“Don’t know much about history…” begins the old Sam Cooke earworm, “Wonderful World.” As it turns out, Sam was ahead of his time. Today, history is as passé as great, great grandma’s butter churn. Each day is a new dawn unshackled from the traditions, norms and lessons of the past. Welcome to post-history America, where yesterday is old news and the only thing that matters is this very instant.
The death of history may be the most significant cultural unintended consequence of the digital revolution. The immediate gratification of Google, Amazon Prime, Grub Hub, and AI, has changed us in unimaginable ways. Today, we not only have Instagram but Instaeverything. Every itch is promptly scratched, and we love it! But living life at the speed of Google doesn’t leave time for reflection, which means history is itself history.
It’s not an accident that the sponsors of nightly news programs are mostly pharmaceutical giants. Nobody under sixty knows Lester Holt.
No surprise, politicians were late to the party.
Prisoners of their own history, the Democrats and Republicans clung to the same tactics that had worked cycle after cycle: cartoonish conventions with giant foam elephant and donkey hats, pseudo-debates and attack ads, all of which is bug spray for anyone under 85.
Then along came Donald Trump, the anti-history president.
Donald Trump behaves as if the world was born the same day he was. Nothing that came before him is of any interest, except as a vague notion of a lost golden era of America and even that has been shoved aside with the promise of a “new golden age.” In his relatively brief political career, Trump has exhibited little interest or knowledge of our past, and zero curiosity about his predecessors. Occasionally DJT will mention Washington or Lincoln, mostly to proclaim himself their superior. He is obsessed with Barack Obama and Joe Biden but only as political pinatas.
President Trump’s lack of historical perspective has freed him to scratch every itch and act on every whim. Unencumbered by the lessons of the past, the law and order, pro-police president habitually demonizes the FBI and Department of Justice, and infamously pardoned 1,500 insurrectionists who attacked police officers.
He has now delivered an Oval Office beat down to an ally fighting to save his country from a Russian invasion, with a bust of Winston Churchill staring in disbelief over his shoulder. This coming days after posting the most un-American statement imaginable, “Long live the King!” said Donald Trump on Truth Social, accompanying this doozie with an image of himself wearing a crown.
But this is not all on Donald Trump.
Our political zeitgeist has fallen in line with our cultural zeitgeist that values stimulation over reflection. President Trump was simply ahead of everyone in understanding where our heads are at in the digital age. President Trump is a creature of the internet where alternate facts flourish and truth is a jump ball.
America has always had a loosey-goosey relationship with our past. We live in the New World. Our forefathers made a conscious break with the Old World, rejecting its repressions, pogroms, and limited horizons for the masses. While other countries fight over ancient hurts fueled by religious and land disputes dating back centuries, we have largely escaped the traps of calcified history.
In post-history America, feelings are supreme. Are you happy? Are you angry? Are you worried? Are you confident? But emotions are easily manipulated, with panderers hailed as prophets by those who have fallen under their sway. The spell will finally break when the promise of instant gratification fails to appear and disillusionment and bitterness set in.
We all have a history: our parents, our siblings, our childhood homes. We can choose to reinvent ourselves if we wish but we can never fully erase our experiences. The totality of our lives is what makes who we are. So too, America. When this confounding era passes, as it inevitably will, Canada will still be to our north, Mexico to our south. But where will we be?
Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays.