Lessons of History?
My wife, Barbara Merrill, recently posted an article on Facebook about an upcoming Ken Burns Documentary which deals with the lingering impact of the Vietnam War on American life. Burns takes the position that our country has not learned the lessons from the war because we never publically faced our defeat there. To this our good friend Nick Ruf asked “Can you please cite the sources for any historical evidence that we can learn from history?”
I appreciate Nick’s cynicism. Once, I would have said we learned the effects of unalloyed capitalism in the 1920’s, but now the American people have elected a Congress and a President determined to remove all the safeguards we have constructed since the great depression. I would have said we learned the importance of diluting the more acidic aspects of nationalism by having the USA play a role in maintaining a united Europe. Now Trump calls for a return to a transactional relationships. The kind of thinking that led directly to ruining Germany’s economy and creating the conditions which led to World War II. In short, I would have offered Nick a more robust argument a couple of years ago, but even in this moment of international amnesia I would point to Germany as a country which has clearly learned a lesson from history to the point that they are much more welcoming to aliens in need than we are. Even accepting that Germany is an answer to Nick’s cynicism, if it takes something as awful as Germany’s fate in World War II to have a lasting impact, if we are that dense, we are in trouble. I don’t believe this. I do believe that we hate the limitations that come with knowledge and so, like headstrong children, we push back from time to time so we can enjoy the sense of freedom that comes with irresponsibility. As we gain power over our world, the consequences of our actions increase, and our knowledge of the consequences of our actions grows. So as adults we are faced with the irony that we have more power but have to be much more careful in how we use it. More power requires more humility and nowhere is this more true than when considering our power to destroy.
Most predators live in a perpetual contest with other predators, but we humans are clever enough to destroy many of them. Consider the wolves. They really posed little threat to us as a species, but they poached on animal life which we saw as our exclusive preserve and they didn’t seem overwhelmed with fear of us, so in many parts of our world, we wiped them out. We did this without any real thought on what the results would be, and when it was done we felt powerful.
A couple of decades ago, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and recently we have learned of the consequences. Biodiversity of all kinds has increased. Limiting the coyotes, the wolves presence has opened the way for more beaver, otters, and mice. Pushing the deer back from the banks of streams has allowed the return of tall grass and bushes and a wider variety of bird life.. All of this has actually changed the course of the rivers and streams and reduced erosion.. The bottom line is that we now know that by destroying these “killers” we were doing no service to the lesser lives that existed in the park or our own quality of life. It’s another small example of the fact that we are such effective killers, we are forced to think about the things we kill. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair that the wolves don’t face similar restraints.
What is true of killing other species is even more true of killing fellow human beings. We are a powerful country but a close examination of our history reveals that our best leaders spent much of their time being called weak for their unwillingness to engage in war: Washington resisting becoming involved in Europe, Lincoln backing down to provocations from the British, FDR holding back from getting involved in the war in Europe when the Germans provided justification by their actions in the Atlantic, Kennedy sitting on the military’s call for invasion of Cuba and using a blockade to buy time while he negotiated a deal.
Obama, worked mightily to terminate the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and meanwhile refused to be drawn into a third war in Syria. Horrible things were happening there and we were exposed as unable to bring them to a quick end. When a new President Trump upped the military ante there, folks from both parties gave him an attaboy. Does it matter that we really don’t know what all the players are up to, or that helping a friend there could also aid a foe. In short, do we really know who need to kill and who we need to help gain power.
Repeating history is not so much a failure of learning, it is lacking the humility and maturity to match our actions against what we have learned. We know that we shouldn’t drive fast under the influance on a crowded roadway but right now we have a man/child, drunk on his own reflection driving 90 miles an hour toward every warning sign in site.
If it is any comfort we know he sees the signs, because he is busy tearing them down. Get the scientists out of the EPA. Tear down the Civil Rights Division in Justice. Fire the Director of the FBI. Ignore the experts in State and Defense.
There are lots of ways to explain the election of 2016 and there is undoubtedly plenty of blame to go around, but there is nothing to justify the fact that mature, intelligent, educated people were the surprise margin of victory for Mr. Trump. We know these people. They are the quiet ones as we discuss the affairs of the day. We need to reach out to them and ask them to make common cause in slowing the descent. It will not feel as good as pointing the finger of blame, but it will do a lot more to restore the commonweal. The kids are watching, it's time to act like adults.
I appreciate Nick’s cynicism. Once, I would have said we learned the effects of unalloyed capitalism in the 1920’s, but now the American people have elected a Congress and a President determined to remove all the safeguards we have constructed since the great depression. I would have said we learned the importance of diluting the more acidic aspects of nationalism by having the USA play a role in maintaining a united Europe. Now Trump calls for a return to a transactional relationships. The kind of thinking that led directly to ruining Germany’s economy and creating the conditions which led to World War II. In short, I would have offered Nick a more robust argument a couple of years ago, but even in this moment of international amnesia I would point to Germany as a country which has clearly learned a lesson from history to the point that they are much more welcoming to aliens in need than we are. Even accepting that Germany is an answer to Nick’s cynicism, if it takes something as awful as Germany’s fate in World War II to have a lasting impact, if we are that dense, we are in trouble. I don’t believe this. I do believe that we hate the limitations that come with knowledge and so, like headstrong children, we push back from time to time so we can enjoy the sense of freedom that comes with irresponsibility. As we gain power over our world, the consequences of our actions increase, and our knowledge of the consequences of our actions grows. So as adults we are faced with the irony that we have more power but have to be much more careful in how we use it. More power requires more humility and nowhere is this more true than when considering our power to destroy.
Most predators live in a perpetual contest with other predators, but we humans are clever enough to destroy many of them. Consider the wolves. They really posed little threat to us as a species, but they poached on animal life which we saw as our exclusive preserve and they didn’t seem overwhelmed with fear of us, so in many parts of our world, we wiped them out. We did this without any real thought on what the results would be, and when it was done we felt powerful.
A couple of decades ago, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and recently we have learned of the consequences. Biodiversity of all kinds has increased. Limiting the coyotes, the wolves presence has opened the way for more beaver, otters, and mice. Pushing the deer back from the banks of streams has allowed the return of tall grass and bushes and a wider variety of bird life.. All of this has actually changed the course of the rivers and streams and reduced erosion.. The bottom line is that we now know that by destroying these “killers” we were doing no service to the lesser lives that existed in the park or our own quality of life. It’s another small example of the fact that we are such effective killers, we are forced to think about the things we kill. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair that the wolves don’t face similar restraints.
What is true of killing other species is even more true of killing fellow human beings. We are a powerful country but a close examination of our history reveals that our best leaders spent much of their time being called weak for their unwillingness to engage in war: Washington resisting becoming involved in Europe, Lincoln backing down to provocations from the British, FDR holding back from getting involved in the war in Europe when the Germans provided justification by their actions in the Atlantic, Kennedy sitting on the military’s call for invasion of Cuba and using a blockade to buy time while he negotiated a deal.
Obama, worked mightily to terminate the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and meanwhile refused to be drawn into a third war in Syria. Horrible things were happening there and we were exposed as unable to bring them to a quick end. When a new President Trump upped the military ante there, folks from both parties gave him an attaboy. Does it matter that we really don’t know what all the players are up to, or that helping a friend there could also aid a foe. In short, do we really know who need to kill and who we need to help gain power.
Repeating history is not so much a failure of learning, it is lacking the humility and maturity to match our actions against what we have learned. We know that we shouldn’t drive fast under the influance on a crowded roadway but right now we have a man/child, drunk on his own reflection driving 90 miles an hour toward every warning sign in site.
If it is any comfort we know he sees the signs, because he is busy tearing them down. Get the scientists out of the EPA. Tear down the Civil Rights Division in Justice. Fire the Director of the FBI. Ignore the experts in State and Defense.
There are lots of ways to explain the election of 2016 and there is undoubtedly plenty of blame to go around, but there is nothing to justify the fact that mature, intelligent, educated people were the surprise margin of victory for Mr. Trump. We know these people. They are the quiet ones as we discuss the affairs of the day. We need to reach out to them and ask them to make common cause in slowing the descent. It will not feel as good as pointing the finger of blame, but it will do a lot more to restore the commonweal. The kids are watching, it's time to act like adults.