The American Gift of Forgetfulness

Presuming the residual antipathies Lex quoted in I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot to be characteristic of UK media figures, we have one more reason to regard tasteless American ahistoricity as a feature rather than a bug, because endocrine-system reactions to “Roman Catholic” are, I believe, just about inconceivable here, and certainly not because we’ve all translated into a higher plane of flawlessly nontheistic rationality.

I was going to make this a comment on Lex’s post but then realized that I wanted to pile on the links, which would choke the comment-spam filter faster than a Greenpeace activist on a tour of a nuclear power plant. So away I go with a barrage of autobiographical details, which is the price of a post written by me that’s anything other than hopelessly abstract. Gosh, you’re thinking, I can’t wait to see this!

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Nuclear Radiation? Not So Bad After All.

From Der Spiegel comes a story about the findings of scientists investigating the results of real-world cases of exposure to man-made nuclear radiation.

Their surprising conclusion? Turns out that radiation exposure from real-world events isn’t anywhere near as lethal as commonly thought.

Wow! Who knew?

Well, I did, as did anyone who actually objectively read the 70+ years of research on the matter of radiation exposure.

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I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot

And it won’t be. As this writer tells it, “what gets my adrenalin flowing is the words Roman Catholic.”

For us English, hostility sprang from ancient politics. The little history I learned at school taught me of Mary Tudor, the bigot whose five-year reign saw some 300 Protestants put to death; of papal efforts to unthrone the queen of England, her successor Elizabeth I; of Catholic Spain and its Armada; of Catholic Guy Fawkes plotting to blow up Parliament; of James II trying to reinstate his Catholicism in a country that had rejected it. Why all this should matter 300 or 400 years later I did not ask.

All this despite having “no perceptible faith”, yet he still has his “childhood prejudices”.

I don’t think this visceral hostility is sensible, let alone in an unbeliever. No one is trying to ram Catholicism down my throat. Yet, however little it may affect my actions, my prejudice is a fact—after 60-odd years, in a man reasonably educated, still tolerably intelligent, in a largely secular society, in the 21st century.

Some years ago the German ambassador to the UK complained that the British had made World War II the “core of their national identity”. But he was wrong. Anti-Catholicism is the core of British national identity, despite being a post-Christian, non-believing, non-church-going country.

The author concludes:

There are warnings in this for people like me who see human reason and conscience as better guides to modern life than are ancient scriptures, however admirable. First, that we too may be leopards. Second, that if our gut feelings are that durable, we are unwise if we discount the strength of other people’s.

That should be uncontroversial. The Sunnis and Shia, to pick one example, are not going to start liking each other any time soon.

But as to Merry Old England, the problem may have a solution. The recent fumbling around about defining its national identity has been interesting. The Labor Government is unlikely to celebrate the burning of the Pope in effigy as a “core value”. Yet there really is a lot in its history and contemporary culture which has value. By rediscovering its heritage of freedom and individualism and enterprise, they would do themselves a lot of good. I can suggest some books.

Why the “Surge” Isn’t Working

In studying military history, two truisms always leap out: victorious generals always refight the last war and the general public never understands the course of the war as it happens.

In 1942 and for several years afterward, the general public believed that Army B-17s bombing from high altitude destroyed the Japanese carriers at Midway. In 1968, the American public believed that the Tet offensive demonstrated that the Viet Cong was an effective and widely supported pro-communist organization in South Vietnam. Many still think that way even though conclusive evidence exists that the Tet offensive destroyed the Viet Cong and demonstrated their near complete lack of popular support.

Likewise, most in the general public believe that the tactic of the “The Surge,” i.e., saturating different regions of Iraq with overwhelming force, has itself improved the situation in Iraq. It hasn’t. The Surge represents merely the most visible portion of a long-term strategy that has finally began to bear fruit.

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