The Washington Post reported Thursday that Donald Trump and his administration plans on cutting national spending by at least $10.5 trillion dollars during his tenure as president. Presidents cutting spending isn’t a new thing, but the abhorrent truth of it is that Trump plans to achieve his spending goal by cutting funding for entities like the National Endowment for the Humanities, one of the largest funding sources for humanities programs throughout the nation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which helps Americans take the opportunity to participate in the arts, and by completely privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the largest single source of funding for public radio, TV and other services.

To make matters sadder, The Post reports that these three entities make up 0.02 of federal spending. At this point, it’s become more apparent that Trump must honestly have some debilitating grudge against liberal arts. The internet jokes about his illiteracy, but it’s looking to be more and more of a reality than a meme. Maybe the president-elect actually can’t read…maybe he’s an awful painter… One thing is for sure, Trump and his administration are actively doing what they can to put Americans in an ignorant position in hopes that they will continue to elect despotic, xenophobic, tanned bags of flesh to positions of power.

Trump’s presidency is looking grim. Cutting things like the arts and humanities will most certainly throw Americans into a proverbial loop of ignorance. Americans are inching their way into a tar pit; the toxic sludge that is a Trump presidency has filled the lungs of citizens, and is actively pulling them down into a dark place — darker
than many people have ever
seen before.

Citizens who like to think of themselves as “rational” need to stand up.

American artists, and those who practice anything within the realm of humanities, need to use their collective knowledge to combat national ignorance, even if it seems useless. Contribute to a rhetoric that isn’t ass-backwards and help the future of America return to something that at least resembles promising.

Even those who seem to have this notion that a Trump presidency won’t affect them need to listen up. Although some of the things Trump does may really not affect those people, it’s important for them to think about humans born into Trump’s America. As cliché as it sounds, children really are the future of the nation and cutting the arts and humanities would effectively remove them as future leaders, or even just sane, well-rounded people.

Americans need to write their representatives. Fighting the futile seems like the antithesis of progress, but millions of voices together can really make a difference. Don’t let the orange-faced bigot destroy the futures of American children. Supporting the arts and humanities may be the only way we can prevent further damage.

William Izzo can be contacted at [email protected].