Here I'm echoing Cyndy at
mousemusings who
points out this gem of an
article penned by Howard Zinn titled "America's Blinders".
I always find asking "why" a horribly difficult question with no easy answers especially when it comes to explaining human behavior.
So I love that Zinn is able to pinpoint these two dynamics inherent to our current collective American psyche:
- our lack of historical perspective and
- a stark moral superiority.
This is
required reading, my opinion.
The solution?
Historian Zinn wants us all to know our history.
One vital point: he reminds us how conflicts in our history, over and over again, are class-based. I think this perspective is extremely illuminating, especially in understanding why the American public so easily gets duped into doing things not in our best interest. We get fooled by our collective lack of awareness and pride. (And you all know I'm not talking about you here in the dkos community).
We're not going to get any support from the powers-that-be nor from our established institutions to get this sort of information out to the public. Can you imagine the tongue-lashing and the hair-tearing?
Which means I'd love to see our progressive organizations put their noses to the grindstone: how can we put a huge effort into awareness of our history, from the lens given to us by Zinn?
More basic education and advocacy, please! It's all for our best interest.