Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Turkification too. And many other parliaments, including the Taiwanese. The question I'm asking myself is not, "Why is this so shocking," as much as, "Why are are so shocked?" The US had a civil war! In almost generational memory, with untold bloodshed! bbc.com/news/av/world-…

https://twitter.com/VladDavidzon/status/1349560303504281601

Why do we not have this historic memory at *ready* access when we ask ourselves "What is the world like?"

I certainly had it *at access,* which is a different thing. I've studied that war avidly; I was and remain fascinated by it; but my perspective was so distorted:

I thought "we" defeated the Confederacy (and became the United States into which I was born in 1968--a child whose grandparents had all arrived there after the turn of the century) But that *is* the genius of historic forgetfulness--

Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln became *my* forefathers--yours, too; in a way that has always made perfect sense to me--an intellectual, cultural, and legal sense, if not a genetic sense. But I think I never realized the civil war *really happened.* Not all that long ago.

Historically speaking? In the blink of an eye. Some of our grandparents might have known ancient Civil War veterans.

Of course there's a potential for fistfights in Congress--how could we be surprised? There has been much worse in America, only recently--

And there are fistfights in parliaments around the world: So what did we think was *magically* protecting American peace and democracy?

All this lecturing about learning history or you'll be forced to repeat it? Well I did learn it, I really did--

I took that very seriously, I thought, "If I get good grades in history, I'll never have to live through what my grandparents did." I was *motivated.* I cracked those books.

But looks like I'll still be forced to repeat it.

What can one conclude but Deus vult? And He truly doesn't care if I got the highest grade in the class on my Thucydides term paper.