Dear future historian: a letter of apology

Day 12 of The Presidency

Dear Future Historian,

I suspect you will be reading this piece in the late 2090s after all the other historians have exhausted the rest of the primary sources pertaining to this era. So in a desperate attempt to get published you are going through this “unexplored gap” in the historical literature.

But all you are left with going through is the archives of Michael Bloomberg University (formally known as Johns Hopkins) and found some student newspapers stored on K-Level of the library.

The fact that you are even reading this is rather heartening. It means that artificial intelligence has not enslaved human civilization, that no meteor wiped us out like the dinosaurs and that most surprisingly, being a historian is still a viable profession.

And to answer the question that you came here to investigate, “Yes, we’re sorry for screwing everything up.”

Originally I did not want to apologize. As the American songwriter, pianist and six-time Grammy winner, Billy Joel said, “We didn’t start the fire.” Systemic institutional racism? Not our fault, that was a legacy of slavery built by dead white people. Soul-sucking, dehumanizing meritocratic values that neglect the unrewarded efforts of everyday workers? Nope, wasn’t us, that was from the fetishization of capitalism by economic policymakers of the past.

But today we are in a situation that is so uniquely bad that we cannot pass on the blame to our forbearers. And this is not to dismiss our past trials of the recession of 2008 or going through 9/11. Today the existential threat to our environment, our values, our people is more palpable than it has been in my lifetime. So yeah, this is our bad. Sorry.

We knew there were going to be horrific consequences for our actions (or lack thereof). We have squandered a good portion of our time tagging each other in memes on Facebook and bouncing around our coastal liberal elitist bubbles. And now we are left with all of... this.

We’re sorry that there is this weird remnant of a half-built wall in the middle of the desert down south. We’re sorry that there was this ridiculous Twitter account that dictated governmental policy for a while. We are sorry for earning the ire, scorn and pity of the rest of the world.

We’re sorry to the generations of humans fleeing violence and terror who were denied the opportunity to experience peace and hope. We’re sorry that we didn’t listen to the people who understandably demanded that their lives mattered when institutions shrouded their plight. We’re sorry that we let individuals get lost in the mazes and loops and the bureaucracy of poverty while what little wealth they had trickled out to the feet of the rich.

We’re sorry that the global average temperature will be four degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial revolution levels and we’re sorry to the freshmen living in AMR I and II who will still not have air conditioning. We’re sorry about New York City being swallowed by the ocean. And for Shanghai. And Bangkok. And the entire country of Bangladesh.

We’re sorry about the 40 hurricanes you’ll have in one year. We’re sorry about the strains of super antibiotic-resistant diseases. We’re sorry that you guys don’t have polar bears or coral reefs. They were pretty cool while they lasted.

And in all kidding aside, thank you, future historian, for doing this work. Maybe you will be able to inform society about our own failures and shortcomings so that maybe, just maybe, in the future, things will be better.

And to the people reading this today, please do something. If you have already done something, continue doing things. Call and petition your local government officials. Protest when your rights or the rights of others are taken away. Demand that facts, whether they are scientific or historical, are taken as what they are deemed to be: facts.

Make a movement of such significance that this letter will be cast aside as irrelevant by future historians.

Sincerely,

An irrelevant historian