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it seems to me that one should be able to accomodate both those elements of the past that are problematic and those that are less so--in the instance of jefferson, i see no problem with including a number of angles in constructing a view of the guy--after all, given that this is allegedly a democracy (in form only, but tant pis) it seems not a problem to understand jefferson and all the others involved with enframing the system as human beings not Great Prophets who Bring Important Stuff Down From the Mount--the founders were human beings operating in a complex, constridictory situation like any of us does--they set up a system that in very basic ways assumed cuh was the case fro not only themselves but for every generation--if there is a problem with accomodating ugly facts with the Heroic Myth, the problem lay with the nature, function and content of the myth, not with the complexity of the past.
such myths are worthless in a democracy. they amount to an attempt to deny effective history, that it continues--instead there is an Originary Moment that reframes history--the people who operated in that situation grappled with the complexity of being in history so that you, subsequently--dont have to. nothing could be further from the notion of democracy than that--nothing could be more directly contradictory with the notion of democracy than that.
does this mean that there is nothing anywhere to be admired? of course not: but it does mean that admiration canot be confused with worship.
as for the massive, inescapable problems that lurk for a hero-worshipping notion of american history--like the genocide of the native americans, like teh slave trade, like the brutalities visited upon massees of people by the variant of capitalism the americans have developed--i say too bad for the heroes--better than people look, and carefully, and critically, at these problems in order to figure out such basic things as how were they possible, how was consent for them engineered in order to maybe be in a better position to prevent such atrocities from being repeated--with parallel types of consent.
of the two basic possibilities presented here: the preference for Heros and a more distanced, critical view i would think the second more useful, more open to taking in complexity and not simply to talking about complexity. the same could be said about those aspects of being in the states that one might enjoy, might endorse.
what makes this general question operational to me is that you have a whitewshed, myopic version of history being floated from aspects of the american right--its function in this context is clear--effective history began and ende with the founders--now you live in a hierarchical society about which you can do and say nothing. for the most part, what folk on the gingrich and lynne cheney lines are advocating is a flight from history, a flight from self-criticism--and with that a flight from anything apporaching informed, meaingful participation in a democratic process--toward a more authoritarian form of rule within which everyone talks about democracy by divine mandate, engages in debates reduced to matters of opinion--behind which the holders of economic and political power can do as they like.
this is why the question of conservative ideology in general comes into to discussions about the nature and role of history, even as it plays out across the question of the name of this berkeley school.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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