Roundup

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• 9/25/2020
  

  The Roundup Top Ten for September 25, 2020

  The week's top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web.

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• SOURCE: The Hill
  9/22/2020
  

  The Militia Menace

  by Tom Mockaitis

  The time has come to stop mincing words about militias and other far-right extremist groups. They are at best-armed vigilantes and at worst domestic terrorists acting on behalf of a racist ideology 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  9/24/2020
  

  How to Remember the 'Notorious RBG'

  by Peniel Joseph

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "Notorious RBG" persona unfortunately obscures the fact that the late justice had a few blind spots, especially with regard to racism. Considering her faults is essential to understand the empathy and solidarity people need to work together for change. 

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  9/23/2020
  

  The 1776 Unites Project Is an Exercise in Empty Capitalist Boosterism

  by Timothy Messer-Kruse

  A pilot curriculum proposed by Black conservatives as an alternative to "victimhood" allegedly promoted by the 1619 Project is mostly an assemblage of business jargon and individual uplift rhetoric. Whatever it is, it isn't history.

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• SOURCE: Zocálo Public Square
  9/23/2020
  

  What Would Cicero See In American Governance Today?

  by Edward Watts

  "The United States now approaches the tipping point between a republic governed by law and the polity of violence, governed by mutual fear, that Cicero described over two millennia ago."

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  9/24/2020
  

  This Vanishing Moment and Our Vanishing Future: John Hersey, Hiroshima, and the End of World

  by Nick Turse

  Lesley Blume's new book Fallout describes how John Hersey and his editors punctured official myths about the Hiroshima attacks to write his influential book. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/23/2020
  

  What Trump Doesn’t Understand About U.S. History

  by Sean Wilentz

  The real choice isn’t between Trump’s rendition of our history and the 1619 Project’s. It’s between ideological distortion and respect for facts, skepticism about pat answers and, above all, refusal to shape the past to fit a fixed political agenda.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  9/14/2020
  

  Even the Republican ‘Skinny’ Relief Bill Failed. How is Such Unnecessary Suffering Justified?

  by Margaret Somers

  How is it that extra money incentivizes the rich to become paragons of moral virtue and economic rainmakers, whereas for working people it incentivizes them to become social parasites and economic saboteurs? How can there be one human nature for the 1%, and another for the rest of us?

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/21/2020
  

  We Need Civics Education — Not The White Power Propaganda Trump Promotes

  by Max Boot

  While history education in American needs to be drastically improved, Donald Trump's proposed 1776 Commission isn't the way to go. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/18/2020
  

  Police Power and the Election of Newark’s First Black Mayor

  by Andrew Grim

  Newark’s experience cautions today’s activists to be wary of channeling the urgency, the radicalism, the moral authority of this current moment into electoral politics.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/18/2020
  

  Scapegoating Antifa for Starting Wildfires Distracts from the Real Causes

  by Steven C. Beda

  The idea of left-wing radicals starting wildfires in the Pacific Northwest dates back to timber companies blaming the Industrial Workers of the World for blazes as a way to discredit demands for workers' power through unions. 

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• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  9/18/2020
  

  The Endless Fantasy of American Power

  by Andrew Bacevich

  Neither Trump nor Biden seems prepared to do the necessary work of moving military power and force from the center of American foreign policy. The consequence will be further endless war at the expense of the global-scale policies needed to confront the most urgent threats.

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• SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
  9/19/2020
  

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg Made The Impossible Look Easy

  by Serena Mayeri

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg's achievements were remarkable, but a professor of law and legal history argues that her determination to open paths for others to follow her was greater. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  9/18/2020
  

  Why Study History? Revisited

  by Peter N. Stearns

  Advocates for the discipline of history must be willing to make concrete claims about the job opportunities opened by a history degree and train undergraduates to understand and express the skills the history major develops. 

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/20/2020
  

  California finally sweeps away most of its tributes to the Confederacy. What took so long?

  by Kevin Waite

  California was home to a substantial secessionist community in the 1850s, and white migrants to the region in the early 20th century brought the Lost Cause mythology with them. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/24/2020
  

  Why Supermarkets Are Powerful Flash Points In Racial Politics

  by Tracey Deutsch and James McElroy

  In addition to selling food, grocery stores have also preserved a social order that treats shoppers of different races differently, dispensing hierarchy along with food — and, in fact, creating it.

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/23/2020
  

  Why I Quit Academe for a Coding Boot Camp

  by Zeb Larson

  Delusions about the availability of "alt-ac" jobs for new humanities PhDs are stopping graduate students from making informed career choices and covering up the academic profession's failures to recognize and act on crisis. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/21/2020
  

  Though Often Mythologized, the Texas Rangers Have an Ugly History of Brutality

  by Jonathan S. Jones

  The link between racial violence and Texas law enforcement goes all the way back to the state’s original police force, the Texas Rangers.

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  9/22/2020
  

  War Zone America? Perspectives on a Riven Nation from a Worried Military Spouse

  by Andrea Mazzarino

  These days, when I watch the news and see clashes among the police, Black Lives Matter protesters, far-right “militias,” and Antifa supporters, I’m often reminded that just because no one’s declared a civil war begun, doesn’t mean we aren’t staring at the makings of an armed conflict.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/23/2020
  

  Revisionist History is an American Political Tradition

  by Michael D. Hattem

  American politicians have constantly tweaked the story of the nation's past for political advantage. Maybe revisionist history by historians isn't so bad.