Repeating History By Preventing History

SOMEONE ON SOME SOCIAL MEDIA SITE SAID SOMETHING like: "The people who want to prevent the teaching of history intend to repeat it"...I assume, I think correctly, that this is a reference to the banning of the teaching of critical race theory in red states, a current crazy conservative craze, one among many. The fear that false narrative hagiograpy will contribute to the exacerbation of racism in America is unproven and perhaps unfounded, but it certainly will do nothing to ameliorate it. It is a fact that history does not and cannot "repeat itself", but similar patterns of behavior can and do. If we do not learn lessons from our mistakes, by studying actual history, we indeed tend to repeat them, as George Santayana essentially articulated. The conservative pseudo fear that by teaching children that racism has long existed and still does exist in America will needlessly cause them to feel shame and guilt is laughable, not to mention phony. Who knew that the right wing was made up of such snowflakes so terribly sensitive to their own sensitivites and to those of America's children, that they consider it an urgent necessity to teach them that America is the shining city on a hill, a land of eceptional virtue, utterly devoid of anything even remotely resembling evil, merely to guard against hurt feelings? We must have faith that children are not quite that thin skinned, not quite that emotionally vulnerable. My generation was told, when cmplaining about injured feelings, that if we didn't shape up and get oevr it, we would relly have a reason for hurt feelings, courtesy our parents. Today's kids have not been weakened so drastically so as to be unable to tolerate a little reality, and are emotionally tougher than oh so compassionate and protective conseratives seem to think. If you tell children the truth about their country's glaring flaws, including the stubborn persistance of racism in contemporary society, why,they are more likely than anything else to be motivated to buck up and resolve to do something about it. Its called raising children right. Conservatives, long known to be about as concerned for the welfare of others as Donald Trump is honest, are erecting a massive smoke screen to concel their true motivation for embracing and teaching hagiography instead of history. These are the folks, after all, who want to cut or eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, never met a welfare program thy didn't detest, and in the name of freedom advised us to cure Covid with hydroxychloriquine and to eschew mask wearing. Living in poverty? Its your own damned fault. Lots of people lose their husbands and fathers to cancer and car accidents. Get over it. Go get a job!... Compassionate onservatism, my ass. Sparing children's feelings at school? As Donald Trump once said: "Gimme a break". Conservatives embrace and insist on teaching a white washed falsely positive version of American history for one reason and one reason only: because it flatters them and their traditional values, makes them seem, so they think, more patriotic than thou, and therfore morally superior. The day they actually give a flip about somebody's, anybody's hurt feelings, including those of our poor, little super sensitive children, is the day their hero and idol, Donld J. Trump, sells whatsoever he hast and gives unto the poor. Or the day they do.