The Past Is Not Even Past 0

One of the most successful attempts to replace history with fiction was the creation of the legend of the Old South, the South of Gone with the Wind: Elegant, stately plantation homes; gracious, hospitable planters; legions of contented darkies singing happily as they labored, before returning to their shacks for the night.

It was a great flack job that enabled the South and Southerners, indeed, the entire country, to look away, look away, look away from the reality of exploitation, brutality, theft of labor, and rape hidden in the back yards of those picturesque estates and, later, remain blind to Jim Crow, which was little more than an attempt of recreate chattel slavery in disguise.

On a smaller scale, we can follow a similar effort right now, as the contemporary Republican Party, its dupes, fellow travelers, and symps attempt to purge the memory of George the Worst, so that voters will forget what governance by that party actually looks like.

In the Roanoke Times, Jason Husser argues eloquently the importance of remembering the past, the real past, not the one we wish had happened. A nugget.

Memory is recognition and recognition is power. “Memory has fueled merciless, violent strife, and it has been at the core of reconciliation and reconstruction,” writes William James Booth, a political theorist at Vanderbilt University and a personal mentor of mine. “It has been used to justify great crimes, and yet it is central to the pursuit of justice.”

Forgetting the bad parts of our past is appealing. Those who caution against “unburying a hatchet” are selling snake oil. Whatever short-term therapeutic value found in blocking a negative event from our minds is overwhelmingly outweighed by the long-term harm of losing the memory of public atrocity.

Read the whole thing.