Bob Neal
The woman in Decatur, Tennessee, had just turned 95. The reporter asked a standard question: Where else in the world have you lived, and how did you like it there?
“Never been out of Meigs County, and proud of it,” she said. Or something very similar. She went on to say the rest of the world didn’t interest her, so why ever leave Decatur?
Move along, folks, nuthin’ to see here.
That may be what most of the newspaper’s readers thought, but I was astonished. I hadn’t known people could be proud of ignorance. I have come to call it “prideful ignorance,” and I find it everywhere.
Before you think I’m just going to go off on QAnon and the Three Percenters, two outfits clearly detached from reality and historical truth, note that word “everywhere.”
Take San Francisco. Last week, its school committee, which can’t find a way to reopen schools shut by COVID-19, found a way to rename 44 public schools.
By April, these names will have disappeared from San Fran’s schools: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Paul Revere, Robert Louis Stevenson. Lincoln because he let the Army hang 38 Indians. Washington because he enslaved people. Revere because some said he had been a coward during the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. Stevenson for using the words “Eskimo” and “Japanee.” The board found those charges on Wikipedia.
Joe Eskenazi wrote in MissionLocal: “This could have been prevented by the hiring of a … fact-checker.” Or, “consulting a historian who knows what … she is talking about.”
But, School Committee Chairman Jeremiah Jeffries ridiculed the idea of asking a historian. “What would be the point? We don’t need to belabor history in that regard.” That is, Why worry about what really happened?
Yes, Lincoln authorized 38 hangings, the largest mass execution in our history. But the original execution order from the Army named more than 300 Indians. Lincoln went through the entire list and spared 265.
Yes, Washington enslaved humans. But history shows that he emancipated his chattel when he died. That doesn’t condone human bondage, but it shows that he wrestled with the evil of it. And he did accomplish a thing or two that might be worth memorializing.
No, Revere was not charged with any crime from the Penobscot Expedition, and he returned to smithing in Boston. Stevenson wrote about the People of the North before the word “Inuit” had replaced “Eskimo” and Japanese before “Japanee” was seen as pejorative.
Reminds me of Will Rogers, who said, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” In other words, ignorance equals trouble. None of those four is entirely evil — all deserve to be judged on the balance of their works.
Last Saturday, about 50 people halted COVID vaccinations at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The Washington Post reported that most blockaders were “right-wing extremists.” But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — no right-winger he — is an active anti-vaxxer. I have no indication Kennedy had anything to do with the blockade at Dodger Stadium.
So, this isn’t a left-right thing. All kinds of people are in on it. The Three Percenters, prominent in the insurrection on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, were founded on the lie that only 3% of colonists backed the Revolutionary War. According to American Battlefield Trust, 231,000 soldiers fought the Redcoats. That’s nearly 10% of colonists. Today, 6.9% of us have ever served in the military. Are the Three Percenters “pridefully ignorant?”
The Battlefield Trust says, “We believe that history education is the foundation of good citizenship and a key ingredient in developing the national leaders of tomorrow.” In other words, it opposes ignorance.
Three years before I read of the old woman in Decatur, my sixth-grade class in Missouri studied propaganda. Barney Matkin, our teacher, taught us to question. Why does Tide soap have no “small” size?” Procter & Gamble didn’t want to be thought of as “small.” Why did the Soviets say they finished second in a sporting event but the U.S. finished second to last? Only two teams competed, so first place was second from last.
Matkin’s lessons have stayed with me for 69 years.
Today, ideologues on every side rely on ignorance, often building an entire ideology on one fact. Or worse, one factoid.
Last words to Mark Twain: “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.” And to Rogers: “If stupidity got us into this mess, why can’t it get us out?”
Bob Neal, like the San Francisco School Committee, clicks on Wikipedia from time to time. But he won’t ever use information from there as “fact.” That would be ignorant. Neal can be reached at turkeyfarm@myfairpoint.net.
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