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WE MUST NOT FORGET
It’s great for America to savor our success in life…and the people who helped create them…
To remember our victories…and take time to celebrate them…
We are a country of the industrial revolution,
free public schools, think of all the medical breakthroughs we’ve completed.
We landed people on the moon, were instrumental in the formation of Nato
and vital, with our allies, in the Nazi’s being defeated.
Look at our contributions to Art and Music….
and, until recently, our diverse humanitarian works for any country who might need them
If there were people going hungry in the world…we did our best to feed them.
As great as it is to acknowledge how through hard work and fate
we triumphed over misfortune and heartache
studies show we learn much more by studying our mistakes.
Beginning with the Native nations…our history should provide
information about how we took their land, their culture……how we tried our hand at genocide.
Our history should teach us about slavery…how it will always be depraved…
how slavery is and never will be anything but horrible…for those who are enslaved.
We should learn about how they were mistreated…families torn apart and women raped
and how they were hunted down and lynched if they happened to escape.
Our history should teach us about the Japanese Americans…
sent to internment camps by other Americans without any qualms…
and of all the Japanese who died or were forever affected by the bombs.
Our history should teach us about mass shootings…how after each mass shooting is done
we offered thoughts and prayers but did noting to make safer…the purchase of a gun.
Our history should teach about the persecution of religious minorities
immigrants, LGBTQ+…and any other people who throughout our history we have spurned…
It seems when it comes to the teaching of American history…we have a lot to learn.
Which is why if we ever want to be as great a country…as patriotic as we hope to be…
we need to study our mistakes…not erase them from our history.
If we don’t learn from the mistakes teaching history would help us to work through…
imagine what could happen in this country….think of all the harm that we could do…
If we don’t learn from our history…if we sugar-coat it or think it’s of no use
we might earmark some of our own citizens for persecution and abuse.
We might use God to help us hate…treat other human beings as if about them we didn’t care…
and when our children are gunned down in our schools…instead of offering gun control
all we’d have to offer the families would be our thoughts and prayers.
Copyright ©
Jim Yerman
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