History Is A Revolving Door

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. - George Santayana

We seem stuck in our infancy. We remain in the first stage of life where our minds are frivolous and we demand distractions. It is not that we don't remember our past, it is that we only seek its relevance when it can be used as a tool or an excuse.

I ran across an interesting article online that I wish to share. My first response to the article took me in one direction, but I quickly noticed that it had my mind all over the place. I could do at least 20 threads, maybe more, based on the material, and the ideas that kept spawning in my mind.

I decided to go with my first response, that is that, "there is nothing new under the sun".

Building a wall sometimes locks you in.

Artist: Friedrich Graetz
Publishing Date: 1882
Published In: Unknown
People/person Targeted: Chinese

Putting aside the cartoonish depictions of the various groups, ethnic and otherwise, that are banding together to build a wall against the Chinese, the clear implication here is that with the United States opening trade and immigration with China, it presents a threat to laborers at home—a sentiment still held by many today.

The Terrorist

Artist: Dr. Seuss
Publishing Date: 2/13/1942
Published In: Unknown
People/person Targeted: Japanese-Americans

During WWII, Dr. Seuss portrayed Japanese-Americans as terrorists, waiting for a signal from Japan to carry out sabotage within the United States.

What The News Does Best

Artist: Unknown
Publishing Date: 1957
Published In: Sam Adams Committee for Public Safety
People/person Targeted: African-Americans, Jews

This anti-Semitic, anti-black cartoon is meant to show a Jewish-controlled media spreading "propaganda" in favor of Jews and African-Americans.

What Some People See - The Radical

Artist: Unknown
Publishing Date: 1866
Published In: Unknown
People/person Targeted: African-Americans

In the Pennsylvania governor's race of 1866, Democrat Hiester Clymer ran on a white supremacist platform, equating his Republican opponent James White Geary's support for African-American voting rights as "radical."

What Other People See - The Solution

Artist: Unknown
Publishing Date: 1888
Published In: The Wasp (San Francisco)
People/person Targeted: Immigrants, in general

Shows a white American settler tossing a Chinese and Italian immigrant in each hand, over the caption "What we would like to see." Not terribly subtle.

There is so much more I could touch on but I have to be careful with this article or I will end up derailing my own thread.

We suffer not from lack of knowledge, but from lack of understanding, fear, and a primordial inclination for survival. Our primal actions require no thought. If we are to progress we are going to need to control our emotional responses. We have to learn from our inconvenient truths, the history that man throws in the closet and only brings out when it is convenient or reconstructed.
The 50 Most Racist Political Cartoons

wow, some of those things are like they were predicting the future.
These 2 for example:

Publishing Date: 1882
the clear implication here is that with the United States opening trade and immigration with China, it presents a threat to laborers at home—a

Publishing Date: 1957
cartoon is meant to show a Jewish-controlled media spreading "propaganda" in favor of Jews and African-Americans.

a reply to: Tardacus
I find it interesting that after all this time that we are still dancing in circles. That we are holding on so tight to the brass ring that we are unable to grab the gold one.

Our future will look like this:

Remains of unidentified soldiers at the ossuary of Douaumont, eastern France, on February 9, 2014. The ossuary holds the remains of 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers who died in the battle of Verdun. #

If we don't learn to do this.

You Sir, are absolutely correct.
After 73, I was in the killing fields of Cambodia. I just though I had seen death.

These young people have no idea that the seeds they are sowing are the beginnings of armed conflict.
A hand full of people here on ATS have engaged insurgents in CBC and know what its all about.
The rest, haven't the slightest idea.



Buck

a reply to: flatbush71
That song always makes me cry, but it is a song that should not be forgotten, because it is another lesson we are destined to repeat if we do no retain what we have learned.

Goodnight Saigon Lyrics

We met as soulmates
On Parris Inland
We left as inmates
From an asylum
And we were sharp
As sharp as knives
And we were so gung ho to lay down our lives.

We came in spastic
Like tameless horses
We left in plastic
As numbered corpses
And we learned fast
To travel light
Our arms were heavy but our bellies were tight

We had no homefront
We had no soft soap
They sent us Playboy
They gave us Bob Hope
We dug in deep And shot on sight
And prayed to Jesus Christ with all of our might.

We had no cameras
To shoot the landscape
We passed the hash pipe
And played our Doors tapes
And it was dark...
So dark at night
And we held onto each other
Like brother to brother
We promised our mothers we'd write

And we would all go down together
We said we'd all go down together
Yes we would all go down together.

Remember Charlie?
Remember Baker?
They left their childhood
On every acre And who was wrong,
And who was right?
It didn't matter in the thick of the fight

We, held the day In the palm of our hands
They, ruled the night
And the night, seemed to last as long as six weeks On Parris Island
We held the coastline
They held the highland
And they were sharp
As sharp as knives
They heard the hum of the motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive

And we would all go down together
We said we'd all go down together
Yes we would all go down together.

And we will all go down together
I said we will all go down together
Yes we will all go down together.

Humanity is lost. We have people trying to use history as a way to make people see, but humanity keeps saying, "Why do you keep telling and showing me that." Obviously it's because they didn't listen or pay heed the first time.
I find it rather amusing that nothing different is ever REALLY tried. It's always the same old #. Seriously. If you look down through history, the same things have been tried to alleviate the same types of problems over and over and over. It never works. Yet, like a child beating his/her head upon a brick wall hoping to knock it down, it's continued.

originally posted by: SpeakerofTruth
Humanity is lost. We have people trying to use history as a way to make people see, but humanity keeps saying, "Why do you keep telling and showing me that." Obviously it's because they didn't listen or pay heed the first time.
I find it rather amusing that nothing different is ever REALLY tried. It's always the same old #. Seriously. If you look down through history, the same things have been tried to alleviate the same types of problems over and over and over. It never works. Yet, like a child beating his/her head upon a brick wall hoping to knock it down, it's continued.

We do seem to dance in circles don't we?

In the grand scheme of things it seems to me that free will and choice have a completely different meaning. They have lead us to believe that free will is about choosing to follow. That path has kept us going nowhere. Maybe free will and choice is about walking away.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

This we know. And yet, we do not. Although those who have been educated, or educated themselves, know that what you state is accurate, that the wedges being driven between communities by governments and world media influences are indeed the same as they always were, the tactics virtually unchanged, only differing in delivery system. It is appalling that persons willing to permit this to go on, to allow themselves to be removed from their fellow human beings by such an old tactic, are not better informed. It is appalling too that nothing can now be done to change the fact that they are not. But most appalling of all is that we who have seen the writing on the wall, those of us who know that the past is the future in some respects and must be fought against with all possible vigour, will likely as not have to battle those who have elected to remain ignorant and phobic.

Though in many other ways, these people are our fellow human beings, even our countrymen, they make enemies of themselves, prevent us from trusting that their compassion is greater than their indoctrination, that their wisdom is greater than their ignorance, they are also making themselves enemies of humanity by their actions toward the innocent, the defenceless, the weak, the oppressed and the needy. Making of themselves our enemies, will prove to be the undoing of them, of that there is no doubt.

a reply to: TrueBrit

....the wedges being driven between communities by governments and world media influences are indeed the same as they always were, the tactics virtually unchanged, only differing in delivery system. It is appalling that persons willing to permit this to go on, to allow themselves to be removed from their fellow human beings by such an old tactic,....

Time after time we continue to dance to the music of same orchestra. The performer and the tune may change a bit, but the dance and the score remain the same. I also fear that we will never witness the jig being up, mainly because we enjoy our fantasy world too much.

We could learn a thing or two from our masters. These corporations have effectively learned the power of sharing.

Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, we have allowed ourselves to become mindless pawns, fighting, killing, and paying generously for our enslavement.
We are becoming the zombies we fear.