An enlightening conversation

When I was in New York in my early twenties, I knew several bartenders and theirs were the bars I tended to go to if I fancied going out for a drink on my own. There were a couple of reasons. One was definitely free drinks. I always sat at the bar, which, yes, could look like an open invitation to some men, but there was a reason for that. If it wasn’t that busy, I could chat with my mate. If it was busy, I had some protection. If someone started making unwelcome advances, it took only a nod for my bartender pal to sidle over and ask the fellow in question, “Are you trying to make a move on my girlfriend?” It always worked. Of course, there were also times when I was quite willing to talk to someone who wanted to strike up a conversation with me.

Which brings me to one night when I did indeed have a fairly lengthy conversation with a bloke who started with the inevitable question about the empty bar stool beside me: “Anyone sitting here?” I don’t remember his name (not sure I ever knew it), but he was a perfectly okay New Yorker.

I have absolutely no idea how our conversation got on to the subject of the Russian revolution, but somehow it did. Given that this was the height of the Cold War, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Russia was on people’s minds. Anyway, I talked about the origins of the revolution, which, I said, were not dissimilar to the discontent that led to the American revolution – with the obvious exception that the Russian revolution had at its roots the desire to improve the lives of the working class, rather than property (slave) owning colonists. I talked about what the Russian revolution was supposed to do and how far it had been corrupted off course by Stalin and others. When I’d finished, he looked at me and said, “Wow, that’s really interesting. Did you study Russian history at university?” I gaped at him, surprised, and said, “No, I took a course on modern European history in high school.” To which he replied: “Really? The only history we’re taught in school is American history from 1492 to the present.” I was even more surprised.

Remember, this bloke was a New Yorker, born and bred. He wasn’t someone from Kentucky or Arkansas. (Yes, yes, I’m showing my coastal elite bias.) He grew up and went to school in one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world, and yet his basic education had included nothing about the rest of that world – other than, in passing, the countries where the US military had waged war. I was gobsmacked.

During my secondary school years in Toronto, I was taught British history (well, the country still had a touch of Motherland mentality), ancient history, Canadian history (with no mention of the residential schools still in operation at the time or the more general cultural genocide they represented), modern European history and, yes, even US history. Pretty Eurocentric, you might say, as indeed it was. Came out of secondary school knowing fuck all about the histories of Asian, African or Latin American countries, but I did know quite a bit more about the world than this New Yorker.

That conversation has stayed with me, because it was an education about the (I suspect deliberate) lack of education in US schools. It’s not an education, it’s an indoctrination into “American exceptionalism” and all the bullshit that goes with it. I suspect little has changed in the passing decades.

Back then, at a time, when Canadians and Antipodeans were travelling the world widely, only about 10% of the US population even had a passport. That was still true in 1994, although the figure now is around 40%. I probably shouldn’t have been, but I was genuinely shocked when I found out that at the point when he was elected President of the United States, the only long haul flight George W Bush had ever been on was to Hawaii and the only “foreign” country he’d ever visited was Mexico – which at that time, like Canada, did not require a passport for US citizens to enter. His first passport was acquired in 2001 prior to a visit to several European countries. I’d ask how it’s possible for someone so ignorant about the world to be elected president, but obviously (and at the time unimaginably) there was worse to come.

Why should it come as any surprise that know nothings are drawn to the biggest know nothing of all? Whose fault is it that they know nothing?