nhboy
Ubi bene ibi patria
" Don’t worry, all of this will be forgotten. If the past is any sort of prologue, even the spectacle of Donald Trump will someday be turned into a vague creature of a bygone era when ethical progress stalled, and loud and lewd slithered its way into the White House.
A persistent historical amnesia makes it possible to forecast that Americans in 2050 will be just as unable to recall the emotionalism of 2017 as today’s undergraduates are in attempting to grasp the panic-swept days after Sept. 11, 2001. Ask them. It’s something they’ve “heard about,” and that’s it. When their children hear tell of 2016-17, barring the collapse of civilization, it will be: “Yeah, weren’t there protests or something?”
One thing probably won’t change, however: the tendency to accept fake history. We take as real the enduring notion that America is and has always been a “land of opportunity,” which lovers of country perceive as their fortunate heritage. You say it often enough, and it becomes fact: “Through hard work, anyone can succeed here.” Equality of opportunity? It sounds real. It sounds like it’s based on empirical evidence. Fake history is fake news, only more widely believed.
Our past ought to be kept close at hand, and used as a barometer to test humility. But it’s not. It’s all too easy to ignore the unpleasant parts of history that live on in our DNA. One doesn’t have to lift a finger to embrace the cause of forgetting whatever gets in the way of pride. Just don’t read about Dred Scott, immigrant exclusion acts, lynching, Japanese-American internment camps or McCarthyism. It is who we are, at least as much as that bright bulb Thomas Alva Edison is who we are. (Not to destroy anyone’s faith in America’s tradition of technological innovation, but Edison also helped bring the electric chair into use.)
Recent events recede faster and faster. As unwarranted as it might seem, the emotions we associate with the ill-conceived and utterly devastating Iraq War are already fading.
Here’s an illustration of how our historical amnesia began: Think of all the places you’ve been to that are names taken from Native American languages. Almost all of those languages are in disuse today, many entirely gone. The literal origins of America’s geography are devoid of recognizable roots: Chicago is Ojibwa for “onion fields,” but no one thinks of Chicago and conjures its premodern natural environment. Connecticut means “long river” in the language of a lost Algonquian tribe no one can name. Not a single linguist alive today knows what the word “Wisconsin” means – one must presume that at the time it became a state, many people did."
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/25/american-history-fake-news-that-never-goes-away-and-empowered-the-trumpian-insurrection/
A persistent historical amnesia makes it possible to forecast that Americans in 2050 will be just as unable to recall the emotionalism of 2017 as today’s undergraduates are in attempting to grasp the panic-swept days after Sept. 11, 2001. Ask them. It’s something they’ve “heard about,” and that’s it. When their children hear tell of 2016-17, barring the collapse of civilization, it will be: “Yeah, weren’t there protests or something?”
One thing probably won’t change, however: the tendency to accept fake history. We take as real the enduring notion that America is and has always been a “land of opportunity,” which lovers of country perceive as their fortunate heritage. You say it often enough, and it becomes fact: “Through hard work, anyone can succeed here.” Equality of opportunity? It sounds real. It sounds like it’s based on empirical evidence. Fake history is fake news, only more widely believed.
Our past ought to be kept close at hand, and used as a barometer to test humility. But it’s not. It’s all too easy to ignore the unpleasant parts of history that live on in our DNA. One doesn’t have to lift a finger to embrace the cause of forgetting whatever gets in the way of pride. Just don’t read about Dred Scott, immigrant exclusion acts, lynching, Japanese-American internment camps or McCarthyism. It is who we are, at least as much as that bright bulb Thomas Alva Edison is who we are. (Not to destroy anyone’s faith in America’s tradition of technological innovation, but Edison also helped bring the electric chair into use.)
Recent events recede faster and faster. As unwarranted as it might seem, the emotions we associate with the ill-conceived and utterly devastating Iraq War are already fading.
Here’s an illustration of how our historical amnesia began: Think of all the places you’ve been to that are names taken from Native American languages. Almost all of those languages are in disuse today, many entirely gone. The literal origins of America’s geography are devoid of recognizable roots: Chicago is Ojibwa for “onion fields,” but no one thinks of Chicago and conjures its premodern natural environment. Connecticut means “long river” in the language of a lost Algonquian tribe no one can name. Not a single linguist alive today knows what the word “Wisconsin” means – one must presume that at the time it became a state, many people did."
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/25/american-history-fake-news-that-never-goes-away-and-empowered-the-trumpian-insurrection/
