Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard from both sides of the aisle that artists and audiences should continue to support the Kennedy Center despite its recent rebranding. The argument is familiar: if we stop showing up, it is the artists — and the arts themselves — who will suffer.
But that argument lets the responsible party off far too easily.
It requires us to forget that, in normal times, sitting politicians do not name public institutions after themselves. By shifting the burden onto artists and audiences — Will you still come? Will you still perform? — we quietly excuse the behavior that created the problem in the first place.
This habit is not new. We do something similar with Vladimir Putin. When discussing Ukraine, the question is often framed as if history has just begun: Don’t you want peace? Why won’t they negotiate? The premise smuggled in is that aggression has no author, only consequences to be managed.
Trump relies on the same logic. First movers count on fatigue — on the assumption that what has already happened must now be accommodated. But Putin did not merely stumble into a land invasion in the 21st century, and Trump did not merely wander into affixing his name to a major cultural institution. These are not misunderstandings; they are choices.
Recent reporting makes the dynamic even clearer: the administration is now seeking damages reportedly as high as $1 million from an artist who withdrew from a scheduled performance. That is not cultural stewardship. It is coercion — and it completes the picture.
What is striking is how quickly responsibility is reassigned. Instead of asking whether power has overreached, we ask whether artists are being unreasonable. Instead of examining the act itself, we ask whether the reaction is polite enough.
History matters here. But so does moral clarity. It is a mistake to assume that the reasonable must always be the accommodating — that seriousness requires silence, or that stability requires surrender.
Supporting the arts should never require pretending that power has behaved normally when it has not.