Jun

26

I don't think history carries a tune, has any lyrics or rhymes, and it most certainly has no moral/political lessons–i.e. the proletariat will triumph. History is always and everywhere just a story about what people did, and one either enjoys stories or one doesn't. The problem with the schoolie versions of history is that they are always fictions with a purpose; the writer reliably distorts, ignores, lies about the known facts of what happened to fit everything to their version of a dialectic. It may not be Marx's but it always has the same presumption of inevitability. They may be "conservatives" like Carlyle or modern day liberals like David McCullough, but either way you end up with a sermon that the writer already knew he wanted to preach. (What makes Gibbon, the historian most often used for lessons in the 19th century, fascinating is that he keeps ignoring the lesson he has in mind in favor of finding the next twist in the truthful narrative. The story wins out over the moral/political lesson.)

This nattering is my apology for offering a historical comparison that today's anniversary brings to mind. On this date, in 1924, the U.S. Marines finally left the Dominican Republic (they had been there since 1916).

The United States has had thirty years of filibustering (not Senators talking but the other kind–adventuring with guns) in the Middle East. Nearly twice that long if you take away most of the guns and leave only the CIA and the American oil companies. By the time the Marines left Dominica, the filibustering in the Caribbean/Central America had been going on for almost a century, if you start with the Texas War of Independence. To this day the importance of all that chasing after sugar, tropical fruit and petroleum gets largely ignored, except by the Zinnistas who use it as yet another proof of the fundamental evil of the United States of America.

I have no doubt that the saga of Texans and others chasing Saudi/Iranian oil will be equally ignored when it comes to understanding what happened to America after Bush I became President. One can only hope that some day the Marines will go home once and for all.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search