Anyway the true answer is that my life is going pretty well and when that is true there is less angst, chaos and trouble to write about. That is the material that interests readers the most I've found...the OVERCOMING ADVERSITY stuff. It isn't that life is easy...it certainly is not that but it is moving along well at this point so my attention lands elsewhere then exclusively on me and my issues.
For example...today's particular BUG up me BUM is that the PO-DUNK town of Coldwater, Michigan (closest city to where I happen to live) has no movie theater showing the new Steven Spielberg movie LINCOLN within 20 miles of it, at least as far as I know.
I find this absolutely unacceptable as well as totally unbelievable. I probably could fill a book with my displeasure and opinion about how concerned I am that Americans no longer have a freaking clue about History, particularly their own. It isn't that they find it uninteresting...last night PBS TV ran a Ken Burns Documentary on the Dust Bowl and it was hugely popular...a multiple part documentary about DUST & DIRT Storms!
The American people truly love history, it's the establishment...IE: The Government School Boards, Department of Education, etc that want to put forward a revised version of history to sell their own politically correct VISION Of America, that is mostly a fabrication, in my opinion. So it is counter-productive to have historically correct shows, movies and books out there so people can educate themselves. The last thing they want is an independently thinking, educated population....GEEZ, then folks might actually use their ability to reason, broad & objective sense of history and intelligence to pick the person most qualified to be our President.
I know...I sound paranoid here like there is a conspiracy against the facts but there sure seems like there is a war against TRUTH going on in this country today. I railed against the LIE in another recent post yet it seems we can do nothing to stop the powers to be from Re-Writing our County's and the WORLD's History. Don'y believe me?
Two years the Leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood addressing the full contingent of the United Nations and claimed as he has many times before that the Holocaust NEVER HAPPENED. The worlds entire population of Muslims basically believe this is the case. So not is ignoring History just plain wrong in my opinion but it's morally corrupt & DANGEROUS as well!
General Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander of the Allies ordered all the troops liberating the German Extermination and Concentration Camps to let the Press in to photograph EVERYTHING without holding back. He said at the time that one day someone would say this never happened and he wanted to make damn sure that never happened. He was a prophet because in less then 80 years the Holocaust has already been denied in the United Nations!
General Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander of the Allies ordered all the troops liberating the German Extermination and Concentration Camps to let the Press in to photograph EVERYTHING without holding back. He said at the time that one day someone would say this never happened and he wanted to make damn sure that never happened. He was a prophet because in less then 80 years the Holocaust has already been denied in the United Nations!
So the people running the movie theaters of Coldwater MI and Angola, IN take HEED, you are helping to destroy, not only the history but our Country itself by your ignorant acts.
By changing our History, promoting false beliefs and understanding among our people we are seeing the foundation of America come apart from the inside - out. And I see it happening now at such an alarming rate because the younger citizens of our County (anyone below they age of 40, I'd say) do not have the basic knowledge and understanding of even this Country's most recent History...that of the 20th Century...which includes the Great War, The Great Depression, Civil Rights, WWII, NASA'S Apollo Moon Program, The Cold War, Vietnam War, Watergate & the fall of President Nixon and the fall of the Soviet Block in Eastern Europe among other things.
They certainly KNOW little to nothing about the Civil War, the Founding Principles of our Nation's beginning, The Constitution etc. I find incredibly disturbing and in all honesty I am not sure that this trend, at this point can ever be stopped and turned around in the other direction. That would be a National Catastrophe, plain and simple!
Hello there. Well...aren't you a ranter! I love it! So few have the hootspa....or however you spell that.
ReplyDeleteI believe. And I believe that history is being rewritten to serve a small majority with "hootspa" enough to stand out loudly. But I really know very little, and I understand how the voice gets small.
You bring up so many interesting points here, I could probably write you a book in response :) What I will try to do, hopefully with a great deal of tact (and I apologize in advance if I fail), is focus on one thing: that history is constantly being rewritten, that it has always been the case, and that IMHO it is a good thing. This could be a long one... :)
ReplyDeleteThe Holocaust is one of those rare instances in history where no decent human being can deny that it was the absolute low point of humanity, let alone that it happened. Systematically deporting, incarcerating and executing six million people, yes that is evil. Indubitably. But more often than not, historical events are more grey than black or white, and one person's guerilla is another's freedom fighter. "Truth" is a problematic, and relative, term here, depending on who is holding the quill. Usually, it is the victors. And "truth" depends on how generous they decide to be.
There was a time, at the end of WWII, when the Holocaust was just an event and not yet Written History. Eisenhower, whom you mention, as well as a multitude of other people, made sure that it was translated, transliterated into history so that it could be remembered and learned from. Had the Allies lost in WWII, that narrative would have probably been written much differently, despite the fact that the event (=killing 6 million people) was the same. This was not the first, and sadly not even the last, instance of genocide in European history, even though Europe would like to pretend otherwise.
In my opinion, Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust is not a bad thing. It is bad that he thinks it never happened because it proves him ignorant, however his public denial of it, and the uproar it caused, is a celebration of democracy and free speech, and the opportunity for the "free world" to reconfirm and reestablish some of its key principles. Free speech means being willing to listen even to things we do not want to hear, and examining them critically - as the independent thinkers and educated population you talk about. It means hearing them and deciding not to accept them, because they go against facts, and against humanity. Anything less would equate the "free world" with regimes that suppress free thinking and free speech. But Ahmadinejad is also a very simple, black-and-white example that does not require much thought.
Another good consequence of the constant rewriting of history is that no truths are, nor should they be, held uncontestable, but agreed upon through a consensus. This critical examination and consensus enables us to have a more "truthful" version of WWII, where the good guys, who won, can also say they are sorry about the civilian victims of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It enables us to say that Stalin had a pact with Hitler, then turned coats for awhile to side with the good guys, then went on to become the monster that he was. It enables us to write the history of horrific oppression and exploitation of Native Americans, African-born slaves, women and LGBT population alongside of "all men are created equal" being written at a time when things were far from it. All of those events are incredibly complex and I will always prefer multiple points of view in forming an opinion. It isn't really about the Ahmadinejads of this world, it is about the rest of us knowing that he is wrong, and saying it out loud.
Chris, this is an excellent comment and one that I happened to agree with for the most part. I have often written in various posts about a variety of subjects concerning people & life that rarely are things black and white. More often there are shades of grey or even an explosive variety of colors.
DeleteIf I am guilty of anything with this post it is that I was a bit lazy and chose to paint my opinion with rather wide brush strokes. But I essentially have always agreed with your very detailed, well thought out description here.
Certainly there are some episodes of so-called "historical fact" that were not even close to being the truth. One of my earliest historical passions after the Civil War was the plight of the Native Americans. I realized at a very young age what we were taught in school was in fact not at all what actually happened. But of course in the 1960's the country was not prepared to admit to systematic genocide of an entire race and Multiple cultures of human beings. Yet that is the TRUTH.
I also agree (perhaps for a slightly different reason)that the Iranian Leaders UN Speech actually achieved a positive result, mainly because he revealed himself as being so ignorant.
And there also is always going to be debate (Quite healthy, IMO) about what was more "humane" Incinerating nearly 100,000 citizens of Tokyo in one night with incendiary bombs dropped on an ancient WOODEN City and an Atomic Bomb, being dropped with prior warning on a much smaller city. Really what's right, what's wrong?
My TRUTH? WAR is all wrong, yet certain situations require it to blight out a greater evil. After the absolute Hell that was the joint US Army/ US Marine Invasion of Okinawa, the prospect of invading mainland Japan suggested casualties upwards of a million COMBATANTS...who knows what the civilian casualties would have been. We knew from our experience with Suicide Cliff on Saipan that Japanese Civilians would follow any order to take their own life and our soldiers watched helplessly as mothers threw their young children off the cliff and then followed them onto the rocks 500 feet below.
Mainly American Leaders felt that the Japanese could NOT make the right decision so by choosing the Bomb they felt we (The Allies) were choosing the less evil alternative for our enemies and their woman, elderly and kids.
It is on post like this one that I get a bit leery because I never know who my audience is. I may try to provoke at times but I never am trying to insult one's culture or put whole races down.
My one struggle and I freely admit it is with Radical Islam...they have declared war on the West (really on anyone who is not them) and I have to accept that sooner or later I will offend somebody whether I am trying to or not.
That's for this Chris...gets me thinking and that is a great thing.