video, and the shooter was never brought to justice?  Remember — the day a bunch of orange-hatted FBI agents instigated a riot and then blamed it on all Republicans and conservatives?  Yeah, that day. 

The Smithsonian says it's building a collection of stuff from that day.  But you can bet it won't be interested in any of the radios the FBI used to agitate and instigate.  It won't snap up the gun used to kill Ashli Babbitt.  It won't pick up a bucket any of the January 6 political prisoners have to use to relieve themselves in their jail cells, where they're treated worse than the Los Angeles County D.A. treats murderers and rapists. 

"The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and on the foundation of the United States' democratic republic, revealed the fragility of our political system," Anthea M. Hartig, the museum's Elizabeth MacMillan director, told the institution's in-house magazine.  She's right that our republic — not democracy, since the United States isn't and has never been a democracy — is fragile.  She's just wrong about the reasons.  It's fragile because all of our institutions, including the one Hartig leads, have been captured by woke racists who hate America.  They denounce America as "racist" and "unfair" every single day.  They concoct trainings they force their employees to go through during which America is trashed as the land of oppression, not freedom.  They reject America's real founding, 1776, for a lie that undermines America at its very republican core. 

Then after they take a hammer and sickle to chip away at America's foundations, they have the audacity, the gall, to say America is "fragile."  It is — because they're working to destroy it.

The Smithsonian's conscious decision to go political isn't a one-off.  The Smithsonian has gone big and gone woke at the same time, which means hating the America that makes its existence possible.  In its National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian — which once prided itself on its fidelity to facts, accuracy, and authenticity — put out an entire section of its website devoted entirely to radical racist "whiteness" theories and propaganda.  I'm not exaggerating; it's right here. 

The Smithsonian isn't supposed to be political, but it's clearly taking sides in the culture wars by pushing out divisive, radical tripe that would please Pol Pot, and now by building this one-sided January 6 collection.  The Smithsonian's current "whiteness" fare is a watered down version of the chart it published in 2020.  That chart openly claimed that traits such as hard work, self-reliance, and even getting to where you're going on time are "white" traits.  How are any of those traits "white," or any other skin color?  What happened to the dream of getting past skin color to see character?  How is it not racist to say that only white people work hard and can be punctual? 

The Smithsonian ended up apologizing for getting caught publishing that, but it's clearly a fully politicized arm of the hard-left core of the Democratic National Committee now.  Its January 6 collection must and can only be seen in this light.  The Smithsonian Institution is no longer doing rocket science or even museum science.  It's engaged in political science now, nothing more and nothing less. 

A.J. Rice is author of the book The Woking Dead: How Society's Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture.  He serves as CEO of Publius PR, a premier communications firm in Washington, D.C.

Image: Smithsonian Institution.