(no subject)

[shadowkat]

While reading Lapham Quarterly's special issue on Alexander Hamilton, found this fascinating quote:

"The iconography of the immortal American past becomes so fixed in the popular American imagination that it's never a surprise when informed voices at the kitchen table or hotel bar demand what Jonathan Edwards would have said about the pornographic film industry, how John Wayne would have handled the Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande. Candidates for political office promise to take America back, but they don't take follow-up questions. Back where and from whom, by what means of conveyance? Aboard the Mayflower, or at a point of a gun? If back home on the range, do the deer and the antelope still play with Kevin Costner and the Teton Sioux? If from the grasp of venal politicians and vampire capitalists, does Ralph Waldo Emerson go to Washington and Commodre Vanderbilt to prison? If a happy return to the American Garden of Eden, who among the founders deserves the credit for a design of the landscape -- Jefferson, who planted the seeds of liberty, or Hamilton, who floated the bond issue underwriting the cost of the wheelbarrows and the slaves?"

"Man in a Myth - By Lewis H. Lapham"

I particularly was struck by the comment, "Candidates for political office promise to take America back, but they don't take follow-up questions. Back where and from whom, by what means of conveyance?" As if the past is somehow better than the present. Lapham states earlier in his essay, "that history is not what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago; it is a story about what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.. The stories change with the sight lines available to the tellers of the tale, every generation rearranging the furniture of its past to suit the comfort and convenience of the present."

I think this is true. I think human beings are very good at constructing myths and fantasies to comfort themselves. Yesterday, a man who works with Syrian refugees conveyed a startling observance, the refugees who can't vote, let alone speak much English, have become devout supporters of Trump.
They watch him on their television sets. And can't wrap their heads around the idea that he would deport them the moment he got elected. He exemplifies a certain machismo in their heads. It's almost as if they have projected their own fantasies onto the candidate, and do not see the candidate that stands before them.

The tendency to romanticize the distant past isn't all that different than what the Syrian refugees are doing. We write fanfic about it. The danger is when we use it to demonize our present. Oh, things were so much better when I was a kid back in _______. Which of course isn't true. They weren't. Or, things were so much worse when I was a kid back in ________, which may have been true to an extent. Since there are many many things that have altered for the better, far less that have altered for the worse. Instead of learning from the past, people often glamorize and fantasize about returning to it -- escaping their presents. There are two time travel series on television at the moment that to an extent address that fantasy or desire.

I also think there is a danger in how we often characterize the past. "Let's Make America Great Again" -- okay what decade are we talking about? Was it during Bush's reign, when we were in not one but two wars, and terrorists bombed the World Trade Center? Not to mention the housing crash? OR his father's reign -- when we went to war with Iraq the first go-around? OR was it during Regan's decade and we slid into a Recession, and few of my generation were able to get jobs? With the cold war bankrupting both the US and the Soviet Union, with fears of nuclear war plaguing our lives? How about the 1960s? During the violent civil rights protests? Or the 70s? With inflation and Watergate?
Or was it the 1990s, which felt a bit too much like the roaring 20s? And define great? And why is it important? What does nationalism really do? Does it make you successful? Happy? Or is it just a construct that you can hide behind and convince yourself that this...this is who you are and yay?

A careful look at anyone or any country's history exposes various blemishes, warts, and sink holes.
It's more often than not far from pretty. Much can be learned from it. But I wouldn't recommend retreating back there...in a nice little bubble. It may very well pop.

Each decade, we go back to revisit a past decade in fashion, art, film, culture -- and sort of romanticize it a bit. In the 1970s, we romanticized the 1950s, in the 1980s, it was the 1960s, in the 1990s, it was the 1970s, and in the 00s, it has become the 1980s...I'm waiting for us to revisit the 1990s. Personally, I've found the romanticization and nostalgia of the 1980s to be hilarious. Mainly because I remember them rather clearly as not being "all that". Can't help but wonder if my parents felt much the same way about revisiting the 1950s?

But our recreation of these decades has a Hollywood glitter aspect to it. It's not real. So much is not real. And it's hard at times, I think, to determine what is and isn't real. The media isn't a lot of help in that respect. Nor are politicians, who have a tendency to wrap things up into sound bites.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It is Monday. Almost 9 am. After we've marched our clocks back an hour, gaining a hour or is that losing one? Well not quite all of us, some have resisted and gone their own way. I think Arizona still ignores Daylights Savings Time and never changed their clocks to begin with. How we view time even varies from state to state, individual to individual, is it all that surprising that how we view and perceive history and political candidates should vary as well?

Comments

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

I particularly was struck by the comment, "Candidates for political office promise to take America back, but they don't take follow-up questions. Back where and from whom, by what means of conveyance?" As if the past is somehow better than the present.

So very, very true.