imperiumpress on Nostr: Hanania is both right and wrong here. He's right in that America is ahistorical. It ...

Hanania is both right and wrong here.

He's right in that America is ahistorical. It left history behind in the old world. But he's wrong that ahistoricism is a source of strength and power. It is a fatal weakness.

First, you can never understand other peoples without it. How can you understand the Jews and Palestinians, what motivates them? If you hope to resolve that conflict, you'll need to navigate the shallows of their differing historical views. Maybe you can't, maybe it's impossible. If you're historically amnesiac like liberals, you would never know. Nor can you understand Russia and Ukraine, why each regards this conflict as existential. If you think either will give up rather than run itself into the ground, you're probably a liberal.

But much more importantly, he who can't remember the past is doomed to repeat it. Thinking historically does in fact make you deep and sophisticated; thinking like Hanania makes you crude and superficial. History teaches lessons, which is something even the American founding fathers understood. And it gives you an unconquerable sense of identity, something that minorities have, which is why they run America. Thinking historically gives you power. It grounds your worldview in reality, rather than abstract fiction. It gives you a mythic sense of where you've been, and where you're going.

In a time when a third-world militant group now holds a major global shipping route hostage and a second-world power is bleeding the West's military budget dry, Hanania still thinks its the year of Fukuyama. This should tell you all you need to know about ahistoricism.