General Discussion

PCIntern

(27,059 posts) Tue Dec 24, 2024, 11:20 AM Dec 24

258

This post will probably sink like a stone...

But on this Christmas Eve, I would like to make what I consider a significant point about America and why this clown could be reelected with even more votes than he received the first two times he ran.

Simply put, Americans have little or no institutional/national memory. They are trained not to have a memory and I’m going to tell you how it is inculcated into us. Did you ever have a favorite broadcaster on TV or radio whom you watched for a great many years and all of a sudden they left the station? It may have been because of a format change, retirement, or a problem with new leadership in management, but for whatever reason one day they were gone. In the vast number of circumstances, they are never mentioned again… Ever. In Philadelphia we have had broadcasters who had incredibly long tenures at the TV and radio stations and their names are never mentioned on that station after they depart. It is apparently a given in the industry.

Yes, it is true that people talk, usually briefly, about Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley, but that is because they were associated with covering world-altering events such as the Kennedy Assassination or the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it’s not just the broadcast media which exercises this prerogative.

Sports teams, no matter how successful, rarely mention previously employed players unless they are in the superstar or Hall of fame categories and even then, it’s kept to an absolute minimum. I’ll give you an example: I have been a Philadelphia sports fan since 1958 and our local, very much of a “Homer” media will reference a particular team, whether good (not often) or awful (more frequently) and IF a player is mentioned from that team it is nearly always the same player, as though the team consisted of this guy and a number of insignificant no-names. But I’ll tell you what: if a fellow by the name of Del Unser had not doubled in the top of the tenth inning in the fifth and deciding game of the Phillies-Astros playoff series, the Phillies likely would have not eventually gone on to the World Series and won their first title ever in their history. Del who? I have not heard his name mentioned in a Phillies broadcast since 1985 or so. Not once.

And lastly, in the music industry, once you’re out of favor, your concert venues metamorphose from stadiums to coffee houses and oldie festivals thirty years later. The music vanishes literally into the ether. Remember The Grass Roots? Yes? No? As per Wiki:

“ In their career, they achieved two gold albums and two gold singles, and charted singles on the Billboard Hot 100 a total of 21 times. Among their charting singles, they achieved Top 10 three times, Top 20 six times and Top 40 14 times.[6][7] They have sold over 20 million records worldwide”

When is the last time anyone talked about them? (Ok ok, yeah. You have their albums. I get it but you ain’t the masses) Gone With the Wind they are…

So Americans have no need to know history apparently. My history courses in junior high and high school were atrocious in every respect. I learned about civics, historical trends, history itself, and government in my mid-late twenties via newspapers and books I’d taken out of the “liberry” (sic). I was a doctoral recipient attending and then instructing at an Ivy League institution and a vacant moron when it came to this subject. Embarrassing. I’m still wildly undereducated in this respect.

So I work with people in their twenties and thirties. Many have never, and will proudly state this, watched a black and white film or tv show including but not limited to documentaries and recaps of historical news broadcasts. One fellow complimented me upon the use of the phrase “low-down”. When I asked him why, he stated that it was new….i told him that it wasn’t new when I was five years old and he actually did not believe me. He asked the only other person in the office nearly my age-within 10 years- and she just laughed at him. She literally said to him, “Are you a moron or just plain stupid?” I thought that a bit harsh, but not really out of bounds.

The American amnesia is sufficiently pervasive that many millions have literally forgotten the entire Trump Presidency as though it never happened. Many recall with certainty the pandemic beginning under President Biden and many wonder why President Obama wasn’t in the White House where he belonged on 9/11. We used to think it was a minority, but it isn’t a trivial one. Hell, these people can’t remember the brand of beer they drank daily from five years ago so why should they know anything about national or world events and personalities?

With this ignorance and unwillingness to learn from history comes hate and prejudice. We are reliving the 1930’s except Roosevelt isn’t President, a diseased version of Charles Lindbergh is soon going to be inaugurated and we are truly going to require a Deus ex machina for our salvation. But, it is not likely, for to slightly paraphrase Shakespeare: the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. We are the weak link: deliberately undereducated and programmed by the corporate media

Well: a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and a Heri za Kwanzaa to all! And if you are an atheist, have a wonderful week!