What Will History Say?
Historians look back on history with a discerning eye, hoping to ferret the truth from any evidence uncovered by archaeologists. Where the truth is not obvious, they devise theories based on any information they have. Some theories are later proven untenable, where others sometimes prove to be fact. Normal people, those outside the sphere of historical study, form their opinions of history from the theories and postulations of the academics. We are fed history as fact in school from a young age. We judge entire civilizations with impunity, confident that our civilization has advanced well beyond those long gone.
What did you think when you first read of archaic surgical procedures? Even in the 19th century people had their limbs hacked off with a saw, a bottle of whiskey to numb their senses if they were lucky. How do you feel about ancient Egyptians, all bowing down to an individual they believed to be of the gods? What about the witch hunts carried out in the middle ages, even in 18th century in some places?
We can sit back and smugly claim how primitive our ancestors were. Today, we live in a world of high technology and radical scientific progress, a world where miracles happen nearly every day. We are much more advanced than those who used to believe the world was flat. In 200 years, of course our time will look primitive. Assuming nothing natural or man-made has exterminated the human race, our knowledge will have advanced well beyond anything we imagine now. But I’m not looking that far into the future. Even fifty years from now, history will view us all as idiots.
If you don’t believe me, just look back to McCarthyism and the paranoia surrounding Communism in the USA. That was something worthy of our more primitive ancestors, yet it happened in the middle of the 20th century. In the present we have a great many parallels. These are things that I think make us look like idiots today. But in the future, it will be much more obvious. Care to hear some of it?
Banning homosexual marriage, which I blogged about last time, is one thing. It’s idiotic because at root it’s a political issue. Supporters of a ban will argue that it erodes our social fabric, desecrates the sanctity of marriage, and disrupts the traditional family structure. No matter how much they rant and rave, homosexuality has been with us for centuries, if not millenia. Today, it just happens that more people are out in the open about it. A ban on homosexual marriage isn’t going to make it go away. You can still have a gay couple next door. Your kids can still see them kissing on the front lawn. They can still be raising children of their own. The only thing a ban on homosexual marriage does is deny them their legal rights as a married couple. Oh, and make the Republican supporters of the ban more popular with the conservatives in their constituency. This is small potatoes, though, compared to other stuff. Like Bush.
Racism. This is something that just won’t go away. People of all colors and ethnicity hate each other. No matter how many preach tolerance and acceptance, the hate just keeps a-coming. Never does it stand out more in the present than when talking about immigration issues. Illegal immigrants are lambasted for stealing jobs and not speaking English, but the root of all the mudslinging is racism.
Another thing people will look back on is the Bush Administration’s abuse of power. We have a president who has been caught in one lie after another, some of which have cost American lives. We have a president who brushes aside laws intended to restrict executive power because they don’t jive with his view of the constitution. We have a president who blatantly ignores human rights by leaving “enemy combatants” to rot indefinitely in a concentration camp. We have a president who routinely purges his administration of people who disagree with him while going to great lengths to defend those who do agree with him when they break the law. We have the worst president in history. Yet, we elected him to a second term and, when more of his misdeeds became public, did not call for his impeachment.
What about the war in Iraq? We have spent billions of dollars fighting a war for reasons that have been retroactively changed over time. Saddam Hussein and his cronies are being tried in a farcical trial. We stormed the country unprepared for the aftermath. Many of the destructive forces in Iraq are fighting with weapons and training that we provided. Our president declared victory when there was no end in sight. And still there isn’t. I’m sure the Bush administration would like to have control over how the history books will be written. The internet will help take care of that. Or will it?
Congress voted against internet freedom (or net neutrality as it is often called) just last week. We have already seen the telecoms cooperate with the government in spying on the American people. Some are saying this is their reward. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s also forward thinking. The people want net neutrality. Conservative and liberal groups joined forces, mobilizing their members, lobbying congress, yet still the telcos won out. The government is giving the telcos what they want. In the future, whose to say the government won’t step in and say, “Block this site or that site”? Scratch my back…
Fifty years from now people will be living with the consequences of the Bush Regime’s Reign of Terror. At best, Bush’s many mistakes will have been overcome. People studying modern history will look back and call us all idiots for letting such a disastrous leader come to power (and double idiots for letting him do it twice). In the worst case, they will be cursing us for bringing such a monster to power and for throwing away everything that America stands for. They will call us fools for being complacent while the government passed one bill after another that took away our rights and our freedom. The “land of the free and the home of the brave” will be nothing but a dream to them. And we will have brought it on through our complacency. The Bush administration and the Republican congress are tearing up our country bit by little bit. We are just sitting back and watching.
What do you want history to say about us? You need to be thinking about that now. In November, you can stop being complacent and do something about it.
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