History wears many masks. To some, it is nothing more than a tidy chronology of people and events. To others, it is the triumphal record of victors praising themselves over the vanquished. But its critical purpose is deeper: a study of cause and effect, an unblinking analysis illuminating the consequences when we choose to forget.
Amnesia is accidental, an uncontrolled loss of memory. What we face today is not amnesia but willed forgetting — intentional oblivion, the deliberate distortion of our collective memory. History is not supposed to soothe or flatter. In its fullness, it unsettles even as it enlightens. It is conscience and compass, guide and warning. Once edited for convenience or neutered by policy, it ceases to be either. It becomes propaganda for the weak, a tool of control disguised as comfort and a noble past.
The danger of this willed forgetting is simple: when the past is edited, the future tends to repeat its horrors and evils. Obliterated memory opens the door to evil and foolish repetition. It allows reality to be twisted into fictions that serve those who want to manipulate and/or lack the courage to confront and learn from the past. We cannot forget that human beings were once legal property, subject, without recourse, to mental, physical, and sexual abuse at the will of their ‘owners’. It is too easy to forget that this country was built upon and continues to rely on the labor of immigrants. We cannot forget the mortality and misery of children before vaccines — iron lungs for polio, blindness and brain damage from measles, deafness from mumps, miscarriages from rubella. To erase these memories is to invite and hasten the return of these atrocities.
We must have the courage to stand in the breach against this intentional oblivion. To study history, its cause and effect, is to bear witness, to heed its cries so that the next generation is spared their toll. It is too easy to listen to policymakers who pander for power. Too easy to strip protections from the weakest among us. It’s too easy to erase artifacts, ban books, and redact textbooks, all in the name of comfort. We must not turn a blind eye or deaf ear to the cries of those lessons lest we allow the next generation to suffer the plagues that will insidiously creep in and take their toll.
But comfort is not progress. Memory, even painful memory, is the price of wisdom and freedom. If we genuinely want to move forward, we must resist the temptation to rewrite the past and accept instead the discomfort of truth. Only in remembering — fully, painfully, and honestly — can we avoid repeating what history has already judged too costly to endure. You must understand the past to plan your future. Don’t erase, modify, or twist history—learn from it. #NeverFearTheDream
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com @simplebender.bsky.social Stand For Truth
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