Thread by @Johngcole

The reason the 1619 Project has republicans so mad is that they operate under the notion that history is written by the winners, therefore all the evil they are doing right now will be ok if they just keep on "winning." And winning is an amorphous concept for them.

What they fail to realize is that history may be, in the short term, written by the winners, history is interpreted by the LIVING. And no matter how you write history the history of this country, the living are allowed to look at it and say "WOW WE DID SOME RACIST EVIL SHIT."

And the living are also allowed to look at that, and say tothemselves "Hey-maybe just maybe, the racist birth of our nation led to some repercussions throughout our nation's entire existence and may still be impacting who and what we are today?"

and from there its a short logical and empirical stroll to get to things like institutional racism, and before you know it, people are looking at the wealth gap and white flight and urban renewal and banking disparities and the criminal justice system and oh shit we got a mess

The problem with people knowing something is that it leads to people knowing more things and before you know it people are informed. So that is why they want to kill the 1619 project dead and taint it so they never have to talk about it.

It's their playbook for everything- climate change is a hoax and only freaks and treehuggers care about it, suppress research into it and attack people who study it etc.

it's why in our lifetimes a bunch of tobacco ceo's went before congress and told the world that tobacco was not dangerous but not addictive

Just suppress the evidence and pretending it doesn't exist is easier than an honest accounting. And since it always boils down to money, easier means, of course, cheaper

I mean, look at the freakout at Ta Naheesi Coates eminently reasonable analyses a few years ago. The freakout from the charlatan right wing "intellectuals" was hysterical.

It's why the Kochs and other shitbird billionaires pour money into academic departments everywhere to create bullshit research.

I don't need to continue on, because you all are smart. You get the point.

An additional reason, though, is the right wing inability to deal with complexity. Decades of training has turned everything into a binary construct for them. Republicans good, Democrats bad. Israel good, Palestinians bad. Business good, regulations bad.

It's why they think pointing out anything bad the US is doing means you hate America.

So they are also constitutionally incapable, at this point, to look at the 1619 project and see that while horrible things were done in the formation of this nation, and that this nation has continued to do horrible things to minorities throughout her existence

even with her flaws, it is still an overall decent experiment.

For the right, both things can not exist.

fyi, re: knowing things and complexity, if you want to see what it looks like when someone KNOWS something about a topic talks about it, read this by @CherylRofer

balloon-juice.com/2019/08/23/eme…

@CherylRofer people who KNOW things about complicated issues don't make black and white definitive statements. It's why your doctor doesn't tell you "OH YEAH SURE YOUR DAD IS GOING TO COME OUT OF THIS SURGERY JUST FINE"