Qui Bono

Submitted by Douglas Schulek-Miller (United States), Apr 4, 2017 at 14:32

Sir,

If the number of practitioners of meaningful history are falling off sufficiently in number for it to be a matter of comment, that prompts the question as to who benefits from this? Charlotte Iserbyt in her reflections on the direction and motivation of the US's DoEd. might say that the benefits from not having great substance history resources available falls to those who would rather that the students and public not know of historical substance 1, because it may contradict the "truth", manipulated or revised, that they may be promoting and 2, because giving people an unvarnished version of events of the past provides perspective that is resistant to populist or progressive political manipulation.

It may appear to be a paranoid view, but it particularly sensible if you believe that control of the historical dialogue is sufficiently important to enable the easier promulgation of social engineering practices and policies helpful to those who would be our rulers, but detrimental to expanding the kind of totalitarian theme we see in much of the current politic across political lines and countries. If you want to control the population and your plan is not a near term chaos one, you need to frame the public in such a way as to eliminate sources of meaningful contrast and contradiction.

If this seems irrational, one might remember the uniqueness of these last few years political arena and keep that in the context of the widely Marxist influence of the indoctrination emanating from the DoEd. in the US and the spread of US practices abroad for 40 years has created the snowflake state, one more susceptible to scripted ideology (a la the Frankfurt School) than something we see virtually no more: reasoned political debate. For an illustration, view the tapes of the Nixon/Kennedy debates compared to this last election's version of a debate. Another acute observation might be the despair that results from the observation: have we sunk that far from where we were?

If we are sinking and the preponderance of history programs are dissolving into self-centred meaninglessness, irrelevant to any apposite perspective on current and historical events, consider that nothing happens without it being directed so and for whose interest does this change serve?

Respectfully yours,
Doug Schulek-Miller

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