High
School History
May
6 2024
In
high school history
it
all made sense.
The
dates were set in stone
and
we tried to remember them,
because
not only were we told
how
important they were,
they
were on the test.
It
was self-evident
that
events happened in order
as
if according to some cosmic plan,
intended
to lead to us
in
the here and now;
the
end of history
and
the beginning of kumbaya.
Although
the biggest lesson I learned
was
how short-sighted they were,
depleting
the resources
they
depended on,
fighting
stupid wars,
submitting
to tyranny.
Now,
older and more cynical
I
know what history really is for.
How
it’s used
to
serve the powers that be,
so
whoever controls the narrative
controls
what we think.
As
well as how easily we forget;
of
even the history
we
ourselves lived through
a
few short years ago.
If
progress
is
two steps forward, one step back
I
can live with disappointment.
But
it feels we’re not gaining ground
just
losing it,
not
only regressing
but
pleased to go back;
fighting
the same old wars,
dying
of diseases
we
thought needles had solved,
and
happy to distract ourselves
while
madmen rule.
We
study history
so
as not to repeat it.
But
who’s to say
the
textbook isn’t glib
simplistic,
superficial;
a
version of a larger truth
we
may never know.
I try hard
to avoid poetry as political as this. Because prose works so much
better for ideas, while poetry is more suited to feelings, moods,
impressions. But I’m more head than heart. And sometimes, too
annoyed to contain myself. So against my better judgment, I
occasionally indulge.
I was
reading Anne Applebaum’s recent piece in the Atlantic about
the sophisticated and extremely well-resourced propaganda from China,
Russia, and other autocratic nations that is not only intended to
engender apathy and cynical disengagement among their own citizens,
but is busy rewriting history (even while it’s happening!),
attempting to discredit the democracies as corrupt and ineffective,
and assiduously brainwashing the people of 3rd world countries who
are poorly served by their own media. Most ominously, how the
propagandists’ domestic enablers (such as Tucker Carlson and
Marjorie Taylor Greene) use social media and their own bully pulpits
to amplify and legitimate these patent falsehoods.
I was also
thinking of Trump. How his relentless barrage of scandal, outright
lies, outlandish discourse, and radical departures from the political
norms (such as demonizing the media; threatening to weaponize the
Dept. of Justice, politicize the military, and prosecute his
political opponents; and labelling any dissenter or disloyalist as a
hater of America and existential threat) numbs us to the next
depravity and makes us forget the last one. How our memories are so
short his followers actually believe his utterly disastrous
Presidency was a triumph.
Not to
mention how history textbooks are superficial, parochially Western in
their worldview, and guilty of “presentism”. And how, above all,
they present history as neat, fixed, and decided; while history is
complicated, messy, open to interpretation, and never fully
understood. Because history is an ongoing debate, not a chronological
litany of accepted facts.
In 1984,
George Orwell said everything there is to say about the weaponization
of history:
Who
controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past.
The
most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their
own understanding of their history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/