"History Repeats the Old Conceits"
History doesn't care if we remember it or not
I don’t remember what it was, but every day there is something that makes you want to turn away, so I didn’t see why I needed to pay attention to this one and said as much. My wife said we have to bear witness, which I tend to agree with, because if we don’t bear witness then we’ll forget where that stain came from and then it’ll just be a red blotch on our tablecloth from a forgotten dinner party. Like I said, I don’t remember what it was because the very next thing she said distracted me: “If we don’t, then history will just repeat itself.”
My first television memory is seeing Richard Nixon resign. I remember seeing that odd-looking man on the black and white television. My mom was probably wearing clogs and a headscarf, and I’m sure she had me in denim overalls. We might have had people over to celebrate. We were peak seventies. Mom threw pots. Dad freelanced. We lived in the DC area then, and my parents ran with a crowd that bought the afternoon edition to find out the latest about Watergate. My brother and I didn’t play cops and robbers. We played Watergate and demanded each other’s papers. Family legend has it that I.F. Stone, upon viewing me in my swaddled infancy, said, “Looks like a little protestor,” marking one of his greater errors in judgment. But in my memory I was sitting on my parents’ bed as mom directed my attention at the man on the television, telling me this was important.
I remember. And yet here we are.
We forget who first said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” yet we repeat it endlessly, looping it through the soundtrack of our lives like a classic melody lifted into a new riff. George Santayana wrote that famous admonition in 1905. He was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. The one thing he was not was a historian. He was just a writer trying to make a buck, spinning quotable prose into royalties. We forget him and repeat his wisdom, which might be the only way what he wrote about history repeating itself has ever been correct.
We repeat this aphorism unexamined as if it were a Bible verse or a scientific fact. In being retold, the phrase remixes into absurdism. In his first-person account of his diplomatic heroism in ending the Bosnian War, Richard Holbrooke offered an unintentional Yogism:
"The circumstances that led to the collapse of Yugoslavia were so extraordinary that it is difficult to conceive of their recurrence. Yet if history teaches us one thing, it is that history is unpredictable.”
How true.
We keep repeating history because we focus relentlessly on the past. The big winner at the Tony Awards was a revival of Oklahoma! Everything is making a comeback these days: game shows, measles, fascism, internment camps. When the administration blamed Iran for torpedoing the oil tanker, the Twitterati rushed to make Tonkin Gulf comparisons. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to miss out on all the timely jokes.
We are gouging ourselves on nostalgic peanut butter cups — You got your Tarantino in my Star Trek! — spoiling our appetites for something new. Remembering the past is not enough if we’re still the same un-evolved nitwits humans have always been, if we deal with the past with glib replies and the same defeats. Keeping our fingers on important issues with crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues — like, say, an aphorism from 1905 — is worse than useless because it tells us that remembering the past is how we prevent repeating it. Watching The History Channel is not going to prevent the rise of fascism or ensure that the viewers mainlining WWII documentaries will recognize who the good guys are the next time around. If knowledge is power, it is a limited one.
What I’m reading
Some scientists at Rutgers figured out why black don’t crack, and it’s not just because the melanin shields the skin from ultraviolet rays.
Great men are still men, by which I mean both men and human. Arc of the moral universe and all that, I suppose.
Artificial intelligence might be replacing classroom teachers.
Adding 15 pounds to a Marine’s gear leads to higher casualties.
The freedom to make a mistake is one of the five factors Google found that went into creating successful teams, though I don’t know why they didn’t just Google “How do you create a successful team.”
How Americans think the economy is doing has less to do with prosperity than partisanship.
Most Americans are on their phones while watching TV, which means it’s not just me!
The bad news is that concern with fake news is up around the world. The good news is that people are seeking out more reliable sources for news. The bad news is that they’re no more likely to pay for it, especially if it’s not video or audio.
Print isn’t dead, but hoo boy it ain’t breathing easy.
A poll of Black Americans says they’re waiting for candidates to sell them on an economic agenda for their community. Meanwhile, historical data says Biden is not a prohibitive frontrunner.
Research says you would be happier if you talked to strangers but expect the opposite to be true.
I’ll be damned. Some scientists at Johns Hopkins looked into it, and universal background checks do “not decrease lethal gun violence." Apparently the only successful way to reduce gun homicides and suicides is to require "purchaser licensing."
Another study found that the permafrost is melting 70 years earlier than expected, but the good news is that marijuana does nothing to reduce the opioid crisis, plant species are going extinct 500 times faster than normal, and 4.1 percent of those sentenced to death in the U.S. are innocent.
Interestingly, “exposure to inequality among the poor is associated with an increase in support for taxing the rich.”
In 1975, it took nine years to save enough for a down payment. Now it takes 14 years, and far more in cities that are doing well. Los Angeles? 43.
Chris Richards, who wrote that wonderful dispatch from the Miami hip-hop festival a few weeks back, wrote a wonderful take on dad rock. It’s lovely and perfect for Father’s Day.
I’m putting a little joke in here to reward the hearty who scan this bibliography: I told someone at a party that I started a newsletter because I’m a white guy but don’t have enough friends to start a podcast. That’s not true, by the way. I have way more friends than is required to start a podcast. (The minimum for a podcast is two, and I’m sure I have a least one friend who’d be willing to do a podcast, but the joke stands even if it’s not strictly true.)
What I’m watching
New rule: If someone is your favorite critic — your entertainment spirit guide, if you will — follow their advice. God bless Glen Weldon. In 2016 he unsubtly gave Fleabag an A+, and I tried to watch it but bailed after a crass joke in the first episode. When Fleabag returned for a second — and last — season this year, he did not hide his delight, discussing it on Pop Culture Happy Hour and Weekend Edition, but did I listen? People, he sent a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter, but I just sat there on my roof as the praise for Fleabag threatened to drown me.
Finally, I slid into his DMs. “Fleabag. Worth it?”
“VERY.”
Let us pause to admire his reply of all caps and a period. He was brief, and reader, he was not wrong. AT ALL.
In that spirit, I will tell you that you must watch Fleabag unless you are my mom, who will not like it, which is fine. Trust me if not Glen, though. Fleabag is stunningly good. It’s goodness stunned me.
There is some talent at work here. Phoebe Waller-Bridge created the BBC show Crashing and wrote Fleabag as a one-woman play that became the television show. She writes and stars in it, and on the side she created Killing Eve. Now she’s “polishing” the script for the next James Bond movie because Daniel Craig asked for her to fix it. Oh, and she’s getting a new HBO show that she will both write and act, but not star, in. She is what would have happened if Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett had been millennials. She’s the next incarnation of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but sharper, slyer, and darker.
Read this smart analysis of the dysfunctional and dissociative relationship that Fleabag creates between the main character and you, the viewer — but not until after you finish season two. I jumped that particular gun and got caught in the crossfire. Don’t spoil things, like the incredible depiction of sisterhood. After you get through episode three of season two, read this to relive one of the best scenes ever. And for god sakes, put down your phone while you watch Fleabag, because she’s talking to you. Oh, and enjoy the last scene as she doesn’t miss a stitch. (And thanks, S.O., for showing me where to get her jumpsuit from episode one of season two.)
What I’m listening to
Listening to Marvis Staples tell Marc Maron stories for more than an hour was about as much fun as you can have and it sent me down a rabbit hole into her collaborations with Prince, Jeff Tweedy, and now Ben Harper. I’ve always held virtuosos in lesser regard than artists. You can be both — Prince was a spectacular guitar player and could write a great song — but some people are just talents looking to be molded or teased out through collaborations, such as Santana, or Staples. Perhaps I overvalue the auteur and undervalue journeyman, but Staples turned me around. It takes a lot of self-confidence to put your talent in someone else’s charge, and you get to experience so much more variety if you can get your ego out of the way.
Her collaboration has also allowed her to grow as a singer in a way that many are never able to — which perhaps explains why so many great singers enjoy duet albums later in life, e.g., Willie, Sinatra, Tony Bennet, etc. There are two eras of creative peaks in someone’s life: in their 20s and in their 50s. Not everyone gets either one of those guaranteed, and some who enjoy their 20s don’t learn enough to catch the second wave. I’d offer The Rolling Stones as an example of a band that has kept performing decades since their last good song (“Emotional Rescue” in 1983). Staples has put out solid work well into her Social Security years. Rare are the artists who put out great songs in their 20s but some of their best work much later in life. Check out Paul Simon’s “Wristband” or Prince’s BLM anthem, “Baltimore”.
Wait, is all this an excuse to get you to watch the video for “Baltimore”? Yes, reader, it is.
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