How Soon They Forget

I'm not surprised, anymore, about the forgetfulness of humans. We forget MORE than we remember - which can be a good thing.

If we remembered every tedious detail, we might find out personalities altering, to reflect that grim, uneventful line of memories. Instead, we remember the good times, the peaceful times, those times when we were filled with the joy of life.

We also remember the awful times - the times when we suffered pain, loss, embarrassment, and fear. Fortunately, MOST of those terrible memories exist only in dulled recollection, without the sharp pains being vividly felt, over and over again. The sharp memories that remain are those that guide us away from repetition of those actions that landed use there.

It's worse for institutional memory. In the past, memories of group pain and suffering were enshrined in the culture; the Jews yearly remember their Egyptian slavery and subsequent wandering through the deserts, before reaching home.

The Armenians passed down the stories of the atrocities suffered at the hands of the Turks. And, so on. For millennia, if not longer, the culture preserved those stories of prior pain and suffering, as a way of warning - Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, Stepmothers May Show Preference Towards Their Own Children, Women May Lie About Men, etc.

Such memories also honored those long-dead ancestors, by ensuring that they would never be forgotten, and that their suffering served as a warning.

Over the last few years, I've realized that I failed to remember MANY events of my lifetime. A sizable chunk of the mid-60s through mid-70s failed to be encoded into long-term memory.

Why?

Those were my teens through mid-20s. Life was fast-paced and personally event-filled. I was often more focused on my own life than the well-being of my country. Plus, I was well under the thrall of the Left at that point, and readily accepted their explanations for the True Meaning of the Events.

In short, I was only semi-aware.

One of the few counters to the programming of my youth was when I read The Gulag Archipelago. That the book was largely ignored by academics, and the information contained was not incorporated into World History classes, is just more evidence that the education fraternity works VERY hard to keep to the script.

For events I'd personally witnessed and been a part of, my memories are sharper. Watergate was one such series of events - I was obsessive about reading the papers and watching the news/hearings. At that time, I accepted what was reported by the Left/Liberal/Democrats as revealed truth. It was only later that I began questioning those Official Facts.

That's the main reason for FULLY investigating the attempted coup of Trump. Not merely to dispense whatever justice can be squeezed from the treasonous attacks, but - more importantly - to nail down the facts that can be found, and make sure that they exist in official memory.

Even so, in 20 years, will kids have a clue how close a President came to partisan removal?