I was lucky enough to go to a particularly good school district. I was able (unlike most US high school students) to take 20th century European history (which stopped just after WWII, to avoid discussing the EU and the rise of Socialism in Europe.) 20th Century Wars (which also touched upon some of the late 19th century conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War,) US Constitutional Law, Shakespeare, Humanities, contemporary World Politics, &c. I role-played representing Albania and Libya in Model UN. Won an award for role-playing Albania, I did.
I was also lucky enough to know better than to accept everything they taught us as gospel. We were taught to think critically, earlier in school, before they stopped doing that, and some of my teachers taught the official curriculum, while annotating it with comments and admonitions that...would be considered very subversive today, bless them. So I didn't believe that we won the American Revolution, or the two world wars singlehandedly, I also watched far more Canadian and British TV than most US folks (we had CBET Channel 9, from Windsor, ON, which helped broaden my worldview at least a bit.) And there was always BBC shortwave, once I had a receiver.
As I've certain unsavory ancestral connections regarding WWII, I spent a lot of time studying how the NSDAP came to power and what happened, in Germany, during WWII. I was also lucky enough to take (one of?) the first history-of-the-Holocaust classes taught at college level in the US, so far as I'm aware of. But I remember discussing "Checks and Balances™" in high school, and being told I was talking nonsense when I explained how they could be easily circumvented. As they have been. (I insisted that the key to doing so was either neutering or stacking the US Supreme Court. Go figure.) So I didn't believe everything I was taught, and all the indoctrination didn't take. But watching the US turn into what it's become, today, has been...remarkable. The parallels between things happening now, and Weimar / post-Weimar Germany are...also remarkable. And I'm very much believing Ivanka Trump's divorce testimony that the only book she ever saw Donald read was a book of Hitler's speeches he kept upon his nightstand. He's doing an inept job of emulating Hitler, but there are a lot of similarities in what he's trying to do and how he's trying to do it.
One of the biggest failings of the US in the Cold War, IMO, was that it never really imagined what might happen if the CCCP actually did collapse. We were so busy fighting it, ideologically, that we never contemplated what would happen if it suddenly were no longer there to keep us playing the "Good Guy™" role. We simply assumed, in a typically American act of inexcusable naivete, that we'd continue to be "The Good Guys™" because we simply believed in our own ideological and moral superiority — which has always been the US' version of the "Master Race" delusion so formerly beloved of the Germans, Japanese, and a helluva lot of White Folks in the Western world. (I won't get into discussing how the definition of 'race' has shifted, relatively recently, from ethnicity to skin color, but that's also an interesting subject.) We seem to have inherited a lot of our arrogant notions and prejudices from our colonial parent, and then reupholstered and distilled them (if you'll pardon my mixing metaphors) through the lens of Hollywood, and embraced them as something akin to both revealed truth and mutating into religious dogma. A dogma we're still, desperately, clinging to, because — much like Weimar Germany — we're terrified of facing the truth regarding how our world has changed since the Berlin wall fell, in '89. Certainly, none of the US "retro" craze, which started with the release of American Graffiti, back in '73, but didn't really get going until Happy Days first aired in '74, and has been re-embraced concerning the '70s and '80s in more recent years. First, we desired a diversion from Watergate and the stagflation years, and now we seek an escape from the confusion and uncertainty of the post-Cold-War era. Just as Weimar Germans sought their escape from the humiliation and devastating aftermath of the Versailles treaty. Put Fox News in the role of the Münchiner Beobachter, Trump's rallies and attempts at State military parades in the role of Hitler's rallies and Nuremburg pageants, his scapegoating of Latinx and Black folks rather than the Jews, and you have a fairly comprehensive parallel to NSDAP Germany during the '30s. Granted, with variations, but the similarities are...troubling.
Not to mention what Customs & Border Patrol are currently doing to US Citizens on the streets of Portland as I type. That's...some SA/Gestapo level action, right there....
no subject
Date: 2020-07-18 12:07 am (UTC)I was also lucky enough to know better than to accept everything they taught us as gospel. We were taught to think critically, earlier in school, before they stopped doing that, and some of my teachers taught the official curriculum, while annotating it with comments and admonitions that...would be considered very subversive today, bless them. So I didn't believe that we won the American Revolution, or the two world wars singlehandedly, I also watched far more Canadian and British TV than most US folks (we had CBET Channel 9, from Windsor, ON, which helped broaden my worldview at least a bit.) And there was always BBC shortwave, once I had a receiver.
As I've certain unsavory ancestral connections regarding WWII, I spent a lot of time studying how the NSDAP came to power and what happened, in Germany, during WWII. I was also lucky enough to take (one of?) the first history-of-the-Holocaust classes taught at college level in the US, so far as I'm aware of. But I remember discussing "Checks and Balances™" in high school, and being told I was talking nonsense when I explained how they could be easily circumvented. As they have been. (I insisted that the key to doing so was either neutering or stacking the US Supreme Court. Go figure.) So I didn't believe everything I was taught, and all the indoctrination didn't take. But watching the US turn into what it's become, today, has been...remarkable. The parallels between things happening now, and Weimar / post-Weimar Germany are...also remarkable. And I'm very much believing Ivanka Trump's divorce testimony that the only book she ever saw Donald read was a book of Hitler's speeches he kept upon his nightstand. He's doing an inept job of emulating Hitler, but there are a lot of similarities in what he's trying to do and how he's trying to do it.
One of the biggest failings of the US in the Cold War, IMO, was that it never really imagined what might happen if the CCCP actually did collapse. We were so busy fighting it, ideologically, that we never contemplated what would happen if it suddenly were no longer there to keep us playing the "Good Guy™" role. We simply assumed, in a typically American act of inexcusable naivete, that we'd continue to be "The Good Guys™" because we simply believed in our own ideological and moral superiority — which has always been the US' version of the "Master Race" delusion so formerly beloved of the Germans, Japanese, and a helluva lot of White Folks in the Western world. (I won't get into discussing how the definition of 'race' has shifted, relatively recently, from ethnicity to skin color, but that's also an interesting subject.) We seem to have inherited a lot of our arrogant notions and prejudices from our colonial parent, and then reupholstered and distilled them (if you'll pardon my mixing metaphors) through the lens of Hollywood, and embraced them as something akin to both revealed truth and mutating into religious dogma. A dogma we're still, desperately, clinging to, because — much like Weimar Germany — we're terrified of facing the truth regarding how our world has changed since the Berlin wall fell, in '89. Certainly, none of the US "retro" craze, which started with the release of American Graffiti, back in '73, but didn't really get going until Happy Days first aired in '74, and has been re-embraced concerning the '70s and '80s in more recent years. First, we desired a diversion from Watergate and the stagflation years, and now we seek an escape from the confusion and uncertainty of the post-Cold-War era. Just as Weimar Germans sought their escape from the humiliation and devastating aftermath of the Versailles treaty. Put Fox News in the role of the Münchiner Beobachter, Trump's rallies and attempts at State military parades in the role of Hitler's rallies and Nuremburg pageants, his scapegoating of Latinx and Black folks rather than the Jews, and you have a fairly comprehensive parallel to NSDAP Germany during the '30s. Granted, with variations, but the similarities are...troubling.
Not to mention what Customs & Border Patrol are currently doing to US Citizens on the streets of Portland as I type. That's...some SA/Gestapo level action, right there....