Things Change...

...And People Never Remember

Historical memory is very, very short-term.

In the midst of all the hullabaloo over the Supreme Court rulings on the 10 Commandments, The New York Times reminds us of the origin of the displays:

The two stone tablets of sunset-red Texas granite inscribed with the Ten Commandments have been a popular draw at the State Capitol here since Cecil B. DeMille helped finance hundreds of them around the country in the years after the release of his 1956 Biblical screen epic.

That's right - what was once a publicity stunt for a movie (from the dread liberal atheist gay-loving Hollywood, no less!) is now central to the Culture Wars and the struggle between secularists and Evangelicals. Once, it was an advertisement; now, we have lawsuits, a political party dedicated to having them posted all over the country, and much moaning and wailing that any attempt to remove them from courthouses is an attack on Christianity and little baby Jesus.

People forget these things so quickly.

We're not the only ones. For all the talk about people in the Middle East having long historical memories, they forget things too. The fez was first introduced to the Ottoman civil service in 1826. It was resisted by the general population as an alien import, but later came to be accepted. In 1925 Kemal Atatürk banned the fez as part of his modernization of Turkey - and was met with riots and would-be revolutionaries who wanted to re-introduce the fez. Once it was resisted as un-Islamic, but it became so Islamic that people rioted over the hat.

So many things that we take as essential, timeless, ancient parts of our culture are relatively recent constructs - and yet, like Turks rioting over a hat their ancestors rejected, like Roy Moore fighting tooth and nail to keep a movie advertisement in courthouses around the country, like Scots wearing kilts that were invented in the 19th century to honor ancestors who never wore them, Americans going into a tizzy to defend the Pledge of Allegiance which was written by a socialist, on and on and on, we care so much about things that meant nothing five minutes ago.

Sometimes we forget things that used to be important. George Bush in 2000, via Obsidian Wings:

It must be in the national interests, must be in our vital interests whether we ever send troops. The mission must be clear. Soldiers must understand why we're going. The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well-defined.

And in 1999, on Kosovo, via Crooks and Liars:

Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.

I don't say this just to bash him (which I want to do) or to point out that he's a hypocritical jerk (which he is), but also to wonder: did he really believe what he said back then, and changed his mind? If so, why? If he didn't change his mind, then which does he really believe - that exit plans are good, or if they're bad? Or did he just forget that he ran on a policy of well-defined exit strategies?

Update: The Poor Man has a lot more. I guess these guys all have short historical memories as well.