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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Oscar Wilde once said that “our only duty to history is to rewrite it.” Now is certainly the time in America to radically rethink the narrative of this country’s collective past. And its present and future.
Each generation tends to rewrite the past to meet its own self-image. Some more than others.
As the United States evolved into an ever more multicultural society, the limitations of nationalistic historical narratives became embarrassingly restrictive. The glorification of the Civil War, the downplaying of Indian removal, slavery and the Jim Crow laws, the romanticizing of immigration, the embracing of nostalgic fantasies about the past, have all become untenable in today’s worldview.
Or have they?
This current government has buried the 1619 Project and its ilk with the Heritage Foundation-created Republican right-adopted Project 2025, its illiberal aims robed in a belief system that justifies inequality for the sake of personal power and profit.
Under its auspices, within weeks our shambling democracy devolved into an autocracy, one with distinctly authoritarian overtones of us vs. them, condemning children and the disenfranchised, all those who think differently. A newly undemocratic un-Christian nation based on retribution and punishment.
Thomas Jefferson had feared it would be only a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into an “elective despotism” he called for citizens to act before:
“The public money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them.
“They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
“Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us.”
“It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
We are now in that time of having to draw the wolves’ teeth.
In a new time of bloody battles, which too often in the past have defined what passes for dispassionate history, emphasizing that today’s tales of the shredding of individual Americans’ rights and expanded aggression against other peoples are ones of greed and abuse of knowledge and power, not narratives of morality and greatness.
During the slaughter of World War One, Wilfred Owen and other poets started questioning conflict, that the old lie dating back to the Romans was fraudulent, that it is never right and fitting to die for one’s country.
But too many of today’s leaders and politicians want to vicariously fight wars in which they can personally avoid participating or are so removed by time from the pain and suffering – and the guilt, from the Second World War to Vietnam to Iraq and beyond, that that they are now desperately eager to relive the excitement and comradeship that is all that has survived of their memories.
Once the U.S. built the nuclear bomb, politicians were creaming to use it. As a result, not only did hundreds of thousands die in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but fifty millions more during wars of foreign aggression during the last half of the 20th century.
Guess what? Now that Elon the Enforcer has removed the scientists, only the politicians remain.
Wars are profitable to those engaged in satisfying the demands of military procurement.
As a series of presidents, majority Democrats, loosened the controls on Wall Street in the abstract of expanding the economy, the oligarchs playing the long game moved in, generating fears, empowering autocrats, eradicating democratic discussion and ensuring further build-up of the military-industrial complex to stoke their bottom lines.
First Biden and now Trump are vicariously experiencing Netanyahu’s thrill in annihilating Gazans using American weapons of mass destruction.
Trump and Putin are now discussing the future of Ukraine without its input, clearly focused on divvying up profit and loss – how much each will profit for 11 years of the Russian bear’s aggression against Ukraine. Doubtful any mention will be made of human beings, their suffering and losses.
Ditto those suffering and dying from the arbitrary withdrawal of American aid around the world. Which, while deemed inconsequential by the White House, will only end up fomenting more anger and terrorist violence against the self-proclaimed King… and those of us under his rule.
Fear and greed are the underpinnings of pure evil. Profiteers pushing power to promote their own ends.
Those most affected by Wall Street greed are those most excluded from the decision-making process.
As Annie Leonard, who took on capitalism with her quirky “Story of Stuff” videos and now heads Greenpeace, wrote:
“For them, protest is often the only avenue of democratic participation that’s readily available.
“This is in part why civil disobedience—a tactic that oftentimes involves breaking the law—has helped cement monumental human rights wins for social movements across the world, led by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Gandhi.”
Activism from Black Lives Matter to Standing Rock to pro-Palestinian protests are being slapped down by corporate interests wanting to defend their profiteering at all costs. Literally.
Powerful companies are using Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) to quash legitimate campaigns against their most egregious behaviors, behaviors that harm people and planet.
These companies are using their deep pockets and abusive litigation tactics to shut down organized objection by intimidation, bullying critics and bankrupting them with ceaseless and frivolous legal filings to shut down free speech and destroy the organizations supporting their actions.
Most recently with a $660+ million SLAPP-down settlement against Greenpeace for providing solar power and basic human amenities to the Indigenously-organized Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing sacred land and endangering vital water resources.
However, politics still remains the art of the possible. Opening doors, even those not acted on at the time, can pave the path to progress.
From Rosa Parks and Bayard Rustin in the 1950s and 60s to Pierre Vallières in 1960s Québec, from Ralph Nader in the 60s and Daniel Ellsberg in the 70s to Ta-Nahisi Coates and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez today, there have always been those who fearlessly speak out for the people.
But they need support, they need a movement that cannot be quashed.
Rosa Parks inspired the black workers of Montgomery. Bayard Rustin organized the march on Washington where MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech reverberated across America. Pierre Vallières’ essay White Niggers of America propelled the Parti Québecois into power a few short years after it was published.
Ralph Nader’s advocacy for consumers placed an initial damper on corporate safety abuses. Daniel Ellsberg revealed the mendacity of the government that eventually led to the sputtering out of U.S. interventions in southeast Asia. Ta-Nahisi Coates took MLK’s crusade for African Americans to a whole new level.
Now it is up to us to have the backs of AOC and Bernie Sanders and their sisters and brothers.
Some of the better-known books on the less-sanitized versions of American history are A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, and An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
