My lucky regulars know that I am a bit of a nut on the history thing…..that I seem to always find some sort of historical perspective for many of my posts.
I believe that we all need to know our history and then maybe we could stop making the same goddamn mistakes over and over…..we should know it all…the good, the bad and the ugly……
America needs to lift that veil of ignorance and step into a brighter future…..
The nation’s observed birthday – July 4th – always brings forth what passes for modern day “patriotism”: prominent displays of the flag everywhere, celebration of the military, picnics, backyard barbecues, and of course fireworks. There is even an occasional tribute to the nation’s “founders,” those men who supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence on that date, and the genius of Thomas Jefferson who purportedly masterminded and wrote the document. Yet Americans, although a great people, are usually vacant on their history, and many really admit it, because history seems a like a dusty little hobby that is irrelevant to the “here and now,” which self-help gurus on TV tell us we need to focus on. However, comparatively, people in other countries usually pay more attention to their own history and those of at least their region of the world.
Because many people in the United States don’t value history very much, they tend to allow politicians to be selective in their remembering of historical events – usually to manipulate public nationalism (which now passes for patriotism) for their own dubious policy goals. For example, if Americans had focused more on the fact that historically, the Vietnamese had been fighting fiercely over the centuries to throw out foreign invaders – such as the Japanese, the Chinese, and recently the French – perhaps they would have demanded that their politicians think twice, even three times, about invading that country. And if Americans had known that the historically fractious Iraq, an artificial country that had been created by the greedy colonial powers after World War I to exploit the country’s oil reserves, they might have wisely rejected George W. Bush’s attempt at military social work in one of the most unlikely places in the Middle East for democracy to flourish.
Source: At Their Own Peril, Americans Are Fuzzy on History – Antiwar.com Original by — Antiwar.com
The complete lack of knowledge of history makes for a country that cannot make a good decision no matter how hard they try. Sadly this fuzziness is by design…..it is a propaganda tool…….the news and any media outlet that pretends to give history when they give only one side of an issue…..
The perfect tool for education especially in history is the “Boob tube”…..but instead of a teaching moment we get programming on modern day “dumpster divers” or gear heads or worse….stupid reality garbage…..so yeah Americans are fuzzy on history……. most have NO other choice.
History is a dry subject for many people and if you have been following the antics of some of the textbook publishers in the southwestern states you will find that history can be re-spun and re-written for the educational system and so students of any school system in America are going to get their History lessons with a full charge of the bias of whoever is teaching the class or whoever has published the text. I think this is by design. Most History in a school setting is taught from a cirriculum that has been approved by a school board and the school board is usually driven by one political ideology or another so whatever bubbles out into the brains of our young people in the classrooms is what the locals want their kids to be brainwashed with. It is rarely ever the same in different jurisdictions either. So that is how we get scads of kids from appalachia believing with all their hearts that Jesus died so they would be free to own guns. History is like the Bible. It is open to interpretation and the lessons we get are always served up with a healthy serving of bias and prejudice of one kind or another. History therefore cannot be authoritative. Did the Jews really build the pyramids? I can’t find a Coptic Christian anywhere who believes so and there are no records in Egyptian Antiquity that attest to it ever happening.
IOt seems that everybody these days is afraid of history…and like the Bible there is no evidence Jews were ever slaves in Egypt…Babylon maybe but not the other….and we will continue to march to the destruction that you seem to see coming….
God will someday destroy this earth with fire. What more destruction could one hope for? And of course I do not “See” it coming; I just know it is coming and when it comes it shall come as a thief in the night. People will be caught unaware and unprepared.
I would hope that we can be redeemed and destruction is not necessary….if not then wqhy bother with anything?
Why bother? Ask God. He has the answer and He is the answer to all questions about redemption.
I prefer my own decisions…
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end there is ….unfortunate. Paraphrased.).
Good one…but I will remain a product of my own…
Titus 2:14 – Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
I shall now state my diametrically opposed view of History.
History … no matter how accurate one tries to make it … is still subscript at best.
My preferred approach to the HERE and NOW is to tackle today’s problems/issues/conflicts/differences HEAD ON. Surely it does not take a group of experts in a think tank to develop a workable plan for a better tomorrow. If you don’t believe me then ask a group of child to ponder a very complex problem. Give them some time to wrap their collective heads around the topic at hand. And then … watch in amazement as to how they provide a very well thought out and logical SOLUTION. Child’s play I say!
Good choice…I like to see what happened before I face today’s problems…..