Repositioning the Nonhistory of History

Dear George,

One of the major challenges a strong leader faces is leading the public down paths that threaten its self interest. Self interest is simply a convoluted dream born of weak egos. There is only one interest, and that is the interest that benefits the Homeland. It is towards this end that the public must be directed. But what should be a stroll towards destiny often becomes a tug of war as voices of dissent abrade the surface of the path that leads the Homeland to its greater glory.

There are various strategies to deal with dissent. Unfortunately, these address the problem after it appears. What you need is a strategy that will remove the root cause of dissent. Once you dig beneath the surface, you discover that the root cause of dissent is history.

Think about it. Dissent is grounded in a memory corrupted by history. Those with a strong sense of history are more likely to view progress as decay and decline than those who are ignorant of it. With history, one gains a sense of continuity and of place, and with this sense comes a hostility to all that threatens it.

Some scholars have addressed this problem by announcing an end to history. This is an error. It would be far more productive to declare that history doesn’t even exist. Those who think the War of 1812 was fought in the twentieth century would have no problem believing this.

We need a history that isn’t history. This new nonhistory would resemble the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales with each tale a self-contained entity with no connection to the tale before it or the tale after it. Just as you have discredited biological evolution, so must you discredit the idea of historical evolution. In this new-age nonhistory, the Civil War and the civil rights movement would be treated as separate and discrete events. In short, we need to reduce history to a series of Super Bowl commercials rather than a coherent narrative.

Decades of rabid consumerism has narrowed the public’s vision to the eternal “now,” so the battle is nearly won. All we need do is cull our schools and libraries of volumes that preach an evolution vision of history.

Do this in the name of tradition in which we return to the days of a golden past when the barbarian tribes of Europe lived in a pastoral bliss, free of a linear sense of time. Instead of an historical narrative, they had a cycle of free-standing sagas.

Without history, what is, is. There is no past to measure it against. Whatever is has always been, since there is nothing from which it could have evolved. Since there is no past, there is no future to strive for.

Best of all, with neither history nor memory, there is no catalyst for dissent.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones