{"id":23905,"date":"2017-05-07T11:46:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T16:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23905"},"modified":"2017-05-07T11:46:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T16:46:57","slug":"why-study-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23905","title":{"rendered":"Why Study History?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Study History?<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

As liberal Democrats for the most part, United States historians have no doubt been having a field day with Donald Trump\u2019s recently reported clueless comments on United States history.\u00a0 The president\u2019s moronic take on the nation\u2019s past was front-page news last Tuesday<\/a> in liberals\u2019 and academics\u2019 favorite newspaper, The New York Times<\/em>. \u00a0Times<\/em> reporters Peter Baker and Jonah Engel Bromwich told readers about Trump\u2019s historical idiocy, seen in the president\u2019s:<\/p>\n

+ Suggestion that Andrew Jackson\u00a0had been\u00a0\u201creally angry\u201d<\/a>about the Civil War, which did not break out until 16 years after his death.<\/p>\n

+ Assertion that the Civil War could have been prevented by smart policymakers who should have just gotten together and cut a deal.<\/p>\n

+ Apparent belief that the great 19th<\/sup> century Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass is still alive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

+ Apparent surprise at learning that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.<\/p>\n

+ Putting up a golf course plaque marking\u00a0a Civil War battle that never happened<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Times<\/em> quoted Princeton \u201cpresidential historian\u201d Julian E. Zelizer, who thinks that \u201cPresidents should have some better sense of the nation\u2019s history as they become part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historian Paul Starobin told the Times<\/em> that \u201cTrump seems almost uniquely ill equipped to process history, whether because of his lack of empathy, his allergy to complexity, or his tendency to keep distant from anything that might carry the whiff of defeat\u2026History is not tidy. Trump likes tidy. He likes slogans. History doesn\u2019t offer any.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, yes, Trump is a dummy about American history, too. I could almost hear the sneers and chuckles across the faculty rooms in academic history departments from coast to coast.<\/p>\n

United States of Amnesia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Great, but once they\u2019re done laughing at Dunce Cap Donald, the nation\u2019s academic historians might want to reflect on the broader and unsettling historical ignorance that stalks the United States \u2013 and their own roles in enabling it.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Study History? As liberal Democrats for the most part, United States historians have no doubt been having a field day with Donald Trump\u2019s recently reported clueless comments on United States history.\u00a0 The president\u2019s moronic take on the nation\u2019s past was front-page news last Tuesday in liberals\u2019 and academics\u2019 favorite newspaper, The New York Times. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[5493,7844,2500,15269,655,827],"class_list":["post-23905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-donald-trump","tag-history","tag-paul-street","tag-propaganda","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23906,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23905\/revisions\/23906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}