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Welcome Back to US History, 2025 Edition
Here's a couple of pop culture references to explain why it's a good idea to dig into US history with some intention.
Shawn Hudson
August 10, 2025
My college dormrats and I basically spoke another language. We used English words, but in that obnoxious, impenetrable way that small groups sometimes do. In hindsight, I’m sure it was more than a little annoying, and I am absolutely sure it would be annoying as fuck if any of us tried to talk that way today.
We spoke in Kevin Smith, occasionally interrupted by Trainspotting and Star Wars. Yes, if you stared at dormrats and wondered what the actual that was, it’s a reference to Smith’s second movie, Mallrats.
So, let’s drop in on some recent pop culture speeches and songs to set a tone for studying US history this year, in the current context. There's been a TV show and a movie that I think really speak to me as a history teacher in 2025: the obvious one is Andor, the second season of a show about the rise of the rebellion in Star Wars; the obvious-not-obvious one is K-Pop Demon Hunters, a movie about… A K-Pop girl group who fight demons and protect their world by song.
Look, this is going to make sense, I swear.
I have a much longer read on Andor that I wrote to end the school year (A Letter to my APUSH Students), but Mon Mothma's season two speech in front of the Galactic Senate (YouTube) still stands here:
The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.
The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away… we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monsters scream the loudest.
This has to be at the forefront of any history teacher’s mind right now. The US government is bringing back tributes and memorials to Confederate leaders, the literal people who tried to break the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that the social-cultural package of the antebellum South is explicitly finding more and more support among some Americans in 2025, one-hundred-sixty years after the defeat of the Confederacy. Executive orders to re-write the 14th amendment, passed during Reconstruction after the Civil War in order to protect citizenship rights and give the federal government the power to enforce those rights, something the Constitution never got around to actually defining.
Gentlemen admit the force of the provisions in the bill of rights, that the citizens of the United States shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States in the several states, and that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; but they say, “We are opposed to its enforcement by act of Congress under an amended Constitution, as proposed.” That is the sum and substance of all the argument we have heard on this subject. Why are gentlemen opposed to the enforcement of the bill of rights, as proposed? Because they aver it would interfere with the reserved rights of the States!
Ah! Say gentlemen who oppose this amendment, we are not opposed to equal rights; we are not opposed to the bill of rights that all shall be protected alike in life, liberty, and property we are only opposed to enforcing it by national authority, even by consent of the loyal people of all the States. . . .
The question is, simply, whether you will give by this amendment to the people of the United States, the power, by legislative enactment, to punish officials of States for violation of the oaths enjoined upon them by their Constitution? That is the question, and the whole question. The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights that belong to the States. They elect their Legislatures; they enact their laws for the punishment of crimes against life, liberty, or property but in the event of the adoption of this amendment, if they conspire together to enact laws refusing equal protection to life, liberty, or property, the Congress is thereby vested with the power to hold them to answer before the bar of the national courts for the violation of their oaths and of the rights of their fellow men. Why should it not be so? Is the bill of rights to stand in our Constitution hereafter, as in the past five years within eleven states, a mere dead letter?
In trying to overturn the clear, plain text principal of birthright citizenship, we are seeing history re-written in the most obvious way. We have more than enough texts to show what was intended by these amendments. Is it any surprise that the party that espouses “states’ rights” is also calling for women to be excluded from the military and voting? Its adoption of a history and narrative that wants to “restore” a memory of people whose supposed heroism was in the service of breaking apart the United States?
The gap is becoming an abyss. History education that asks critical questions and examines the motivations, truths, and actual impact of people’s actions is more necessary than ever. Reading Barry Goldwater saying that of course desegregated schools are better for kids but he doesn’t believe the federal government can tell states what to do is… Exactly like what Bingham is arguing against while defending the 14th amendment.
And then you get the hypocrisy of how the current federal executive is behaving in order to enforce its agenda. This time, I will turn to Nemik’s Manifest (YouTube) from season one of Andor:
And remember this:
The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural.
Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks.
Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.
This is the reason why you get the states’ rights or less federal power hypocrisy — the current federal executive’s “need for control” means that they have to constantly fuck around with any and every bit of opposition or kind of institution that would stand against their antebellum comeback project. You can’t have colleges teaching anything or supporting any student that doesn’t fit their agenda. Public schools must have permission to teach kids how to regulate or listen to their own emotions, because kids’ emotions have a notoriously anti-tyranny streak. Behind it all is their fear — fear of not holding the majority power, of sharing it with people who don’t look like or believe like them, their fear of progress that would undermine the power that they’ve always represented. Why have we never gotten over the Cold War? Because if you cut off any and every discussion of socialism or communism, you also cut off any discussion about real popular power, rather than the performative stuff that happens when you give the gilded toilet guy the keys to run things. All that produces is hate and a permission structure to oppress “the other.” This does not empower “the people,” it just divides us in a way that should be described as “unnatural.”
And then there’s K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Look, if you haven’t seen this movie on Netflix, you probably think the premise sounds insane, and not like something that a middle aged dad would be pushing his 1st grade daughter toward in the summer of 2025. But if you like moments like the portals from Endgame, or take your pick of goosebump-inducing moments from modern media, then you have to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters. Also, the songs in the movie are bangers. Except the Saja Boys stuff. THEY’RE THE BAD GUYS WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO SODA POP AGAIN???
Sorry. That fucking song.
So three moments, lyrics, or conversations that sum up why I think this movie has anything to do with teaching US history what are you on Hudson?
First up: Free (YouTube / Spotify), the duet between enemies turned… almost lovers song. It goes like this:
What if we both tried fighting what we’re running from?
We can’t fix it if we never face it
What if find a way to escape it?
We could be free, freeEeeEEEee
And like, what else could be a more perfect way to summarize the problem with our popular narratives and oversimplified views on US history? The pushback against really dealing with the limitations of our Constitution, our unwillingness to come to terms with our history of slavery, and our refusal to accept that the Founding Fathers were anything other than what WARREN FUCKING HARDING called his “belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers” in NINETEEN GODDAMN TWENTY-ONE Y’ALL.
Sorry, Harding is a piece of shit, and if he’s the one who deified the “founding fathers” then that really, really, really should be taken into consideration.
We can’t fix it if we never face it.
Second, in the lowest point of the movie, the part that really had my daughter running to her bedroom to hide before coming back for the big finale, lead singer Rumi eviscerates her godmother’s attempts to hide Rumi’s actual half-demon heritage this way:
Celine (the godmother/band’s spiritual leader): Everything I was taught told me you were wrong, but I made a promise. So I did my best to accept you and help you.
Rumi (the half-demon lead singer who has just been publicly exposed in an Olivia Rodrigo Take Him Back level of lyrical double meaning): Accept me? You told me to cover up, to hide.
Celine: Yes, until we can fix everything. And we still can. We can cover those up and put everything right again… (excuses and rationalizations and a terrible plan ensue)
Rumi: No. No more hiding. No more lies!
Celine: Rumi, we can still fix this.
Rumi: Don’t you get it? This is what I am. Look at me. Why can’t you look at me?! Why couldn’t you love me?!
Celine: I do!
Rumi: ALL OF ME! (the magical protection against demons pulses and weakens)
Celine: This is why we have to hide it. Our faults and fears must never be seen. It’s the only way to protect the Honmoon. (the magical protection that is, uh, not really doing well at that moment)
Rumi (picks up her mystical sword): If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.
Ugh man that pushes like, every one of my history teacher buttons. The state has always weaponized history and historians to support their version of events, the ones that legitimize them. Divine right of kings? Oh sure, that has SO MUCH primary source support from Jesus, absolutely, yup. We were the absolute good guys during the Cold War! We would never overthrow democratically elected leaders and install dictators! WE’RE THE GOOD GUYS Y’ALL.
And then, in the big finale, we get probably my favorite song, and a real statement of intent from Rumi:
Gwi Ma (ultimate bad guy leading the demons and stealing souls n stuff): You come here like this? You think you can fix the world? You can’t even fix yourself.
Rumi (looking prrretty rough at this point): I can’t.
Gwi Ma: And now everyone finally sees you for what you really are.
Rumi: They do.
Gwi Ma: And the Honmoon is gone.
Rumi: It is.
[dramatic pause]
Rumi: So we can make a new one.
Cue the big finale song, What it Sounds Like (YouTube / Spotify). I’ll just point out the chorus here, because I think it speaks for 2025 and teaching US history and where things may, or should, be heading:
I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it
My head was twisted, my heart divided
My lies all collided
I don’t know why I didn’t trust you to be on my side
I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back
But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass
The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony
My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like
It’s not exactly how I might word it, but it is pretty fucking spot on. So many attempts at reforming things in the United States refused to engage with the actual fact of what this country was at its founding: an oligarchy that bent over backwards to protect the interests of a slave owning upper class who constantly threatened to leave if they didn’t get their way. Then the slave owners were replaced by industrial capital that literally could have given a shit about the immigrant and lower class labor that produced their wealth. We had an almost moment in the mid 20th century when multiple civil rights movements tried to push our constitution into living up to the promises of “We the People” or the inalienable rights stuff being for everyone. What came next? States’ rights. Tax cuts for the rich. Destruction of union power. Take your pick, we’re living in the most concerted effort possible to lie and minimize the faults of this country under the banner of “patriotic education.” And what has it actually produced? The destruction of our Constitution and system of checks and balances. A post-Reconstruction level of reversing anything that looks like progress in people’s rights. A cruelly nativist assault against immigrants.
A million pieces. And anyone suggesting that we can just go back and it will be “the good old days” again?
Sorry, I just can’t see any evidence to support that wishful thinking. Instead, let’s go out on the next bit of What it Sounds Like:
We’re shattering the silence, we’re rising, defiant
Shouting in the quiet, “You’re not alone”
We listened to the demons, we let them get between us
But none of us are out here on our own.
So we were cowards, so we were liars
So we’re not heroes, we’re still survivors
The dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I’m tired
But dive in the fire, and I’ll be right here by your side.