The End of History

To the best of my recollection, I have seen “Gone With the Wind” in its entirety exactly once in my life.  While I admired its scope, its high drama and of course its immortal performances by the likes of Vivian Leigh, Clark Gable and the Oscar-winning Hattie McDaniel, I have never been particularly compelled to watch it a second time.  If I wanted to devote four hours of my life to any single piece of cinema, I’d just as well re-watch “The Irishman,” followed by 30 minutes of thoughtful contemplation.

Nonetheless, should the urge to revisit the 1939 blockbuster ever set in—for whatever reason—I would hope to be able to access the classic film with the ease that the Streaming Revolution has wrought for virtually every work of visual art ever created since the dawn of time.

As of this week, however, that will not necessarily be the case, following the announcement by HBO Max that it will temporarily purge “Gone With the Wind” from its library, on the grounds that the movie presents an essentially rose-colored view of slavery in the antebellum South, which might implant the wrong ideas about 19^th century race relations in the minds of unsuspecting viewers.

The context of this decision is clear enough:  Amidst nationwide protests against the institutional racism that caused the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, et al., no streaming service wants to be associated with material that puts it on the wrong side of history.

The problem is that, in the world of film, “Gone With the Wind” is history—an essential artifact of erstwhile American values alongside “The Birth of a Nation,” “Song of the South” and numerous other now-execrable expressions of what the United States used to produce and represent.  While we now generally view these movies with cringing, eye-rolling horror—if, indeed, we watch them at all—their mere existence serves a critical and indispensable reminder of what our country once stood for, and of how far we have (or have not) progressed ever since.

Hollywood’s adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling novel may strike us today as irredeemably racist.  However, adjusted for inflation, it is also the highest-grossing film ever made in the United States.  Rather than simply stowing the movie away in the national attic—never to be seen or heard from again—would it not be more fruitful, more educational and ultimately more enlightening to attempt to reconcile those twin realities and hopefully arrive at some greater truth, however unpleasant it might be?

I say yes.  As with all “problematic” cultural touchstones, I say we should keep everything out in the open for all to see, and to engage in the messy, uncomfortable conversations we claim to value and desire in this supposedly free-thinking society.  Arguing—as many do—that some works of art are simply too toxic to exist is to deny each of us the opportunity to make that decision for ourselves—and, more importantly, to more fully reckon with our collective past, rather than sweeping it under the rug, as if that would solve anything. (In the “Gone With the Wind” case, HBO has said, to its credit, that it will eventually re-install the movie with “a discussion of its historical context.”)

What most animates my resistance to this censorious approach to the past—and, more broadly, to the “cancel culture” movement that believes in purging society of all forms of political incorrectness—is the dangerous question of who gets to decide which art is appropriate for public consumption and which is unsuitable, offensive or otherwise beyond the pale.  In a nation that supposedly holds the freedom of expression sacrosanct—believing that the Ku Klux Klan has the same right to the public square as the Lions Club or Black Lives Matter—the notion of appointing an individual (or group of individuals) to determine what we can all watch and what we can’t ought to strike us as fundamentally repugnant.  Indeed, even if 99 percent of us agree a particular film, book, etc., has worn out its welcome, what right do we have to deny the other 1 percent the opportunity to make themselves look ridiculous?

We have no such right, nor should we.  If the First Amendment means anything, it’s that repulsive speech—such as a movie that effectively glorifies slavery—deserves just as much protection from censorship as speech that is wholesome and uncontroversial.  If we only cared about the latter, we wouldn’t really need a First Amendment in the first place, would we?

To put it more bluntly still:  If the state of the American culture is such that the film that (to repeat) has sold more tickets than any other film in history is vulnerable to being disappeared in the interest of good taste, how does that bode for every other flawed classic (and non-classic) in the canon? 

You may not give a damn about “Gone With the Wind”—frankly, I don’t—but what happens when your own politically incorrect favorites are on the chopping block?  When “Blazing Saddles” is no longer deemed satire?  When the appropriation of “Johnny B. Goode” makes “Back to the Future” anathema to enlightened eyes and ears?  When 50 years from now, after we’ve finally decided that killing animals for food is unconscionable and barbaric, it is no longer kosher to watch every 2020 release that depicts someone nonchalantly eating a cheeseburger?

Values and mores change and evolve over time, and it is morally disingenuous to impose today’s truth on yesterday’s fiction. To erase the past is to doom the future.

As for the very real problem of those viewers who cannot tell the difference between film history and real history:  Well, that’s what education is for.

Questions For Hillary and Donald

The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is Monday, September 26, at 9pm.  Here are some questions I would like to ask both candidates:

Mrs. Clinton:  On policy, do voters have any reason to think you won’t be serving President Obama’s third term?

Mr. Trump:  Is it true—as one of your ex-wives has claimed—that you once kept a book of Hitler’s speeches as your bedside reading?  If so, what did you learn from them?

Mrs. Clinton:  You have said there is no conflict between your pledge to regulate big banks and the fact that you have received millions of dollars in speaking fees from those same banks.  Do you truly not understand why many Americans cannot take your “tough on Wall Street” posture seriously?

Mr. Trump:  You have praised President Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback,” which resulted in hundreds of U.S. citizens being illegally detained and deported because they were of Mexican descent.  Do you also support President Roosevelt’s initiative to hold more than 100,000 U.S. citizens in internment camps because they were of Japanese descent?

Mrs. Clinton:  You consider yourself a champion of the LGBT community.  However, you publicly opposed full marriage rights for same-sex couples until March 2013—exactly one month after retiring as Secretary of State.  When did you decide that gay people are equal to straight people with regards to marriage, and did it ever cross your mind that supporting marriage equality as America’s chief diplomat might have been helpful to the LGBT community?

Mr. Trump:  Earlier this year, you suggested that any woman who has had an abortion should be punished in some way.  Do you still think that today?  If not, what made you change your mind?

Mrs. Clinton:  You have expressed regret for saying that one-half of Trump’s supporters constitute a “basket of deplorables.”  Upon reflection, what do you believe the true figure to be, and how will you win the trust of those people once in office?

Mr. Trump:  When physical violence erupted at several of your campaign rallies, you lamented how such clashes don’t happen more often, saying, “Nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”  How do you reconcile this philosophy with your pledge to bring “law and order” to America’s most violent cities?

Mrs. Clinton:  Why do you think you lost the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama?  If you lose the 2016 election to Trump, do you think it will be for the same reasons?

Mr. Trump:  In an interview, you claimed to be a highly religious person on the grounds that many evangelical Christians support you.  Are you religious in any other respect?

Mrs. Clinton:  If it were politically feasible, would you repeal the Second Amendment?

Mr. Trump:  You have disavowed the support of former KKK grand wizard David Duke.  Is there anything you two actually disagree about?

Mrs. Clinton:  Are you ever concerned about your propensity for appearing to have violated the law, even when, in fact, you haven’t?  Whom do you most blame for this perception—the voters or yourself?

Mr. Trump:  If a poll came out tomorrow saying that a majority of your supporters now oppose building a wall along the Mexican border, would you drop the whole idea and never mention it again?

Mrs. Clinton:  You have said you regret using a private e-mail server because of all the trouble it has caused your campaign.  Is that the only reason for your regret?

Mr. Trump:  You say you have a plan to defeat ISIS, but you intend to keep it a secret until after you win the election.  If Clinton wins instead, are you going to keep it a secret from her as well?

Mrs. Clinton:  Is there any major issue about which you think the majority of the public is dead wrong?  If so, have you ever said so in public?

Mr. Trump:  In your convention speech, you said, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”  If that’s the case, why didn’t you run in 2012?  Or 2008?  Or 2004?

Mrs. Clinton:  During the primaries, you opposed Bernie Sanders’s plan to make all public colleges tuition-free, arguing it would just be too darned expensive.  If you believed, in 2003, that it was worth funding the Iraq War with money we didn’t have, why doesn’t the same standard apply to higher education?

Mr. Trump:  You once said, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”  Where did you come by this information and why haven’t you shared it with the generals?

Mrs. Clinton:  In recently hacked e-mails, Colin Powell wrote of you, “Everything [she] touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”  Did it surprise you to read this?

Mr. Trump:  The screenwriter of the Back of the Future movies recently revealed that the character Biff Tannen was largely based on you.  Do you take this as a compliment?

Mrs. Clinton:  Have you ever consciously lied to the American people?  If so, why?

Mr. Trump:  Based on how casually and frequently you have completely reversed your position on one issue after another, why should anyone believe a single word you say?

Mrs. Clinton:  When you entered this race, did it ever occur to you that you might lose?

Mr. Trump:  When you entered this race, did it ever occur to you that you might win?

What Might Have Been

Over at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, there is a special exhibit, “To the Brink,” all about the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Among the featured documents on display, perhaps the most arresting is the original typed draft of a speech that President Kennedy never delivered—that is, the announcement that the United States was about to launch an all-out assault on Cuba to destroy the missiles secretly installed there by the Soviet Union.

“I, as president, had the greatest reluctance to order the action that is now being carried out,” Kennedy was to have said.  “I made every effort to clarify my position.  But the Cuban authorities would not listen.  In the face of their open defiance action became inevitable.”

“There should be no doubt on the part of anyone,” he was to add, “that, in carrying out this commitment, the U.S. will be prepared to use all the forces at its disposal including nuclear.”

The American people never heard such an address because such a decision was never made (the president opted for a blockade instead).  But it jolly well could have been:  Several key members of the secret White House EXCOMM meetings recommended such a move, and Kennedy considered it seriously enough to prepare a speech just in case.

In this week of reminiscences of the Kennedy administration—Friday is the 50^th anniversary of the assassination in Dallas—the question has predictably resurfaced, “What if Kennedy had lived?”

Minus those three shots fired from the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, how might the arc of history differed from the one we have?

Would the United States have doubled down in Vietnam?  Would the Civil Rights Movement have progressed faster (or slower)?  Would the American public have been spared its disillusionment with government spurred by the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon?

The counterfactual history industry has long flourished in America, and it’s easy to understand why.  After all, the creative possibilities are endless and, by their nature, cannot be positively disproved.

In the case of Kennedy, the allure of crafting “what if” scenarios is especially potent, given the presidency’s oversized promise and undersized length.  It ended on a series of cliffhangers, and it has been left to survivors to second-guess how it might have played out.

What events like the missile standoff bring so sharply into focus, however, is the fact that the world does not require such horror shows as assassinations for the thrust of human events to change course.

As we know but sometimes forget, our leaders are all the time faced with decisions that could (and often do) prove enormously consequential in the longer term—decisions that were all but arbitrary at the time but are seen as inevitable in retrospect.

Such is one of the central insights of history and of life itself:  Nothing is inevitable.  Events unfold in only one way, but there are a billion other ways they could unfold, with only the mildest shuffling of the cards.

Never mind the decisions Kennedy might have made had he not died.  We cannot possibly sort through all the decisions he could have made while he lived.

Further, by no means is this principle of unknowable-ness exclusive to government and politics.  It also applies to each and every one of us.

Back to the Future was all about how Marty McFly’s parents, George and Lorraine, met and fell in love because George unwittingly stepped into the path of Lorraine’s father’s green Chevy.  As the movie makes plain, had George simply watched where he was going, the marriage would never have occurred and Marty would never have been born.

How many of us owe our own place in the universe to events that could very easily have gone the other way?  Is the alternative even possible?

And so when we talk about how different the world might have been if President Kennedy survived, let us acknowledge the limits of such theorizing by recognizing that the future is far more unpredictable than we give it credit for, that nothing is “destined” to happen until it does, and that we are all the time hostage to the playful randomness of the universe in ways that even a president cannot fully control.