The ghosts of...

As a social science student at Brown in the Seventies I recall a professor saying that we really couldn’t understand our current events as they happened. He said it would take a good forty or fifty years to put them in the great context and perspective of our collective experience, context, and human evolution. Apropos to this, I take issue with those who dismiss the social and political upheavals of the Twentieth Century as irrelevant. Perhaps it is now that we can truly understand and affirm them, especially as we struggle against the forces of reaction. The demons of our past are far from dead. They’re not even past. Unfortunately, the issues of the Nineteenth haven’t even been put to rest as white supremacy advocates seek to relitigate the Civil War. So, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Hopefully we evolve to something better over time. In any event, there are those of us who feel morally required to try and to bear witness.