O P I N I O N

NOT THAT PROFOUND

By Nathan Graziano

In lockstep—or maybe the better term is “goose step”—with President Donald Trump’s disdain for anything intellectual, New Hampshire House Republicans recently voted to pass a proposal, introduced by Rep. Joseph Sweeney (R-Salem), to eliminate the Division of the Arts. 

Their reasoning: We need to trim the discretionary spending budget, and rather than eliminating an out-of-state nonprofit program that oversees vouchers for private tuitions, it seems judicious to them to nuke programs that encourage the creativity of students while making the arts accessible in underserved communities. 

While the elimination of the state division of the arts will need to pass through more procedural votes before it lands on Governor Ayotte’s desk, it certainly allows the people of New Hampshire to read the tea leaves and clearly see the Republican party’s longview. 

And the aligns perfectly with the current MAGA movement.

More recently, the Trump administration has also called to eliminate the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) after severely cutting NEA grants, as well as funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). 

In other words, on both a state and a federal level, Republicans want to suppress artists and creativity because, you know, these things aren’t nearly as important as deportations and parades and assuring that the extremely wealthy don’t get taxed more.

I mean, who needs more art? We already have Kid Rock. And as long as the MAGA cult remains clueless and angry and incapable of critical thought, their handlers can continue to thrive.

That old rabble-rousing scribe Henry Miller was once famously quoted for saying, “Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.” And what practical purpose could there possibly be for putting taxpayers on the hook for something that frivolous? 

Art is not going to make gasoline any cheaper, and art certainly won’t help Trump accomplish his Lear-like mission of world dominance. 

In fact, art teaches empathy and asks us to view each other as more alike than we are different, and this is a direct impediment to the MAGA mission, which seeks to divide us according to class and color and political ideologies.

Imagine how difficult it becomes to sleep soundly when one knows that the families being separated and deported without due process may love each other as much as they love their own families? 

Imagine trying to justify belittling a trans person, and taking away their basic human rights, when one realizes that underneath the clothing that these are people who also yearn to be loved and held by another human being? 

But this is the MAGA endgame, folks. 

They want to dehumanize people who are unlike them and disagree with their worldview. And the arts threaten to make MAGA’s base of automatons think and feel and reflect. 

So the simple solution is to eliminate the arts, or at least make it marginally more difficult for artists—who tend to lean on the side of people, not politics—to create. 

If anything is going to stop this march toward a fascism, if history has taught us anything, resistance depends on the minds and hands and hearts of our artists. My fellow artists, now is the time to punch back, not with violence, but with creations that celebrate human life, as opposed to trying to diminish it.