Advancing backwards with all haste
Jun. 1st, 2010 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamFrom my outsider’s pov, the American right wing appears to be marching resolutely and somewhat ridiculously into the past.
Rand Paul, the Republican nominee in Kentucky, thinks that parts of the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s were an over-reach and that the Government should have had no role in dismantling the system of discrimination in private business in the South. As well as being a splendid example of how the doctrine of Libertarianism has no relationship to reality, he is advocating abandoning fifty years of what I would see as significant social progress.
However, others disagree that the rot began in the 1960s and they instead see the 1860s as the problem. The latest Supreme Court nominee has been criticised because she said the American constitution was ‘flawed’ in the sense that it had to be fixed up with a Civil war. Yes, the question of whether or not slavery is wrong is actually being contested by the American right. In 2010.
Still, this position seems relatively moderate if you compare it with Sue ‘Chicken Lady’ Lowden who suggested the health system could be fixed by dismantling the monetary system and returning to barter. (I exaggerate her position only slightly). So, not the 1960s, or the 1860s but some time BCE.
At this point you can click below for a post that continues being lighthearted.
Maybe this constant focus on the past stems from the peculiarly American form of ancestor worship in which the founding fathers are regarded as infallible mini-deities.
I find this quite incomprehensible because the Australian fathers of the federation are, uniformly, completely forgettable. We did the Federation endlessly at school and yet I remember nothing about it. Well, virtually nothing. I remember that a lot of white men with massive beards got together in the 1890s and argued a bit about inter-state taxation before petitioning the Queen to become a constitutional monarchy. It’s not a gripping narrative.
I remember that Victoria and South Australia argued about where their border should be. That Victoria and New South Wales argued with all the other less populous States about whether matters should be decided by absolute majority or by the majority in each State. I remember that Western Australia fought with all the other States about seceding and that New Zealand considered joining.
But mostly I remember the completely over-the-top facial hair. As I recall those who didn’t sport massive, waist long, nineteenth-century beards had instead huge, Yosemite Sam sideburns and waxed moustaches, or, at the very least, out-of-control nose and ear hair. I remember that the eye brows seriously beetled. If they had been invented, these guys would have been wearing mullets.
For evidence, I submit the following pictures:
http://www.australiantales.com/images/sir-henry-parkes-australian-father-of-federation.jpg
http://www.aussiecurrency.com/membersfedconf.jpg
Possibly Australians might be more inclined towards revering these men if they weren’t so incredibly unattractive. Franklin, Washington, and their crew might not have been gods among men, but at least their features were not obscured by a forest of hair.
This is my hirsute theory of history.
Or you can click here for an abrupt change of tone into the serious.
As you can tell, I have enjoyed writing this mocking post, and of course it is easy to cherry pick the stupidest things that the most extreme people say and to laugh at them.
What I would say, in all seriousness, is that the strand of history I see being contested most often is the issue of race.
And in this sense Australia has a very similar problem. We even have a name for it – the history wars between ‘black armband history’ and ‘whitewash history’. This tension lies over whether we call it colonisation or invasion; whether we talk about the massacres and if we do whether we mention the massacres that continued well into the 20th century; whether we state that many women were raped or merely note that pastoralists often had two families; whether we see the Stolen Generation as attempted genocide; whether we mention that Apartheid was modelled on West Australian policies of the early 20th century; whether we mention that much of the country was opened up using unpaid Aboriginal labour – until the 1970s; whether we say that universal suffrage was introduced in 1901 or in the 1960s or, for local Government, in the 1980s; whether we say that we – the mass of middle class Australians – have benefited at the expense of the Aboriginal people whose land this was.
This debate flares up every time the history curriculum is reviewed, every time a popular work of history is written, every time a shock jock talks about Aboriginal people having too many entitlements.
I only watch American culture from the outside, but I would suggest that their own debates about race are underpinned by a similar anxiety.
Here ends the serious part.
Rand Paul, the Republican nominee in Kentucky, thinks that parts of the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s were an over-reach and that the Government should have had no role in dismantling the system of discrimination in private business in the South. As well as being a splendid example of how the doctrine of Libertarianism has no relationship to reality, he is advocating abandoning fifty years of what I would see as significant social progress.
However, others disagree that the rot began in the 1960s and they instead see the 1860s as the problem. The latest Supreme Court nominee has been criticised because she said the American constitution was ‘flawed’ in the sense that it had to be fixed up with a Civil war. Yes, the question of whether or not slavery is wrong is actually being contested by the American right. In 2010.
Still, this position seems relatively moderate if you compare it with Sue ‘Chicken Lady’ Lowden who suggested the health system could be fixed by dismantling the monetary system and returning to barter. (I exaggerate her position only slightly). So, not the 1960s, or the 1860s but some time BCE.
At this point you can click below for a post that continues being lighthearted.
Maybe this constant focus on the past stems from the peculiarly American form of ancestor worship in which the founding fathers are regarded as infallible mini-deities.
I find this quite incomprehensible because the Australian fathers of the federation are, uniformly, completely forgettable. We did the Federation endlessly at school and yet I remember nothing about it. Well, virtually nothing. I remember that a lot of white men with massive beards got together in the 1890s and argued a bit about inter-state taxation before petitioning the Queen to become a constitutional monarchy. It’s not a gripping narrative.
I remember that Victoria and South Australia argued about where their border should be. That Victoria and New South Wales argued with all the other less populous States about whether matters should be decided by absolute majority or by the majority in each State. I remember that Western Australia fought with all the other States about seceding and that New Zealand considered joining.
But mostly I remember the completely over-the-top facial hair. As I recall those who didn’t sport massive, waist long, nineteenth-century beards had instead huge, Yosemite Sam sideburns and waxed moustaches, or, at the very least, out-of-control nose and ear hair. I remember that the eye brows seriously beetled. If they had been invented, these guys would have been wearing mullets.
For evidence, I submit the following pictures:
http://www.australiantales.com/images/sir-henry-parkes-australian-father-of-federation.jpg
http://www.aussiecurrency.com/membersfedconf.jpg
Possibly Australians might be more inclined towards revering these men if they weren’t so incredibly unattractive. Franklin, Washington, and their crew might not have been gods among men, but at least their features were not obscured by a forest of hair.
This is my hirsute theory of history.
Or you can click here for an abrupt change of tone into the serious.
As you can tell, I have enjoyed writing this mocking post, and of course it is easy to cherry pick the stupidest things that the most extreme people say and to laugh at them.
What I would say, in all seriousness, is that the strand of history I see being contested most often is the issue of race.
And in this sense Australia has a very similar problem. We even have a name for it – the history wars between ‘black armband history’ and ‘whitewash history’. This tension lies over whether we call it colonisation or invasion; whether we talk about the massacres and if we do whether we mention the massacres that continued well into the 20th century; whether we state that many women were raped or merely note that pastoralists often had two families; whether we see the Stolen Generation as attempted genocide; whether we mention that Apartheid was modelled on West Australian policies of the early 20th century; whether we mention that much of the country was opened up using unpaid Aboriginal labour – until the 1970s; whether we say that universal suffrage was introduced in 1901 or in the 1960s or, for local Government, in the 1980s; whether we say that we – the mass of middle class Australians – have benefited at the expense of the Aboriginal people whose land this was.
This debate flares up every time the history curriculum is reviewed, every time a popular work of history is written, every time a shock jock talks about Aboriginal people having too many entitlements.
I only watch American culture from the outside, but I would suggest that their own debates about race are underpinned by a similar anxiety.
Here ends the serious part.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-01 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-02 11:37 am (UTC)I think I know this because it was referenced in a native title report.
But I know it is true because, for instance, my friend's father's first job was in customs at Broome which involved maintaining the separation between white sailors and the black women (both prostitution and de facto couples). That was the 1950s.