Week 1

In Dionne’s first chapter, he talks a lot about the conception of the Tea Party and the party’s amnesic qualities when it comes to remembering parts of American history. To be honest, I’ve never really understood quite how Americans allowed the Tea Party to be created – even some Republicans don’t take them seriously. Dionne explains that the Tea Party was basically founded by opponents of Obama who got angry when Obama pursued the policies that he ran on. What’s even more embarrassing to me than that, is that I have family members who I strongly suspect identify with major chunks of Tea Party ideals. (I should interject here that, while I grew up in a conservative household, am decidedly not of a conservative mindset). What was most surprising to me in this first chapter of Dionne’s book is on page 34. On that page, he writes of the 150^th anniversary of the civil war. During this time, defenders of the South’s “Lost Cause” sought to downplay the role of slavery as the Civil War’s primary cause. I’m a pretty open minded person, but to me, the answer here is cut and dry – those “defenders” are just plain wrong. I honestly can’t believe that people could possibly spout that nonsense in today’s day and age. Truthfully, the people who say that are on the same page as Holocaust deniers in my book. It’s appalling that people can deny such an important part of American history. Despite all of the problems in the school system (such as denying/hiding the genocide we enacted against Native Americans), we at least learned about the root cause of the civil war – how can someone claim that the root cause was anything else?

             One of the reasons that I find history so interesting is that although there are certain facts that can’t be denied, history is subjective. What to Americans looked like progress when we started displacing Native Americans, looked unfair and cruel to the Native Americans (and rightly so). Does progress have to come at the expense of someone else? The definition of “progress” (per google) is “the forward or onward movement toward a destination”. But that doesn’t really encompass how America sees progress. Often when we progress, we don’t know exactly where we are heading, hence there really isn’t a desetination. Progress, by nature, is subjective. What may seem like progress to someone, may be seen as regression to someone else. I don’t believe that progress has to come at the expense of someone else, but I think that it often does (whether intentional or not).

             One thing that is in the news right now that relates to this is the refugee crisis currently in Europe. Germany has recently relaxed restrictions on immigrants because of the refugee crisis. This makes entering Germany much easier for the refugees that are currently detained in Hungary. Many Germans and people around the world are praising the chancellor, Angela Merkel, for these recent developments and Germans have actually been seen at train stations greeting the refugees with cheers and gifts. For a nation that has traditionally been xenophobic, this progress is certainly heartening to see. However, there are certainly some Germans and others who do not see this as progress and have been protesting and burning down facilities meant for housing refugees. From one perspective, this progress isn’t coming at the expense of anyone, but others could argue that it is coming at the expense of the German tax-payers. As Americans, we tend to not care as much about things that aren’t happening right in our backdoor. But, when the picture of the little Syrian boy who drowned went viral, all of a sudden there was this major outcry from Americans saying that Europe should be letting more refugees in, etc., when in actuality, this crisis has been going on for months. I’m not saying that the outcry is unwarranted, because I do think Europe should be doing all that it can for these refugees, but I think it’s interesting that it only entered in to American’s eyes recently. I feel sad for that boy and his family, but there are more like them out there. I’m glad America opened its eyes to this crisis, but I don’t think we will be as welcoming when the refugees are at our doorstep asking for help. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but somehow I doubt it. In their book, Stern and Axinn say that anti-immigrant attitudes has existed in America essentially since its conception. Even Benjamin Franklin was worried about the German language and culture spreading in Pennsylvania. Despite this country calling itself a “melting pot”, we have traditionally been repeatedly resistant to that idea. As Stern and Axinn say, the entry of millions of immigrants since the 1970s has both provoked the belief that immigrants enrich our society and also the intense fear that they will steal “our” jobs.

           One part of the first class that I found thought-provoking was the Walter Benjamin text. I read a fair bit of Benjamin texts when I was studying in Berlin, but I hadn’t read this one before. Benjamin’s critique of history as progress is certainly warranted. We, as Americans, don’t really question ideas as much as we should and I think we accept that history is progress without second guessing it. I think it’s important for us to take a step back and objectively look at our history – is it pure progress? Are there things that we may not be proud of? Then why do some of us still consider it to be history? Benjamin saw history as catastrophe and tragedy. Perhaps if we combine Benjamin’s thoughts about history with Marx’s, we come up with something similar to Dionne’s view – that we progress, but leave behind chaos as well. In my opinion, that seems to be the most encompassing view of history. I don’t think anyone can claim that history is beautiful and perfect and can be fit into one nice box. History is messy, but perhaps if we realize that, we can grow from it and be more successful in the future.