By Patrick Hardeman, In and Out of Darkness.

The Church of Trump has launched a new crusade – not for justice, not for unity, but against accountability. Their latest battleground? The Smithsonian Museum. Apparently, the curators did their jobs too well by documenting America’s history of slavery. Now, Trump is demanding legal action to censor the “receipts” – the evidence of this nation’s crimes against humanity.

Too many beneficiaries of racism are feeling their shells crack under the weight of truth. Accountability does that – it forces a mirror where denial once stood.

And yet, while crying foul at history’s reflection, the Church of Hypocrisy continues breaking humanitarian laws day after day with its cowardly ICE militia – rounding up families, weaponizing fear, and calling it patriotism. The same voices who wail about “heritage” demand their racist history remain preserved through Confederate flags, monuments, courthouses, schools, military bases, and even our currency.

It seems the one tradition they hold dearest is flattery – flattery without accountability.

But here’s the newsflash: Outside of America, history is not a popularity contest. Much of American history was written by criminals who edited their own rap sheets – dictating what could be published, redacted, or burned.

Still, I understand the riddle. When you’ve excelled at being leaders of hate crimes, rewriting your own sins becomes second nature.

Though history is not complicated. It is acknowledgment. It is a receipt of existence. We didn’t learn not to consume poison by deleting the records of where it was found.

So how is it possible for an entire race of humans to harbor so little empathy toward humanity itself?

No more shallow excuses. Let’s get personal:

If someone hit you with a car – you, your spouse, your child – at the very least, you’d demand an apology. So why is it that so many refuse to even acknowledge the harm done – the generations of stolen labor, stolen land, stolen humanity – that built the wealth of this nation?

If someone assaulted you, would the crime vanish because the evidence was destroyed? Would yo simply forgive and forget? Of course not.

So why, then, is it so easy for non-Black America to demand that the Black community “get over” centuries of unresolved trauma and state-sanctioned violence?

Why do so many within white America feel so arrogantly qualified to decide when we should be “over it”? Especially when they continue to benefit from the very crimes they refuse to repair – crimes that compound daily, with interest.

Let’s not pretend ignorance. Legacy admissions, inherited wealth, nepotism, and the priceless “benefit of the doubt” – these are the quiet dividends of racism. They are the selective DEI of whiteness.

And how quickly so many forget how small they were in their homelands before their families took part in the theft of America. How quickly the oppressed became the oppressors once they found comfort in stolen soil and souls.

Let’s not ignore the truth behind the Second Amendment either. That world-leading obsession with collecting arms wasn’t born from bravery – it was birthed from fear. Fear of consequences. Fear of accountability. Fear that the stolen might rise to reclaim their freedom. Those guns weren’t just for “defense” – they were tools to keep stolen humanity in chains of terror.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the convenient silence of the zero-tax, accountability-exempt churches. The same pulpits that once sanctified slavery now clutch their pearls over imagined “anti-Christs,” blind to the mirror that might reveal the prophecy was never about someone else – it was about them.

Before anyone reaches for another shallow comparison, let’s be clear: The American system of chattel slaver was unique. It was permanent, racialized, legally codified, and ideologically justified. It wasn’t just forced labor; it was the deliberate erasure of a people’s language, culture, and history. It was hereditary – a generational death sentence. It denied us religion, identity, and humanity, branding us property while painting us as threats.

That mirror must burn to look into – especially when you choose complicity, in action, or in silence.

History is not meant to make you comfortable. It is meant to make you remember.

And until America chooses to reckon, honestly, with its reflection, it will remain trapped in the same cycle – rewriting the truth rather than redeeming it.

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