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The Simon, CA
June 2 2004
Alternative History: The American Way
By Josh Schollmeyer
Jun 1, 2004
I organize history for a living. As the digital archive editor at
the famed foreign affairs and national security journal The Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, I take what Manhattan Project scientists
wrote about the nuclear age and turn it into made-to-order term
papers and research material for high school kids, graduate students,
and paranoid leftists who believe I'm filling in the blanks of their
right-wing conspiracy theories.
Here's what I've learned while doing this: I'm glad American children
can't find France on a map. After 18 months of reading intelligent,
nominally biased, first-person accounts of the nuclear age, I'm pretty
sure that if France exists it's not where my teachers told me it was.
A sharp history student, I thought I knew everything about our
country's past. The abridged version:
Those exploitative Brits raped us economically until we couldn't take
it anymore and were forced to revolt. Plus, they locked our women
and children in churches and burned them. (I got that one from Mel
Gibson's The Patriot, but since he's considered such an authority on
history lately, I figured that's how it really happened.)
But all would not be well for long as soon we were faced with our
greatest challenge - the Civil War. It took us a little while, but
finally us Northerners (I'm from Chicago) figured out that slavery was
bad. So we took it upon ourselves to teach the South a very important
moral lesson. Brothers were forced to kill brothers, but in the end
the backward South figured out that Jim Crow laws were just as an
effective way to oppress black people as slavery.
>>From here on, we're pretty much the righteous moral compass of the
world. We had a couple slip-ups here and there (woman should probably
be allowed to vote, too), but we basically kept to ourselves and
bailed out Europe whenever it got into a jingoistic pickle.
This brings us to the most poorly taught era of them all: the nuclear
age--defined here as the stuff that's crammed into the last two weeks
of any history course. From grade school to college, the latter half
of the 20th century is drawn in the broadest strokes imaginable. The
long and short of it: The big, bad Soviets held the world hostage
with their gigantic nuclear arsenal and bellicosity, reluctantly
forcing us to send our equally potent military to fight freedom
wherever freedom was threatened. (Sound familiar?) Without us and our
brilliant, forward-thinking leaders such as Harry Truman and John F.
Kennedy, today the world would be a cockroach's Shangri-la.
Sure, in a couple spots we weren't that great. Like segregation,
Vietnam, and Watergate. But we realized our ills - hey, it was of a
time - fixed all that and said we were sorry.
Well, guess what? That's all nonsense.
You see, we can't possibly be the bad guys. It's too unappetizing to
imagine, so we view our history with rose-colored glasses, teaching
it so it's palatable and easy-to-understand. When we absolutely
must admit serious wrongdoing, we make sure to include a proviso that
absolves total blame. Sure, Manifest Destiny was a more poetic term for
genocide, but those heathen Native Americans weren't good at sharing
(other than Thanksgiving) and we needed the land.
The American classroom peddles as much propaganda and provides as
many misconceptions about the world as the Islamic schools in the
Middle East. The only difference is the American education system
doesn't incite violence. This, in turn, creates both leaders who
pursue misguided, ignorant foreign policy and a general populace that
fervently supports such policies. After all, we're somberly following
the lessons of history. Best yet, when a more balanced version of
historical events is finally taught, the generations that learned it
the jingoistic way can grouse that liberal schools and teachers are
teaching anti-American dribble.
To wit, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The American history curriculum and
popular culture recalls the event as this: Unprovoked, the Soviets
aggressively moved nuclear weapons into Cuba with the intention
of destroying the United States unless their demands were met;
the Kennedy administration met this Cold War volley brilliantly and
graciously saved humanity from nuclear annihilation.
A more balanced account doesn't comfort our nationalistic psyches
as much. Cuba was the Soviet Union's strategic North American ally -
much like West Germany and Turkey were our strategic European allies.
We provided a nuclear umbrella for each with nuclear weapons that
were strategically placed throughout their countries and aimed at
Soviet military installations and cities. Turkey, coincidentally,
borders Georgia and Armenia, both of which were then Soviet republics.
By inviting Cuba underneath their nuclear umbrella, the Soviets
were attempting to reestablish a nuclear balance. (This deterrence
two-step defined the Cold War - especially in the '50s and '60s.) The
Soviets never intended to give the Cubans control of these weapons.
The Turkish and West German governments certainly didn't possess the
launch codes to the nuclear missiles within their borders - although
many members of the American military and NATO pushed for a system that
would allow Turkey and our other allies access to these weapons under
the guise of a non-proliferation initiative. The Soviets, in fact,
were shocked at Castro's callous attitude regarding the weapons -
privately, they considered Castro a lunatic.
Kennedy had only himself to blame for the escalation. The peace-loving
JFK who would've prevented Vietnam and quelled the Cold War is a
myth. He ran for president on a hawkish platform, claiming that the
Eisenhower administration irresponsibly allowed a missile gap to
develop. While his prose was poetic, his actions were inflammatory.
Kennedy did not stave off nuclear annihilation, he courted it.
Imagine how we would have responded had the Soviets covertly attempted
to topple the Turkish government.
Why isn't this version taught in our public schools? Because teaching
our hypocrisies is unpatriotic - no matter the provisos. So it was
the big, bad Soviets who initiated the arms race. It was the big,
bad Soviets who bucked any and every arms control measure. It was
the big, bad Soviets who insisted on supporting brutal, totalitarian
regimes throughout the Third World. The truth becomes irrelevant;
the bold strokes are easier for adolescents to commit to memory.
We're incapable of stopping. Part of the American way is being
the hero. Damn our actions if they frame us otherwise; we'll twist
the facts until they're in our favor. For our next trick, watch us
justify this nasty little prison scandal where a few patsy soldiers
(probably ordered by some higher-ups) staged sexual shenanigans between
Iraqi prisoners of war. These barbaric insurgents simply would not
provide us information about their insurgency. We tried everything,
but they would not talk. If we didn't make them rape each other,
American soldiers might have lost their lives. It was a sad chapter
in our history, but a chapter we were forced to write.
These are the lessons subsequent generations will be taught. Thirty
years from now, a high school student will regurgitate for a history
exam that in 2003 we (along with a Coalition of 60 other nations!)
toppled that evil Saddam Hussein (he gassed his own people!!) and
freed the Iraqi people from their bondage (we helped them destroy
Saddam effigies!!!), finally bringing democracy to an unenlightened
people. And that student will receive an A.
June 2 2004
Alternative History: The American Way
By Josh Schollmeyer
Jun 1, 2004
I organize history for a living. As the digital archive editor at
the famed foreign affairs and national security journal The Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, I take what Manhattan Project scientists
wrote about the nuclear age and turn it into made-to-order term
papers and research material for high school kids, graduate students,
and paranoid leftists who believe I'm filling in the blanks of their
right-wing conspiracy theories.
Here's what I've learned while doing this: I'm glad American children
can't find France on a map. After 18 months of reading intelligent,
nominally biased, first-person accounts of the nuclear age, I'm pretty
sure that if France exists it's not where my teachers told me it was.
A sharp history student, I thought I knew everything about our
country's past. The abridged version:
Those exploitative Brits raped us economically until we couldn't take
it anymore and were forced to revolt. Plus, they locked our women
and children in churches and burned them. (I got that one from Mel
Gibson's The Patriot, but since he's considered such an authority on
history lately, I figured that's how it really happened.)
But all would not be well for long as soon we were faced with our
greatest challenge - the Civil War. It took us a little while, but
finally us Northerners (I'm from Chicago) figured out that slavery was
bad. So we took it upon ourselves to teach the South a very important
moral lesson. Brothers were forced to kill brothers, but in the end
the backward South figured out that Jim Crow laws were just as an
effective way to oppress black people as slavery.
>>From here on, we're pretty much the righteous moral compass of the
world. We had a couple slip-ups here and there (woman should probably
be allowed to vote, too), but we basically kept to ourselves and
bailed out Europe whenever it got into a jingoistic pickle.
This brings us to the most poorly taught era of them all: the nuclear
age--defined here as the stuff that's crammed into the last two weeks
of any history course. From grade school to college, the latter half
of the 20th century is drawn in the broadest strokes imaginable. The
long and short of it: The big, bad Soviets held the world hostage
with their gigantic nuclear arsenal and bellicosity, reluctantly
forcing us to send our equally potent military to fight freedom
wherever freedom was threatened. (Sound familiar?) Without us and our
brilliant, forward-thinking leaders such as Harry Truman and John F.
Kennedy, today the world would be a cockroach's Shangri-la.
Sure, in a couple spots we weren't that great. Like segregation,
Vietnam, and Watergate. But we realized our ills - hey, it was of a
time - fixed all that and said we were sorry.
Well, guess what? That's all nonsense.
You see, we can't possibly be the bad guys. It's too unappetizing to
imagine, so we view our history with rose-colored glasses, teaching
it so it's palatable and easy-to-understand. When we absolutely
must admit serious wrongdoing, we make sure to include a proviso that
absolves total blame. Sure, Manifest Destiny was a more poetic term for
genocide, but those heathen Native Americans weren't good at sharing
(other than Thanksgiving) and we needed the land.
The American classroom peddles as much propaganda and provides as
many misconceptions about the world as the Islamic schools in the
Middle East. The only difference is the American education system
doesn't incite violence. This, in turn, creates both leaders who
pursue misguided, ignorant foreign policy and a general populace that
fervently supports such policies. After all, we're somberly following
the lessons of history. Best yet, when a more balanced version of
historical events is finally taught, the generations that learned it
the jingoistic way can grouse that liberal schools and teachers are
teaching anti-American dribble.
To wit, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The American history curriculum and
popular culture recalls the event as this: Unprovoked, the Soviets
aggressively moved nuclear weapons into Cuba with the intention
of destroying the United States unless their demands were met;
the Kennedy administration met this Cold War volley brilliantly and
graciously saved humanity from nuclear annihilation.
A more balanced account doesn't comfort our nationalistic psyches
as much. Cuba was the Soviet Union's strategic North American ally -
much like West Germany and Turkey were our strategic European allies.
We provided a nuclear umbrella for each with nuclear weapons that
were strategically placed throughout their countries and aimed at
Soviet military installations and cities. Turkey, coincidentally,
borders Georgia and Armenia, both of which were then Soviet republics.
By inviting Cuba underneath their nuclear umbrella, the Soviets
were attempting to reestablish a nuclear balance. (This deterrence
two-step defined the Cold War - especially in the '50s and '60s.) The
Soviets never intended to give the Cubans control of these weapons.
The Turkish and West German governments certainly didn't possess the
launch codes to the nuclear missiles within their borders - although
many members of the American military and NATO pushed for a system that
would allow Turkey and our other allies access to these weapons under
the guise of a non-proliferation initiative. The Soviets, in fact,
were shocked at Castro's callous attitude regarding the weapons -
privately, they considered Castro a lunatic.
Kennedy had only himself to blame for the escalation. The peace-loving
JFK who would've prevented Vietnam and quelled the Cold War is a
myth. He ran for president on a hawkish platform, claiming that the
Eisenhower administration irresponsibly allowed a missile gap to
develop. While his prose was poetic, his actions were inflammatory.
Kennedy did not stave off nuclear annihilation, he courted it.
Imagine how we would have responded had the Soviets covertly attempted
to topple the Turkish government.
Why isn't this version taught in our public schools? Because teaching
our hypocrisies is unpatriotic - no matter the provisos. So it was
the big, bad Soviets who initiated the arms race. It was the big,
bad Soviets who bucked any and every arms control measure. It was
the big, bad Soviets who insisted on supporting brutal, totalitarian
regimes throughout the Third World. The truth becomes irrelevant;
the bold strokes are easier for adolescents to commit to memory.
We're incapable of stopping. Part of the American way is being
the hero. Damn our actions if they frame us otherwise; we'll twist
the facts until they're in our favor. For our next trick, watch us
justify this nasty little prison scandal where a few patsy soldiers
(probably ordered by some higher-ups) staged sexual shenanigans between
Iraqi prisoners of war. These barbaric insurgents simply would not
provide us information about their insurgency. We tried everything,
but they would not talk. If we didn't make them rape each other,
American soldiers might have lost their lives. It was a sad chapter
in our history, but a chapter we were forced to write.
These are the lessons subsequent generations will be taught. Thirty
years from now, a high school student will regurgitate for a history
exam that in 2003 we (along with a Coalition of 60 other nations!)
toppled that evil Saddam Hussein (he gassed his own people!!) and
freed the Iraqi people from their bondage (we helped them destroy
Saddam effigies!!!), finally bringing democracy to an unenlightened
people. And that student will receive an A.