12 modern delusions that must be challenged: #10

Number 10: We have no need for History

In recent decades large areas of intellectual and academic life-political thought and analysis, economics, philosophy - have jettisoned a concern with history. Yet it remains true that those who ignore history repeat it;as the recycling of unacknowledged cold war premises by the Bush administration in Iraq has devastatingly shown.

My Reply:

This is less my area, so there'll be less of a point to my ramblings.

It is interesting to look at the actions of the Bush administration under the assumption of their ignorance of history, but its probably truer to say that the people who elected him are the ones ignorant of history. Take this little nugget, gleaned from a progressive blog site at http://www.inthesetimes.com

In the autumn of 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential election and in the middle of a typically bloody month in Iraq, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature article on the casualty of truth in the Bush administration. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer, Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the president:

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

History is not their enemy, it is their target. To be the writers of history, means to be the winners. This is the Plan for the New American Century - they want to take over the world. Or keep taking it over. I think they stand a good chance too, because we all depend on 300 million under-educated, overfed sheep to reign in their worst excesses.

History as a warning, serves only those who have a discerning eye for detail and the truth so that they can pick out the propaganda from the reportage. History as a tool, served only the winners. But now there is the internet, and everyone can write their own history. The problem then becomes, no one can read all that history to decide the ultimate truth, no more than one can talk to everyone in the world to get the popular opinion. So the history being written remains the preserve of those who have the biggest broadcast bandwidth.

I did warn that there wouldn't be much of an overall point to this!