Columbus Day has come and gone again, and no one I know mentioned anything about it. Admittedly, the idea of a three-day weekend nowadays is not all that exciting. In the Trump era, it brings up the idea of instilling youngsters with thrilling tales of heroic explorers who ultimately helped create the United States, according to Trump's promotion of "real" history, when real history is about greed and cruelty and politics--in other words, just like it is right now, and always.
But the cat's out of the bag. If we want to teach children fairy tales about how our country was founded, fine, I guess, but there will come a time when kids growing up will ask each other, just like they do now, of Santa Claus, "so when did you find out that the motive for founding our country was about money and greed and power?" And the answer might still be, I heard my parents in the living room talking when they thought I was in bed asleep.
Yeah. I don’t understand the resistance to updated info. We KNOW we were taught a white, male-centric version of history, and in particular a rah-rah idea of the US. Why hang on to these illusions?
ReplyDeleteYeah. I think it's because it's easier to sit back and think how exceptional we are rather than actually go and do something.
ReplyDeleteI still think the "founding fathers" did a remarkably good job of setting up the government, and I suppose we could be proud of that--or feel lucky--but to ignore the bad is equally bad.