In the interest of candor, it must be admitted that the American Nation, beneficially occupying the venerated status of the avatar of liberty and democracy, has, notwithstanding such deserved accolade, unfortunately, evinced periods of repressive and censurable conduct. A cursory reading of American history reveals an unfortunate plethora of anecdotal evidence of such a reverential shrine of moral humanism, sadly backsliding into acts of self-justified inhumanity.
MAGA-inspired programs seek to abridge American history, dishonestly deleting any references to the Nation’s past moral blemishes, such as chattel slavery, Jim Crow legislation, cruel displacement of Indigenous peoples, immoral kidnapping of Indigenous children for “Christianizing,” internment of Japanese Americans citizens during the Second World War, the KKK Tulsa City Bombing, the uncountable acts of racial homicide, censorship of curricula and books on the subject of human sexual behaviors, gender disparity and homosexuality; all of which serve to identify many of the examples of autocratic-type repression or trademark “backsliding” of our democratic Nation.
Thematically, knowledge of the entirety of our Nation’s nuanced history should responsibly oblige mainstream American citizens to remain eternally watchful for the ever-present threat of decline, in the Nation’s foundational ethos underlying democracy, which empirically, seems to present itself in periods of extreme events. This pragmatic admonition includes the currently presenting danger posed by the bizarre, cult-like attraction of an autocratic and deceitful demagogue to our Nation’s large population of inadequately educated and perpetually discontented, populists.
We were relieved, recently, to hear the “long-overdue” apology from President Biden, on behalf of the Nation, for its historic, nefarious program of merciless kidnap of Indigenous children from their families for the arrogant purpose of”Christian Humanizing” (1895-1975) by heartless religious adherents. We would additionally choose to cite the wholesale removal and incarceration of upstanding Japanese-American citizens during the Second World War, and the turning back of a large shipload of Jewish refugees for certain execution in Hitler’s death camps
We can vividly recall, with great distress, the atrocities committed in the time of America’s participation in the Wars in Southeast Asia, and the unsettling Nazi-style years of the McCarthy era. We are contemporaneously aware of the proximate danger of the Nation’s armed White National Christian Militias, of policies of racial and religious prejudice, including the all-pervasive historic anti-semitism polluting the Nation and the Globe ( (persisting since the third Century, BCE), the pathological priority of profit, over human life and health, by large industrial polluters opposed to government health and safety regulation., and the overcrowded, odoriferous inventory overfilling the dumpster of human indecency to fellow Man.
These shameful atrocities, albeit incongruent with America’s mantras of liberty and democracy are often ignored by the unaware mainstream citizen, encapsulated within his personal assumptions and mundane practice of societal morality including the sophomoric and pollyannaish presumption of the presence of a universal humanistic empathy for one’s fellow Man.. He may be lulled into a narcotic- like, precarious stagnancy in his naive presumption that such idealized societal and personal scenarios are unassailable. The instances of anti-democratic and immoral travesties, cited above do not seem to occupy a vitally appropriate place in his personal sphere of contemplation. This “burying of one’s head in the sand” is a utilitarian producer of peace and quiet for the ostrich, but is productive of societal and political hazard for the upstanding,, albeit, somnolent citizen.
In keeping with our long-held view that there is little empirical support for the aphoristic declaration that the study of history is a historical panacea for the avoidance of empirically similar mistakes, we do, affirmatively declare that the value of the historical past offers a non-specific but certain reminder of the eternal danger of “backsliding,” or decline of freedom and democracy. The voter must eternally weigh the sweet taste of the fruits of liberty and democracy against the retrograde, rotten taste of an autocratic [oranger-haired] backsliding of American society in the coming vote for President.
-p.
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