The Reality Of History

I am almost 1/3 way ‘kindling’ “The People’s History of United States” by Howard Zinn. (I am copyrighting the term ‘Kindling’ i.e. reading a book on Kindle!) First time I learned about this book when Mr. Zinn was making at my college for a lecture. The book's been on my reading list since then. The book is a factual history of people and for people. The ‘people’ are the working class poor, the downtrodden, and the sufferers. The book presents history as is, without white-washing (literally!). And it surely does an admirable job. The book was written to counter the ‘official’ history popular with the masses and taught in the schools. I don’t know how American history book present their past but it is safe to assume that sharp edges are sawed-off and bloody aspects washed clean. It is hard to teach kids that the ‘land of free’ is built by systematically removing native Indians from their own land or enslaving millions of soul simply because of their skin color. It ain’t sexy, you know!

The premise of the book is that the country always excluded majority population from ruling and in essence, is not a true democracy. The rich and the powerful interests always governed and laws are structured to serve them. The blacks, native Indians, woman (all of them) and poor whites were systematically disfranchised right from the declaration of independence. Even the Civil War of 1861 was stimulated more by economic interests of rich than actual opposition to Slavery. (That is not to say there was no opposition to slavery. The north-eastern states had banned slavery for almost 100 years prior to civil war but if it wasn’t for necessity of opening of southern markets and emergence of western frontier, the emancipation of blacks would have been delayed further.)

I am currently going through the Civil War chapter.

I agree with this premise but to argue that true democracy is an ideal state is utopian. It never happened in human history and will not happen ever. The way human psyche works and responds, there’s always someone at the top taking advantage of others who are at the bottom. Garbs could be different; they may be Kings, rich barons, military dictators, monopolist industrialists or Priests. Revolution may throw the existing system but inherent structure remains the same. The human ambition forces people to coagulate, build, destroy, annihilate and rebuild again. There is no cure for this.

I am not trying to defend the actions of European settlers (or invaders!). Without a shred of moral hesitancy, they summarily annihilated all Native Americans. The Founding Fathers of United States proclaimed a grand-standing constitution granting freedom to everyone even though they had slaves and allowed the practice of slavery, disfranchised women and voting rights were based on property owned. I am not saying that these acts should not be criticized.

But there is no denying that this is how the world works and will continue to work. Unjust and violent

Back to the book!