History has a price tag

[ltmurnau]

Triumphal arches, parades, panem et circenses.. and now it's starting to affect things that really matter.

Commemorations of historic military events could put current force at risk, internal documents say By Lee Berthiaume, Postmedia News January 10, 2014

Comments

[bruiseblue]

And remember he's not celebrating the reality of this stuff, but the mythologised version of events. "We became a nation" =/ mass casualties of under equipped soldiers, neck deep in mud, under British command, etc.

There are dozens of things I hate Harper's government for- co-opting history is just one on the list. It's a very american thing to do, but it also dumbs down our history. (He's also commercializing, making it way less available to citizens and researchers, and muzzling those in a position to comment intelligently). Dude hates women, children, immigration (does no one remember the reform party?), libraries, museums, archives, and science. But taking over our History is a step too far.

One of my history professor colleagues has bemoaned the lack of representation in his list, too - where are the women in that co opted history? the visible minorities? immigrants?

And after the "WOO 1812 fiesta", as we're calling it at my house, it has been increasingly clear that he's got no interest in acknowledging any of our out-west regional history.

Seriously? The Halifax Explosion? Nobody should celebrate the destruction of an entire city, no matter how many Heritage Minutes you can eek out of it. The Chicago Fire is commemorated, but with great gravity, not celebrated with giant statues and PSAs.

/rant (at least out loud)

I suspect that Harper gets his History from Wikipedia. It's all USA style upwards/onwards, single dominant narrative, mythologised, based on secondary sources from your dad's basement (and is not footnoted).

[ltmurnau]

"Who controls the present controls the past;
Who controls the past, controls the future."
- Party slogan from Orwell's 1984.

Everything's coming out of the 00s Republican playbook; these are our Bush years, though we don't have term limits.

[bruiseblue]

I keep thinking about parallels to Bush, too, but I don't want to acknowledge it.

[ltmurnau]

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/01/09/Harper-Science-Library-Closure/

Harper is a much better small-p politician and tactician than Chimpus Maximus ever was; he had to elbow his way into power, while Dubya was put there as window dressing.