I'm a history buff, and so I can't help looking at this in terms of history. History remembers great catastrophes, like this one. It remembers catalysts, events that changed a nation's consciousness, like September 11th. But it doesn't usually remember what people were saying at the time.
Almost everyone has heard of the Trail of Tears, the forced march of the Cherokee from the east to the west, dying of dysentery and exposure along the way, drowning in the Mississippi by the hundreds. And a final death toll ending in zeroes--- 3,000? 4,000? But hardly anyone knows that it was the most unpopular action the 62-year-old nation had ever taken. That angry letters and petitions poured into Congress from all over the U.S. That there was a battle in Congress (which was lost, of course) to stop the removal.
Hardly anyone knows that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall ruled against the removal, saying that the Cherokee were a sovereign nation and thus not subject to U.S. rule. President Andrew Jackson retorted, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it if he can!" Sound like anybody you know?
He couldn't, of course. The Supreme Court doesn't do enforcement. So history remembers the Trail of Tears, but not the anger, and not all the fruitless efforts to stop it.
History won't remember how we felt. It's not important, after all. It doesn't have anything to do with what really happened, which is that 229 years after the founding of this country, ten thousand (or twenty thousand, or thirty thousand) people spent a week in an enormous, dark room, forbidden to leave, without latrines, food, or water, criminals and children, babies and elderly, all thrown in together. People were raped and killed but no one was allowed to leave.
That it took five days for aid to arrive. That refugees who could have walked out of the stricken area were stopped by the National Guard. That for the first time in our history, the U.S. has lost a city, a whole city. And there will be an estimate given for the number dead, a guesstimate really, ending in a string of zeroes, because history will admit it doesn't know how many people were drowned, dehydrated, went into diabetic comas, carried out to sea, or murdered in the streets.
History will say that we let this happen. We didn't care. We were too wrapped up in our middle class comforts, in supporting our President right or wrong, in concern about the war and the price of gas.
Unless!
Unless this becomes one of those great catalysts for change. The point that we look back at and say "That was when we had enough. That was when America finally woke up. That was when Americans finally understood that the rich oligarchs weren't on their side."
Then history will say, this is when the 25-year reign of wealthy extremists came to an end.
History's up to us.