One Story to Read Todayhighlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.
“Whether Trump realizes it or not, with his name game, he is following the same playbook he has accused progressives of abusing when they have sought to change the record,” Gal Beckerman writes.
(Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.)
In our current culture wars, the left gets accused of playing loose with language that is supposedly eternal and universal, distorting the meaning of words in order to suit its ideology. Wish someone “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and what you’re really trying to do, or so Fox News would argue, is erase the birth of Christ. “I’ll tell you one thing: I get elected president, we’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” Trump said on the stump in 2016.
But if the charge against renaming Fort Bragg or the Washington Redskins is that history can not just be waved away with a wand, then it’s notable that Trump’s first executive orders include two such discourse-altering flourishes.
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