By John Kendall Hawkins
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
- Neil Young, "Ohio"
It's generally true what they say about public history -- that it's easily trivialized and forgotten, so that we can soon start over again, and make the same mistakes next time, with more brio and technology-driven enthusiasm. And don't even get me started on personal memory. Ever since postmodernism came along and said that just because the Foo shits on you doesn't mean you have to wear it. We don't really know what happened, or what hit us. We're like the dinosaurs that way. F*ck, if I can remember where I left the keys, let alone my dignity. And I tell myself: if memory doesn't flatter, what good is it?
I've been reading a lot of "history" lately. And it's only made me more confused. Last year I read a book about mosquitoes the writer referred to as General Anopheles and how her bites changed the course of history. Napoleon might have ruled America, the writer claims, except that his men couldn't handle the still loo water of mosquito incubation. So he sold Louisiana, and abandoned Haiti. One reads, gobsmacked, that the General has been responsible for the deaths of "as many as half of the people who have ever lived." It's not the butterfly effect we should be worried about, but the mossie effect.
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