I have had it with liberals of all advocacies whining, as
they do on Facebook, “Whyyy didn’t we learrrrnn about THISSS in school?"
Well, maybe it’s because history is infinite. It is not just
one thing; all things are connected. You learn basics in elementary school,
more details in middle school, concepts and linkages in high school, and particulars
in college. In fact, you never stop learning about history if you read. So all these
things that snowflake bozos bitch about not being taught are not unknown. What
they want is a history curriculum attuned to their desires, which of course would
not be history at all but curricula of cultural superiorities.
If history teaches anything, it teaches that there is no
single accurate viewpoint, but a patchwork of ideas, movements, and individuals
that rose to an occasion for better or for worse.
Is there a single person reading this who did not know about
Juneteenth until George Floyd was killed? Yet apparently we need a national holiday
so Republicans can have something to claim they did for African-Americans. We have Lincoln’s birthday
(subsumed into President’s Day), we know when the Emancipation Proclamation was
signed, we all know about the beginning and end of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
We know about Bloody Sunday at Selma and we celebrate MLK’s birthday as a
national holiday.
By all means, take note of Juneteenth, as we might note St. Patrick’s Day, Pulaski
Day, and, yes, Columbus Day. Without Columbus, we wouldn’t be here to
complain about the kind of oppression that has gone on since the beginning of time and
conducted by every single nation-state and ethnic group. But do we need national
holidays for Americans of Greek, Turk, Czech, Polish, German, Armenian, or Palestinian descent? (I am very sensitive
to national “days” because out of 365, only one commemorates nothing – “National
Nothing Day,” which falls on my birthday.)
So we do know stuff because we are exposed to history texts,
teachers, and books, not to mention "Jeopardy." What many of us learn about our own heritage is done through religious and family instruction. Must everything with a political
following be made into a national observation? Maybe so, and then watch for “Juneteenth”
mattress sales. But stop the mewling that “the white power structure didn’t
teach us what they wanted hidden.” There
is only so much to teach in schools and only so much to be absorbed by tiny minds that overpopulate social media.
Now, what about Tisha B’av? (Pssst, it's July 29-30.)
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