Our history will be what we make of it

Our history will be what we make of it
And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now
And there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks
They will there find recorded in black and white and in colour
Evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent
We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information, our mass media reflect this
But unless we get up off our fat surpluses
And recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us
And history will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in catching up with us

It may be that he human race is doomed never to learn from its mistakes
We are the only animal on this globe who periodically set out to slaughter each other
For the best, the noblest, the most inescapable of reasons
We know better but we do it again and again, in generation after generation
It may be that our empire too is doomed like all those that have gone before it
To continue to spill and waste its best blood on foreign soil
No matter what we say or do in its place, or think, or believe, or have learned from history
But, thank God for us.