Fondly remembering the bad times

Someday, these will be remembered as, “The good ol’ days.” It’s guaranteed. There’s something weird baked into human DNA that allows us, even compels us, to gild-thelily of the past despite having lived through all those slings and arrows.Maybe because we lived through it.

I’ve had countless conversations with my elders about the “good ol’ days” of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, when they had to negotiate the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, a World War followed by the imminent threat of thermonuclear annihilation during the Cold War. The 1960s were no picnic either, featuring assassinations, race riots and yet another war. Still, in our senior years, we remember life then as simpler, better.

Back then baseball was “still a game”, even though only whites could play it. Women spent their lives at home baking delicious things, unless they could type, then they were allowed to prettyup the office. When it snowed black in Pittsburg from coal dust, the locals celebrated it as a sign of full-employment. Gay meant happy, period.

Twenty or thirty years down the road, young people today will bore the young people of tomorrow with pandemic nostalgia. “When I was your age, we had remote learning!” they’ll say to eye rolls. Across the Thanksgiving dinner table, grandma and grandpa will ask each other fondly, “Remember N95 masks?”

That we survived past catastrophes, both natural and man-made, somehow minimizes the real trauma they induced at the time. Maybe you’ve seen a “Miss me yet?” billboard.

After Poppa Bush broke his “Read my lips” pledge, Ronald Reagan’s face landed on billboards asking, “Miss me yet?”

Then, people began to miss George H.W. Bush when Bill Clinton was president, Bill Clinton when W. was president, W. when Obama was in office, and Obama when you-know-who lived in the White House. A century ago, I’m sure there were folks saying, “Everything went to hell after McKinley got shot.”

Our capacity to quickly forget is both wonderful and alarming. In parts of the world people are still killing each other over hurts suffered hundreds, if not thousands, of years before. The downside of historical amnesia is obvious: we forget lessons learned the hard way.

Recently, the Republican National Committee proclaimed the feces-smearing, flagpole-impaling, police officer-beating attempted coup of Jan. 6th, 2021, “legitimate political discourse.” The same day the RNC was putting a Stalinist big lie before the world, former Vice President Mike Pence told the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, “There is no idea more un-American

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than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.” Yet, it’s Mike Pence’s party and former boss who have advanced this most un-American idea.

I am grateful Pence said what he said. I am grateful Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell chimed as well. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election,” said McConnell. It would have been better had McConnell whipped the GOP impeachment vote when he had the chance, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

Unfortunately, partisanship has blinded millions to the consequences of the Trump-inspired and orchestrated insurrection.

You can love Donald Trump or hate him. You can loathe Joe Biden or hang his poster over your bed. You are free to hold whatever view you want on the issues of our day. What you can’t do is cast traitors as patriots and patriots as villains for future generations. That’s been at the heart of the Confederate statue fight for years, and it’s at the heart of the battle over January 6. The people most opposed to “erasing history” by removing Confederate monuments are the people erasing the truth of January 6. Which side are you on?

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