To the editor:

The current administration is constantly looking to eradicate histories that it considers “woke”…whatever the hell that means. But let me tell you…just because denialists choose to reject histories with which the Right is uncomfortable, doesn’t make these histories any less factual. Ancient civilizations preserved their histories verbally. The present administration is attempting to recreate and preserve its own hand-picked history in real time with its lies that refute what Americans have seen with their own eyes, for instance, on January 6…or any time 47 spews “facts not in evidence.” (I have watched a lot of “Law and Order.”)

The history to which I refer goes way back, almost 2,000 years. That’s long enough ago that the Right probably doesn’t feel the need to rewrite this history. I’m referencing the story about the judgment of Jesus when Pilate was looking for a way not to punish our Savior. However, the crowd was adamant in its blood lust to see Christ executed. Pilate asked, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?” (Matthew 27:17) Spoiler alert for the Christian Nationalists…the public sentiment set free the notorious criminal. You might even find this story in 47’s gilded Bible.

My point…just as the masses chose to spare the life of Barabbas over that of Jesus, the right in the Twenty-first Century chose to put a convicted felon in the oval office for a nefarious second act after a failed first debacle, not to mention the criminality before, during, and after his first presidency. Yesterday was Emmett Till’s birthday. How many black and brown people in our country can look forward to having his story, our history, repeated? Athletes are not immune. Google “Emmett Till.”

George Sanayana wrote in “The Life of Reason” (1905): “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The right remember the past; they just hate to be reminded of it and made to feel guilty. If that’s what they fear, it is they that we have to fear.

Keith R. Klawitter

Morgan