Please Review This Report from the Committee for the Review of History, Issued in March 2217

At this juncture in early 2217, we wish to convey to the leaders and citizens of the United States Sub-Region of North America the results of our intense review of life as experienced two hundred years ago in this part of our Universal Confederacy.    

 

We at first found our discoveries surprising, despite the enthusiasm for history that has for many decades yielded an understanding of the major turning points for society in the United States.  We knew of the trend toward democratic socialism that proved inexorable in the aftermath of the Trump Debacle.  We understood that the two decades of the Great Tribulation that followed the Trump resignation so early in his tenure led to widespread protests, confrontations, and ideological struggles that induced the Great Debate;   and we have long known that nationwide discussions during that transitional phase promoted a heightened focus on the importance of facts, objective evidence, policy formulation, and the articulation of high-quality systems of health and education.

 

But we now are able to deliver to you a fuller account of the degradations that led to the massive reevaluation and transformations of the late 21^st century and the first decades of the 22^nd century.

 

In the year 2017 there was casual tolerance for an economic chasm between those who earned very little and those who accumulated great fortunes.  The phenomenon of “poverty” existed, in Appalachia, in vast stretches of the South, and most consequentially in most urban centers.

 

Designations for calendric observances were very crude in those first years of the 21^st century.  People fancying themselves “liberals” apparently were very proud of themselves for creating Black History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), and for changing such observations as “Columbus Day” to “All-Nations Day” and the like.  With regard to the former and latter of those appellations, the designations now appear ironic, since great swaths of those populations dwelled in conditions of “poverty,” wretched education, and remnant displays of racism difficult for us today to fathom.

 

With regard to women, the term, “feminist,” was still in use in 2017, although widely misunderstood.  We now trace our current condition of internalized gender equality to about 2075, by which time the Great Debate and the design of better education and health care systems had transformed the general wisdom of the United States populace.  The objective consideration of practices attending the Great Debate led to widely prevailing shifts in the way that women considered and presented themselves.  “Conservative” women took a grand leap into full-fledged feminism, while “liberal” feminists peered beyond economic gains and enhanced participation in the professions of law, medicine, and business to those personal and familial practices that still impeded full equality.

 

We have a hard time believing that there was a time when most women still took their husbands’ surnames.  We find absurd the notion of “feminists” tottering around on little stilts that constituted a  latter-day form of foot-binding.  And the notion that most women did not like their faces is bracing;  that they were actually expected to present painted professional and social countenances is stunning.

 

These were the days prior to 2125, when representatives of the World Council of Religions convened and produced articles for the seminal document, Universal Ethics;  we have long traced our current stance on matters of spirituality and morality to the ensuing shift from particularistic claims, toward a universal system of ethics consonant with the teachings of their religions’ progenitors.  To read the appalling details of how many people had by 2125 lost their lives in the name of religion is daunting.

 

We know that education is a matter of accumulated knowledge and analysis based on facts.  But there were in 2017 those who made their living as “education professors,” quite vexingly maintaining that critical thinking could take place in the absence of a strong knowledge base, and that lifelong learning could occur among people who had never learned much in the first place.

 

Happily, this was the momentous breakthrough that occurred in the late 21^st century.  Along with the commonly embraced values of Universal Ethics, the provision of excellent public education led to the defining characteristics of our own society, grounded as we are in universal human values that run counter to ideas prevalent in 2017 concerning gender, ethnicity, and class.

 

We on the Committee for the Review of History caution against arrogance as we compare our lives to those of our ancestors two hundred years ago.  We urge instead gratitude for the systems of ethics, health, and education that have produced the elevated quality of life in our Universal Confederacy.