History

I recently read Billy Bragg's book, the Progressive Patriot, something I've been meaning to do for a good while now. It was different from what I guess I expected, but not in a bad way. A mixture of personal and familial history, general British history, music history, and reflection on what this "Britishness" actually is that apparently everyone is feeling the loss of but which no one bothers to define. I was especially interested by his use of diary excerpts from previous generations, which made me think about how different diaries were then from what passes for diaries now. It's not even that they were more introspective or anything; most of the entries seemed to be statements of fact about the wars, how many lives lost, how many bombs dropped, one day that was remarkable simply because there wasn't an air raid. There didn't even seem to be any personal reflection, just statements of fact and that was all that was noteworthy. Compare that to my own diaries over the years... just whining and grousing and talking about pepto bismal and contradictory statements and complaining about my brother and on and on ad nauseam. Or even to most blogs I've seen (or written) which are nothing but personal reflections and completely ignore what's going on in the world. If future generations by some misfortune stumbled upon any of my blogs, would they even know there's been a war going on? Or would they think the only things happening at this period of American history were bargains on videos (although I guess that could demonstrate the dire straits our economy is in).

The fact of the matter is, everything America's been doing overseas in the recent past is practically incomprehensible to me, so it's hard for me to reflect on it much. And I never thought war should be the only thing we learn about in history class, although that's how I remember everything being taught. Which may be why I was never all that interested in history until I started reading books about old movies. History needs to relate to something we can understand and appreciate, and I've never understood wars or power struggles. I can't imagine ever wanting something enough to kill or die for it, let alone enough to send thousands and thousands of strangers off to kill and die for it. And let's face it, at least in the history classes I've had, we were taught next to nothing about the Middle East anyway, so it's not like we were prepared to understand anything that's been going on. Because everything that's happened recently is tied to everything that's happened in the past, and since I don't comprehend the past I have trouble understanding the present situation.

I definitely didn't understand the general reaction to Bin Laden's assassination, for one thing. To be honest, I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I don't see how people could be celebrating in the streets. Not only because I don't understand celebrating someone being killed, but also because I don't understand celebrating when you have to realize there will probably be very nasty consequences for killing him. That night I was actually over at a friend's house and near a tv (both most unusual), so for once I was able to see the news when it was still relatively fresh. We were all sitting around full of home-smoked meat and watching Super Troopers, when our host's sister came in and told us to put on the news. And while hundreds were probably shooting off fire crackers, we all had a collective "Oh, shit" moment.

Oh, shit, he's actually dead after all this time.

Oh, shit, WE killed him.

Oh, shit, this is going to piss off a lot of very dangerous people.

Oh, shit, how are people celebrating? Do they really think this is the end of it?

Oh, shit, what now?

But hey, maybe this will somehow be a good thing. Maybe this is a step toward peace and not a step toward even more war. You never know.

After all, I wasn't a history major.