I’m a historian of the Golden Age Who has drawn parallels between our current moment and? Late Nineteenth centurytwo periods known for big economic inequality and widespread technological change.
But much of the reporting on the murder of Brian Thompsonthe CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and Luigi Mangionethe person accused of killing him gave me pause.
According to many journalists and experts, each Thompson and Mangione appear to have migrated to the New York City borough of Manhattan for the reason that late Nineteenth century.
In her interpretation, the 2 Gilded Ages now not run parallel. They collided, mixing their occupants and luggage right into a chaotic mess.
When I and most other historians speak about parallels between the Golden Age and today, the comparisons are structural. They reflect general conditions that affect thousands and thousands of individuals. It's when experts Use specific examples from the past Problems arise in explaining the actions of people today.
We've never been here before
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens forged Thompson as a personality from a Horatio Alger novel: a working class hero who pulled himself up by his boot straps. Sociologist Zeynip Tufekci, who also writes within the New York Times, comes close to make Luigi Mangione a reincarnation from Alexander Berkmanthe anarchist who tried to murder Industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Over on the New Yorker, Dhruv Khullar suggests This was, in its arbitrariness and callousness, the prototype of the US health care system that angered Mangione in his manifestooriginated somewhere within the Golden Age.
Today's historians and journalists obviously imagine that the past has much to show their fellow residents. And their motives are sound: They need to beat back against the concept that the past is irrelevant, that every part necessary happened within the last quarter-hour — a view reflected in President-elect Donald Trump's favorite phrase to explain any current crisis to explain plagues the United States: “We've never seen anything like this before.”
Therefore, comparisons between two time periods can function a brake on hasty claims that every part has modified and that the present moment is unprecedented. But in my view, concrete comparisons are sometimes a categorical mistake. They replace the beliefs and judgments of individuals of the past with modern ones.
Immediately after the murder Tufekci wrote this “The currents we see are expressions of something more fundamental. We've been here before. And it wasn’t pretty.”
Wait, decelerate: “We” have never been here before. The biggest, most evident—and virtually all the time ignored—difference between the Golden Age and our time is that we didn't live in it. None of us lived within the late Nineteenth century. The individuals who lived back then didn't think like us and didn't act like us. Finding structural similarities doesn’t make writers Nostradamus, in a position to recognize the signs and predict the longer term.
It is all too easy to make use of the past as a tool to learn lessons from modern beliefs or ideologies. Without knowing much about Thompson or Mangione – let alone anarchists or Horatio Alger heroes – Mangione becomes the Nineteenth-century equivalent of a working-class avenger, while Thompson is a modern-day “Ragged tail“He got to his position through bravery and exertions.
Most popular and political appeals to history aren’t only superficial, also they are quite ahistorical. Nowhere is that this more evident than in court.
Jonathan Gienapp's latest and sensible book: “Against constitutional originalism“” exposes what he describes because the sloppiness, ahistoricism, and anachronism of conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court, who often justify their decisions by invoking the intentions of the nation's founding fathers. According to Gienapp, their important sin is easy: they’re ventriloquists who put their modern ideas into the founders' mouths and claim that they’ve regained the unique meaning.
Emerge from the mire
This ahistorical considering runs across your complete political spectrum. It comes from asking the flawed questions and considering that structural similarities result in roughly equivalent results.
The two periods have more in common as rising inequality and massive technological changes. There have been attacks on racism and resurgent racism; mass immigration and backlash against it; frequent fluctuations in party control; economic booms and busts; an absence of daring leadership; failures in governance; and outbreaks of violence.
Both eras also experienced Shortening lifespans, environmental degradation that has affected health, and the efforts of the rich to insulate themselves from the illnesses of the less fortunate.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
But often missed is the proven fact that the Golden Age faced these problems; it was also, paradoxically, a time of reform. From the tip of the Nineteenth century, life expectancy increased, child mortality fell, epidemics declined, and public health achieved remarkable results.
Now this trend has been reversed. Death and illness are at the guts of the murder of Brian Thompson, who was on his technique to a gathering with investors looking for to take advantage of an organization whose calculated decisions condemned some people to suffer for the advantage of others.
Useful questions might include: How did the Golden Age escape its crises? And why have solutions that looked as if it would have progressively improved the health and well-being of most individuals over generations stopped working? How did UnitedHealthcare, the individuals who profit from it, and people willing to speculate in it come about?
There's a story there.
image credit : theconversation.com