PSA?

I was watching TV quite late at night (as I usually do). And stopped to watch a little bit of MTV (as I usually do). Then this commercial/PSA came on




And all I could think was "that was really effective."

That's all I'm going to say about the video itself, because I think it pretty much speaks for itself. However, I am interested in why it's come out now. I'm not say that there is ever a bad time for anti-hate messages, but why now specifically? I'm sure part of it is the upcoming election; MTV has their whole "vote or die" thing and probably want to galvanize people to think about issues. I always wonder about the rest of the world's view of America. Do they see us as ignorant? Hateful? Divided amongst ourselves? Are we so divided that we need to be shocked in such a way? To remind us of where fear and hatred can take you? But more importantly, for those people that are ignorant and hateful (and I'm aware there are ignorant, hateful people all over the world), is a PSA enough? Is a commercial, not matter how shocking, enough to make someone really think? To understand an event in the context of its time and still appreciate the horror of it? As a history major, my professors constantly push me and my fellow students to take an event in context, to fully understand it and in a way rationalize it. Part of the "post-1989-fall of the Berlin Wall- post-modernist" historical view. As historians, we have to ask ourselves, should we ever be able to understand something that horrific? And what makes an event "that horrific"?

"But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust."
~from Alan Bennett's History Boys