Anybody intent on indicting the American educational system should watch Ken Burns’ The Civil War. The 9-episode, 11 1/2 hour documentary classic takes the viewer through our worst years from start to finish. I remember vividly watching its premeire back in 1990 and thinking how bad it made my Jr. and High School history teachers look; how did they manage to make such an important and compelling subject so deathly dull? How could it be that this riveting tale of American self immolation bored me to tears as a teenager?
Burns checks off all the boxes, conveying both war’s senselessness and glory, the human bonds it creates and destroys, and the lives it defines and ruins. But in so fully documenting America’s march to the brink of destruction and back again, Burns provides an emphatic answer to the conflagration’s most pertinent question: yes, the Civil War began and ended with slavery and race. Case closed.
Moreover, at the end of the day, the war’s primary legacy was the challenge for America to create the necessary circumstances for former slaves and their future generations to meld into the fabric of US society, as part of one community, all beholden to and protected by the Constitution. The degree to which we succeeded at that single task, Burns more than implied, would go far in determining our future prospects as a nation.
Of course our successes and failures at addressing the challenge are well documented; and, up to 2008, depending on who one asked, the glass was either half full or half empty. One man’s progress was another’s stagnation. Indeed, the issue of exactly how far we had come became central to the culture war as years slipped by and the memories of Jim Crow faded.
The election of Barack Obama provided a brief but glorious euphoria that the mountaintop, if not reached, was at least in view. For many African-Americans who had suffered through the shameful indignities of poll tests and klan thuggery, Obama validated their aspirations and sacrifice. More than simply a salve for the past, he represented the best opportunity yet for securing the future…walking the walk, not just talking. In January of 09’ even the most hardened and cynical could admit good things seemed possible.
But where one group felt hope and opportunity another feared the apocalypse. Many in white America, particularly baby boomers, saw, if not their worst fears realized, certainly those of their parents. Suddenly, “this thing has gone far enough” became “this thing has gone too far!”
Of course it’s probable that, sans the relentless drumbeat of Fox/AM, and a Republican Party not committed to full throated dog whistles and obstruction, many of those initially inclined to bigotry and grievance would have grudgingly accepted the sky had not fallen, and in fact, there was a good bit to like in this youthful and charismatic POTUS. One only needs to view the limbo like setting of Trump’s bar to appreciate how different things may have been if many in flyover country had afforded Obama the slightest bit of slack. Ailes, Limbaugh, Levin et al had other plans.
To Fox/AM the 2008 election was an ATM. Historians may be interested how much of the rotten hash Shit River personalities actually believed and how much was just business. Seems irrelevant. What is irrefutable is the billions upon billions of dollars the make-Obama-Satan machine raked in with nothing less than a 24/7 multimedia propaganda operation. Any pause an Iowa farmer may have had toward something decent he heard our first black President did never made it to the dinner table, as Fox got a hold of it.
Everything intersected at the crossroads of police conduct. Departments throughout the US, stocked with post 9/11 war machinery, and employing enough bad apples to cause problems now fully documented for public viewing, dealt with charges of brutality the way they always had… by circling the wagons. Nobody got the memo about a new sheriff in town on that score. Minority citizens were unreasonable enough to expect that, at minimum, a black POTUS should translate into basic personal freedom. One could argue about economic progress, or the nuances of income disparity, but walking to the corner store without being brutalized by cops should be a given.
Bill O’Reilly didn’t see it that way. In the tightly closed little chambers of his brain Black America was the victim of its own ugly vices. Empathy, never an O’Reilly strong suit, was for others, like heroic cops forced to patrol hell zones every day and clean up the garbage. O’Reilly appointed himself their patron, and when a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minnesota were caught on tape chanting “pigs in a blanket”, Bill O had all he needed. “I’m going to shut them down,” he hissed on his show that evening after declaring BLM a terrorist organization. From that point on BLM was never mentioned on any Fox/AM show as anything other than Hezbollah’s equal.
Obama, ever the deft politician, tried his best to placate flyover denizens on the issue, speaking eloquently of the challenges police departments face, while expressing empathy through his own humanity for victims of brutality. He could have saved his breath. A thoughtful statement issued in the morning, was Louis Farrakhan by Fox’s prime time line up. Mythology became common Shit River wisdom during a single news cycle. Anybody who doubts this need only have listened to Trump toadie Rick Santorum expel it word for word the other night on CNN.
After weaving its way through places like Ferguson, Mo., New York City and Cleveland, where young Tamir Rice was shot by jittery officers for playing with a toy gun, the issue of police conduct toward minorities has morphed into nothing less than the kind of pivotal challenge Ken Burns pointed out 28 years ago. The sorry fact that less than a minuscule number of officers ever get worse than fired for outrageous conduct often documented by camera, makes it a systemic issue, with a sum far greater than its parts.
Our nihilist POTUS, dividing us as his instincts always dictate, while also settling a score with a group who once refused to let him join, has moved things to the football field. And while the venue has changed, the principles remain the same: one group expecting nothing more than to be treated as the rest of America, to be part of a national community; and another unwilling to even acknowledge any problem exists, and ready to demand the same indifference from its elected officials.
Watching Sterling Brown get mugged by a bunch of cowards in Milwaukee the other night, that mountaintop seemed as far away as I can remember. BC