TN Read-Along #7: A People’s History Discussion Thread
William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about “the cold pot of grease of McKinley’s cant at the recent Boston banquet” and said the Philippine operation “reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns.” (314)
A People’s History of the United States reminds me a great deal of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and not only because Zinn addresses at length the fucking-over of the Native American, an undertaking of complete and utter dishonor that the “Great” Fathers also managed to drag out over decades. The similarity is more in the experience of reading the books, which I have had to do in bits; spending more than fifty pages at a time with the litany of crushed labor and civil-rights struggles, craven warmongering, and kicks in the teeth received by the better angels of our national nature is, in quantity, oppressive. It isn’t dull, at least, but as each fresh chapter unfolds, featuring the same heartless and gutless behavior as the last, I have to take a break and tell myself something hopeful about…something.
One of those somethings is that, in spite of overwhelming evidence that America’s love for the underdog is only equaled by its power structure’s proven proficiency in crushing said underdog, American people don’t give up. American people keep striking, sitting where they’re told not to, agitating. And American people keep saying the most beautiful, bitchy, hopeful things about American life in all its gritty, overwrought, stubborn hypocrisy. I happened to find myself in the ’60s/civil rights chapter, “‘Or Does It Explode?’,” yesterday, and dog-eared this thought from Dr. King: “But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.”
What a beacon shines from that sentence, and, I’ve started to feel after hundreds of pages, how typical of this foolish, overreaching country that we let it get shot out. The book pulls us back and forth between these two ideas constantly, which is worthwhile and difficult and frustrating — and great.
Your thoughts?
Tags: "hard is what makes it great" tm Jimmy Dugan books Howard Zinn Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shut up Andrew Jackson The TN Read-Along
Honestly, I’m only up to The Other Civil War chapter, because each new strand of history just adds to my overwhelming emotion during the reading of this book: I could die of shame.
I know, obviously, that there’s nothing I can empirically do about any of this, I wasn’t even born yet, etc. But that doesn’t help, not one little bit. The grotesquerie that Zinn exposes from Columbus on is so hidious in its ramifications that all I can do is squirm and cry and wish I were dead, so strong is my need to make some kind of recompense to the hundreds of thousands of millions who had their lives and families trampled in the dirt so I could sit in my warm, bookfilled apartment reading about them and saying, gosh, how sad.
It hurt to realize Lincoln was a politician who acted out of expediency and desire to preserve the Union, and the emancipation of slaves was a kind of grafted-on accident. I already knew Jackson was a demon, but Jesus, we’ve basically got a mass murderer on our twenty dollar bill. I know Zinn has an agenda like all historians do and facts can certainly be presented in different lights, but this is the book I’m reading right now and it will color my thoughts from here on out.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying, to use a truly inappropriate word, the experience. I promise you I never heard of three fourths of these occurances in my studies or later reading (hell, I first heard about the Green Mountain Boys, only in passing, from the Little House books) and knowing that every one of them was important to somebody, somewhere gives a rich if bitter flavor to history–not to everyone’s taste, but our past is more insipid, pale, without them.
On a more “scholarly” note:
Is Zinn a socialist? I can’t help but notice the constant theme of rich vs. poor, and the creation of the bourgouise as a buffer for rich interests, etc. It seems like a kind of socialist read, and it keeps cropping up. (I’m not saying he’s wrong or made it up, but it’s there.) It seems to chime oddly against his points about how paper currency was kept down by the rich so the poor couldn’t pay their debts with it, but I’m certainly not up on Socialist thought and could be wrong.
I really, really, really am looking forward to reading others’ thoughts. I don’t know how much further I can go on alone.
I completely agree about having to take a break to think happy thoughts while reading this. I remember being warned that by the end of it, I’d want to sit in a warm bath with a razor blade, and they weren’t wrong. I’m glad someone pointed out the inherent hope of struggle; that makes it less depressing.
Excellent book, though.
My first time through this book, I felt a lot of anger — both at the horrible, mind-numbing oppression and cruelty (“kicks in the teeth received by the better angels of our national nature,” indeed), and that my supposedly first-class education had omitted so much vital history. It’s odd to be filled with helpless rage and compelled to continue reading simultaneously.
Yes, Zinn had a pretty far-left slant, but that doesn’t necessarily negate his conclusions, and it certainly doesn’t make his facts wrong. He was a remarkable man — when you finish People’s History, reward yourself with a viewing of You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train — and while I never got to take one of his classes (a bit too young), I did cross paths with him once, in the Detroit airport, of all places, and had the chance to thank him for his extraordinary scholarship and even greater passion. Quite a man.
@Alan: At the risk of sounding fangirlish, how did he respond?
I am very glad to see that others are having the same reaction. I was assigned People’s History in a freshman course, and OOOF!Yeah, the helpless rage that you have all described is exactly how I felt.
Ever since then, my view of history has been that it’s a succession of stories of one people oppressing another.
And then I hear someone complain that history is boring.
I’m up to The Socialist Challenge chapter, and am frankly getting a little irked.
I’m not debating the accuracy of the facts, but the (for lack of a better word) glossing of a lot of the problems in the Socialist movement is striking me as a bit disingenuous. As wrong, wrong, low down wrong as most of our actions have been, they didn’t ALL sprout passively from the blend of capitalism and patriotism, nor did all socialist groups hold hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” all the time.
I haven’t yet run into any mention that Lincoln, Cleveland, and McKinley were all asassinated, McKinley by a man who was directly influenced by Emma Goldman’s speeches, not many of which were advocating passive resistance. Goldman later did renounce the idea of asassination of political leaders as an effective tool (it’s not)but if we’re not excusing anyone else for their thoughts, speech and actions, socialists don’t get off the hook either.
Cuba and the Philippines were disgraces of the first order: the Vietnams of their times, but that doesn’t change the fact that a Communist Cuba was propped up from the start by the USSR and its regime was as oppressive as anything we came up with. Hell, everybody’s just sitting around now waiting for Fidel to finally get on with it and die so we can swarm in with Game Boys and McDonalds and all the other effluvium of capitalism–the crumbling plastered over with the slickly plastic. NEITHER side has come up with anything better, not in all this time. We should be doing better by now!
@ysabet: briefly, but warmly and graciously.
Oh, and apologies, it was Garfield who was assassinated, not Cleveland. Cleveland served two seperate terms.
“I happened to find myself in the ’60s/civil rights chapter, “‘Or Does It Explode?’,” yesterday, and dog-eared this thought from Dr. King: “But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.” ”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “jam tomorrow” stated so eloquently before. We’re at the threshold of a new dawn? Who gives a shit about dawn? What, we don’t have fucking flashlights, we’ve got to wait for the Magic Sky God to make everything okay?
…What are you talking about?
I had no idea this book was going to make me feel so gross and full of shame. I realize Zinn was way over on the left (I thought I was, but geez, this guy.), but he’s just unrelenting the whole time. I started to dread reading it. It seemed less a history lesson and more a list of greivences in chronological order.
@Jen S: EXACTLY.
What I’m saying is, why wait for dawn? Turn the lights on now.
But, of course, you have to reach out and flip the switch yourself. Waiting for dawn is much easier, because you don’t have to do anything. Just…wait. Dawn is coming. Soon. Any minute now. Just be patient. Don’t fight, don’t make trouble, don’t mess things up. Don’t ask where the light switch is, or why we can’t flip it ourselves. Just wait for dawn. Have faith.
@Gralnger – Because turning a light on and the sun rising are incomparable in terms of illumination. Turn on all the lights you want – it’s still dark outside at midnight (for the sake of argument.) You’ll have to wait for the world to turn, to see the whole picture, in the light of day – regardless of religious beliefs, you can’t make dawn come any sooner than it comes.
I am starting to wonder what happened to the American Indians at this time. Zinn’s covering a helluva lot here, but they didn’t just fade out. (I’m up to the WWI chapter. Jesus, could humanity get any lower? Don’t answer that.)
@ Jen S: Zinn actually ends up covering some of this in the Surprises chapter (after the Vietnam war chapter), as he’s talking about the rise of AIM and the Alcatraz occupation. But, it’s kind of a brief overview. What surprised me was that he didn’t end up discussing the Native American boarding schools and forced assimilation (talk about a low point for humanity…). In a book like this, though, there’s no way to include everything.
I also had a hard time with some of Zinn’s politics (and I list pretty far to the left, here); I actually put the book down last fall, somewhere in the chapters on the 30s, and didn’t pick it up again until the TN read-along. For whatever reason, I found it less bothersome in the WWII and later bits. To give him credit, in the introduction he clearly lays out that he’s writing a politicized history of the US, intentionally.
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“But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.”
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@GraInger & @Krissa
I honestly think that MLK is truly mixing the metaphor here. If it’s midnight, the threshold of dawn is still truly 4-7 hours away, depending on your season/time zone/whatever.
*But* the standing thing – and the threshold thing – I mean, I think that since one walks across a threshold into a new place, MLK is mixing it up to say: watch us “stand in life at midnight” and then walk our way into the morning. B/c what with the freedom marches & Birmingham bus strike, it seems like the man wore through a lot of leather, walking.
and in re: Magic Sky God – he was a reverend, so I guess to each his own.
In re: the rest of the book …
… oh, man.
:( Agree w/ everyone upthread about the sense of oppression, guilt, and sheer WTF-ness.
I found myself hoping, desperately hoping that I would turn a page and there would be the daguerrotypes of Taft on a girls’ bike. Just to cheer me up.
There was none. And then I felt guilty for hoping so. :P
Y’all make me feel more human (if not exactly more accomplished) for failing to read past the first or second chapter.
I’m reading about the Clinton presidency right now. Clinton was the first president I was old enough to vote for, and I find myself wondering: was I that naive, or do I have so little memory? Of course I remember the scandals (my husband still laughs about blue dresses) and the disappointment of a supposedly liberal president, but still.
This book, as a whole, is a tough, tough go. I look forward to finishing it so I can take a long hot shower and think about rainbow ponies or something.
Yay, more comments! I was afraid (or hoping or both) that everyone had given up.
I just finished the “Or Does It Explode?” chapter and am [NOT]enjoying the guilt flood that always follows any studying I do about civil rights or the Black experience in America. Not just white privilege guilt, but the tape that plays in my mind about how I don’t really know any black people (outside of one or two aquaintances at work) and what if I’m just subconciously trying to be freindly because of the guilt, and wouldn’t they resent that, and why shouldn’t they resent that, so maybe I better not be to freindly in case they think I’m one of THOSE white people out trying to find “a black freind” so they can feel Not Racist, but now I’m totally attributing my own feelings to someone I don’t even know and how I dare I do that? It’s exhausting, and upsetting. Much like this book.
One of the things I’ve found most interesting about the protests in Egypt, and the US government’s responses, is imagining what Zinn would have to say about it all. Some of the commentary I’ve read openly acknowledges that the US responses are more about our own interests than those of the Egyptian people. What does it mean that this has become a recognized part of our foreign policy negotiations?
Well, Jesus, when did self-interest (on a foreign policy level) automatically become horrible and wrong? It certainly can be, but what the hell is Obama supposed to be doing? He’s not president of Eygpt, he’s not in charge of the middle east. To prematurely say “Murabak is a big fat donkey’s butt” is as stupid as sending US troops to fire on the protesters. Monitoring the situation and trying to present a balanced stance that supports democracy while not saying chaos is a fabulous idea is a GOOD thing!
I stalled out reading this, but I still have 5 weeks left before it’s due back to the library, so I may give it another shot. I’ve enjoyed the discussion regardless!