Roundup

The Pentagon as Penta-God

by William Astore

"Paraphrasing Joe Biden, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you worship. In that context, there can’t be the slightest doubt: America worships its Pentagod and the weapons and wars that feed it."

Al Levy's Court Martial: An American Dreyfus Affair

by Jeannette Gabriel

Al Levy's court martial exposed the discrimination embedded in American military culture during World War II, and the way that antisemitism informed the way his accusers questioned his loyalty. 

Law Enforcement Has Long Practiced Double Standards for Activists

by Denise Lynn

Nobody should be shocked that the FBI has aggressively surveilled Black Lives Matter organizers while deciding that the online organizing of the January 6 attack on the Capitol was protected speech; this double standard has characterized law enforcement's approach to racial justice protest. 

The Elephant Who Could Be a Person

by Jill Lepore

A petition challenging the keeping of Happy, an Asian Elephant, by the Bronx Zoo raises questions about the legal status of personhood. If it applies to protect the property and civil rights of corporations, can it be extended for the protection of the natural world? 

Kyle's Tears

by Joe Lowndes

Kyle Rittenhouse's demeanor at trial shows the difficulty of his case; he presents a figure that normalizes and sanitizes the violent core of the vigilante movement he represents.

Can Universities Counter the Global Tide of Nationalism?

by Emily J. Levine

Nationalism and a growing rivalry with China have pushed some politicians to reconsider the openness of American universities to foreign students. The history of academic exchange suggests this may be a mistake. 

Kyle Rittenhouse is an American

by Patrick Blanchfield

"The impulse to reconstruct that night’s chaos as though watching a 21st century Rashomon, is a trap."

“Critical Race Theory” Is White History

by Kali Holloway

"The history of Black folks in America—through slavery, Black codes, lynchings, redlining, voter disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, racial pogroms, illegal medical experimentation, extrajudicial and state-led theft of Black land, anti-Black policing, racist mass incarceration—is white American history, too."

As A White Student in a Mostly Black School After Brown, I Learned Not to Fear History

by Woody Holton

"My three and a half years as a racial minority convinced me that one of the biggest beneficiaries of school desegregation was me."

What Big Oil Knew About Climate Change Since 1959

"Before San Francisco’s Summer of Love, before Woodstock, the peak of the ’60s counterculture and all that stuff that seemed ancient history to me, the heads of the oil industry were privately informed by their own leaders that their products would eventually alter the climate of the entire planet."

The Littoral Combat Ship is a Lens on the Military-Industrial Complex

by Emma Salisbury

"The military-contract treadmill is still running."

When a Bible Isn't a Bible

by Kathleen E. Kennedy

The British press has bungled its accounting of the discovery of a gold bead in the form of an open book. If it's not a Bible, what is it? 

Why I'm Tired of Hearing About "Wokeness"

by Regina Rini

"Perhaps the worst effect of the anti-Wokeist rhetoric invading academe is that it drowns out more careful critiques of so-called “Woke” policies."

Why Mislead Readers about Milton Friedman and Segregation?

by Nancy MacLean

"One would think that today the facts about the long struggle of southern white leaders to preserve segregation are so well known that simple fact-checking would suffice to rule out attempts to whitewash their efforts."

Betty Crocker Turns 100: How Generations of Women Identified with the Fictional Cook

by Elizabeth A. Blake

Betty Crocker has always been a symbol of a feminine ideal; the ways that women interacted with the character are illustrative of changing social values and norms. 

The Roundup Top Ten for November 12, 2021

The top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

Black Veterans of the First World War are Often Overlooked

by Michelle Moyd

Nearly 638,000 African men fought in Africa and Europe. Some were conscripted by colonial powers and forced to fight or labor, and others hoped through service to stake claims to political rights. More global attention to their service and its relationship to colonialism is needed.

Conquering Hell

by Ed Simon

"Hell’s tragedy is that those who deserve to go there almost never think that they will, while the pious shame-filled neurotic imagines those flames with scrupulous anxiety" – HNN contributing editor Ed Simon meditates on the American engagement with damnation. 

In Rittenhouse Trial, Language Matters

by Felicia Angeja Viator

Kyle Rittenhouse's trial evokes the 1943 "Zoot Suit Riots," when white vigilantes, including uniformed servicemen, beat Mexican American youth in Los Angeles and other cities. The courts contributed to exonerating the vigilantes by repeating the language of a moral panic that characterized the victims as "gangsters" and hoodlums.

Is Reining In the Pentagon Even Possible?

by Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung

The CBO's recent study proposes three paths to cutting $1 trillion from the defense budget. Even these proposals still leave in place massive Pentagon budgets and affirm the nation's use of military force as the first option for resolving international security issues.