The Eradication of Our History will Only Lead to Disaster

I was sitting back a couple of weeks ago watching some news coverage about the 75^th anniversary of D-Day, and how many of the WWII survivors are now becoming extinct, I use the word extinct because they are a rare breed that history has given to us and also a font of information and first-hand accounts of what they went through.  I for one, wish I could have talked to my grandfather about his experience during his enrollment in the Army as he made his way through Europe during WWII.  He was a proud American who during the Vietnam war era told several of my aunts “If the Army would let me, I’d still go and fight, but they say I’m too old.”

His intentions might have been in the right place but I’m pretty sure he was still in the WWII mindset when he said that he’d go and fight in Vietnam if the Army would have let him. If I were old enough to have let him know I would have explained to him that those were two very different types of wars and that he would have been not only shocked and dismayed at how the fighting had changed from the very mechanical type of fighting he faced in WWII to the very chemically weaponized war he would have fought in Vietnam.  But anyway I’m getting off course here, as I watched the many interviews of those veterans from the D-Day experience I was saddened to know that we have less and less of those vets to give us those historical accounts.  Then my sadness turned to rage when a reporter was stopping people on the street, mainly millennial’s and asking them if they knew what D-Day was.  Out of the eleven people asked, nine of them, all millennial’s didn’t know what D-Day was!!!

Ain’t that the truth Obi-wan, ain’t that the truth!

Okay before I start getting comments or messages about how not all millennial’s are uneducated or ignorant, I just want to say that it’s true, not all people of the millennial generation are this way.  But according to the Center of the American Experiment, two-thirds of millennial’s can’t identify what Auschwitz is and twenty four percent have never heard of the Holocaust, you can read about it here.  They’ve NEVER hear of the Holocaust!!!  What is this saying about a generation that is hell bent on “improving” our future when they can’t even identify with our past?!

This is literally what I think they’d look like even if they weren’t holding a red Solo cup.

D-Day was a combat attack and is best known for the Normandy landings by the allied forces fighting against the Germans WWII, which happened on June 6, 1944.  I was more angry than shocked, I couldn’t believe this shit, the pure unadulterated shit that was coming out of these young idiots’ mouths!! My kids, all three of my boys are millennial’s and they know about D-Day, and you know why? Because I told them about it and they were taught about American history in high school.  Even my youngest, who graduated high school in 2013 knows about D-Day, what WWII was about and how the U.S was forcefully pulled into this war.  This is unacceptable, in my eyes this is a part of U.S and world history that needs to be taught, in every section and type of education.  All the way from elementary, high school and college levels.

This isn’t China, we are not banning or redacting our own history to keep it from American citizens.  We don’t need to erase crucial historical events that might keep us from reliving these types of catastrophes, we are not a dictatorship that needs to go to the extreme like China has, in order to keep events like the 1989 Tienanmen Square Massacre from their history.

They don’t want any citizen of theirs to realize that they can radicalize and fight for freedoms they don’t know they have, if they just delete historical happenings and deny that they ever occurred, out of sight out of mind.  So much so they have internet, media and informational cleansing police that keep an eye out for anyone that types in the title “Tienanmen Square” or “1989 Tienanmen Square massacre” or what is probably the biggest symbol of pro-democracy of that era, Tank Man.

Tank Man

The one man in a white shirt who stood in front of the military tank brigade, holding two shopping bags in defiance, that was on its way to go and literally murder hundreds of Chinese students who were protesting for a democratic China.  We, as the United States of America are NOT China, Russia or any other communist or dictatorship country that we need to ignore the very important subject of world history and the events that shaped us as a nation or that shaped our world to what it has evolved into.

Everyone needs to know what D-Day was about, why WWII happened and the consequences that developed because of it.   I was so angry at the ignorant youth on my television screen and their lack of knowledge of what they were being asked that I literally threw my sweet potato fries at the screen.  Which, in retrospect was a stupid thing to do and that my son got mad because it’s his television, but it’s my house so I trump his t.v. ownership.  Anyway, I couldn’t believe it, we are allowing American and world historical events be eradicated by ignorance of new and “improved” generations (sarcasm I’m not really thinking it’s an improvement) of Americans all because they aren’t being taught the important history they need to learn, THEY NEED TO LEARN!!

For instance, the Tienanmen Square incident coincides with the fall of the Berlin wall, all which happened in November of the very same year.  In 1989 the Hungarian government began to dismantle the electrified fence they had along its borders with Austria. All of this going on and younger generations probably don’t know about this either.  I learned more about everything I’m talking about in my sophomore year in college.  I am grateful to my world history professor and his ability to make events like this interesting, as much as they were horrific he said “History is cyclical, and the saying ‘those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it’ is true, so we need to make sure events like this are taught to every generation” and I totally believe that.

We cannot allow this sacrifice to be forgotten!

You can’t erase history, you just can’t, somewhere, somehow, there are people who know what happened in our country and around the world.  This is why I’m opposed to taking down statues of Confederate so-called “hero’s.”  Not because they were wrong, not because what they did was unspeakable, or what consequences their direct actions did to people and/or places, what happened in our country’s history during the Civil War was less than civil.   It was dehumanizing and that’s putting it mildly.  Things like that need to stay up in order to remind us, as a nation what NOT to do again, it needs to enrage, it needs to emotionalize but most of all it needs to remind us of what happened!  It’s to keep our history alive whether it’s good or bad, we can’t just teach the history that is aesthetically or mentally pleasing because we don’t want to offend.  We need to keep our history intact so that we don’t repeat it and make the same mistakes all over again.  If younger generations don’t learn about this, they will be the ones to make those mistakes and God knows what will happen then.

So this is one of the main things that pissed off the Huntress this past couple of weeks, that and the fact that I had to clean up the television screen from a bit of grease from somewhat healthy sweet potato waffle fries.  I must say it’s still bothering me because my grandfather fought in WWII and he would have been appalled by the lack of education and more so at the abundance of ignorance in the last couple of generations that know nothing about what he and his fellow soldiers did to ensure their safety and freedom!

Until next time remember, chin up, soldier on and watch you back!

The Huntress915