We are History
Ted Cruz, Tyler Durden, and Being Honest with Ourselves
A movie opens with two men: the narrator, bound with the business end of a pistol in his mouth, while the other one holds it, noting it is a mere matter of minutes before several catastrophic explosions will level multiple city blocks. The bound man is shocked and uncertain how an unexpected friendship and roommate could lead to a network of terrorist cells and his seemigly certain demise. How could it have come to this?
A couple months back, many Americans watched as a frenzied group of conspiracy theorists assembled in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC in an ill-fated attempt to stop the certification of a fairly conducted election. They were encouraged by several Senators, dozens of House members, an the now former President whose term they sought to protect, and as a result an insurrection ensued, killing 5 people in the process. Suddenly, the same legislators who had been encouraging the crowd just hours before spoke out against the violence, but only after the Capitol had been breached, Senators had gone into lockdown, and the outcome of the day’s events remained up in the air for some time.
The familiar refrains cascaded from cable pundits and the Facebook commentariat that “we’re better than this,” or “This isn’t my America.” Some attempted to pin it on a an opposition group. Others tried to deny the obvious facts in front of us. “It’s not an insurrection,” they said, “and calling it one is hyperbole.” It is natural and good to see the Capitol Hill Insurrection as bad, but it it is a blind spot to believe that this event is singular and exists apart from the progession of US History.
The general consensus of that is history is as a land of freedom and opportunity. The US is the protagonist in the story of the world and any negative feature is but a minor blemish, a past that was overcome on the path to greatness. In such a frame, it is no wonder that many would view January 6, 2021 as unique and unforseeable, but in reality, we have a history of political violence in this country that suggests otherwise. It gets moved the the darker corners of our national memory while this shinier moments are brought to the foreground.
New Orleans was once overtaken by a white mob because they didn’t like the election, and while it was put down, the insurrectionists were allowed to go home free. Another group successfully overthrew the legal government of Wilmington, North Carolina and maintained control, tightening the screws of Jim Crow, erasing decades of Black progress in the region. The Jan 6 insurrection, thankfully, did not reach the same level of violence, but it was by fortune more than intent. Participants were well armed; some brought bombs, zip cuffs, and homemade napalm. It could have been much worse. Prior to that, a plot was uncovered to kidnap the Governor, and a group of Trump supporters were videoed trying to force a Biden campaign bus off the road, and if one looks, it is easy to see how these events begin to pile up.
When the Narrator of our movie first meets Tyler Durden, as a single-serving friend, he is a wonder. He’s clever, adventurous and magnetic, and almost everyone feels like this is a dude you’d want to hang around. Yes, he is off a little, and sure the fight club is weird, but there’s also community building and a group of people looking for, and finding, a purpose in life. Which would be great if he wasn’t also an awful person, but even as things spiral, the Narrator refuses to see Tyler as he is, until a moment in a hotel room, when the Narrator, at the end of his whits, asks, “Who are you??” Tyler leans back and casually responds, “…You know who I am.”
Americans tend to have a grand self-conception of what this country is, what it has been, and what it is becoming that is not in lock step with its actual history. Even when the shortcomings are acknowledged, it is accompanied with the caveat that we are not that country anymore, or that things are better than they used to be. In order to resolve the dissonance between the present and the past, there is a temptation to disregard the latter in order to accept the former. America must be post-history because, after all, those things are in the past, but it doesn’t work like that.
Many politicians (cough Ted Cruz cough) tried to ride the lightning of the Stop the Steal movement believing they could harness the power for their own, but like the Narrator found with Project Mayhem, they were constantly outflanked and outmanouvered by the same forces they sought to control. QAnon, and the various conspiracy groups now have the strength to withstand efforts to follow a single leader, and will punish those who are out of step with the prevailing theories.
Like Tyler Durden, the signs are all around us and if we just looked, we’d realize how things escalated and brought us to where we are: a denial of our current situation and how we got there. The Narrator tries to reason with Tyler, overpower him and outsmart him, but Project Mayhem was already beyond his control. The only solution was drastic and it very nearly killed him.
Let me hop off this metaphor before it entirely breaks down, but the point it is: we are our history. We are not a beautiful, unique snowflake. We live in an environment that is the sum product of those that came before us, their actions, and the resulting consequences. We cannot claim ignorance or insist that the past has no bearing on the present. The history of the United States is remarkably clear, if we look at it for what it actually is. The only time our view of it is cloudy is when we insert our own myths because the truth departs from what we wish it to be.
If we’re being honest, that knowledge should free us. We can understand our past in new ways because we are no longer talking about founding demigods bringing forth truth and liberty out of the ether. These were men with motivations and beliefs who acting in accordance with them. They grew, learned, and changed over time the same way we do. It should make the past more accessible, but we may have to give up some of our heroes along the way. There may be mantras and beliefs that are purely aspirational rather than actual. We can see which arguments have remained unchanged for generations to maintain a racial caste system, and which actions actually played a part in advancing justice.
Ida B Wells was right that “[t]he way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth upon them.” Like Fight Club’s narrator, we have to own our history fully and acknowledge it for what it was, but also what it means for us today. It is not merely a sequence of past events. It binds our present together. It shapes the world around us. It is us. We are history.
What I’m reading:
Against the Consensus Approach to History - William Hogeland tackles history and the way we record it, and what what we choose to include (or leave out) to support our desired outcomes.
We Do this Until We Free Us - A collection of essays and inverviews from Mariame Kaba about abolition and transforming justice.
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