Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen many people announce their support for Hamas. To be fair, some of them have been announcing their support for Palestine. But, for all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing.
I started wondering how anyone could support an organization whose stated purpose is the total annihilation of Jews everywhere. That’s what Hamas is all about. I’m not making that up. It’s right there plain as day in their recruiting material. They consider it a selling point.
How could so many young people support Hamas? True, there are some older people like Susan Sarandon, but the majority of Americans who side with Hamas are young twenty-somethings.
They should know better. But they don’t.
Unforgettable
I remember back when I was in high school, there were several books in our school’s library with pictures of near the end of World War II when the extermination camps were being liberated. I think the books were published by either Time or Life magazine. Maybe both. The pictures showed, in graphic detail, the emaciated prisoners, the mass graves, people being forced into gas chambers and piles of dead bodies.
Even 50 years later, I remember those photos. One that particularly comes to mind is a picture of people, barely more than skin and bones and unable to walk, reaching out to accept food given to them by the American soldiers who liberated the camp.
So, when I hear someone say, “never forget, never again”, it’s easy for me to relate to it because I will never, ever forget those images.
What happened? Let me tell you what happened. People stopped remembering.
Well, that’s not exactly true, most of the people who already knew did remember. I’m sure even Susan Sarandon remembers. She’s probably just either stupid, senile, trying to make her irrelevant life just a tiny bit relevant, or a little bit of each.
But she’s really not the problem. Because people like Susan Sarandon won’t be around enough to have any impact on the future.
No, the problem is that we stopped teaching new people about the past.
George Santayana was a Spanish philosopher who lived from 1863 to 1952. He is most famous for saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There’s a misquote that’s appropriate and ironic and directly applicable to what we’re seeing today. It goes like this, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
Hold that thought.
Unthinkable
My wife and I recently saw the Auschwitz exhibit at the Reagan Presidential Library. We had been looking forward to it for weeks. As we stood in line to get inside, we noticed groups of high schoolers also waiting in line. Some of them weren’t even staring at their phones.
After viewing the exhibit for several hours, we found ourselves outside sharing a plate of $17 chicken fingers and discussing our experience. We both agreed that, at best, it could be described as “meh”.
I came prepared to see a very disturbing and graphic representation of pain, suffering and unimaginable human loss. That’s what I expected to see. What I actually saw was a bunch of bored teenagers.
My wife said, and I agree with her, that everyone who went to that exhibit should have left in tears. After learning about the horror and suffering that happened at that camp, attendees should have exhibited at least some sort of emotional reaction.
But no one did.
Unmemorable
People seemed to exit the exhibit no different than when they went in. And that seemed strange. After all, the exhibit was supposed to be showing us part of the historical record of what is arguably the worst event in the history of mankind.
I’d say 70% of the exhibit covered the dry history of what happened prior to the camps coming into existence. There were lots of maps with arrows pointing in every direction. Some may find that interesting, but when the exhibit is supposed to be about Auschwitz, I expect the majority of the exhibit to be about…you know…Auschwitz.
In the other 30%, we saw very little that looked like attempted genocide. We did see pictures of happy families before they got on the trains. There were, among other things, mug shots of well-fed “prisoner volunteers”, a shoe, about 10 feet of security fence, a display of confiscated personal items, and a bunch of sketches made by one of the people who ultimately died there. Historical? Yes. Disturbing? Not really.
Unexpected
I saw hardly anything I expected to see. I expected to see warning signs telling people that there would be something upsetting and disturbing around the next corner. But there weren’t any. There were no pictures of emaciated prisoners. There were no pictures of mass graves or people being marched naked into the gas chambers. There was a mention of medical experimentation, but no real description of what was done to those people.
Keep in mind that most people not that much younger than me grew up playing violent video games and watching movies that were more guts and blood than plot. It takes a lot to get their attention.
So, we sat there eating overpriced rubber chicken and wondering how the people putting together the exhibit could be so far off the mark.
Then my wife found the disclaimer in the brochure they handed us when we got there. It turns out that the organizers of the exhibit purposely nerfed what could have been a powerful learning experience. The reason? They wanted to make sure they didn’t upset and offend anyone.
But here’s the thing. EVERYONE should have been offended by the exhibit and everyone should have walked away upset. After all, it was supposed to be educating everyone on the horrors that occurred. It should have been a cautionary tale. Everyone walking away from the exhibit should have felt such an emotional connection that they will remember it 50 years from now.
That’s how we stop history from repeating itself.
But instead of being horrified, we were left with some vague notion that something bad happened a long time ago. Instead of the exhibit being a warning for the generations to come, we were fed a watered-down version just so some people wouldn’t be disturbed or offended.
Uninformed
And that’s why we see these idiot twenty-somethings announcing their support for Hamas, and by extension, the genocide of the Jewish people. Not because those idiot twenty-somethings forgot history, but because they were never taught it in the first place.
There are only so many hours in the school day. And that means if you’re going to add stupid shit to the curriculum, like glibtaq history, then some important stuff has to go. Like the Holocaust.
No one should be surprised to see these twenty-something idiots proclaiming their support for an organization and culture that aims to pick up where Hitler left off.
Because instead of teaching these kids to be disgusted and offended by the horrific death of millions of innocent people, they’re being taught to be disgusted and offended by someone being “misgendered”.
Schools need to get back to teaching kids things that matter, and not some woke propaganda bullshit that elevates being mentally ill to something kids should aspire to be.
If that doesn’t happen soon, and I mean real soon, then it is certain that history will start being repeated.
Because it’s impossible to remember what you didn’t learn in the first place.
