The Cult of Amnesia

 Many in my generation have fathers who fought in WWII, and a common story is that they never talked about it.  One could say they practiced a kind of voluntary amnesia (or perhaps involuntary) to deal with the horrors of war.  In a sense, our nation has also used amnesia in dealing with its darker side.

This amnesia allowed the creation of an image of 1950’s suburban happiness that has become part of our historical narrative.  This culture of amnesia denied more than the horrors of WWII.  It was expanded to cover over such national horrors as the terrorism of white supremacy and the practice of lynching, the race riots of 1919, and the 1921 Tulsa massacre.  In this framework, the 1960’s can be seen as a deconstruction of our national amnesia, a deconstruction that white supremacists have been trying to repair.

Their efforts have now become so successful in dominating the Republican party that the party has become a cult of amnesia.  What makes it a cult is not only that the members are “true believers,” who practice voluntary amnesia, but also that outsiders—those of us who wish to engage in a conversation about diversity or inclusion, are see by them as enemies.  Like other cults, this cult of amnesia threatens members to maintain loyalty, and pictures the outside world as an evil empire. 

Once one understands the current Republican party as a cult of amnesia, the full-scale attack on D.E.I. makes perfect sense.  What does not made sense is the absence of a liberal defense.  Liberal pundits have given a variety of proposals for what the Democratic party should do, from pick an issue and focus on it, to gain access to social media, but not to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion.  This is actually a white people’s game we have seen before.

After 10 years of reconstruction, the compromise of 1878 between what had been the slave and free states sanctioned the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, which allowed white supremacists to “redeem” the South by instituting the Jim Crow regime.  This white compromise rested on a denial of the terror and horror of enslaving millions of persons.

Are we facing another white compromise?  Is the appropriate response to a cult of amnesia ignoring its harm to others?  I have not heard of one pollster who asked if respondents did not vote for Kamala Harris because she was a Black woman. No one talks about race now.  It’s the economy stupid.  I doubt it.  The Republican project is not to repair the economy, it’s to “repair” the deconstruction of American amnesia.