Why do we romanticize the past history of this country?

[cali]

Why do we hew to the belief that there was ever a golden age; an ideal America?

There wasn't.

I sure the hell didn't grow up in some ideal America. Neither did you.

The present is no more or less a corruption of American ideals than the past.

Those living in a particular era too often give in to a belief in how their era is exceptional. It's a skewed view of history and the present.

American democracy (yes, yes, I know we're a republic) and freedom have always been platonic ideals, never full realized, never even close to fully realized. We make progress. We go backwards. Nothing new or startling about this.

We live neither in the best of all possible Americas or the worst.

Our age is no more exceptional really than others that came before it.

[raccoon]

1. I think it's human nature to romanticize the past, on both the personal and the macro level.

Good post.

[mmonk]

2. So myths can be given to the people as reasons for current government

actions.

[BrklynLib at work]

3. Because the "winners" are the ones who write the history. It is their best interest to demonize

those they have defeated or subjugated.

[hobbit709]

4. No different than any other country.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

5. read the book "The Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen...should be manditory reading imho

[cali]

6. this was actually a rhetorical exercise.

I believe I know the answers to the questions I posed. I will look into your reading suggestion though.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. duh.... of course ...but you'll love that book, it taught me some surpising things

High school students hate history. When they list their favorite subjects, history always comes in last. They consider it the most irrelevant of twenty-one school subjects; bo-o-o-oring is the adjective most often applied.
James Loewen spent two years at the Smithsonian Institute surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American History. What he found was an embarrassing amalgam of bland optimism, blind patriotism, and misinformation pure and simple, weighing in at an average of four-and-a-half pounds and 888 pages.

In response, he has written Lies My Teacher Told Me, in part a telling critique of existing books but, more importantly, a wonderful retelling of American history as it should - and could - be taught to American students. Beginning with pre-Columbian American history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre, Loewen supplies the conflict, suspense, unresolved drama, and connection with current-day issues so appallingly missing from textbook accounts.

A treat to read and a serious critique of American education, Lies My Teacher Told Me is for anyone who has ever fallen asleep in history class.

A sociologist who spent two years at the Smithsonian surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American history only to find an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation, weighing in at an average of 888 pages and almost five pounds. A best-selling author who wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. A researcher who discovered that many, and in many states most communities were "Sundown Towns" that kept out blacks (and sometimes other groups) for decades. (Some still do.) An educator who attended Carleton College, holds the Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, and taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont

[Rowdyboy]

23. Loewen is brilliant....he co-authored an outstanding textbook on Mississippi history

35 years ago that included the roles of women, blacks and native American and dealt honestly with issues like lynching, the KKK and "Jim Crow". The co-author, Dr Charles Sallis was one of my major professors in college and a fabulous educator in his own right.

[BrklynLib at work]

7. .

[cali]

8. I get the sense that you didn't even read the OP

That really doesn't apply that directly to the questions I was posing. I believe it's human nature to romaticize the past. It's not all about the information we're fed. Hell, most folks on DU know that the past wasn 't some ideal bathed in golden light, and yet many insist on the exceptionalism of the present.

[bryant69]

10. As you grow older everything sucks more and more

See we are born with a suckage gland, which drains your ability to enjoy life and be happy. As children this suckage gland is tiny, and thus children have a wide range of enjoyable experience available to them, and also more capacity to hope. As we grow, our suckage gland grows as well, making the range of enjoyable experiences smaller and smaller. We lose hope and become more and more cynical. This is simply the natural outgrowth of our suckage gland. Hence we are trained, basically, to remember the past as wonderful.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[JackRiddler]

11. Empires do decline and fall...

And when they do, even atrocious pasts are romanticized.

It's not a cycle, it heads somewhere, and the government no doubt has hit its worst point since, oh, 1932.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. Heard a guy on the radio yesterday say...

that 2008 is absolutely the best year in history.

And he wasn't kidding.

It's so common to hear about the good ol' days, but we get kinda conned into remembering only the good stuff from back then, and tend to forget the bad. That's just the mind's mechanism for stopping us from becoming terminally depressed over all thaq bgad shit that's happened.

If you're in your 20's, maybe it seems like we're going backwards because not much good has happened lately, but for those of us older, if we're honest, we know of all the problems we had in the past that have been solved. And, with that experience, know there's little going on now we can'ty surmount if we want to, no matter how bad we like to complain it is.

Me, maybe it would be neat to relive some early years and make some different decisions, but I have no nostalgia for "the good old days." Just one small example of thousands is how my father died from misdiagnosed colon cancer over 40 years ago, but now diagnosis and treatment is so standard death shouldn't happen at all.

(I miss fountain pens, though. And more newspapers.)

[Bluerthanblue]

13. nostalgia for "the good old days" seems almost like a

right of passage.

Our age is exceptional, simply because it is seen through our own eyes.

Good reminder Cali-

Thanks for the grounding.

peace~

[leftofthedial]

14. the older I get

the better it was


why do you hate America?

[TahitiNut]

15. Because Disneyland is more comfortable than the mean streets of Anaheim.

:shrug:

[KG]

16. this country was built on lies and fairey tales.

continuing to believe in them in the face of contary evidence is a coping mechanism.

[rucky]

17. I remember the good old days when we didn't do stuff like that. n/t

[Brewman_Jax]

18. The truth is too painful

[Mountainman]

19. Some things were better in days gone by. Change happens. Sometimes it goes with

advancement in our knowledge and sometimes it is manipulated. There are always good things and bad things going on simultaneously and always have.

Two things I know were better in the past were the number of unskilled jobs in the country and the quality of education. Two things that were worse during the same time were segregation and polio.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence...

without civilization in between." Oscar Wilde

An apt description.

[arcadian]

21. Good point, we should just do nothing about anything.

Good way to support apathy in America. You are wrong by the way. Return to 'Idol'.

[cali]

26. Return to "Idol". Way to make a fool of yourself. I don't have

TV. Haven't for over a decade. So sorry, dearie, you're completely off base. Unlike most of you, I don't listen to trash talk radio, I don't tune in to pop news or pop culture.

I'm simply trying to point out what any reasonably intelligent person living in this country should know: The idealized past is a myth. Duh.

[brentspeak]

22. Well, the economy was a lot more "ideal" during various decades in the past than it is today

For example, there used to be both a solid middle-class and a solid blue-collar working class. Not any more.

[The2ndWheel]

24. Because the future never satisfies us?

In the present we're constantly torn between the two?

[applegrove]

25. People need creation myths and myths in general. We are mystical beings.

I too believe Canada has had some great years all the while there is an epidemic of suicide amongst aboriginal people.

[dorkulon]

27. Our economic and regulatory policies were indeed better

while our civil rights policies were obviously much worse, from the post-war era until the '70s. Up to about the mid-'60s, we had very progressive taxation, which created the robust middle class conservatives now mourn. Our regulatory bodies, such as the FDA, were much stronger as well. Pre-Reagan, these things really were better. It's a cop-out to say the Reagan-Bush era is "just as bad" as it ever was; it's just not true.

[cali]

28. yeah, economic and regulatory policy was better for a twenty to thirty year

period post WWII. And those policies mainly benefited white males.

[supernova]

29. It's a human trait, not especially an American one.

Every country has to create its myths about itself. It's a form of group cohesion at a national level.

Is it necessary? Could you have a country without that? I don't know.

[baby_mouse]

30. Yes, i think it is necessary.

Sometimes nations have to be mobilised to causes that require the power of the masses. If you're not going to beam thought-rays into your subjects brains' you have to play on their instincts to get them to do what you want, so you have to have a myth structure to have a dialectic with.

[warren pease]

31. 'Cuz future history is too damn hard to predict.

[spanone]

32. i can romanticize when politics were less corrupt than they are now