I wasn’t alive for Woodstock.

 I wasn’t around during the Stonewall Riots.

To me, Nixon is an angry guy with a big nose in a jar on Futurama.

I do know all about the day Lincoln was shot. But of course, there was a movie about that. 

This is history for my generation; it’s a commodity. If it can be squeezed into a movie with at least one attractive star, we might watch. If our teacher happens to share the whimsical perspective of historians – and not attract the ire of the local PTA in the process – we might pick up something.

Still, the question has to be asked: Do we care? And does it matter?

Victoria Woodhull was laughed out of Washington 120 years ago for suggesting female equality (okay: she also suggested a few other more Austin Powers-style beliefs, too). One hundred years later Bea Arthur, as “Maude”, had an abortion, and was shouted down.

That’s right: a fictional character was considered controversial for exercising her legal, independent right.

Then along came Dr. King and the most overdue of deserved causes which, as we saw in New York City this past week, didn’t amount to that much after all.

Should I then bother? Is fighting for equality and recognition ever going to achieve anything? Will modern-day activists – be they fully-fledged or merely bloggers – have any effect?

Three years ago, an eager university freshman, thrown into a mix of new people with new and open attitudes, I saw a renewed hope for those utopias we hear tell of.

Surely we look at ridiculously overblown war propaganda from decades past, and can’t be fooled again!

Surely satire must be having an effect on the populace, and not just being watched by those who already echo the sentiments of the satirist, right? … right?

Yes, as time went on, I began to realise we can never go back to the garden.

Instead of looking to historical struggles, we simply reduce the groups struggling – be they ethnic or sexual – to a faceless mass, led by one or two wonderfully inspired orators. And since these so-called minorities are no longer protesting in such numbers, we assume the most logical answer: their problems must have been solved. We rewrite history as easily as, say, Michael Jackson rewrote They Don’t Care About Us to remove the K word. 

Of course, we fix the mistakes of the last generation. And then we go ahead and make our own decisions, which must of course be right. Anyone who thinks otherwise is surely radical.

The past really is another country; led by the tyrant of history, pressuring us to learn from our mistakes, and to help our society evolve. And evolution, after all, is a big no-no these days. 

By removing the contemptible notions of the tyrant history, we take away that antiquated idea that we can learn from the past. Indeed the past is not our world, but a comparative one: one much stupider than ours.

By removing this, we reassure ourselves of our intellectual superiority to these primitives, and of the apparently incontestable argument that if we’ve come so far and achieved so much, why keep at it?

 Sic simper tyrannis indeed.