Hide and Sneak

​In a leaked memo, a Trump appointee has ordered the National Parks Service to put up signage asking visitors to report what they think shows American history in a negative light.

A few years ago, I went to Berlin a few times to attend IFA, an international tech show.  Wandering the streets, it was impossible to miss the great many historical markers throughout the city noting the location of its NAZI and holocaust past.  And sometimes not just what were mere markers, but also remnants of that gruesome, monstrous national history.

On my first trip, few minutes after arriving in my hotel room, I was looking out the window and saw an intriguing architectural structure.  I couldn't figure out what it was, so I walked down to find out.

It turned out to be the Anhalter Banhoff, the bombed-out remnant of the railway station where Nazi trains transferred elderly Jews from one line to another on their way to concentration death camps.  In modern-day Berlin, the country didn't tear down the structure to get rid of any sign of this sickening reality of hell and hide their past from history, they not only left it standing but put up a plaque to explain it all.  Reading the sign, it was so gut-wrenchingly visceral that, totally without warning, I just burst out in tears.  And to my surprise, almost instinctively, I turned to the station and spit at it.  But I was glad and moved by this reminder that put German's past in a "negative light."  (The very polite term.)  Because it was a reminder of the Jewish phrase, "Never again."  And because, too, it showed how Germany itself was saying it wouldn't forget and worked hard to move beyond its disastrous past.

Beyond the concept of hiding their inexcusable past and trying to hide anything that puts it in a "negative light," Berlin even has a hauntingly beautiful Holocaust Museum out in the middle of the city.  And it's not just a building you can walk by and not think much of it (they do have such a building, filled with artifacts), but it's surrounding by a remembrance so vast, unique and notable that it intentionally draws attention to itself.
​

​That's how you get beyond not just the things that put your country in a "negative light," but created historic shame for you past.  When you hide that, and pretend that it doesn't happen, it continues.

Showing what in your past puts it in a negative light doesn't lessen what you've done that so good, or even great, or even noble.  It shows how you've transcended what was bad and makes your achievements all the greater.

Even more to the point, as philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

All this aside, what on earth is the National Park Service doing trying to obliterate history and reality?? 

Okay, given that the person doing this is a Trump appointee, the question basically answers itself.  But the question still stands, and the answer remains disgraceful.

Trump and today's MAGOPs don't want to acknowledge that we had slaves here.  That many Black people couldn't vote until the 1960s.  That women couldn't vote until 1920.  That Southern states ceded from the Union.  That we had a Civil War.  That we interred American citizens who happened to have Japanese heritage.  And far more.  America is not perfect, it's full of flaws.  But by acknowledging that, it lets us grow and move beyond it.

Very early in his career, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was a low-level official in the Ku Klux Klan.  But he not only came to be abhorred by his actions, he later became one of the leading Civil Rights activists.  And even more to the point, in 2005, he wrote in his autobiography that he not only didn't want to hide his past, he wanted to be continually reminded of it -- so that it couldn't be forgotten and he could eternally apologize for it.  He wrote, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

That's why you don't hide a country's past.  To do so doesn't get rid of that past, it lets it fester and live.

In some ways, you get the sense that that is Trump's goal, and MAGOPs, too.  To sneak an unhappy truth through the cracks as if it never existed.  To create that Trumpian "alternative reality."

Alternative reality is not reality.  History exists.  To deny it, all of it, just destroys those who try to pretend it isn't reality.  And is a reprehensible disgrace to those who lived it and suffered.  And is a disservice to the country when it faced its past and improved. 

Well...a disservice to those in the country who faced it.  And improved.  Some people sadly refuse to face reality and improve.

Hey, here's a thought!

If Germany can openly face its Nazi and holocaust past of when Adolf Hitler tried to literally take over the world -- then I really think the U.S. National Park Service can handle any visitors who don't like that something at the park puts the country in a negative light. 

Which the park should do have, because there actually, honestly, really was a time in the country's past that it truly did do something negative.

And y'know...I really think the country as a whole can handle it, too.  Because...we did! For a very long time.  Taught in schools, accepted as a part of U.S. history.  At least, up until Trump, and his tender, sensitive heart.  In his defense of brutality, racism and hatred.