The question about American History
As the saying goes, history is written by the victors. However, of course, there is the other side of that controversial coin.
History, according to Merriam-Webster is nothing more than: “The study of past events”, as for past events, the dictionary explains: “The beginning of the time when important events in the past were written down”
Now, my question is: Is the Dictionary, today, going to re-write its own definitions as there are groups of people in America trying their best to re-write the past even at the expense of distortions worse than possibly the one’s Victors may have written?
As many feel powerless as individuals, albeit they have no idea how blessed they are having been born in this country, they necessarily will seek a greater cause
Wannabe woke historians credit no influence of the direction of the country on individuals, nor do they envision what can happen to the nation, rather they attribute to small events’ ‘Raison d’être’ to greater causes.
Some even exaggerate the influence one person may have to justify the actions of a crowd. Also, because of the American mindset of independence, one may think that one person cannot effectively affect these actions. Here is the American paradox, both are true and false. As a result, Historians gloss over our society’s complexities and give a whitewashed account of past events and in the same fashion predict the present as the future belongs to another realm of thinking, hence historical interpretations are delivered each day by people in the media who have immediate personal needs and wants and couldn’t care less about the direction the country is going.
History Revisionism today is ‘De-Rigueur’ in America as in the past two decades the National guilt about slavery has engulfed society. Slavery was horrendous for sure but if we speak about today’s African-Americans they should be proud of their ascendents’ fortitude, courage, and optimistic vision, and drive for a better future which most have achieved.
Having said that, what is interesting as I have observed over the years, the very ones who have promulgated racist views in the first place, namely the Democrats, are now pushing as hard as they can to promote revisionism of the country’s history in order to remain in control of certain ethnic groups which are just as American as apple pie but are further misguided. They hope that re-writing history and re-inventing a glorious past and fantasy empires in Black Africa for the descendants of slaves will keep them in their fold. I guess it is a political strategy proposed by Leftist intelligentsia who knows very little of world history, never mind its geography. However, let’s say those imaginary empires ever existed they surely must have been engulfed into nothingness by cataclysmic events or climate changes over eons. However, politically driven so-called historians transform what could have been insignificant kingdoms into vast imaginary empires in the hope of insufflating pride into African-American souls. These people know what they need and know who they are. The last thing they need is to be further infantalized by lazy historians.
NOTE: The only real and documented North African great civilization was that of the Egyptians which by the way were not even Arabs, nor Muslim. Judging by people’s features depicted in their bas-reliefs or carvings, some of them probably pertained to Central Africa. Egypt was a fantastically impressive society but not an empire as we know nothing of their conquests. Good or bad, Arabs built an empire that extended from Damascus to Southern France.
If the history of the American society is its collective memory, the problem which strikes me for the Left is that those nuances of interpretations they employ today have a short shelf-life and are limited. Everything up till today’s USA is and or has been very well documented since Amerigo Vespucci. So it takes morality contortions as revisionism has little wiggle room left other than pure mental gymnastics to create a universe that may not have existed at all and if it has no one knows anything about it.
When some pretend history is a continuing dialogue between Present and past interpretations, they try to assign a contemporary perspective and insert present values which have nothing to do with the context of the times when events occurred and were recorded. Again, of course, each writer as a perspective according to his or her own prism and socio-political or religious penchant but nonetheless, the core of their reporting is there to be seen. So historians who are bent on controlling people in our present via astounding interpretations of American History and convoluted mental and verbal gymnastics vomit verbiage which as someone who went to a famous political studies institution said to me: - “We learned how to speak and be convincing for an hour or two after having said absolutely nothing of substance”. In that vein, incompetent Historians may get fame and fake rewards but in terms of profundity, they are at the kindergarten level and only worthy of tabloid exposure.
In conclusion, one may say that History is very complex as it equally depends on general causes as it does on specific events as minute as they may be. Society is a body of its own with its own ills who suffer as individuals do. This country has had its share of problems but all in all, as an observer I’d say that America cannot get rid fast enough of its self-inflicted ridiculous guilt feelings and get on with being the beacon of light, almost everyone in the world dreams about.