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.