Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana
Americans suffer from a peculiar and almost characteristic ignorance of history. Part of the reason is certainly “American exceptionalism”, the ridiculous dogma that the US is intrinsically different from all other nation and empires which have preceded it since the nation-state was first invented; after all, if one truly believes that none of the lessons of history can possibly apply to one’s own current reality, then studying it is as academic as a physician choosing to study the anatomy of echinoderms. Another part is this country’s bizarre celebration of ignorance; as Isaac Asimov once expressed it,
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Soi-disant conservatives mock the currently-fashionable elevation of feelings above facts by the “woke”, yet they themselves are guilty of the same sin; they eschew facts which conflict with their irrational attachment to ancient religions, their emotional discomfort with new ideas, and their visceral fear of unfamiliar cultural or sexual practices. Americans belonging to both “wings” of the US Fascist Party are only too happy to discard whatever economic, scientific, or historical facts get in the way of their preferred policies, especially when those facts indicate that the policies will accomplish exactly the opposite of their pretended goals. And then there’s intentional disinformation; since tribalism is the highest virtue in modern American thought, nobody wants to be called a “traitor” for refuting the lies vomited out by their “leaders”, even when those lies are easily contradicted by consulting a legitimate source. So the ignorant believe whatever they are told, while those who know better remain silent.
Worst of all, history has always been written by the victors, and in the US the victors have always been authoritarians; US history is thus warped by authoritarians to glorify other authoritarians, and Americans can’t be bothered to consult histories written by non-Americans because what do those foreign eggheads know? They’re probably atheist or libertarian or Muslim or dead white males who aren’t Marx anyway. USA! USA! USA! Both Team MAGA and Team {unpronounceable string of umpteen capital letters} are much too busy dreaming of inflicting their own flavor of totalitarian dystopia on everyone else to bother even attempting to learn from those who went before, and besides, it’s 2019, duh. And so they keep fighting over the wheel while the ship which carries all of us spins slowly in the rapid current toward the whirlpool ahead, ignoring the writing on the map, the clearly-posted warning buoys, and the shipwrecked sailors on nearby islands shouting at them to turn back before it’s too late.
I always found it interesting, peculiar, and appalling when I’d learn more about world history and semi-current events from fucking *movies* than I did from elementary through high school. There was so much I’d never even heard of. So most citizens are educated to be US-centric, mostly filtered through a white mens lens.
Well said, as always. Since this is the anniversary of the JFK Assassination, I would like to mention that John had an affair with German Spy Inga Alvad. (Kudos to Edward Cline for that one.)
Could not agree more. Unfortunately, the same (in varying degrees of intensity) is going on almost everywhere. The lessons from history are just in the way and so are ignored. That they represent hard facts that do not go away when ignored is something most people are not equipped to understand.
I agree with you that American’s show a stunning ignorance of history and agree that our false belief in“American Exceptionalism” is a contributing factor. I think it’s valuable to look at where this false belief in exceptionalism comes from.
I would argue that it’s a direct result of our unique geography. I think Robert Kaplan makes a convincing argument in his book The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate that American’s have confused the gift of their exceptional geography with personal attributes as a people. We are not exceptional because of who we are, but because of the unique geography we occupy.
One way to look at a country is in terms of it’s strategic imperatives. The Russians have a historically understandable deep fear of invasion and fanatical attraction to warm water ports. Germany suffers from a constant insecurity that it is the strongest nation in Europe, but can be overrun if Russia forms an alliance with a strong European power against them (historically France and Russia with Britain acting as the spoiler). India desperately wants to be a world power, but can’t escape its parochial history with Pakistan.
The list goes on, but what makes the US exceptional is that we achieved our 5 strategic imperatives by the middle of the 1800’s while the rest of the world has failed to achieve their strategic imperatives. This has led to a period of unending prosperity (with the exception of the 1860’s, the US has ended every decade since 1700 wealthier than when it entered that decade, which is unheard of in the rest of the world). Our wealth, safety and power is unmatched in the world. This allows us to dream up and believe literally insane ideas with no skin in the game that would lead to personal growth, or self correction.
If Russia get it wrong they can be literally wiped off the map as they have 3 times before in their history. Countries in eastern Europe and place like Korea and Mongolia are constantly at the whim of larger countries on all sides that have invaded them multiple times. For places like that, which is most of the world, a mistake can lead to existential disaster (such as Stalin killing off all his best generals leading up to a series of disastrous battles at the beginning of WWII).
If there is a defining characteristic of the American spirit the matches our historical ignorance it’s the fear that all their prosperity is really just a house of cards that could collapse at any moment. It’s the fear of the untested who have not earned faith in their resilience. We have an endless supply of resources to project our irrational and neurotic fears on to innocent victims. Americans can dream up one insane and highly expensive fantasy after another (satanic daycare, McCarthyism, sex trafficking, war on drugs, endless wars abroad) his our reaction being order of magnitude more damage than even of our fear had been valid. We we are done destroying our current target, we simply forget about them and move on to the next innocent target to satisfy our insane fantasy that always seem to require a violent solution. Not surprisingly, there are always lots of unethical sociopaths waiting in the wings to profit off of American’s unquenchable fear.
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