California, percentage-wise, has the most human beings living in poverty of all 50 states. Its economy is foundering as techies search ever more fruitlessly for toe holds in an economy based substantially on fanciful, clickable online nonessentials. The State’s environmental disasters are stacking up: wildfires (locking many rural residents out of the home insurance market), dwindling fish stock, a looming energy shortfall (suppressed by EV manufacturing interests eager to sell their expensive, soon-to-be-unchargeable products), crumbling infrastructure, and unsustainable water consumption. On the social side, homeless residents clog our city streets while the wealthiest among us buy second homes that stand empty for most or part of the year, and many if not most of our students can’t tell you the name of the Vice President or describe anything about the Bill of Rights.
So many pressing problems, how can we possibly decide which one to tackle first? Aha! Got it: Let’s change Fort Bragg’s name! Not the city’s homeless problem or the crime/drug problem, not even the education problem. We’re woke and Confederate General Braxton Bragg (like virtually all white Americans of his generation and class) was a racist dude — he must be erased from our history: Poof! This may be a comic distraction, but is in its essence a sad waste of civic energy that could be redirected to something that actually improves the lives of residents.
Most California cities and towns were named in the 1800s —my grandmother’s mother’s time. They reflect the lives of our ancestors at that moment in time and are irreplaceable roadmaps of our history. The folly of thinking that we can rewrite our shared history, of pretending it was other than the bloody, lawless, discriminatory free-for-all it actually was, is a fool’s errand. We can’t change history, so who cares a fig what people long dead named their cities and towns? All we can do is learn from it and not repeat it. A tragic victim of this foolishness is actual knowledge of our history rather than its changing interpretation by vested interests at both ends of today’s political spectrum. This in turn has cast doubt on provable fact, an existential threat as its adherents move increasingly into governance.
Fact: California contains 58 counties and 482 municipalities, many if not most named after individual persons. Imagine the civic chaos, to say nothing of the expense, if more California cities and towns chose to follow the foolish trail being blazed by a handful of Fort Bragg woke true believers. Let’s consider just a handful, starting at the top. The origin of the name California itself is commonly believed to be an imaginary island paradise described in a Spanish romance novel written in 1510. Nobody appears to object to this, possibly because this is such a fitting description after some 500 years. Should the residents of the East Bay City of Hercules adopt a Fort Bragg-like path, that city’s name should go on the chopping block even though its name comes from a thing instead of a person — namely a dynamite manufacturing outfit that touted its product’s potency as “Hercules Powder.” Community leaders (who were also former plant managers) chose the Hercules name back in 1900. Surely the manufacturers of the explosive material that fuels guns, bombs, and other explosive materials should be high up on a list of names needing public erasure. But all seems calm there, nary an anti-war protester in sight. Then there’s San Francisco, beacon of woke liberalism named for the Catholic Church that condemns homosexuality, sex before marriage, birth control, abortion, and other social issues diametrically opposed to everything the City and County of San Francisco stands for. I was there just this week and all was calm, though designer coffee lines looked longer amid the boarded-up ruins of Market Street. And what about Orange County’s Ronald Reagan International Airport, named after the American President who led the charge to dismantle progressive tax reforms begun by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913?
As far as U.S. presidents go, what about third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, condemned for fathering a child with a black slave? A contemporary historian wrote of Jefferson’s fall from woke grace that the real question is not whether or not Jefferson owned slaves (everyone in his class did), but rather how he came to believe passionately that it was wrong. This conclusion unfortunately requires context and philosophical thought, both in short supply these days. And what about the Father of our Country, the one-and-only George Washington himself, who owned 56 slaves yet also came to believe, like Jefferson, that it was wrong, freeing all of his slaves in his will. So how did the fact that both men owned slaves eclipse their enormous contributions to our history? Which is more relevant to the actual history of this country? And, practically speaking, how could they be erased? Blast their likenesses out of Mount Rushmore? Bomb the Washington and Jefferson memorials? Rename the state of Washington and Washington D.C.? The wider the net, the more ridiculous and foolish its path.
This rejiggering of history has even infected books and events. Years ago when I did a brief stint as a writing/language instructor, my black co-trainer and I browsed a colleague’s bookcase at one of our group parties. I felt her stiffen before pointing to a worn copy of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind. “That’s a terrible book and should be banned,” she declared, eyes flashing. I studied her for a moment before replying, “How else would you expect the great-granddaughter of a slave-owning plantation owner to remember the antebellum South? And changing hearts and minds isn’t easy or even always possible, anyway. In Savannah, Georgia, a few years ago I went into a local bookstore and asked the owner where I might find books on the Civil War. “We don’t have anything on a civil war,” she sniffed. “Books on the War of Northern Aggression are along the back wall.”
Over the years I’ve seen many Confederate statues and other types of memorials in several states. My first thought was gratitude; those memorials were powerful visual reminders that slavery no longer exists in our country. The past is to learn from so, theoretically at least, we can craft a more just and equitable future world.
Governor Gavin Newsom the benevolent despot with good hair who is presiding over these failings and calamities now wants to be president.
And don’t forget his bonafides: a Claus Schwab acolyte and product of the Young Global Leader program. They’re everywhere these days.
Thoughts and prayers offered in advance.