They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land's original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn't even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.I'm not sure whether to be optimistic that we can get through it again, just as we always have, or whether the country is in such a hole today that we simply can not afford to placate these people any longer. It's no accident that Obama's approval ratings are much higher among the under-30 crowd and much lower among the over-50 crowd. Who thinks they have more to lose in this new century? And who gains?
These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town's borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.
But back to the historical angle.... It's absolutely imperative that kids today understand that these movements don't exist in a vacuum, that they don't spring out of some spontaneous grassroots response to injustice, and that they aren't harmless. The roots of right-wing extremism run deep and have caused considerable damage to the progressive narrative that many Americans believe in. Perhaps if we were to educate our students about push and pull that has defined our struggle towards a more perfect union, they would develop the will to keep us moving into the future rather than rooted irrevocably to an ugly past.
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I'm with you on this, Stella.
ReplyDeleteLast week I was walking down Liberty toward State and at the corner where the Starbucks is a group of people were standing there with a giant picture of Obama with a Hitler-esque mustache. I walked by, looking thoroughly confused, almost enough to stop and ask them WHY they were there with that offensive photograph, but decided instead that there was no point trying to talk with them, much less argue, as they were clearly beyond any form of logic or reasoning.
Stella, this very interesting post has me thinking about two things. First, there is something here about the cyclical nature of history, including social history, that seems to me to be a splendid thing for young people to consider. Secondly, as much as I am confused and even angered by people taking the actions related by Sullivan's reader, I am reminded of the importance of seeking ways to see how the world looks to them. I don't necessarily need to go out of my way to be overly empathetic with people who are rendering President Obama as Hitler for daring to suggest a relatively modest tweaking of the way in which health care works in this country. I do, however, think that there's a lot to be learned from trying to gain some kind of understanding of the source of this seemingly fearful response. Fear dogs us all, and my feeling is that exploring the reasons why could be time very well spent as we seek to equip our students to be agents of change in the world.
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