People these days have a tendency to comfort themselves (or steel their courage) by talking about being on the ‘right side of history.’ I have no objection to looking at life this way, by considering how your actions would be viewed by future generations as moral and courageous or immoral and reprehensible.
But sometimes, even often, history doesn’t give a fuck. And history won’t give a fuck about many of the things happening today.
Three Presidents History Forgets
Back in the 1840s, a man named James Polk was President of the United States of America. He was followed by Zachary Taylor. Who was followed by Millard Fillmore.
History today doesn’t really give a fuck about any of these three US presidents. How often do you hear about any of them? Millard Fillmore’s name almost sounds like a joke. At least it’s more interesting than James Polk’s.
James Polk was president during interesting and active times. He asked Congress to declare war on Mexico, which it did. He was president when San Francisco became an American city. When a treaty was signed with the British establishing a new boundary for the US with what is now Canada. He was an American territorial expansionist, and now hardly anyone really gives a second thought to that history.
This is important shit. And still nobody gives a fuck. Because slavery, and the Civil War, and President Lincoln, suck all the oxygen out of the historical room.
Zachary Taylor was a military man who occupied Monterrey, Mexico during the war between Mexico and the US. Yeah, occupation was thing back then – like now.
Zachary Taylor died after about a year in office, when people in America were getting all up in each other’s faces over slavery. So his death from eating spoiled food sparked conspiracy theories. Yeah, conspiracy theories were a thing back then – like now.
The conspiracy theories were wrong. Yeah, wrong conspiracy theories is an old old thing in our history. It has always annoyed some human brains that life on this planet is a lot more chaotic and random than brains would prefer. Shit happens that has nothing to do with whatever you think is most important.
Which brings me back to the ‘right side of history’ argument.
Yeah, what you are doing is important. What is happening today is important. If Polk hadn’t been such an expansionist, slavery tensions might not have boiled over some ten or 15 years later, since a big point of contention was whether the new parts of the US were gonna be slave-holding or not.
Polk, in his way, set the stage for the Civil War.
So go ahead and try to be on the right side of history.
Just don’t expect history to remember or care or acknowledge. What’s important doesn’t always get noticed, just like what’s important today doesn’t always get reported. It’s still important.
But if you think history is going to remember Trump the way you think of him today – maybe not. Once upon a time it was hard to imagine a president objectively worse than George W. Bush coming down the pike. And yet here we are.
History Doesn’t Remember the More Recent Past Either
Certain Republicans hated W’s father, George Sr., so much during his presidency that they helped elect Bill Clinton. That same George Bush had a 70% approval rating at the same point in his term that Trump is now. Seventy percent.
Can you imagine a 70 percent approval rating for anything in American politics these days? And yet they thought he was worth despising.
And so it goes. Whatever you think of Trump now, it’s easily possible that something far more wildly dramatic is actually coming down the pike. Something that history will pay far more attention to than anything we’re seeing today. Yikes!
It would be wrong, though, not to at least hope for a better future for America. Think about the year 2120. Think about the future generations. Think about your kids’ kids’ kids. What do you long for those future generations to have?
What would you be willing to fight for, bleed for, die for; what would you sacrifice for your descendants and why? What do you want them to inherit from you?
True liberty and justice for all? A nation where everyone actually believes that all people are created equal? A place where love beats hate?
If you live as though that’s the world you want to leave behind, it won’t matter whether history remembers you or not.
You’ll be on the right side – no matter how slow or halting or precarious the road toward the world you want to see.
Remember that the people who fought in the American Revolution had nothing but hope for a better future. That their sacrifices would amount to something whether acknowledged by history or not.
They got pretty fed up with the system they were under. Because they dared to imagine that a better one, no matter how unlikely, could not only exist but persist.
Dare to imagine that your country could be better.
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