The other day at Mount Rushmore, he tried to say that kids were taught to hate their country. Of course he'd say that.
He thinks he can say it because some of them tore down statues. They did it because the connection of some of that history is old, tired, and yes, pretty bad.
Some of those statues were of Confederate soldiers. By implication, they celebrate a bad part of our history: the cause for which they fought. And no, it wasn't states' rights, which are a part of our Constitution and, until it's amended (not likely), always will be: the 10th Amendment, which says that states can govern themselves beyond what the national government's stated powers are. The word we have for that is "federalism," and the degree to which it exists, or ought to, is an ongoing debate.
No, the war was about slavery and whether the nation would go on, together, without it. Lincoln could have let the Confederates go and have their own country, you know. There's nothing that made him take on the Confederate Army and Navy. But he wanted to save the whole country, as is, so he had to call out the federal troops. And away we went.
Some time after that war ended, Southern states decided to preserve their "lost cause," justifying it partly by creating statues celebrating the main figures who fought to preserve the South's way of life, which mainly included making sure that a race of individuals were subservient to another. A whole bunch of us are still pretty convinced that that's not a bad idea, and all kinds of trouble has conspired because of it.
But 45 didn't mean that. He just meant that if you tear down a statue, you hate our history. Well, he's got a point there. You can hate part of our history, to be sure, and hating that part of our history is, in some parts, a sign of sanity and a willingness to move forward.
But nobody told them to hate it. They didn't have to. They concluded that on their own. That's the idea of education--that you take in the relevant facts and make up your own mind.
Defending those statues takes a bigger and bigger reach now. The Civil War was fought in 1861-65, over a century and a half ago. Clinging to that part of our history and all that that means is preserving a thought pattern that an overwhelming majority said we didn't want. The Congress and the states voted upon constitutional amendments to remove the meaning from the previously stated parts of the Constitution that referred to the status of slavery, preserving it as part of electing Congress and, implicitly, the president (that latter part of which remains: the Electoral College, the potentially goofy effects we have witnessed twice in this century, already).
The states most affected weren't there to debate those issues, but they had taken themselves out of the discussion by seceding from the Union. Too bad, so sad. So upon being driven back into the Union, they decided, with help from the Supreme Court and a horrible compromise to end Reconstruction, to create rules to get around the Constitutional changes that were made and put the freedmen into a box they couldn't get out of called Jim Crow. And they stayed there, too, far into the next century.
All this is documented. All this is included into any history book you want to open. Nobody said to hate the country. Nobody said to hate our history. I can guarantee you that no history teacher worth their salaries told any kids to hate their history. I sure didn't. But neither did I back away from the bad spots. I called it as it was. And some of it hasn't been nice. I owed it to the kids to do so.
But 45 doesn't want you to really look at our history, either. He wants you to retain the same thought patterns that created the problems that have recently reared their ugly heads again: To ignore race, and discrimination, and prejudice, which remain parts of our culture we have to work on. If that were not so, George Floyd and several other people would still be alive.
He just wants you to take his word for it, as if he ever opened a history book with serious intent himself--which, I also guarantee, he didn't. If that were so, he would open other bits of information that he clearly hasn't--for instance, the notion that Russians paid Afghans to kill our soldiers. He ignored it because he has some kind of business deal he wants to complete with the Russian government, so the Russian government can hold him hostage to just about any kind of hijinks they wish to perform, such as playing with our election and killing our people.
The word is that he's reacting to what the commentators at Fox News are doing. That tells me two things: That he doesn't have a mind of his own, that he can't put anything together unless someone helps him do it--in this case, probably Stephen Miller; and that he has to check his back to make sure whoever's watching that nonsense agrees with him.
That doesn't make him strong. That makes him weak. That response to the cow bell doesn't give me much solace. That doesn't make the nation secure. That puts it at risk. That risk will build upon his re-election.
An attitude of endless attack upon our own citizens leaves us divided and wondering how we can exist within the same borders. And we're stuck with each other, now that other countries are closing their own borders to us because of the horrible way 45 and his assistants have handled the coronavirus.
But you can be sure that your history teachers didn't tell their students to hate their country. They did, for the most part (excepting a young member of my department who once told his students that God won World War II, which is nonsense--our production did), tell things like they were and are. I wonder what they're saying today, other than "you can see we have some problems we told you about that are catching up with us." They will have to speak, though, as if the whole country matters--something 45 refuses to say or affirm.
That is, if they can get back into their classrooms. 45 has arranged to keep them out through last spring because of his horrible handling of the virus. The virus will pass someday, though. And when it does, the reporting of what he has done to ruin us will emerge into full view, regardless of what he wants to happen. He wants everybody to agree with him and attacks everyone who doesn't. That will work with a few people in the short run, but it never does in the long run. He can't control that.
He doesn't understand the degree to which he will be cast as a shadow upon our history. He won't stop that, either. He can't get into every history classroom. The truth shows up, eventually, and his mark upon history will be awful. Deep inside, he already knows that. Deep inside, he knows it's beginning to slip away.
He's going to have to try to grease the skids to get him back into office this time. He'll fight with every legal or quasi-legal trick he can find. That, too, will get him into the history books as the only president who didn't step down from defeat with style and a sense of the constitutional process and culture. But you know he already has assured us of that, and the majority of the U.S. Senate chickened out instead of getting rid of him.
So hang on tight. Someone who trashes our history by maintaining the worst parts of it will assuredly trash us in the present.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
The word is that he's reacting to what the commentators at Fox News are doing. That tells me two things: That he doesn't have a mind of his own, that he can't put anything together unless someone helps him do it--in this case, probably Stephen Miller; and that he has to check his back to make sure whoever's watching that nonsense agrees with him.
That doesn't make him strong. That makes him weak. That response to the cow bell doesn't give me much solace. That doesn't make the nation secure. That puts it at risk. That risk will build upon his re-election.
An attitude of endless attack upon our own citizens leaves us divided and wondering how we can exist within the same borders. And we're stuck with each other, now that other countries are closing their own borders to us because of the horrible way 45 and his assistants have handled the coronavirus.
But you can be sure that your history teachers didn't tell their students to hate their country. They did, for the most part (excepting a young member of my department who once told his students that God won World War II, which is nonsense--our production did), tell things like they were and are. I wonder what they're saying today, other than "you can see we have some problems we told you about that are catching up with us." They will have to speak, though, as if the whole country matters--something 45 refuses to say or affirm.
That is, if they can get back into their classrooms. 45 has arranged to keep them out through last spring because of his horrible handling of the virus. The virus will pass someday, though. And when it does, the reporting of what he has done to ruin us will emerge into full view, regardless of what he wants to happen. He wants everybody to agree with him and attacks everyone who doesn't. That will work with a few people in the short run, but it never does in the long run. He can't control that.
He doesn't understand the degree to which he will be cast as a shadow upon our history. He won't stop that, either. He can't get into every history classroom. The truth shows up, eventually, and his mark upon history will be awful. Deep inside, he already knows that. Deep inside, he knows it's beginning to slip away.
He's going to have to try to grease the skids to get him back into office this time. He'll fight with every legal or quasi-legal trick he can find. That, too, will get him into the history books as the only president who didn't step down from defeat with style and a sense of the constitutional process and culture. But you know he already has assured us of that, and the majority of the U.S. Senate chickened out instead of getting rid of him.
So hang on tight. Someone who trashes our history by maintaining the worst parts of it will assuredly trash us in the present.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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