A CRISIS OF PERCEPTION

FEBRUARY 10, 2025 – (Cont.) In a nutshell, Zinn’s thesis of American history is that its essence and inevitable outcome turn on a tight combination of three inescapable determinants: (a) Whiteness, (b) male dominance, and (c) property ownership. Of course, there are layers to each of these elements and a host of influences beyond them, but according to Zinn, by and large these three factors set the stage, then the foundation and ultimately the framework for the creation and development of the United States of America.

Much of the core evidence that Zinn presents is irrefutable. For example, he doesn’t “make up” decimation of the native population; nor does he fabricate the long-standing inferior rank of half the population—women—manifested most notably by women not having the right to vote until 144 years after adoption of the Declaration of Independence and 313 years after the founding Jamestown; and he doesn’t “invent” the enslavement of Africans or conjure up some off-the-wall “Marxist” theory that the Constitution memorialized a tragic compromise around the “Peculiar Institution” (as it was labeled by John C. Calhoun)[1]. In addition to these foundational realities about our history, Zinn reminds us that the Framers (i.e. the (white) men who led the American Revolution, then molded the United States out of the original 13 British North American colonies) were landed gentry, wealthy merchants/entrepreneurs, or successful lawyers (and a few physicians). In other words, they had wealth and power over those who had neither. Out of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 25 were slaveowners.

By mere focus on these attributes of our origins, Zinn is condemned as “Marxist,” “radical,” and (it follows) a “wholesale fabricator.” Without careening down the definitional tangents of these terms, one must place Zinn’s fact-based springboard into a meaningful frame of reference. That is, one must recognize that there’s hardly anything revolutionary about the view that in almost every sophisticated subset of civilization, from Africa to the Middle East to India to the Far East to Euro-settled/conquered North and South America to Europe itself, the Golden Rule has prevailed since the beginning of history. The Golden Rule, as I learned early on in my law/banking career, has always been, “He (the man) who hath the gold maketh the rules.”

Throughout history—American and the world—“justice” has been subservient to the Golden Rule. Despite enshrinement of the word “justice” on the wall of every federal courthouse in the country, even the casual (but honest) student of American history must acknowledge the many injustices visited upon women, native people, Black people and poor whites.

Although we’ve moved beyond the relative crudity of mercantilism and early capitalism and a power structure that in Europe and the U.S., anyway, was monolithically wealthy white male, Zinn presents the evidentiary case for arguing that America has always been a “for-profit” enterprise, causing gross mistreatment of women, native people et alia. But again, show me a society, past or present—including “Marxist”—that isn’t “for-profit” or “for-plunder.”

Yet—Zinn’s didn’t intend or pretend to conduct a comparative analysis. He simply examined basic factual realities about American history, laid them out and argued his view that “We the [American] People” didn’t exactly form “a more perfect union” or “establish justice.”[2] Again, look at the treatment of Blacks and women and wholesale destruction of the native populations—after they were first put through hellish suffering by such people as President Andrew Jackson, who for nearly a century has graced our twenty-dollar bill.

For more besmirchness of our national reputation, consider the unavoidable reality of the Mexican-American War (1846-48), which no one can rightfully call anything short of a war of aggression by the United States. That conflict was a war of conquest, resulting not only in the annexation of Texas but the acquisition of California (and territory between them). The sweeping drive by President Polk—fully supported by Democrats and a majority of Whigs—had no more justification than Putin’s invasion and attempted takeover of Ukraine.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Zinn’s book, but my point here is not to review it to the degree it merits. I leave the reader to make an assessment entirely independent of my own. My point is simply to state my joinder with the comment the presenter penned on the face page behind the front cover: “This book profoundly changed me.” A People’s History has consolidated a view of America that has been coalescing for me over the past 10 or 20 years, bolstered heavily by other books about American history I’ve read over that time, including, but not limited to, Robert Caro’s four-volume definitive biography of LBJ; Taylor Branch’s three-volume (equally definitive) biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Isobel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns; (WSJ reporter) Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name; Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln; and most recently, Paradise Bronx by Ian Frazier.

Now, back to what started this series—“A Crisis of Perception.” The profound consolidating effect of A People’s History on my pre-existing bias has merged with the two other factors that I mentioned at the outset of this series (the so-called Billionaire-Libertarian “Butterfly Revolution” and “Rule of the Fiat”[3] by which Presidents Trump and Musk have become the government). Let me next describe in greater substance, those other two factors. (Cont.)

Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2025 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Going beyond Zinn’s thesis, for the past eight to ten years I’ve argued that in large part, what ails our country politically is more fundamental than ne’er-do-wells occupying Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court. At the core of our problem is the very structure of our government, and the disproportionate senatorial power of small states. The structure is anachronistic, but more specifically, its roots are deep in the original compromise over slavery—the price the northern colonies had to pay for the southern colonies to join the “United States.” This flawed structure has rendered us nearly ungovernable.

[2] The full preamble to the Constitution reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

[3] Essentially, “It’s a presidential fiat, therefore it’s the rule, courts and congress be damned.”