Thursday, June 11, 2020

Remembering versus Glorifying History


Do You Hear The People Sing?

Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!

 DJT ( and Santayana) are correct. "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it".  But there is a difference between remembering and glorifying.


The protests since the end of May have an echo in history.  In happens whenever one group tries to enrich itself by enslaving another.  The shackles may be iron, as they were before the US Civil War, or economic, as they were in France at the time of Les Misérables.  Neither set of shackles should be glorified.  In recent times in the United States, the shackles have also been economic.  While total wealth and income has been increasing, it has been concentrated in just a few, while the majority  has seen their income and wealth stagnant or falling. 

It is not an imagined inequality.  It can be shown that inequality has been increasing in America both by income and by wealth.  This is in contrast to the conditions in the rest of the world, including places where inequality has long endured.  The gap between rich and poor is decreasing within most other countries. The gap in the United States has been increasing and arguably has reached a critical point.  Those of us who are invested in this system, must hope that the angry men will be satisfied with a reform of that system which we will make by remembering and addressing our wrongs, and not that the angry men will demand the  destruction of that system.

No comments:

Post a Comment