From Pine View Farm

Those Who Forget Deny the Past . . . . 0

Historiann is not surprised at the reactions to events in Ferguson, Mo. She is disgusted.

A nugget (emphasis in the original):

I guess my big reaction is this: why is anyone surprised that the present looks so much like the past? It seems like when it comes to race in America, we’re dangerously invested in insisting that the Bad Old Days are long gone. I get it that that’s a more reassuring story to tell, but it’s a childish one. Aren’t there any grownups among the grownups these days?

Even if I understand why people insist on pretending history is irrelevant, why must they evoke history in such wildly inappropriate ways? For example: Howard Kurtz say that “Some liberal outlets [are] creating almost a lynch mob mentality around this,” that is, the insistence that the police officer who killed an unarmed man be arrested and charged with a crime. Is that what lynch mobs did–they published headlines in news outlets demanding the arrest and trial of men suspected of crimes? Because that’s what you imply when you compare an online magazine to a lynch mob. Judge Lynch, as we all should remember, was not at all about insisting on due process for suspected criminals. That was the whole point of a lynch mob friends–the circumvention of the criminal justice system! Yegads. So stupid.

Share

Comments are closed.