Several times this week I have seen American philosopher George Santayana quoted. He famously said in 1905 that those “who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Nice and catchy but what does it actually mean?

History does not repeat itself. Arguably, to quote Mark Twain to whom the saying is attributed, “it often rhymes.” In the civil-military relationship, we are seeing an echo of a period when senior decisionmakers had no concept of the so-called Law of Unintended Consequences. Behaving like a mafia don when talking to allies does not engender their trust. Who knew? The American electorate has never really been strategically aware, and foreign policy has always been ignored by the public or simply considered unimportant relative to the Super Bowl or the Daytona 500. That was fair, considering the track record of Secretaries of State, who were usually highly skilled and understood geo-political strategic concepts. But what happens when you put F Troop in the cabinet? We will have to wait and see but my strong suspicion is that even MAGA members will be surprised at what the downstream effects will be.

To quote another famous American philosopher (Forrest Gump): “Mama says, stupid is as stupid does.”

America is arguably the Western world’s most ahistorical society. This is not to say that Americans do not like history. They do. The problem lies in where they get their historical data. Having taught at one of America’s oldest small universities for a decade, the grad students I taught demonstrated a shocking ignorance of world history (Really? Canada has paved roads?) and even when it came to American history, they were either ignorant of the facts or ill-informed. Most could tell me chapter and verse on the history of the Superbowl or why it was so important to follow Britney Spears on Twitter but explaining how Texas joined the Union? Why was the Dredd Scott decision so important? Nope.

With this situation only having grown more acute in the decade since I stopped teaching, I should not be surprised to discover that American voters STRONGLY believe that most US oil imports come from the Middle East. (Spoiler: they come OVERWHELMINGLY from Alberta — and we sell our oil to our once-reliable friend at a discount.)

What to do? The US electorate, in spite of my badmouthing them, are not stupid. They believed the lies that the MAGA crowd told them and sooner or later they will understand that the two men (plus one non-elected IDIOT) they gave the keys to drive the national economy behave like a cross between misogynistic bullyboys and drunken frat bros. When the consequences of their stupidity hit rural precincts, there will be a reckoning. We can only hope that it happens before Nov 3, 2026.