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November 21, 2004
Don't Know Much About History
On Nov. 15, NPR had a bit about history textbooks in Cambodia today. They say practically nothing about the Khmer Rouge--in part, said the report, because so many well-placed Cambodians today were Khmer Rouge yesterday. Anyway, the net effect is that Cambodian schoolchildren know practically nothing about the genocide of the previous generation.
Meanwhile, in Rwanda, the genocide of just a decade ago is ignored, and my friend who works for the State Department there says that nobody has forgotten, and that tension still simmers because no resolution has been reached. That tension boiled over on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan massacres.
And meanwhile, the majority of people in the U.S. are willing to re-elect a president who has blundered us into an imperialist losing cause that resonates all too loudly with Vietnam. But Vietnam was thirty years ago. Many voters in 2004 were children or not yet born, and those of us who remember may have become--well, complacent. Our nation knows a lot more about homeless vets and post-traumatic stress syndrome than it does about the affairs of state that led to the Vietnam debacle.
If people in Cambodia, Rwanda, and the U.S. knew just a bit more about history, we might be a little less willing to repeat its errors, and a little less willing to tolerate those who are old enough to know better.
Posted by senioritis at November 21, 2004 08:01 AM
Comments
I'm not so sure we actually did elect him. The systematic dismantling of our civil rights, the freedoms that enslave us, suggests to me that we are in the midst of a carefully orchestrated coup. The erasure of history, the policy of war for peace, the emphasis, even celebration, of ignorance. Winston Smith said he wasn't sure if it was really 1984--what if he was 20 years off? Smith's words were either going to fall on deaf ears because the future was so different or so similiar to his own time as to make his readers indifferent. Which do you imagine? Maybe blogs are OUR little red notebooks. Cheery thoughts for a sunday morning eh love?
Posted by: Bender at November 21, 2004 08:55 AM
I haven't read 1984 in ages, so it just functions as general metaphor for me now--though it does indeed function very powerfully. Tom teaches it at Colgate, and his students are electrified by it. Asking hard questions: that's the first step. Orwell does it so well, that I can almost forgive him for "Politics and the English Language."
Posted by: senioritis at November 21, 2004 09:24 AM