I have been on a bit of a history kick lately, watching Ken Burn’s latest opus, “The American Revolution” and listening to Rachel Maddow’s “Burn Order”. Both of these are definitely worth committing to as they are not only brilliant and compelling, but honest and revealing, which can also unfortunately make them, at times, depressing and disheartening. I bring these up – and will revisit in a bit – in part because I also recently read an excellent piece in the Bulwark regarding Trumpster’s firing of the Archivist of the United States, along with the Librarian of Congress and all the members of the admittedly obscure State Department Historical Advisory Committee. Add this to the removal or rewriting of National Park info plaques and the new presidential bios in his so-called Walk of Fame, and you start to see a pretty clear pattern of revision and erasure of our nation’s history. I know, I know, add it to the list. But I think it is worth looking at the various motivations that come into play.
You have undoubtedly heard some version of “History is written by the victors”. (Usually attributed to Chruchill, but he probably swiped it.) There are countless examples that support this assertion and some of those histories will probably never be challenged as primary sources not part of the victor’s canon can be pretty thin on the ground. See China’s standard practice following conquest was to destroy all records kept by the vanquished. But more recent history can be pesky as the researchers and scholars have a nasty habit of digging up the truth even when the victors are not keen. This obviously makes sense as nobody wants to be associated with the heinous shit that so often springs from, well, wars. It is much better to remember the American Revolution as a just and glorious cause and leave it at that than to acknowledge that probably at least a third of the population was against the idea and were literally beaten, jailed and exiled for not being fans of the Sons of Liberty. And who can forget the glorification of Custer’s Last Stand as a rallying cry to continue the extermination of the indigenous population? Never mind that Custer started it and only got slaughtered because of gross incompetence. So the impulse to put the best possible spin on terrible things is timeless and to be expected. Shitty, but not surprising.
The next appropriate adage is “those that forget history are doomed to repeat it”. Sure, but since you can’t count on people to forget, it is far more effective to alter, revise or erase. The current anti-immigrant movement is not new. The marginalization of immigrants is one of the most oft-repeated sins of which our country should be ashamed. Pick a time and pick a group and you can find Americans, and more specifically, the American government treating them badly. And while we are certainly more likely to be especially shitty towards people of color, white Europeans weren’t exempt. Ask the Irish or Italians. (Where you would like to include anti-Smitism in this conversation is up to you since there is a debate as to whether or not Jews are a race, but as an ongoing stain on our national soul, it mustn’t be ignored. This is not, however, the place to get into it.) That said, we do our worst work using pretending race isn’t the reason. “Alien enemy”, “a threat to national security”, “undermining our society”. Do these sound familiar? It is hard not to read or hear those phrases, or very similar, on a daily basis. Those are the very same words we used to describe Japanese-Americans in the early 1940s. And the parallels to then and now don’t stop there. Then, just as now, due process was thrown out the window, the Constitution ignored or trampled, and civil liberties suspended or abolished. Facts were either altered, made up completely or suppressed to justify those actions. And possibly the worst, cruelty and inhumanity became commonplace. Just like the phrases above, “detention centers”, “relocation” and “family separation” are eerily and horribly familiar when you learn more about our treatment of Japanese-Americans following Pearl Harbor. So while our knowledge and understanding of that time was eventually expanded – an official apology and small reparations happened in 1988 – we most definitely do not have a clear or broad understanding of the things that led to it. I readily admit that the entirety of the current assault on immigrants is not racially motivated – there are stories of Danes, and Germans and even Brits being detained and deported on specious grounds, let us not kid ourselves please. To deny that this is directed at brown people is to engage rabidly delusional behavior. I don’t know if we are doomed or not, but we definitely have this playlist on repeat.
The last quote I want to throw out is “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts”. The MAGA philosophy hinges on the idea that America was once so much better and wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go back to the good old days. That is simplified by making sure there is no tarnish on that rosy memory of the past. The National Parks rewrites are rife with this approach: you can’t talk about how urbanization has harmed the Everglades because that would make industrial development look bad; can’t talk about where we got the land for some of the parks because you would have to explain forcing Native Americans out; can’t point out that Cape Hatteras might not be around for much longer because mention of climate change is forbidden; and don’t even hint at the idea that slavery was bad. Any of that goes against the narrative that we used to be star-spangled awesome in every way and Trump will bring that all back. The 50s seem to be a favorite target of theirs, which tracks because we have romanticized that decade to death and don’t want to remember it being laden with isms: jingoism, racism, sexism, even McCarthyism. Don’t get me wrong, the 50s weren’t all bad: cool clothes, the birth of rock and roll, the rise of the middle class, and some very cool modernization, but damn. And to MAGA of course, all those isms are features, not bugs. (One of my favorite conveniently forgotten things from that decade is that the highest tax bracket was a whopping 90%. The 1 percenters forget this when pining for Ike.) But picking and choosing what to remember is mighty handy when trying to convince people that all the crappy policy you’re shoving down their throats is good for them.
These motivations are why at some point we had the good sense to empower people like the Archivist and the Librarian. Their job is to keep our history grounded in truth and facts instead of ideology. The Archivist keeps track of everything, not just the stuff they think we would want or like to remember. The Librarian catalogs all the books, not just the ones they like or don’t offend anyone. The idea that we should purge anything that might bring us shame or embarrassment is just so dangerous. Do we not learn from our mistakes? I probably shouldn’t pose that question in the wake of re-electing the Felon-in-Chief. And in the final irony, it is the emergence of a more honest version of American history that has ConDon and his clown cadre upset. The executive order that spawned much of this madness was titled, and I’m not kidding, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”. Their view is that revisionist history – revising the original revisionism? – tarnishes our nation’s legacy of “advancing liberty, individual rights and human happiness”. All that other stuff just makes us feel bad about ourselves. And they say liberals are snowflakes. Our only hope is that the brave and honest folk who are paying attention and keeping track will someday be back in a position to write a truthful and accurate history of this era and its inevitable dark legacy. To borrow from “Hamilton”, history has its eyes on you, Mr. President. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Thanks for reading.