Zinn on the Power of History

Howard ZinnA recent speech, The Uses of History and the War on Terrorism by Howard Zinn (Democracy Now), shows that Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (Amazon), still has a fire in his belly. It’s most excellent and well worth reading from start to finish. To make sure everyone’s awake and that they know they’re at the right lecture, he starts with a clear, succint, impossible-to-misinterpret topic sentence for his essay:

“They’ve taken over the country. They’ve taken over the policy. They’ve driven us into two disastrous wars, disastrous for our country and even more disastrous for people in the Middle East. And they have sucked up the wealth of this country and given it to the rich, and given it to the multinationals, given it to Halliburton, given it to the makers of weapons. They’re ruining the environment. And they’re holding on to 10,000 nuclear weapons, while they want us to worry about the fact that Iran may, in ten years, get one nuclear weapon.”

Learning from History

This is the situation today. Zinn, with a compendium of history stored in his head, provides context to prove the saying, plus ça change…[1] He argues convincingly that the thing most Americans need is this proper historical context—to be able to see today through the lens of history and avoid being fooled by the same spurious arguments again. Without context, we are just sheep, waiting for the next firecracker to go off, so we can show bare our teeth and the whites of our eyes in fear as we careen to the other side of the meadow.

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same way in any country.”

In citing Hermann Göring (above), he wants to show not how smart the man was, but how fatuous we all are, for falling into traps predicted 60 years ago. That we are such complex beings—capable of the most magical things, yet controllable by such crude stimulations—is embarassing. Read the quote again; it’s a dead-on description of the political and intellectual climate in the United States for the last four years. Just build the fear and the power will come.

And it seems not to matter how often it happened before because the government does a great job of maintaining its power and it has no scruples. History is not taught to Americans. The subject is taught, but with all the important bits left out and fake bits put in. It is a history honed over the years (not intentionally or with a grand program behind it, but more evolving towards the perfection of non-information we have today) to grind out patriotic, obedient and hard-working Americans who will not rock the boat. And it works incredibly well. But, as I.F. Stone said, “Just remember two words: governments lie”. And presidents lie, no matter how much you think they love you back. Though examples are legion, take this one from the American Empire’s acquisition of its Pacific Rim properties:

“…President McKinley said, ‘We’re going into the Philippines to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos.‘ … if the history books spent some time on the war in the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, instead of, as history books do – they spend a lot of time on the Spanish-American War, which just lasted three months – they spend virtually no time on the war on the Philippines, a bloody war which lasted, oh, seven years, and which involved massacres and the extermination of populations. That history doesn’t appear. You know, we had civilized and Christianized the Filipinos and established our control.”

And, since the Filipinos loved every minute of their subjugation, there was really no reason to mention it. Ever again. The obvious question (with a rather obvious answer) is: “why do governments lie?” Why must they continually do things that they need to conceal from us or sell to us with outlandish, criminal propaganda? Because they need you to to keep munching your grass and squirting into the pail, all the while not looking up once to notice that you’re not in a pasture, you’re in a tight, little, lightless stall … and the farmer is not.

“…governments in general do not represent the people of the societies that they govern. And since they don’t represent the people and since they act against the interest of the people, the only way they can hold power is if they lie to the people. If they told people the truth, they wouldn’t last very long.”

You and your government are not best buddies, hitting the lanes together on Thursday nights and playing poker one Saturday month. Your government has an agenda and your well-being is generally not part of it. Your government is run, as governments are bound to be, by a minority elite who need you to keep doing what you’re doing, which is not questioning what they’re doing. To this end, they invest a lot of time and energy convincing you that you are buddies and what’s good for them is good for you. Though that may not be immediately obvious, they’ll be happy to explain it to you … you see, it’s like this … TERRORIST! COMMUNIST! GAY MARRIAGE!

“It’s very important to know this, because the culture tries very hard to persuade us that we all have a common interest. If they use the language ‘national interest’ – there’s no national interest. … All these words and phrases are used to try to encircle us all into a nice big bond, so that we will assume that the people who are the leaders of our country have our interests at heart. Very important to understand: no, they do not have our interests at heart.”

This has always worked for the majority of the people; especially since the majority of the people don’t really suffer that much from those policies. It’s generally a minority group that’s singled out to take the brunt of the govenrment’s policy—the minority is aware of the subterfuge, but can’t do anything about it because both the government and the majority are singing Kum-ba-ya together. That’s how the “one big happy family … includ[ed] the black slaves … [or] … the Native Americans, whose land we were taking from them, mile by mile by mile by mile … [or] … women, who were left out of all of this”? Don’t be fooled into thinking that now everything’s good and everyone’s on board and there really is a national interest. Zinn notes that this attitude even has a name, “it’s called American exceptionalism in the social sciences”. Just how fucking awesome is that? And they say irony is dead.

And if love of country doesn’t work as a soft motivator, there’s always Herr Göring’s good old fallback, fear, to get the sheep to the other side of the pen:

“…if we knew this history, we would understand how often fear has been used as a way of getting people to act against their own interests to work up hysteria and to get people to do terrible things to other people, because they’ve been made afraid.”

Examples of American fearmongering are numerous, from exaggerating the threat of communism throughout the 20th century—“it’s not just that they’re in Eastern Europe. It’s, they’re going to invade Western Europe”—to the stories about Iran’s nuclear ambitions: “They’re enriching uranium … I don’t really know what it means, you see, but it’s scary”.[2] That’s the new bogeyman; we have 10,000 nuclear weapons today and Iran may have 1 in ten years. Looks like Uncle Sam has to wipe his weary brow and go “make the world safe for democracy” once again.

C’mon everybody! Let’s pull together and do this thing.