THE VERY MOMENT an american gets into an argument, he, or she becomes a historian. people who ignored history in high school and avoided it in college are suddenly, magically overflowing in knowledge of the past. Such people are the most likely to utter such banal platitudes as "history repeats itself".
Red flag raised, your next decision is whether to correct the standard misconception, and how. Just explain that whenever two different people, or groups of people seem to be doing the same thing that other people did in similar circumstances, history is not reallyrepeating, but imitating, and only because we say so, only in our categorization.
Then, when you have them thoroughly confused, start talking about patterns of human hebavior , and how sociology and psychology can be used to help explain history. And explain that making causal connectons in history does not change or create history, but only helps us try to understand it a bit better.
Telll it like it was, admonished the great german historian von ranke, and who could argue."Wie es eigentlich gewesen!" You see, not only does every historian have a unique version of history, but how history should be researched, interpreted, and written: "historiography", the study of the writing of history.
Soon enough historians will be asking about cultural connections between all the random mass murders in early twenty first century america, so why not start now? why all the violence?
was american society in the early twenty first century competitive, individualistic, unequal, with high rates of poverty, depression, lonliness, alienation, and anger, they might ask? future historians need to make a living too. let's help 'em get started.
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