After I left high school, life happened unbelievably fast: marriage, birth, deaths, divorce, change, tragedy, so it wasn't until a few years later I realized that I had stopped partaking in my favorite childhood pastime, reading. Still money was incredibly tight so there was seldom any leftover for frivolities like buying books, and so I stuck with reading the Star and Enquirer whenever I got the chance. However one day luck smiled on me and I somehow became the recipient of the John Jakes series, The Kent Family Chronicles, the entire 6 book collection! It really wasn't my thing, they were about history and war and stuff, not the typical biographies and mysteries that I adored, but beggars can't be choosers so I took them and started reading the first of the series, The Bastard, and so began my love affair with historical novels.
Not only did John Jakes reel you in with his words the moment you turned the first page, they made you feel like you were right there beside the characters. I was hooked. But even more interesting to me is that these books brought back some school memories that were actually enjoyable, for as much as i pretended to hate history class, I was actually entranced with Mr Messina's lively recitations of American History and the characters he brought to life. All those names I never thought I'd retained, King George III, Sam Adams, Henry, Pitt, Hancock, Lafayette, and later Lincoln, Stonewall, Davis, Lee, Beauregard, Pickett and more, all came back to life and intertwined with strong believable characters thoughtfully, considerately and honestly laying out the course of time that founded and through all the good, bad and painful events and truths that evolved this country from before its birth through to the 20th century. Seldom if ever do I reread any book. There are a few exceptions to the rule, The MIsts of Avon, Replay and a few biographies from my youth, simply because there are so many books to read that I don't want to waste time rereading books, but when I spied the John Jakes series at the Used Book Store last month, I knew that this series was worthy of another look simply because of all the rich history between their covers. So I bought them and went back to have another look at what really happened, particularly during the Civil War, this time from a fresh mature viewpoint, and was once again taken with how poignant this struggle in history was and how difficult the period for so many families, especially for those, white and black, who had families on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Sadly you couldn't write these books today. You couldn't write them because the PCers would demand they be retracted deeming them racially insensitive and/or provocative towards the black community and slavery. But they aren't that at all. The are in fact always thoughtful and sympathetic to the plight of slaves. All the fictitious heroes are always fighting for blacks and underdogs. And yet because of the wording they would be reviled, and that's because the author chose to be authentic to his works and to his audience and use the the words, nigra, negro, n_____, etc, when speaking in the voice of book characters. The author is being authentic to the characters, to the time period, to the story, and to history itself. Because as ugly as the truth is, there was slavery, there was horrible abuse of black people, and they were called ugly names, just as every other slave and indentured servant was, and eventually how every Native American was treated. Sadly that is part of the very ugly truth about the founding of this country, but it is the truth and fact of the matter and just because you hate history doesn't mean you should attempt to change it or whitewash it, if you will. White people treated black people deplorably. They treated them like property and called them ugly names to dehumanize them and break their spirits and Mr Jakes pointed this out with compassion in his books, letting us know what it was like to live in that time. What good does it do anyone to pretend it didn't exist? This reminds me of a ridiculous story that started brewing this past June, of a school in California that voted to paint over a beautiful mural in the school featuring a few of the realities of life with George Washington, the original father of this country, which depicts General Washington giving orders over a dead Native American and later George standing over a slave. It's a beautiful work of art that was on display every day at this school to show kids what life was like in colonial times, but somebody decided they have to paint over it, calling it reparations. What? reparations for what? How is destroying art fixing anything? Luckily I'm not the only one who viewed this as nonsense and an unlikely source stepped in and fortunately quelled the madness. Danny Glover, famous actor and activist, addressed the board stating that he graduated from that school and was never traumatized by it. In fact he thought the last thing it needed was to be destroyed forever so he faced off to the school board and urged them not to destroy a harmless piece of art. https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/08/13/danny-glover-removing-george-washington-mural-akin-to-book-burning/ And although he could not restore total sanity to the PCers searching for their pound of flesh, they decided to board over it instead of destroying it forever, saving it for hopefully a saner future generation.
Too much of anything is never a good thing and too much PC hypocrisy is definitely counterproductive. Philosopher and novelist, George Santayana said it best in his treatise on progress, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" In these moves to sequester the truth are we dooming ourselves to repeat these horrors? We need to stop acting like destroying memorials and works of art or giving money to people whose families suffered 150 or more years ago are somehow going to change the past, present and future. It's not. Nothing can change the past and the only that can change the present and future is knowledge, acceptance and understanding. Maybe if we stopped concentrating on words and instead started focusing on actions we'll get a better understanding of our neighbors, because if you look around you'll find that most people are not looking to hurt others. In fact our seemingly united goal is to navigate through a mind numbingly endless gauntlet of judgments where their only true goal is to make a better life for themselves and their families.
In spite of this insight or because of it, I will be called a racist who just doesn't understand, or must not, because I defend the writing of books that could probably not be written today because it's too politically incorrect to use that kind of language, and yet my outlook is not so different from that of the Jews who took the biggest genocide machine in the world and converted into a museum to tell the horrors of the holocaust, the infamous Auschwitz, because they are people who understand and appreciate the sage advice of George Santayana. I think what we have to honestly ask ourselves before we jump on these bandwagons is whether we are truly making a difference or are we just adding to the angst, and in doing so just continuously ripping the scabs off of old wounds for the sake of attention. #johnjakes #thetitans #thebastard #racist #racism #pc #reparations
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