It's really starting to bother me now--this lack of awareness of history that a lot of people seem to have. I know that history is not everyone's favorite subject anytime, anywhere, anyplace. That's because of the way it is taught to students in school. All we are expected to know are dates and we better damn well remember them when there's a test. On top of it all, it's OLD. It never seems relevant to you at the time. It's worse than learning math for a lot of people. This makes me very sad.
For instance, only half of adults can name the 3 branches of government. Worse, only 18 percent of 8th grade students were proficient or above in U.S. history and only 23 percent in Civics. Those statistics came from a report done in 2014. I'm quite sure that those numbers haven't changed much in the 3 years that have passed since that report was published.
This means that I shouldn't be surprised when I see leaders falter in their knowledge of history. But, I am sorry to report that I am still dismayed when this happens. It seems that knowledge of history is not a requirement for government officials. This comes out in unexpected ways, most notably during press conferences or during tweet storms. Every week, I wince as our dubious president, Mr. Trump, tweets out a statement which reveals his ignorance of history.
I know that we don't all have time to be experts in history. I know I'm not. However, we now have the internet to help us become more knowledgable. It belies understanding especially since the president is surrounded by other people that can help him do the research that is needed before he makes nonsensical statements. It's easy to do: pull up Google, type in what you need to know, press the return key and voilà! Why don't more people do this? Yes, I know, this is a rhetorical question.
So, we come to what has happened this week. For some reason, the president has equated white supremacists with counter-protestors. And, he has stated that there are nice people on both sides. That's not holding up to any intense scrutiny. He followed that with a statement saying that Confederate statues are "beautiful." More specifically, that people should not take down Confederate statues because if they do that, other statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are next for dismantlement. After all, Washington and Jefferson also owned slaves. But, he cannot equate Confederate heroes with the founding fathers of this country. The founding fathers were flawed, but in the end, their deeds outweighed their flaws. Nothing that the Confederate heroes did ever indicated that they would back off of their racist creeds. Nor, did they create anything positive in the aftermath of the war.
It's very unfortunate that he didn't bother to do a little bit of research. It would have taken just a few clicks to get some of this information. Granted, it is all nicely summarized. But, I don't think it's very challenging to find the history from the original sources elsewhere. Secondly, the statues were not created shortly after the Civil War. They were put up at different significant points of history, as per this article. The statues were created and placed entirely to make sure that white supremacy showed its power against black people. Truly, there is nothing redeeming about these statues.
Does the president or any of his minions dare to bother to do any research? Nope. Not one click. Thankfully, the rest of us know better.
I ran across this guy with this helmet at an auto show. I know my history--he's wearing a helmet styled from a design of WWI.