Donald Trump demands a "patriotic" history. This unfathomably ignorant man has apparently been told that there was an influential U.S. historian, the late Howard Zinn, who probably wouldn't think much of him. Zinn's A People’s History of the United States tells our country's story through the lives and struggles of ordinary people, our triumphs as well as the conniving plots and plans of the greedy and the powerful. Zinn had a vision of this country improving itself, making itself better for all. Trump wants a country whose highest purpose is the aggrandizement of himself, his family, and his cronies. Such a small man.
Some of what Zinn wrote can read as a secular American sermon on building the godly Kingdom.
Zinn's work is influential. High school and college classes read the People's History. Trump doesn't read, so we can assume this is just something else that he doesn't know.“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
"What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
"And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
In a tribute to Zinn, Peter Dreier, a professor of Politics at Occidental College, catches what most likely unnerves Trump. His insecure ego has concerns beyond being ejected by the electorate this fall.
Trump, of course, has good reason to worry about how scholars write about American history, because historians will be soon be evaluating his presidency. Trump will be lucky to avoid a rare consensus among historians, ranking him as America’s worst president.
Photo is of Zinn speaking at a Historians Against the War meeting in 2006.
1 comment:
Well so many in his party fall in the same category as Drump. Every day the news frightens me more.
Another book I would like to read but I'm waiting one on RBG.
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