Time & Perspective Quote by Robert Scheer

Scheer’s line works like a mild confession wrapped in an accusation: if even a veteran journalist teaching at a major university sees the same blind spot, the problem isn’t one quirky syllabus. It’s structural. By anchoring the claim in “anyone who teaches,” he’s not just reporting an observation; he’s asserting consensus and daring colleagues to contradict him. The authority here isn’t a stack of studies, it’s the everyday evidence of the classroom, the moment a discussion collapses because students don’t have the timeline to hold it up.

The subtext is sharper than the phrasing. “Obvious” signals frustration with institutions that behave as if ignorance is a neutral condition rather than an outcome produced by curricular choices, standardized testing incentives, and political skittishness about “recent” history. “Modern presidency” is doing double duty: it’s a topic area, and it’s a proxy for power literacy. If students can’t place the last few administrations in context, they can’t meaningfully parse war authorizations, surveillance expansions, deregulation cycles, or the way executive power quietly grows between election nights.

Context matters: Scheer comes out of a long tradition of adversarial American journalism, suspicious of official narratives and allergic to amnesia. The line reads like a warning about civic vulnerability. A public that doesn’t know recent history is easier to manage, easier to polarize, and easier to sell recycled myths to. The sting is that this isn’t an abstract media critique; it’s happening in the classroom, in real time, at USC.