On history and our allergy to it

[nadinbrzezinski]

It is amazing to me how many folks in this country cannot see the parallels to the 1930s and how relevant that period in US History is.

History has a pattern to it, and one of those patterns in US history is that liberals and conservatives follow each other onto power like clockwork, in what are actually peaceful revolutions. This also means that people don't realize the first dictum of US Politics, just because a politiico did NOT run on an item, does not matter what, it does not mean they will not enact it

The New Deal is the best example of that

The corollary to this is just because I ran on something, does not mean I will carry it out... see Nixon and pull out from the Nam. Remember that secret plan? There you go.

This pattern also means that the country will take a swing to the left... not the center... whatever the center is. And if the current leaders don't follow the country to these progressive politics, the country will still go there. And it will take the path needed, history 101. And in revolutionary times, we are in the midst of them, things that might not been acceptable five years, even two years before, become the norm.

Enjoy the ride... and try to learn from it.

I accept that most americans think they live in a unique point in history, isolated from what a French Historian once called the Grand Duree. We are in a long cycle, starting probably in 1776... if not earlier, with the age of reason. It may be coming to an end, but we are part of a cycle... and KNOWING how things went in the past, will help you understand what is going on now.

That is all.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Yeah I know, kick

[RoyGBiv]

3. I'll kick too ...

When I post things like this, no one pays any attention to me either.

I've found ya gotta say something that gores a sacred cow or something.

And posting about goring sacred cows will usually do it, if you're in favor.

More seriously, what you say here is one of the points of studying history on any level, understanding cycles and patterns and, if nothing else, allowing it to help a person gather some perspective. We are, by definition, unique in history because only we inhabit this moment in history, but the patterns, as you say, have never been unique, not since recorded history began.

I'll just quote Battlestar Galactica, "This has all happened before, and it will all happen again." There are many lessons to be learned there.

The problem is we're all arrogant. It's a human curse. We think we're special. While somewhat of a tangent, I especially enjoy the complaints about the dirty nature of modern political campaigns and how disgusting it all is. That may well be so, but even in the most recent campaign, I didn't see anything the compared to a little cartoon I used to make this very point on a Hist 1301 website I do for someone that portrays Jefferson in Satan's embrace pulling down the pillars of Republican government. A more careful viewing might find the suggestion of buggery between the Ol' Trickster and Tom. "Pallin' around with terrorists" was close, but contextually with the time, an order of magnitude lower.

The United States does hold an almost unheard of place in world history with its peaceful revolutions, but then we're only a couple hundred years old, and we failed miserably at that once. Viewed from a longer cyclical perspective, one could say we failed overall since the period from 1775 thru November of 2008 all constituted one period of our nation's history, and it's still not done. There are more specific cycles within that larger cycle, of course, but the larger cycle has yet to play out.

At some point, assuming humanity survives, the long view of the United States will take hold as a part of the narrative, and this will all be seen as one period, one big cycle. Pray we have more than one.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Thanks I feel that the reason these things sink is ... them pointy intellectuals

also ... the American people, by national DNA, are anti intellectual by nature... part of the longe duree... of cousre if I look at the US as part of the cycle that began the the age of reason I have to go back to at least Locke and Hume...

(I can hear the groaning already... who are those?)

By the way, been cleaning house and found some interesting books in storage... methinks will take them to campus for the library, that way they can gather dust there. My recent visit to the library left me "in tears" as to how empty that place was

[RoyGBiv]

7. Hoffstadter ...

I was a generally pissed off person regarding anti-intellectualism when I read first read _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_ by Richard Hofstadter (all bow down and praise his name ... ahem ... sorry ... flashback). On a first reading, he didn't help.

And then it soothed me a bit because I realized it wasn't just me who was irritated by it. This was, as a matter of fact, just a part of the cycle.

The continuing problem, for me, is how it infects our politics at every level. During the past eight years many of us have decried the lack of respect for intellectualism, especially when discussing Gore and the treatment he received in the 2000 campaign by the national press.

"Hellfire, Homer! I wants me a Prezdint I can drink a beer with, not some gosh darned ol' egg head that talks all funny! Danged ol' carpetbagger anyway ..."

But then ... just as you think people are coming around, Gore is criticized by those who supported him as being too "stiff" of not honing his message for the common people. While Gore's oratorical skills and how badly his campaign staff functioned in defining his message are certainly subjects worth considering, the criticism itself took on a decidedly anti-intellectual tone.

And it's happening all over again with Obama. We loved, loved, loved how he was a smart one. (Well, some of us said that.) The adults are in charge now. (Some of us again.) He's got this. (Still ... some.)

However, for many, now and during the campaign, his ever move, every unknown thought is being questioned. We don't want smart, dammit, we want revenge. To hell with smart.

Or that's the way I see it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. I know, and it is refreshing to hear a man that can string the English Language

in a comprehensible manner

But that makes people feel rather threatened.

I need to get the latest book on that... and as to Gore... he is smart

Hell even here, people get angry when one mentions worst case scenarios (Paging professor Krugman) and I suspect folks do not know the meaning of the term worst case scenario

We have had this as part of our national DNA... but I fear it's gotten worst... and as we enter the worst crisis since the Depression... people are missing CRUCIAL and MAJOR parts of it, and cannot make rational decisions or have a rational discussion... and are easy to manipulate by the MSM.

I have to wonder, where the disdain for them egg heads started (Jackson, who am I kidding here)

And we will pay dearly for it.

You realize we are having one of them pointy head history discussions? The kind the rest of the class hates?

[RoyGBiv]

14. My head is pointy ...

And my eyes are doubled.

Speaking of Jackson, I have lost the reference and am once again reminded of it. I now need to find it. It was a contemporary piece written upon his election that brings together several modern threads quite well. I have thought of it often ever since 2000. It applies to so many different angles.

To summarize, an observer of the election of Jackson wrote about the mob mentality that went along with his ascendancy, and he called it that, an ascendancy, not and election. He wrote of the downfall of civilization now that "democracy" held the popular imagination more than republicanism. Clearly, this commentator was not of Jackson's fledgling party, not too enamored with the notion of someone as ignorant as Jackson leading the country, someone "chosen" solely on his popularity and not his talent, skill, or intellect. This commentator, in fact, declared the American experiment failed.

There are so many layers to this.

We, in the modern era, of a more progressive bent of mind abhor the idea of such things as property holding being a requirement for voting rights. But at that time, the main point of the extension of the franchise was an attempt by Southerners to overpower the interests of the Northern, specifically New England and Virginian (and odd pairing) hold on the reigns of government. An irony of our experiment in government is that the democratic impulse gained traction amidst a society that used it to solidify the idea of racial inequality, the emergence of Manifest Destiny, and the perpetuation of slavery. The planter class in the South was such a minority that the needed the votes of the lower-class whites to equalize their electoral power with the more varied and widespread wealth of the North and emerging Western regions.

With the rise of democracy, however, we found the key to eradicating that which it was initially intended to preserve. Popular opinion would not, after all, acquiesce to the idea of human ownership.

That, too, changed or cycled as the parties that united to resist the immoral institutions that had fueled the economy of so much of the nation used their newfound power to provide the foundations of the Gilded Age that took so much from so many and gave it to so few for so little.

I'm simplifying here, of course, but, yes, the election of Jackson is a key moment, for many reasons.

We are a strange country.

[chrisa]

5. We live in interesting times...

The next few years should be pretty interesting. I think we're at the beginning of an era of Democratic dominance, depending on how effective Obama is.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. that we do, the chinese curse and all that

may you live in interesting times...

[Joe Fields]

9. We must remember the past, absolutely and learn from it.

That is one of the tenets I live by. There are a few things I would mention that might possibly make a difference in the course of where this country will head. I won't say that I believe the country will take a hard left. I won't say that it won't, either. But there are factors which are enormously different, that could keep that leftward change from happening.

Not in any particular order of importance:

1) We had very few real industries in the 1930's. IIRC agriculture made up approximately 60 percent of our economy. My point to that statement is that we were not an industrial powerhouse. Big business didn't have the hold on politicians that it does today.

2)marketing and mass market manipulation by those who influence and control the media is so much more sophisticated and persuasive than back in the 1930's.

3) The 24 hour news cycle. To this one I will also add that news came at a snails pace in the 1930's, and news from around the world in many places was non-existent.

4) Because the military industrial complex holds great influence with the media, in some cases outright owning broadcasting networks, the media reports less of news and does more to shape public opinion.


These four items I've brought up will have a decided bearing on the direction of this country. Which way depends entirely, I think, on just how loud the American people voice their dissatisfaction. That is the real X factor in the equation.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Well history does not exactly repeat itself every time

but the patterns are there, as well as the echoes

For example, for the same structural reasons that led to the very unacceptable New Deal... at the end of this I can ALMOST bet on National Single Payer health care

Seeing Michael Moore talk nationalization of the big three on Countdown tells you just how far we have moved in six months into what is acceptable

[Odin2005]

10. There seems to be an 80-year cycle.

Institutional-political crisis followed 40 years later sociocultural upheaval, followed 40 years after that by another crisis. The Great Awakening was followed by the American Revolution, which was followed by the Age of Transcendentalism, which was followed by the US Civil War, which was followed by the Progressive Era, which was followed by the Great Depression and WW2, which was followed by "The 60s", which was followed by the Credit Crisis, and the cycle turns again. The generation that raises hell shouting "hell no, we won't go" during the period of cultural upheaval becomes the "gray champions" that lead society through the crisis. The young adults that come of age during the crisis become a generation of great, but hubristic, institution-builders that desire to build their way to utopia, until they are attacked by their own children during the cultural upheaval.

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny." ---FDR

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Yes, and we are at either the beginning or the end of that cycle

That is the short cycle

Now the Longe Duree is 500 years or so... and we might be close to the end of that one too... hence the end of the age of reason might be upon us, and another age of superstition is fast approaching.

[Odin2005]

13. What I have read seems to indicate the crisis period started in 2005 and will last until about 2025.

And the similarities between FDR and Obama are almost scary, right down to both being on the boundary between a generation of idealists (The Muckraker and Boom generations) and a generation of cynical pragmatists that came of age in the wake of the period of cultural upheaval The Lost Generation and Generation X).

IMO Western Civilization is in a situation similar to the situation Graeco-Roman Civilization was in during the Age of the Gracchi, in where there was a struggle between small-holding farmers and great landowning aristocratic elite. In modern times the same dynamic is developing between workers, consumers, and small businesses on one hand and the multinational corporate elite on the other. In Rome's case the elites won and the populist farmers were brutally crushed, damning Graeco-Roman civilization to be engulfed in a "universal empire," a civilization's "death shrowd," to use a turn of phrase used by A. J. Toynbee. Toynbee called the period Graeco-Roman Civilization was in then and the period we are now the "time of troubles," caused by a "creative minority" (in our case the commercial-capitalist class of the modern West) degenerating into a uncreative "dominant" minority that tries to maintain it's power through force. If Western Civilization is to survive it must get rid of it's dominant minority and develop a new creative minority.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Let me add something to this comparison to the fall of Rome

Religion

We are in the midst of a resurgence in fundamentalist thought

So was the case in Rome... as they abandoned the rational thought and took refuge first in the Roman Pantheon and then Christianity

The Age of Sacred Terror (which is a cool term all on its own and a creation of two former CIA analysts) is not limited to Islam...

And I am a sucker for Toymbee as well

Oh and our farmers are facing the same crisis... industrial farming versus the family farm, and the end of the Yeoman farmer that we might be witnessing. What came next... oh yes, the middle ages... and the American Empire is at threat of collapse already

[20score]

16. If only people knew history, K&R.