Patriotic History is Neither Patriotic Nor History?

Historians have many different ways to examine history. We can use an economic analysis, a political analysis, we can use gender as the lens. We can focus on military history to forward the march of time, or maybe the history of technology. There are different philosophies as to how (and why) to examine history. We call this historiography. French ideas are based more on social history. German historians tend to focus on economics and nationalism, and American historians have used a combination of European ideas as well as coming up with our own, such as Women's history, Queer Theory and Critical Race Theory. What this means is that there is no one way to analyze, interpret, categorize, and disseminate history. But, how we look at history and the significance of history, changes over time. 

Towards the end of the 2020 Presidential election, trailing Joe Biden (D) in national polls, President Donald Trump announced his support for a new type of history, what he called patriotic history, a "pro-American" curriculum. A type of history that will teach "our youth . . . to love America."  Suggesting that young people did not "love America"? Whatever that phrase means, or what loving America would look like, or sound like, or be in a curriculum. 

President Trump made this announcement at the National Archives, on Constitution Day -a day to celebrate the ratification of the US Constitution in 1787, billed as the first "White House conference on American History." Some argued that Trump's call for a new history curriculum was a ploy to gain white voters by downplaying the centrality of slavery in the history of this country.

As reported in the New York Times, "The president focused much of his speech on his claim that American schools have become infected with revisionist ideas about the nation’s founding and history, producing a new generation of “Marxist” activists and adherents of “critical race theory” who believe American society to be fundamentally racist and wicked — and who have taken to the streets in recent months. Mr. Trump said that “left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools,” adding that “it’s gone on far too long.” He boasted that the National Endowment for the Humanities “has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history.” 

To me, this seems to have been an attempt to run roughshod over such things as the 1619 Project and Critical race Theory. 

But Donald Trump's knowledge of US history is somewhere between sketchy and curious. In a July 4th speech in 2019, Trump claimed that American soldiers during the War for Independence "took over the airports" as well as:

“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, . . .  it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory,”

The reference to Fort McHenry and those rockets' red glare happened during the War of 1812. His knowledge of the War of 1812 was displayed again, in 2018, when President Trump commented to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau over the phone, "didn't you guys burn down the white House?" First, Canada wasn't a country in 1812. Second, the people who set fire to the White House were British troops (in retribution to American troops burning British government buildings, and other damage, in what was then called York).  

Donald Trump has a history of saying inaccurate, incorrect, or just wrong things about US history and politics. For example, he claimed (repeatedly) that the vote in the Electoral College was the biggest win, outside of Reagan. That is, of course, wildly incorrect. "Only two presidents have received fewer than Trump’s 304 electoral votes since 1972 — Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. And Trump’s 304 is less than both of Barack Obama’s wins, at 365 in 2008 and 332 in 2012."

Trump claimed that Andrew Jackson would have "stopped the Civil War."  President Jackson died well before the War and was a large slave owner. Unlikely a slave owner would have stopped enslavers from committing treason and attacking the United States. 

Gordon Wood, an award-winning historian at Brown University, said this about Donald Trump's thin grasp of American history: 

"You can’t explain where we are without having some sense of the past. The past created the present. What’s unusual is not unique about Trump — he’s just spouting off the top of his head, the way a guy in a bar room might talk. There are lots of people, maybe even educated people, who might think the way he does, but he’s president. He hasn’t learned the restraint that most presidents have. He’s throwing things off the top of his head.”

Speaking of historians, besides the Secretary of HUD, there were two historians at the "Conference on American History," Wilfred McClay and the Civil War historian Allen Guelzo. McClay wrote a US history textbook Land of Hope and one of the panelists, Theodor Rebarber, a staunch opponent of public education in general, and current K-12 curriculum in particular, argued that a new US history curriculum based on McClay's book should be mandated throughout the US. McClay, who is not unknown on FOX, and the New York Sun (a conservative publication that ceased existence in 2008) is someone who seems to be particularly offended by the seminal work of the (deceased) historian and political scientist Howard Zinn and seemingly anything produced by the (quite alive) historian David Brinkley. 

Land of Hope seems to be a linear narrative lacking critical analysis. A book that states in other words "it is what it is because I say it is." Or, as Michael Kazin explained, "[the textbook] sheds praise on the nation and its people without explaining why and how they accomplished the deeds he finds so worthy of tribute." 

Conservative publications praised the book, while mainstream publications and historians panned the book as an attempt to "making American history great again." A play on Trump's campaign slogan. The book was the "Conservative Book of the Year" award in 2020. 

Finally, McClay possibly did not write the book for the pure sake of history, but to try to counter a popular neo-Marxist history book by Howard Zinn called A People's History. Zinn's book examines US history, flaws and all, using the argument that a small elite have propelled US history at the expense of the masses. 

So, Trump wants a new US history curriculum, based on McClay's book (which seems to be a cheerleader for the far right's belief in a particular type of American exceptionalism). What would be new about this new look at US history?

Nothing.

"Make America Great Again" is not just Trump's election (and reelection) slogan. It's Trump's view on life in the US. A tactical retreat to a time when powerful, white men controlled the destiny (and government and the economy) of this country. It's an attempt to revive the Gilded Age. 

So much of Trump's administration has been a return to the Gilded Age: restricting non-white immigration, economic power in the hands of fewer and fewer, the abyss between the haves and have not growing, a shrinking middle class, the existence of overt racism, and a hands by government. Well, hands off unless a bunch of K-Pop loving Gen Z teenagers use a social media app to embarrass the president at one of his campaign rallies. 
This idea supported by Trump, was known as the Great Men Theory. That outdated, misogynistic, and racist way of ordering history advanced the idea that leaders of industry and politics rule history. That what the President had for breakfast matters more than what factory workers endured at a time without minimum wages, no OSHA, and no tough, smart Texas lawyers ready to sue to protect you rights. That was the Gilded Age. 

We are in a new Gilded Age and Donald Trump's new, patriotic US history curriculum is a tactical retreat to that time when America was "great again," as the slogan goes. Segregation? No Nineteenth Amendment? No Brown decision? No 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, etc., etc., etc. 

Patriotism is not about the ability to recite dates, names of presidents, names of corporate leaders, and a focus on feel-good stories while ignoring the warts such as slavery, centuries of racism, women as second class citizens, and immigrants as disposable commodities. 
Patriotism is the knowledge of the linear narrative, how those events happened, why those events happened, the lessons learned, and the historical significance of those events, in context. History is the culmination of the words and deeds of individual people. People like you and me.

 
If Trump's vision comes to fruition, maybe Professor McClay's first lecture could be on the US Flag, to include the color of its stripes, and, the words to the National Anthem.

 

When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down

in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Maya Angelou

"May her memory be a blessing."

I have a hard time beginning, not knowing where to begin, to discuss the life of one of the most important people to equal rights in the last 100 years. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of the US Supreme Court since 1993, died last night at the age of 87 due to complications of pancreatic cancer.

She earned the nickname The Notorious RBG, a play on the rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

She had three strikes against her when she entered law school: she was Jewish, a woman, and had a child. People with those characteristics just were not in law school in the 1950s. And, upon graduating from Colombia, her career path was limited to teaching, which she did at Rutgers and Colombia.

She was a volunteer for the American Civil Liberties Union, where she argued several cases before the US Supreme Court on gender equality. Two of those cases involved extending the same rights to men as were already granted to women.  

Antonin Scalia was one of the most conservative judges on the US Supreme Court and RGB's best friend. From having dinner together to hunting together, their bond was strong. There was even n opera about their friendship. And when Justice Scalia died in 2016, Ginsburg said:

 "Toward the end of the opera Scalia/Ginsburg, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: 'We are different, we are one,' different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve. From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies. We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the 'applesauce' and 'argle bargle'—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion. He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. The press referred to his 'energetic fervor,' 'astringent intellect,' 'peppery prose,' 'acumen,' and 'affability,' all apt descriptions. He was eminently quotable, his pungent opinions so clearly stated that his words never slipped from the reader’s grasp."

Upon RGB's death, Antonin Scalia's son Christopher Tweeted:

I'm very sad to hear about the passing of my parents' good friend, and my father's wonderful colleague, Justice Ginsburg. May her memory be a blessing. I'd like to share a couple of passages that convey what she meant to my dad.../3

This is from a roast he delivered for her 10th anniversary on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. They'd been colleagues on that court until he went to the Supreme Court; she hadn't joined him there yet—and he missed her.

This is a story that Judge Jeffrey Sutton shares about an encounter late in my dad's life, when he bought his friend Ruth two dozen roses for her birthday. "Some things in life are more important than votes."

Their friendship was not unusual for their time, but unusual for our time of extreme partisanship.

2020 has been a terrible year: 200,000 souls lost to that virus, we lost the civil rights icon John Lewis and the beautiful soul Chadwick Boseman, and now the death of RGB.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. According to Jewish belief, those who died at that time were the most precious, the most important and thus God kept them on Earth as long as possible. 

A mourner at the Supreme Court building, 9/18

Back to Square One?

My son started second grade yesterday. Actually, he started second grade two weeks ago. Our school district started with everyone online, and then slowly bringing students, by grade, to campus. He loved his teachers but hated the online environment. At seven, he was too young to maneuver from page to page, from URL to URL, from assignment to lectura (he's in a Spanish immersion program). And so either my wife or I had to be there, assisting him. He wanted to do it himself but needed our help, which only made him frustrated, anxious, and angry. 

The other problem with online learning for my son, was the Spanish immersion program he is in. Yu cannot be immersed in a foreign language over the internet. When together, as a class, the non-Spanish speaking students learned in part by taking cues from the Spanish speaking students. When the teacher asked everyone to "levantate" the non-Spanish speaking kids learn that 'levantate" means to stand up because they saw their Spanish speaking classmates stand up. He needed to get back to school. But, he loved his teachers.

When we told him he was going back to school, that he would be with his friends again, and could take real music and art classes, he threw a fit because he would also be getting new teachers, and he loved his online teachers.

He survived the first day, begrudgingly. We are waiting for the other shoe to drop -and that being the first case(s) of COVID. How long until the school reports its first cases? 

Every state has reported an uptick in positive cases once colleges opened for the Fall semester. Some schools quarantined the positive or suspected students, others shut the campuses down for two weeks, and other schools just called it a day and went to 100% online classes. Some schools never reopened their on campus offerings and others, such as Iowa State University, continued to hold on campus classes as the number of infected students rose and rose and rose until ISU had more COVID cases than any other school.

So what's going to happen at HISD? The largest K-12 district in the area. They will not return to classes until October, and then what's going to happen? 

And what about HCC? We are slated to move those on campus classes from online to onsite. But what about those who are immune suppressed? What about those with child care problems? What about those with severe anxiety or other emotional disorders? How will the transition be for those groups? 

Actually, will there be a transition? I mean, what if HCC decides to push back the start date from online to onsite, or just outright cancels all on campus classes? How will the on campus students adjust to the world of Distance Education? How will I have to change or what will I have to do to help those on campus students in their transition to 100% DE students? [That's what happened less than 24 hours after I posted this.]

There are major differences between on campus and online learning. The skill set needed to succeed in an online setting are different from the skill set needed to succeed in an on campus setting. Just the mindset alone needs an adjustment, attitudes about learning need to be tweaked, and maybe even feathers will need to be smoothed out. There could be anxiety issues with remaining as online students when they didn't sign up to be online students. Of course, that's what happened in the Spring. Remember?

BTW, most of the West coast is ablaze. Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, and all points in between seem to be either on fire or covered in a thick layer of pick (the color of the retardant). Sally is about to slam into Louisiana or Mississippi as a Cat-2 storm. There are four other named storms churning in the Atlantic and we've exhausted the list of hurricane names. It's only mid-September -the height of the hurricane season. Now we start using the Greek alphabet, so the next named storm will be Alpha, then Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc.  Anyone wish to argue that climate change is not real? I mean, besides Donald Trump who blamed the state of California for mismanagement of the forests even though nearly 60% is owned by the federal government. Only 3% is owned by the state. The other day Trump said it's going to get cooler, "you just watch."

Leland Melvin: NFL Player and NASA Astronaut

Leland Melvin graduated from college in 1986. He was drafted by the Detroit Lions. He also played with the Dallas Cowboys. 

After a three-year NFL career he went to work for NASA. In 1998 he became an astronaut and flew on two space shuttle missions to the International Space Station: STS 122 and STS 129. He then became the associate administrator of NASA's Office of Education until he retired from NASA in 2014. 

Listen to how Leland Melvin describes race relations and social justice. 

October Can't Come Soon Enough

So it sounded like Donald Trump has, repeatedly, told his followers to vote twice. More police officers were charged with killing black men, such as Daniel Prude. An article in The Atlantic reports that the Commander in Chief didn't know who the US fought with in World War I, didn't know why anyone would join the US military, referred to those who did as "suckers," allegedly referred to military members who died as "losers" and refused to visit a WWI US cemetery in France fearing the bad weather would mess up his hair. There's a new doctor in charge of the White House's COVID response. His name is Scott Atlas and his specialty is radiology. Yes, like MRI and CAT scans. He has no background in infectious diseases. He does have a background on speaking negatively about wearing masks and social distancing on the FOX network. He thinks people should catch the virus, get sick. Get immune (if they survive). It's called "herd immunity."And those are just a few things that have happened in the last 72 hours.

This is the end of week 2 of the 100% online (to date) Fall semester. Smooth as a baby's bottom. No hiccups. Of course, I've been offering classes online since 2006 so this isn't new to me. New, however, and unanticipated nonetheless, to many of my on-campus students who suddenly find themselves as online students. The plan was to start the semester 100% online, then move back to campus the week of October 4th, provided the numbers are down.

The numbers are down because testing is down, yet the fatalities are rising. Locally and nationally. There are 1,411 deaths as of September 4th in Houston and 188,000 deaths in the US. By the way, Trump did call for Obama to resign during the Ebola pandemic. Three Americans died during that pandemic. 3.

 

My on-campus students cannot wait for October. Neither can I. I have three on-campus classes. In those three classes 100% of the students have voiced their desire to return to the classroom. The problem, however, is that only nine (9) students will be allowed to attend class. The rest will have to log in. Not unlike what they are doing now but instead of me doing my shtick at home, I will be in the limelight in my classroom. And then, in a method that has yet to be determined, those who were online would be able to be in person the next time we meet. The on-campus classes are limited to 18 students, and as the rooms will be limited to nine students, then it makes sense that half of the class will be in person on the first day we meet and the other half will be in person the second day we meet. 

Of course, life is not that simple. There will be times in which students are sick, have to work, take their kids to appointments, and for whatever reason miss "their turn" at coming to campus. So what will be the procedure then? The college is hammering out all of that and will announce the procedure soon, I presume, in order to allow everyone time to adjust to the new order of doing things. If all goes according to plan, we will return to campus four weeks from this Monday -Labor Day.

Monday, September 8th is Labor Day.  Enjoy your long weekend. Keep social distancing. Mask up! 

Labor Day Parade, New York City, 1882