Jon Wiener’s How We Forgot the Cold War is an engaging tour of American monuments dedicated to the failed remembrance of the Cold War. Through a five-part study guiding the reader through different eras of remembrance, Wiener gives detailed accounts of monuments, memorials, and museums dedicated to the official memory of the Cold War. Conservative thought dominated for much of the book. Through the decades, conservative politicians fought to disseminate their belief of the conflict as a triumph of good over evil and the equation of the defeat of totalitarianism with the defeat of fascism in World War II. Wiener’s travels on the surface are simply a road trip through time and space visiting different sites which remember the conflict in varying
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The main tenet of the conservative argument concerning the Cold War is “that it represented a struggle between good and evil” (295). This has roots in the victory of the “good” Allies against the “evil” Axis power in World War II. The victory of democracy over fascism has been equated to the (almost) victory of democracy over totalitarianism. Wiener argues that the very heart of their argument is the place where most Americans have the largest amount of skepticism. The conservatives attempted to equate totalitarianism with communism and failed following the disgrace of the McCarthy era. The public became more likely to view the war on American communists as antithetical to democracy. The question of memory and the Cold War is due to the inconsistency of ideology portrayed to the American public. The lack of support for the monuments led to a general decay in emotional attachment except in the single moment they could muster a personal attachment to the conflict itself. This personal attachment can only be found at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (296). This memorial does not claim to be the triumph of good over evil but simply mourns the loss of American lives in the …show more content…
The disdain Wiener feels is evident through the documented tours he guides the reader through over the course of the book. This small criticism does not overshadow the importance of his study on American memory though especially as he grounds the work in the scholarship of several well-known historians in the field. He specifically mentions David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country and the ways in which the uses of memory are perhaps more important than the memories themselves. The connection one feels to the past ensures the survival of memory, and, in the case of the Cold War, ensures the failure of memory. Similarly, David Rieff’s In Praise of Forgetting also asks difficult questions about the failures of memory and morality of memory. Rieff argues that collective memory can be incredibly toxic and sometimes it is best to forget. The example utilized by Rieff is the “fading of the memory of the lover who broke one’s heart” is applicable to the discussion of the Cold War (55). The failure of the conservatives to portray the conflict as good versus evil is at the heart of the failure of American remembrance. In a country of false memorializing and appropriation of moral memory—like the Holocaust—it is a forgone conclusion that the Cold War would fade from memory. The Cold War had no real, tangible victors and as such faded, and is
The main tenet of the conservative argument concerning the Cold War is “that it represented a struggle between good and evil” (295). This has roots in the victory of the “good” Allies against the “evil” Axis power in World War II. The victory of democracy over fascism has been equated to the (almost) victory of democracy over totalitarianism. Wiener argues that the very heart of their argument is the place where most Americans have the largest amount of skepticism. The conservatives attempted to equate totalitarianism with communism and failed following the disgrace of the McCarthy era. The public became more likely to view the war on American communists as antithetical to democracy. The question of memory and the Cold War is due to the inconsistency of ideology portrayed to the American public. The lack of support for the monuments led to a general decay in emotional attachment except in the single moment they could muster a personal attachment to the conflict itself. This personal attachment can only be found at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (296). This memorial does not claim to be the triumph of good over evil but simply mourns the loss of American lives in the …show more content…
The disdain Wiener feels is evident through the documented tours he guides the reader through over the course of the book. This small criticism does not overshadow the importance of his study on American memory though especially as he grounds the work in the scholarship of several well-known historians in the field. He specifically mentions David Lowenthal’s The Past is a Foreign Country and the ways in which the uses of memory are perhaps more important than the memories themselves. The connection one feels to the past ensures the survival of memory, and, in the case of the Cold War, ensures the failure of memory. Similarly, David Rieff’s In Praise of Forgetting also asks difficult questions about the failures of memory and morality of memory. Rieff argues that collective memory can be incredibly toxic and sometimes it is best to forget. The example utilized by Rieff is the “fading of the memory of the lover who broke one’s heart” is applicable to the discussion of the Cold War (55). The failure of the conservatives to portray the conflict as good versus evil is at the heart of the failure of American remembrance. In a country of false memorializing and appropriation of moral memory—like the Holocaust—it is a forgone conclusion that the Cold War would fade from memory. The Cold War had no real, tangible victors and as such faded, and is