Out & About …

… on the North York Moors, or wherever I happen to be.

The wide green valley of Farndale, seen from high moorland. Rolling hills covered in patchy heather and bracken fall away into a checkerboard of small fields stitched together with dry stone walls. Scattered farmhouses and barns sit low in the valley floor, dwarfed by the landscape around them. Thick grey cloud presses down over distant hills, the kind of sky that promises rain and rarely bothers to warn you first. Green upon green upon green, all the way to a hazy horizon.

Why Historical Truth Matters

A view looking down Farndale, moments before an unforecasted downpour caught me completely off guard. Typical.

But I cannot let this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence pass without a word, mind you, because someone once said “where the US leads, Britain follows.” A worrying thought, that.

America is caught in a proper tug of war. On one side sits a comfortable, “uncomplicated” patriotic story. On the other, the harder truth that freedom has always been an “unfinished struggle.”1Woodley, Jenny. “USA at 250: the Black American struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The  Conversation. https://theconversation.com/usa-at-250-the-black-american-struggle-for-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-286590 The current administration has thrown its weight behind a “sanitized view of America,” and gone after the complicated bits of history sitting in the nation’s 433 national parks and monuments. An executive order set the tone: strip out anything hinting the country was “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive.” Nearly 2,000 historical and scientific materials got flagged for the chop.2Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa. “’A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks”. The Guardian. 2 July 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/02/us-national-parks-history-censorship

Among the casualties: signs at the Mammoth Cave National Park describing the enslaved guides who worked there, and descriptions at Grand Teton of the massacre of Indigenous people. But a federal judge stepped in with a 63-page injunction, putting a stop to it all. Judge Angel Kelley was blunt. The government, she said, cannot serve the public “half-truths,” nor can it practise “censorship and sanitization” in classrooms meant for everyone.3Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa. “’A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks”. The Guardian. 2 July 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/02/us-national-parks-history-censorship

Bureaucracy played its part too. The “boring machinery” of audit trails and neutral rules turned out to be a decent brake pedal, slowing down brute-force edicts before they could slip through unnoticed.4Jackson, Dominic. “Donald Trump is losing control.” North West Bylines. 15 December 2025. https://northwestbylines.co.uk/politics/donald-trump-is-losing-control/5Jackson, Dominic. “Demolition Man – what might finally stop Trump and his wrecking ball? Pt 5.” North West Bylines. 14 January 2026. https://northwestbylines.co.uk/politics/demolition-man-what-might-finally-stop-trump-and-his-wrecking-ball-pt-5/ Even inside the parks, some staff quietly turned the wrecking ball back on itself, reporting signs that disparaged marginalised groups rather than removing them.6Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa. “’A sanitized view of America’: inside Trump’s campaign to erase US history from national parks”. The Guardian. 2 July 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/02/us-national-parks-history-censorship

So on this milestone day, one thing stands clear. The “bank of justice” stays open only for as long as people refuse to swallow a version of history that leaves them out of “We the people.”7Woodley, Jenny. “USA at 250: the Black American struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The  Conversation. https://theconversation.com/usa-at-250-the-black-american-struggle-for-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-286590

Rant over, normal service will resume tomorrow.

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