dropdeadpolitics

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing.  It infects the mind and slowly takes hold altering opinions and beliefs despite what history said.  I know many people who think the world and our nation is getting worse.  The percentage of Americans who think the country has gotten off track is growing, and while some of that can be attributed to the current economic times we’re facing, it seems consistent with the effects of nostalgia.  Politicians evoke it all the time.  Nostalgia itself isn’t the problem.  I look back on my childhood and remember the good times and smooth out some of the roughness of the bad times.  We all do it.  The problem is when we apply it to our history and our politics.

Politicians love nostalgia, particularly the conservative ones.  They like to convince their base that things are changing too fast and would be better if they were just like they used to be.  The entire notion of conservatism is not founded on nostalgia, but on preserving traditions and the status quo.  Of course no rational minded conservative would preserve things that are violations of human rights even if they used to be practiced.  The irrational ones do, but they are the ones besides themselves with nostalgia.  And politicians, who are smarter and know better, understand that getting the votes of those people requires an emotional plea recalling a “better time” when things weren’t so different like they are today.  Of course liberals do it too.

The governor of Virginia recently let loose a bit of nostalgia that’s landed him in hot water.  The favorite nostalgic game many Americans like to play is that of the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Those who like to be nostalgic claim the war wasn’t about slavery but state’s rights…to have slaves that is.  There was no single bigger issue than slavery at the time of the Civil War and even at the time of the Revolution slavery was an issue.  We simply delayed the argument for nearly a hundred years is all.  The Confederacy is looked back upon as a romantic fight for what they believed in.  Sure it was misguided, but they were defending their home from a more powerful aggressor and we Americans sure do love the notion of such a fight.  So are the Muslim terrorists we’re fighting today, and yet I doubt many of those who look back with nostalgia on the Confederacy would afford Al Qaeda the same kind view.  Maybe in another hundred years or so?  I won’t hold my breath.

But this is where nostalgia gets us into trouble.  The South in particular has been very good at remembering the past the way they’d like to.  Pleasant plantation life, fine warriors like Robert E. Lee, and a host of other things that have some basis in truth but lack the complete picture.  Lee was brilliant, but also foolish.  He took risks that no commander should’ve and he finally paid for them at Gettysberg and in ma.  And yet if you were to tell that to a Southern Nostalgist (no, it’s not a word but it should be) they’d argue all day how wrong that assessment of Lee is.  It is however historically accurate.  The Confederacy gets very good treatment by historians and those in the South despite the simple fact that they were fighting to deny human beings their rights.  That’s the simple truth of it, but of course they claim the truth isn’t so simple.  And yet on other things, such as fighting Muslims terrorists, it is that simple.  That’s the first rule of nostalgia.  The simple rules that apply to others don’t apply to their own nostalgic version of history.

As for the world getting worse, I frankly don’t see it.  In fact, I think the world is getting better.  I know many of us like to think that the 1950’s were great times for America, but ask black people about how great those times were and you’ll get a different story.  Today we are living closer to the high ideals laid out in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  We are still not there, but closer than we were when we allowed slavery to exist, or giant corporations to form trusts that could abuse the market and the government and in turn the people.  Women didn’t used to be able to vote.  They could be beaten with a switch no thicker than a man’s thumb (hence the origin of the phrase ‘rule of thumb’).  We used to allow children to work twelve hours a day or more and pay them next to nothing for it.  We used to have no safety net for the poor, elderly, or unfortunate.  And we used to have standards of living that were much lower.  We didn’t understand diseases the way we do now nor have the medicines and medical procedures to cure them.  We didn’t understand our universe the way we do now and as a result we’ve seen great advancements in both our technology and our humanity.  We still have a long way to go of course, but I just don’t see how things are getting worse.