History That Doesn't Suck - 115: History–Doomed to Repeat It? A Conversation with Lindsay Graham

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

The Legendary podcaster and composer (but not US Senator) Lindsay Graham is a dear friend of HTDS and an integral part of the podcast's sound. Today, he gets behind the mic with the Prof. to interrogate the oft-repeated adage "those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it." So ... is it true? Centering the conversation around our current HTDS period (Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era) while pulling from various philosophers and thinkers (Hegel, Twain, Churchill, Santayana, and more), Lindsay and Greg dig in. By the way, we're big fans of Lindsay's many podcasts, and Greg has contributed to a few of them as a guest or historical consultant! To check out Lindsay's many narrated history and historical drama podcasts go to https://airship.fm/ ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette  come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did it take to survive an ancient siege? Why was the cult of Dionysus behind so many slave revolts in ancient Rome? What's the tragic history and mythology behind Japan's most haunted ancient forest? We're Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fangirl. Join us to explore ancient history and mythology from a fun, sometimes tipsy, perspective. Find us at ancienthistoryfangirl.com or wherever you get your podcasts. From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you

might not even know you had, but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve? Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation, jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. Subscribe to MinuteEarth wherever you like to listen. Hello and welcome to a special episode of History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and today we're hitting a slight pause on our usual chronological march through U.S. history for a very special guest, a good friend and collaborator of the show, as I'm sure many of you are aware, Lindsey Graham, not that Lindsey Graham, but Lindsey Graham of Airship.

Lindsey, I think many of my listeners, if not all of them, are aware of your background, but if you'll permit me to give you the full introduction, all the same, sir, you are the voice, the talent, the brains behind a number of podcasts. These include American History Tellers, American Scandal, which those are two of the top trending shows in the United States in history at any given moment. Terms, American Elections, Wicked Game, which of course I have a bit of fondness for having been able to be a consultant for you on those episodes. 1865, brilliant audio drama on building from the Lincoln assassination, again, exploring the reconstruction era. And most recently, History Daily, great way to just start the day with a little story, a little narrative history,

five days a week. Well, six days because of the Saturday matinees, of course. Did I miss one? You did actually, but that's okay because it's not a history show. It's a business history show. Business Movers comes out weekly telling the stories behind great movers and shakers in the world of business. Yes, drat. Okay, well, not bad.

It was a passing grade. Well, hey man, I forget what I'm doing all the time. Which is a problem because they're my deadlines, not yours. Well, and of course, I'm going to add that you are the brilliance behind the sound design to HTDS episodes from, I believe it was episode 65. Airship has actually done the sound design for, we're about to crest that 50% mark of all episodes. Yeah, very close because we're on 115 right now and we subtract out 65, but then add back in the eight that we've remastered and a few in there and we're getting real close to halfway.

Well, forgive me for indulging a little bit on some of those other things. We were having a conversation the other day and it kind of led to discussing that oft-repeated theme that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So we're going to go ahead and broach that today. And, of course, we'll lean a bit into the progressive era, into Theodore Roosevelt, because I always love tying everything to where we're at with history that doesn't suck. But we won't limit ourselves to that either. So with that, we'll go ahead and soldier on, shall we?

Yeah. So I came to you with this question because I was asked the question, you know, this famous aphorism, and we should probably try and get it straight, that it was George Santayana, a Harvard philosopher in 1905 that probably came up with the phrase first. But it is said by everyone as kind of an evidence for their particular viewpoint on whatever might be happening in the current day. And it also has, you know, some implicit assumptions packed into it that I think we ought to explore here. But yeah, so I wanted to have this conversation with you because it gets to

kind of a foundational portion of what we do every day, which is teaching history. And that raises a question, why bother? It's over with. One of the answers, obviously, is if you don't learn history, you are doomed to repeat it. That's what we're trying to explore here. And lots of people have picked up on this. Churchill paraphrased it. Mark Twain paraphrased it. I guess what I wanted to know first was one of these implicit assumptions in the quote, whether you use the Churchill version or the Santayana version, we're doomed or condemned to repeat it, which means that history is just bad. Right. If it repeats. Well, it's funny that you said that, you know, my mind is right there with you. As I was

thinking this through, I would suggest those who learn history are best equipped to repeat the best aspects and gleam wisdom from history. It's kind of been a thing for years, at least in my life's experience, where people love to talk about the fall of Rome and they want to make a comparison to the United States. Where's America at on the life cycle of Rome? And it is very much always this kind of doom and gloom scenario. And yet, as I think about a number of the figures and eras of U.S. history that we've even covered here on History That Doesn't Suck, one of the things that I enjoy about history is learning from these past figures. And sure, that includes the cautionary tales, but I like to look at the good habits, the good ideas, the good practices that I see and incorporate them into my life. And I feel that's a lesson that can be applied

on a national level or, you know, a corporate level. If you're a business, you know, whatever organization you might be thinking of. Anyhow, that's where I land, Lindsay. Yeah, I would agree with you. I also understand why condemned and doomed is kind of in the parlance of the aphorisms here, because, well, you know, if we look back at the facts of human history, everyone has died. And most of the time it wasn't really pleasant.

And if we look at any sort of metric of human happiness or progress, right now is a really good time compared to any other time. It is. So, you know, if we think about history as a portion of the past, repeating that in any mirror version of it would be a bad idea, because it did literally suck then. I mean, it really depends on how Hobbesian you want to be here, how nasty, brutish, and short it really is. But there does seem to be a progression of human activity

towards a better condition. But this quote seems to indicate that we must be aware and understand the bad conditions lest we repeat them. That's probably true. Also, I kind of think that as people living complicated lives, but with brains that can only really capture simplicity, that we look for patterns probably too much. And we will see these shadowy similarities between certain events and they

will leap out at us that we must not do what we did then else the exact same thing happen, even though it's impossible. So to tell our audience why this came up, I was asked by an organization to write a little essay on this particular thing. People say history repeats. Why is that? And why does everyone say that regardless of what they're trying to prove? And I think my argument is more pessimistic than your initial thought here. And it's that history does not repeat, but people do.

Over and over, people act like they've always acted. They have the same impulses, the same needs, the same desires, the same need to claw their way forward in the same way, and all the same biases and limitations of our intellect and perception. So no wonder if you've got a couple billion of these machines all designed the exact same way that they were 40,000 years ago, that they would keep doing the same thing. That it would be insanity to think that there would be an enormous improvement. Yeah, but there is improvement, isn't there? So we have to explain that as a group of human machines, all designed and built the same with not too many upgrades. Right. We have upgraded our life and ability to live on this planet.

We have to reconcile that. I think that's really the crux. You did mention Mark Twain earlier on. The sentiment is attributed to him. It's effectively that history does not repeat, but that it rhymes. Everything you're saying there, it brings that to mind for me. Because you're absolutely right that we're programmed the same way. And I do think that is to our detriment that sometimes in present discourse, we seem to

forget that when we look back on past generations, that what might seem preposterous or ridiculous or improbable in terms of things that we would do today, the hard and painful truth is that if you took an individual from today and you dropped them decades, hundreds of years back into the past in whatever society, well, you'd probably end up with the same behaviors. It speaks to having those same desires, but I think it also speaks to the power of our societies that part of the equation is the group or tribal nature of our species. We don't exist in silos. I think that's part of where we can explain some sort of forward movement. So the key ingredient, I suppose, for that forward march that I very much agree with

you on, all the troubles that exist in the present, that's not to make light of them in the least. But when people ask me, when would you like to have been born? There isn't some romanticized past that I long to have lived in. This is the most secure, safe, and prosperous era in which one could live. That is the outlier, the differential aspect is the society into which a person enters the world. Obviously, that's moving forward in some sort of way that helps us not full on repeat to go to the same. Yeah, I think you have to think of a societal progression as constructing a ladder. It's a simple machine, a ladder. And as you install each rung, you're able to climb higher. And there's really

no need for new technology or new insight and very little ability for rungs to deteriorate or destroy themselves. You're always able to climb higher on the backs of every previous generation. But let's go back to the original intent here. Why does this aphorism ring so true for so many people if we kind of know that there is no repeating of history, we're always improving, but there is this popular conception of a fear of replicating the fall of Rome or who knows what, I mean, the collapse of the Mayan empire. So I'm trying to reach for something that's not so Western focused, but there is a popular conception that this quote, the meaning behind it is pretty much true. We must know what the mistakes of the past in order not to repeat them. And yet we're kind of developing a thesis that people are the same and the institutions of society is a safety net. Right. But I don't think I'm pushing back on what you just said, but perhaps I'm throwing

a slight spin on it. By and large, the latter is certainly an upward moving, simple machine. We do have historic examples though of times at which a rung has broken. I do think that there's the fear that in the present that that's happening. And it's in every generation. That is something that strikes me very forcefully in my career. My entire adulthood has been focused on the study of the writing of the articulating of history. Every generation thinks that they're on the cusp of collapse. There's a fear that the rung will break. If not this present rung, perhaps even multiple rungs or one that's lower down.

I've read countless sources from U.S. history and doing history that doesn't suck and just teaching history where the present generation, this is the year 1900 or before that, you name it, there's concern about the youth and how they've lost their way. They're not doing what they should. Society is falling apart. Everything's just about ready to go sideways. And for me, I find a curious comfort in seeing these same sorts of concerns being expressed. I mean, that's as repetitive as any other aspect of history. And that tells me that what I think we're really dealing with is the anxiety of the blank page. An example, I think when we study, say, the American Civil War, this truly fraught moment in U.S. history,

death, destruction, true reason to question if the union is going to continue to be a thing. Yet when we study it, we come with the knowledge that the United States is going to survive it. We come with the knowledge that the Emancipation Proclamation is going to happen, that the 13th Amendment is going to come. So we have these components that jump out and enable someone who is looking for a positive tale to locate that within the history. And so I don't think we always appreciate the same level of anxiety that soldiers in blue and gray must have felt on the battlefield of Antietam or Gettysburg, Vicksburg, you name it.

Or that Abraham Lincoln must have felt when he was absolutely convinced that his former general, Little Mac, now his democratic challenger in the 1864 presidential election was going to beat him. Lincoln was certain of it, that the nation was tired of him prosecuting the war, that they were ready to compromise, that they were going to take the Democrat who was willing to wheel and deal with Jefferson Davis and call it a day. It's hard, I think, sometimes for us to really appreciate that those previous generations had those same anxieties that we feel when we think about whether it's our own private future,

you're thinking about retirement, you're worried about the health of a loved one, what's going on in your career, or if those anxieties reach out to things that are happening within your state, the nation, your religious community, and so on and so forth. You said something about the anxiety of the blank page and something clicked in my head,

and it ties back to our need for patterns and security and this wilderness of the future that is hidden from us. Now, on History That Doesn't Suck, if I'm correct, you've just kind of finished the Gilded Age and are marching into the Progressive Era, right? Yeah, we've wrapped up the Gilded Age. The next episode will be Roosevelt's foreign policy. So we'll get into the Panama Canal. Yeah, that's where we're at. So it strikes me that this is actually a probably good period to be studying in this conversation, because as we've gone through our turbulent political climate in the United States now, and especially, you know, technological and ecological and even immigration concerns all seem to be pointing to a similarity to this very same era, the Gilded Age moving into the Progressive Era, in which the United

States faced enormous pressures and changes, just fast-paced, nation-shaping changes that happened in half a quarter of a generation. And we look back and say, oh, maybe there are some lessons to be learned in this era, which seems to resemble our own so much so in technological advances, rural and urbanification. What were they looking back to? Pointing their own fingers to their own history and saying, if we don't pay attention, we'll end up just like poor old... What?

Oh, you know, it's funny. As you say that, I mean, my mind flips back to a number of primary sources, which just remind listeners, primary source, that's a document that comes from the era. So progressive era, that means we're talking about speeches by William Jennings Bryan or Teddy Roosevelt, newspaper articles from the era, as opposed to secondary, which would be episodes of history that doesn't suck or American scandal. It's a telling by a historian. So everyone, I'm actually going to kind of invert your question there, Lindsay. The thing I saw the most in writing those episodes was everyone aligning themselves with the previous generation's heroes. So William Jennings Bryan, one of the very fascinating to me kind of asides was how he leaned on Andrew Jackson in his cross of gold speech.

And I don't think that this is just my reading in the present. I don't think many people, when they reflect on William Jennings Bryan, think to themselves, you know who he reminds me of? Andrew Jackson. And yet that's precisely the figure that William Jennings Bryan points to,

to try and elucidate his good ideas, to try and connect with his audience. And when we pause and think about it, it makes great sense. Andrew Jackson's the start of the Democratic Party. William Jennings Bryan, he's running on the Democratic ticket. It's only been a few decades. There's a natural connection there. Andrew Jackson spoke for a far more common people. That was what brought in the fears and trepidations of John Quincy Adams and his crowd was that the republic was being watered down as they saw it from an elite republic entrusted to wealthy white men to now being expanded to include these poor farmers who could not be trusted with a vote.

When you pause and take that in, you can kind of really see, okay, right, that's where the connection's at. All of them, just as everyone will point to the past with fears, they also all find a way that they connect to yesteryear's heroes. Sorry to take your question another way. That was just the thought that came to my mind.

Well, now I've got all sorts of weird questions about gold and silver specie between Jennings Bryan and Andrew Jackson because they both had to deal with, weirdly, here we go. They had to deal with rocketing inflation and currency manipulation, pretty much, and this trying to manage a national economy through a central bank. Brian's cross of gold speech is one for the ages, but it's weird. It's about monetary policy. So it makes sense that he would point back to Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, and someone, a populist, and someone who dealt with bimetallism himself. But on the opposite side of that coin, it's like, surely they were pointing to the past as here is the way. These are the lessons we can learn. But what other examples can you give me of in the moment,

and let's say 1902, what were they afraid they were repeating? And I would say perhaps more fear of losing, that there was the need to understand the past, to know how great the United States was, had been, that it was important to not lose what had been bequeathed from the founding generation and on. And there was anxiety about the blank page of the West closing. Western expansion had been completed. There was nowhere Bryan's crowd is looking at the massive division of wealth and poverty, particularly in places like New York, and seeing that as a sign of waywardness, that the nation is losing its moral compass. I'd say that's another constant that I think we've kind of beat around the bush, but perhaps haven't recognized directly.

There's always that anxiety with it that you need to know your history in part because that's going to inform your maintaining that same moral direction that your predecessors either failed to adhere to or succeeded at adhering to, and you're at risk of losing. Well, I think you've identified something that is probably pretty obvious, that there is always a general anxiety that we're losing something, that there was a golden era that we're departing from. But when I think about the progressive era, I mean, even in its name, a forward movement that is defined by leaving things behind, right? How do you think this era achieved that

more so than any others? First off, we had a critical mass of people that were concerned about what was going on. The Gilded Age was a time of political division on a knife's edge. Sure, Republicans, Democrats, they could get elected. They might hold the power in Congress, but they held it by one seat or they

had the White House, but only by the skin of their teeth. Grover Cleveland is the pinnacle example of that. He's the one time we actually have a president who fails to get reelected. And then the party still is invested enough in the figure that they put him back up for reelection and the man gets elected again. So he gets a second term in a non-consecutive fashion. Really the importance to glean from that is what a nice edge there is. I just have to pause and remind you how similar that is to today's potential political landscape. That's a fair point. The key thing I see in the Gilded Age and, you know, being a historian does not make me a prophet. So I will by no means try and project what is to come. But that era, you see staunch gridlock because there was no strong mandate from the people. Instead, you've got both parties

grasping at straws to hold on to power. And in some ways, they actually weren't terribly different in their ideology. So they're also making mountains out of molehills to try and differentiate themselves from one another. William Jennings Bryan is the point, you know, as he starts talking about wanting to bring silver into the picture, that that's really where the Democratic Party takes an abrupt step away from the Republican Party. And Cleveland is caught in that moment where he is not ready to go of William James Bryan. But by the time we get into the progressive era, we've hit a critical point where the anxiety and the concerns have spread basically to a bipartisan level. And what that really means

is that the tribes, the alliances that tended to fall in these parties that frankly just weren't as different as they like to pretend they were on paper, they had hit a point where they were really willing to reach across and work together more. Now we come to a fluke, a presidential assassination. I by no means ever want to suggest that disruption from assassination is ever a good idea. That is a terrible, terrible way to think through policy. It does happen that William McKinley's assassination brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. And to be entirely fair, it's possible that maybe he could have been elected president. I think it's highly improbable though. So I'm going to caveat this as we're definitely into

my informed opinion, but nonetheless opinion. I don't see the party systems upturn of the century United States around 1900, enabling, permitting someone who's willing to challenge their own party like TR into the White House. I mean, he felt he was on his way out already for his inclination to challenge party bosses in New York. He was put forward as vice president purposely to put him out of the way, to take this war hero that had attained such a standing with average Americans that the party couldn't ignore him, yet they also didn't want to engage with him. So in this awful fluke where McKinley's assassinated, suddenly this

figure that everyone who has say in poll in the Republican Party did not ever want at the helm was there. He then proceeded to make decisions that resonated with the majority of Americans in such a way that the party couldn't deny running him again. And as he wins reelection, frankly, by a landslide to a second term, that's a true mandate, you know, that really enables and empowers the president to do things. And it's probably also worth pointing out whether one agrees philosophically with Theodore Roosevelt or not, he greatly expanded the presidency.

This is a remarkable departure from how presidents are elected today. We expect a candidate to come with an agenda, things that they're going to get through Congress. They are leading that branch that the Constitution very much separates. We have our Articles 1, 2, and 3 with our three main branches, and they are separate entities. And for the first century and a half of US history, the thought was really that the executive executed the laws of Congress. I mean, both Jackson and Lincoln were accused by the detractors of abusing their powers, but nobody came in like TR and said, well, the Constitution doesn't prohibit me from

doing A, B, or C. And since it's not prohibited, that means I can do A, B, or C. If we were to rewind all the way to George Washington, you have Washington looking for explicit permission to do anything in the Constitution. So it's a very different mentality. So we have a figure in the White House who is leading in a very unprecedented way and has cut through the usual barriers, not through his own doing, but has nonetheless broken through the usual barriers that would have kept a figure like himself from the White House.

And these lightning strike sorts of shifts, I think, were instrumental to the progressive era. And that isn't to dismiss, of course, the groundwork that's being done by WJB and other figures down to the muckrakers who are writing insightful, well-researched pieces that are opening the eyes of the American public and getting them to consider things that they've never thought of or known about before, whether that's the fact that there's fecal matter in their bread in New York City or that the meat they're eating from Chicago is absolutely disgusting and so on. When you have a major shift, Lindsay, in history, you do have to look for what mechanism came into play. We've spoken of machines. I think you've used that term very effectively in this conversation. A wrench has to be thrown into the machine that oddly ends up doing good, or there has to be an innovation. Well, I think we can all agree that if there were a Mount Rushmore of presidents, then Roosevelt would be on it.

You know, I'm going to go ahead and say that, yes, in the hypothetical situation that a Mount Rushmore is made, I think TR should be among those visages. When Johann Rall received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Hessian colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware

and would soon attack his forces. The next day, when Raw lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pocket. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh well, this is The Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler.

Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at ConstantPodcast.com or wherever you get your finances. I sit down with NerdWallet's team of nerds, personal finance experts in credit cards, banking, investing, and more. We answer your real-world money questions and break down the latest personal finance news. The nerds will give you the clarity you need by cutting through the clutter and misinformation in today's world of personal finance. We don't promote get-rich-quick schemes or hype unrealistic side hustles. Instead, we offer practical knowledge that you can apply in your everyday life.

You'll learn about strategies to help you build your wealth, invest wisely, shop for financial products, and plan for major life events. And you'll walk away with the confidence you need to ensure that your money is always working as hard as you are. So turn to the nerds to answer your real world money questions and get insights that can help you make the smartest financial decisions for your life. Listen to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's continue this conversation by diving into this aphorism that we're exploring, that history does repeat and we should be wary of it. So let's go ahead and directly compare the progressive era with our current one. What do you think leaps out to you first? greatly concerned about wealth disparity, the dwindling middle class versus the extreme wealth. So the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, Carnegie, compared to the tenements, the slums in New York

City. And the division was astounding. I think many people today do not grasp just how deep that divide between the haves and the have-nots was in the progressive era. It was, in my estimation, truly next level. The questions about the power of corporations, there are plenty of issues being raised as we go through this technological revolution and the power that companies wield, information they have and whatnot. There's a wealth of control that the same way that, say, a large company today can track your information, they know your purchases, they know what you're buying, and they have access to that information.

If I can draw an analogy, tell me if you think this doesn't land, Lindsay, but the railroad's kind of your internet of turn of the century, early 1900s America. It's this web that brings the nation together. You've got people with their Sears catalogs making their orders. Things are delivered through them. Obviously, apples and oranges on so many levels.

Yet the companies that control the railroads have a lot of power over the lives of individuals. And I might suggest that it is stamped in the DNA of pretty much any American, whether you're first generation or your family's been here for many generations. But when we think about the Bill of Rights and the idea that we have privacy, these are concerns that I think you'll find they surface anew with shifting technology and innovations and power dynamics in every generation. Immigration. I'm actually in the midst of researching right now an episode on Ellis Island. So I do happen to know off the top of my head that in the first decade of the 20th

century, thereabouts, roughly 2 million Italians came to the sympathetic individual who is concerned about the health and well-being of immigrants packing themselves into just frankly god-awful conditions, trying to have an entire family live in one room of one poorly built tenement building with poor access to food and whatnot. So topics of concern and similarity between then and now are wealth disparity. And I think that's probably clear. I mean, we have the same concerns and anxieties about Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg. And each one of those commands a new and surprising dominion. You know, like they are largely monopolistic or at the heads of certain industries

that are approaching monopoly. And we are concerned about how they've infiltrated every aspect of modern life. And along the way, accumulated obscene amount of wealth. As we can go back a bit and think about when it started with the Occupy Wall Street movement, that there is a legitimate concern that not just with the ultra mega billionaires at the

top, but that there is a carving out of the middle, something that has been not seen in terms of real numbers, the data of it since the Gilded Age. So we'll put a check by wealth disparity. Another similarity would be new technologies, the railroad and telegraph. Well, I think even though we've had the internet for, you know, decades now, the ubiquity of it, and then also smartphones in the last, you know, 10, 15 years, plus with the rising eminence of AI, it's become more than just a dot-com bubble or any new technology. It is a defining aspect of the era. I might point out, I think you actually make a good point there, that even though that

technology had been around for decades, by the time we get to the Gilded Age progressive era, the ubiquity, I think that's kind of a turning point that we see in both of these moments where the internet, we have a generation that's grown up with the internet. It's been around now and it's that ubiquity. It's that moment where the old ways really die. You cease to be able to do things in certain ways.

Payphones are a true rarity now. So if you had a proclivity to rely on payphones when you're out and about, you can't do that anymore. It's no longer a duality of options for you. The infrastructure itself of the world has embraced this new space. And that's the same thing that we have at the Gilded Age slash going into the Progressive Era, where the railroad, sure, it's been around, you know, for decades. The Telegraph has long since put the Pony Express out of business, but it's everywhere.

Everybody has access to it now. I'm just doubling down on that similarity, I suppose. I don't know if I can put a big check next to immigration, though. Certainly not by the numbers, by percentages of the influx of new immigrants to America versus the existing population. Those were shocking numbers in this era that cannot be matched today. Now, maybe I put a check against the similarity in fears of immigration that they are held as strongly and as broadly in today's American population as it was then. But I don't believe the actual, the numbers can't support it. We would have to have 30, 40 million immigrants a year to match what was happening then. Well, I think you're right on that. And to clarify that, that is indeed what my intent was. The parallel that I see is absolutely disconnected to what the immigration rates are, but rather that

it's a major part of the public discourse that on both sides of the issue, you have those who are concerned about the well-being and those that have major concerns about the fact that immigration is occurring and the impact that immigrants may have on the nation. The next category of similarity that you didn't actually bring up, but I wrote down as you were talking, was this sense of political division, that we've never been more divided. Now, of course, coming out in 1890, 1900, there is fresh memory of the Civil War

in which the nation was never more divided. But talk to me about the popular opinion of political factionalism then and now. Well, the wounds of the Civil War are still plenty fresh. You have people like President William McKinley, who is not excited about going into the Spanish-American war because, as William Tecumseh Sherman put it, the Union General, he knows that war is hell. He's lived through it. He remembers that. He was there at

Antietam, that 24-hour period that has seen more Americans mowed down in gory violence than any other single day, even now in the 21st century. But part of the shifting that we see in the progressive era, it does bring significant division. If we push past William McKinley, we get again to our much discussed Theodore Roosevelt. And this is ahead of where HTDS is, but a fun little sneak preview, I suppose, for listeners who don't know about this. He's ultimately going to run one of the most successful third-party candidacies in American history. He leaves the White House, a very popular president, feels that he's handed the baton off to his chosen successor, Taft. But then Taft proceeds to fill his role in a way that, well, it's not up to snuff in the eyes of Roosevelt. So he comes back and takes another crack at the White House.

And frankly, Woodrow Wilson really only becomes president because the Republican Party is so divided that you've got a number of Republicans who could never fathom leaving the party. They're going to stick with the party. And that carries with any political label. So there's no way they're going to abandon Taft, even if they like Teddy. Meanwhile, you've got others who are going, well, yeah, Teddy's what we want. This is the progressive era. There is this movement and it just completely divides the Republican Party into allowing Woodrow Wilson to sprint ahead.

It's one of the most unique elections in American history. And so, of course, we'll be doing a full episode on just that election in the near future. Yeah, I don't know how many people are looking forward to our most recent upcoming presidential election, because it promises to have plenty of surprises. But I think it's undeniable, no matter how you look at it, that the current Republican Party is one divided against itself. And it will be interesting to see how these allegiances to either the party or individuals within them shake out. Because the potential is obvious that it could be another Woodrow Wilson or even another Abraham Lincoln, who also benefited from a divided party, opposition party, that something disruptive happens. It should be a very simple thing for us to wrap our heads around, but I think it's often lost on

us that Significant change whether you like that significant change or you don't there's got to be a significant disruption that comes before the change occurs When you do the same thing, you're going to get the status quo over and over You know as I hear myself say that it draws me back to one of our initial points just you know that on all sides of the political discourse, everyone is convinced that you need to know your history or you're doomed to repeat it.

And I would suppose, I'm not a fan of plain pundit, but either way, there are different pitfalls perhaps that both sides are alternately seeing or are perceiving, whether or not someone agrees with what that pitfall is perceived to be. Let me ask you one final category of similarity. And this one's interesting. Misinformation in public and political discourse. Yep. One of my favorite topics.

Because it, I'll tell you, Lindsay, it grates at me when the term fake news is touted as though it's a new thing. Yellow journalism, to go right back to the progressive era to tie into that, the idea that it is new, that a media entity would play fast and loose with the facts, stretch things, that's been done from time immemorial. One of the great casualties I fear is that for some that can then lead to us being so jaded that we misconstrue every source as being equally invalid, that they're all fast and loose when there are, of course, careful journalists who do a very good job. I mean, well, I could even push past the progressive era. I mean, the way that events leading up to the American Revolution were discussed, they had a very different tone in the way they were published in London versus the way they were published in Boston. And that's not unique to the American experience either. It's always been the case that there are those that hold themselves to a high standard and are going to maintain that their integrity

must supersede any other agenda. And then you're going to have people like William Randolph Hearst, who in his desire to oust Joseph Pulitzer as the king of the mountain in the New York publishing game, and in his interest in pushing the Spanish-American War, though it is fair to point out it's often overstated his influence. He likely did not single-handedly bring that about as much as he might like that narrative, but it's always been there.

And the need for people to be critical thinkers and assess their sources, that has always been present. It's always going to be present. I think the interesting consideration there is the democratization of sharing information in the present. Now, that would be a change in the system as a whole, that our simple pattern-seeking brains, our rather unchanging, by and large, genetic pool, is having to deal with in a new way. But we're still just seeing yet another manifestation of something that humanity has lived through from time immemorial. We've been talking at length about similarities that absolutely exist between our age and some other age.

But we've also kind of looked at this idiom and said, well, it's not exactly true. History doesn't repeat exactly. Twain might be the most correct. And the lessons that are available to us in history are ones that are much more person oriented, individual-oriented, because the complexity of the planet and our societies will not allow for the exact circumstances to repeat. But I want to, and I don't quote Marx often, but he brought something up and I wanted to

get your take on it and we'll leave it at that. So Marx remarked, talking about philosopher Hegel, that Hegel had said somewhere that all the great world's historical facts and people appear twice. Right. But Marx said they appear twice, the first as tragedy and the second time as farce. What do you make of that? Well, I always find Marx is best understood in his historical context, which I suppose we could just say about every single philosopher. But he was, in this case, he was writing and thinking specifically about Napoleon III, which HTDS listeners might have some familiarity with from the Statue of Liberty episode where I couldn't help my Francophile self

from giving a brief rundown on modern French history. So Napoleon III, the nephew of Emperor Napoleon's nephew, and France has gone through this massive cycle from its 1789 revolution to just being all over the place as to whether it's an empire, it's a republic, it's a constitutional monarchy, and so on and so forth. And Louis-Philippe, he's been elected the president of the second French Republic, and he can't be elected a second time per the constitution. So he goes ahead and ends the Republic. He makes himself the emperor, styling himself after his uncle. So this is the precise thing that has Marx thinking about repetition in history. And what he is seeing is in his mind, right? The tragedy play out

was the rise and fall of Emperor Napoleon. And now the farce is his nephew, who's basically playing at being his uncle. All that said, I mean, I do think at the end of the day, I land with Twain. I think that that's a really witty and fun kind of take, partly because it does highlight that there isn't an exact repetition. There's never an exact repetition. You know, an interesting thing about this conversation is that I do get lots of emails and tweets, you know, asking about similarities between Gilded Age, modern day US. And as we pointed out, the similarities are there. I don't know if I'm gonna say that the Gilded Age was the tragedy and that we're the farce,

but that idea hits at the same thing on some level that Mark Twain was getting at, which again, I like his precise phrasing that it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. That hits home for me. You know, I do just have to ask, Lindsay, I know which Churchill quote I have in my mind when you referenced him at the beginning of things,

but I'm wondering if we have the same quote in mind. Do you happen to have that language in front of you? Well, the one I know of is from 1948, in which he really just paraphrases the original, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but more jowly. Yeah. So he has another quote. It's a click out, but it's one that stuck with me for years.

And I'll just say I'm going to paraphrase because I'm sure I'll get a word off. But it was study history, study history. In history lie the secrets of statecraft. And when we think about, it doesn't matter what someone's, whether they're liberal, they're conservative, whatever their vantage point is, I really do think that in the study of history, you do come to better understand the shortcomings of your own ideologies, maybe question your ideologies, and come to better appreciate those ideas that perhaps you disagree with, but maybe you can come to better understand how it would

attract someone or how it has attracted people in the past. So I guess that gets away from the idea of repetition in history, but perhaps highlights the value in it and the role that it plays in, I would say, you know, sure, statecraft is important to diplomats and prime ministers and presidents, but it's also important in a democracy to every citizen that everyone have some understanding of their civics, of where things have been, so they can better understand how we got to where we're at. But whatever someone's view is on whatever issue you might be discussing, you'll always have a smarter take and have greater

nuance with the study of history. You know, I'm glad you actually ended on Churchill and that particular quote, especially because it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, also from a World War II hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who doesn't mention history once, but I think you'll hear the same sentiment ring. Eisenhower said that he always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. The history may be useless, but the learning of it would be indispensable. And that resonates with me. Yeah. I often tell my students at the end of a course that I don't expect them to remember the date that X event occurred. I don't expect them to remember the exact definition of the Roosevelt corollary or what were the dates that we used to define the Gilded Age. Frankly, don't expect you to remember it.

Don't know that it even matters that you remember it. That's not crucial. What's crucial is that you've learned the broad strokes, that those things stick with you, that you've learned to question. Question yourself. Question your own in-group. Question what's put before you. and just to be able to think. And to me, history does all those things. So I think that jives very well with Eisenhower.

Well, thanks for taking the time to talk with me about this and give me specific relations to an era of history that you're currently exploring on History That Doesn't Suck. I think there's probably plenty of material here to mine to write my 750 words that I've been asked for. Yeah, so I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully your listeners have enjoyed a slight diversion into the meditation on history. I hope so. You know, Lindsay, one of my listeners, a patron, Jose, I'd mentioned in a small group with him that we were going to have this conversation. And he said that a conversation between you and me, he said,

as far as I'm concerned, you and Lindsay could debate the proper way to install the toilet paper roll and I'll listen to it. So if that's any indicator. Well, there is only one way. Well, of course. And that's the way it's depicted in the U S patent, which is with the, with the roll coming down over the top. You unspool the whole thing. Sure. And then stack it up in sheets. I mean, you only need one, one sheet at a time two at most. And on that note, thank you very much, Lindsay. It was a pleasure, as always, to have you. And we'll continue on with Teddy Roosevelt's big stick diplomacy, the Panama Canal, in two weeks.

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