Anything I say is just propaganda from the right. Anything you say is clear wisdom unsullied by partisan straitjacket. Riiight.
Straw man. I never said any such thing.
I did indicate that the "knife in the back theory" is a standard excuse for government failure. Conservatives in the sorta-free world use it to explain failed wars; leftists use it to explain the failure of their social programs. The USSR always used it to explain all their failures, and whenever a shortage or a surplus was created in their command economy, someone was sure to "confess" to deviating from the plan, and be duly executed for his "sabotage." This observation is light-years away from suggesting that you are wrong on every issue, or that everything you say is propaganda.
Indeed, I said the opposite: I said that "liberals" are actually right when they decide that slaughtering a bunch of turbaned folks who never belonged to a terrorist organization in the first place is immoral. They're right when they say it's immoral to suspend habeas corpus and the protections ofr the fourth and fifth amendments in the name of "security." And on the other hand, conservatives are right when they say it's immoral to steal, even if you're "stealing from the rich to give to the poor." It's immoral to intrude into and seize control of people's lives in the name of "helping" them. And so on.
It would be much more accurate to say that I've called both sides "half right." The left is usually wrong on welfare, and the right is usually wrong on warfare.
The writers themselves, being way too close to the events they document, are usually motivated by the agenda of either the left or the right, and write accordingly. The vast majority of all works on recent history are, as a result, little more than the distilled propaganda of the ruling parties.
Ah, yes. Everyone else is blinded. You are above the fray.
More straw men. Yawn.
Everyone is selling something. Call it advertising, propaganda, or whatever you will, but a balanced report of the objective facts is a rare animal. You know it too, though you probably call it things like "liberal media bias." The media IS biased leftward--but the administration, which knows that, does a good job of controlling what they find out about things like wars. Advertisers and other special interests are also in the fray, just to keep the fog nice and thick.
The facts are out there, and plenty of people--but far too few--are able to consider them slightly objectively.
A good example is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most Americans, including myself until recently, swallow without question the comforting myth that nuking Japan was an act of God-like
mercy by Truman: those stupid yellow devils were going to resist until the last man fell with his sword in his hand; and then the women and children would
keep resisting. We "saved a million lives" by nuking them so they'd get it through their primitive minds that their cause was completely hopeless. Yay us!
Some believe that they were nuked because racist Americans didn't value the lives of little yellow devils--and that's why we nuked Japan and didn't nuke Germany. Germans were white like us. Considering the flap at the Smithsonian Institution over the
Enola Gay exhibit, I'd speculate that this is the largest minority viewpoint in the US. It's even more stupid than the generally-accepted truth above.
Plenty of people are aware of the real facts: Japan was desperate to surrender, and had made overtures to the US. Their only concern was that they didn't want Hirohito deposed or harmed, since they revered him as a deity. Truman's policy of "unconditional surrender" made them hesitate, even though in the end Hirohito
wasn't deposed. When the enemy is begging for a chance to surrender, with such minimal terms, it's clearly nonsense that they're planning to resist until the last toddler is slaughtered. Truman's generals were more or less unanimous that it was wrong and immoral to nuke Japan, and the "saved a million lives" rationale didn't come on the scene until later. Most people speculate, and it's probably the correct explanation, that the bombings were intended to be a warning to Stalin that the US was not to be trifled with. Other factors, such as the desire to try out his new toy, or to play God, may or may not have been present--it's tough to psychoanalyze a man after he's dead.
So I make no special claim of enlightenment, and certainly no
blanket claim. I merely point out that "history is written by the winners," that governments are heavily into the propaganda business, and that other powerful interests with agendas are involved as well. The facts are usually there under all the muck, somewhere, and plenty of folks eventually become aware of them, but it takes a while. Popular myths can overwhelm the truth for years or even centuries.
You are correct that once history becomes remote enough, it too becomes mythologized. King Arthur was probably a historical figure, as was probably Robin Hood, but the true facts concerning either are buried under a mountain of legend. Ancient history is an extremely dicey business, and a fair bit of what we "know" about it is probably wrong. Huge swaths of history fall into doubt if Herodotus happened to be an embellisher, for example.
--Len.
