Let’s Clean the Window

My third wish for a society that examines history fairly and in context.

History. Personally, I’ve always liked it. In fourth grade Pat Walmsly and I used to compete to see who could write the longest, most complete answers to the questions at the end of the chapters. In fifth grade he and I were supposed to debate about Watergate as that history was playing out in real time, but since we were in fifth grade, we couldn’t quite get a handle on exactly what was happening. Every year we were taught the same lesson about Christopher Columbus “discovering” the “new world,” and, though we became weary of covering the same periods in U.S. history, we never questioned it. For years we would memorize historical data up to the U.S. Civil War and then the school year would end. Finally my sophomore year in high school, Mr. Stoner got to start somewhere around reconstruction and continue on through U.S. history. He loved to talk about the dirt and was a very engaging history teacher. He allowed himself to be excited about it. I was fifteen years old and had little perspective to help me understand the importance historical events had and their relevance to my contemporary time line. Mr. Stoner’s perspective was more objective than the others I’d been taught up to that time, and it helped me catch a glimpse of how the stories we read about past events might look different to different people. His was the last formal history class I ever took. But I still liked history.

As I grew older and my world expanded beyond what I learned about my own country from textbooks, the glass in the window through which I viewed history started to change. School had given me a clear glass window with no imperfections other than a few bubbles due to some of Mr. Stoner’s stories of scandals (e.g., Teapot Dome). Observing history being made, however, for example living through Regan’s Iran-Contra years and Bork’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings as they occurred, added ripples of distortions to the glass. I could see that history didn’t transpire in clear-cut, indisputable events. People watched the same historical events and reported them in completely different ways. If people who watched history being made in real time couldn’t agree, what hope is there of uncovering the truth that lies beneath the grimy built-up crust on my window to times gone by?

I don’t think we can ever be sure of the absolute truth about events. History is messy. We have to accept that and keep it in mind whenever we look at history. (Do I need to talk about why we even look at history? It’s how we inform ourselves so that we build a better future.) Accepting it doesn’t mean that we gloss over it—quite the opposite. It means that every time we look at a historical event, whether it happened last century or yesterday, we have to examine it from many angles to see all its facets.

Take that history lesson we all had to learn five years in a row about Christopher Columbus discovering the new world. I accepted that when I was nine. Later I had to accept that from the Native American point of view, Columbus didn’t discover any new world. Europeans were invaders. I may love my country, but I have had to admit that our founders’ fight for liberty came at a very high price of repression and slaughter of the Native American people. And those founders who we like to think of as being great crusaders for liberty condoned slavery and many owned slaves. They were great thinkers and successfully formed a strong nation—a very rare deed. But they were not saints, though some texts I had as a child liked to paint them as such.

Here’s why this matters to me so much right now. As I’ve mentioned, something that happened yesterday is history today. It seems to me that even though we live in a technological age that makes it ridiculously easy to verify information, our window onto recent events is more dirty than ever before. You should know about me: I’m somewhat of a skeptic. I don’t rely on a small number of sources to inform me about issues I care about. I get some of my news from more mainstream media, but less often, because it does not frequently report on or delve deeply into issues that I think are most important. I don’t usually repost Facebook memes unless I take the time to verify what they say. I call myself a progressive, but if you look at the podcasts I have on my phone, along with podcasts such as The Best of the Left and Moyers and Company are Armed America Radio and Alex Jones’s show. Originally I added them to my podcast lineup because I wanted to understand their points of view. But often their content is not fact based and they are interested in generating a culture of irrational fear. They use their airtime to create a demand for the products sold by their advertising sponsors. Armed America Radio’s advertisers are gun manufacturers (excuse me, “firearm manufacturers” because that word is better because…why? I don’t know but that’s the nomenclature used in the broadcast.), firearm accessory manufacturers and distributors, firearm classes, etc. The advertisers are also given airtime to “discuss second amendment issues.” Alex Jones has sponsors who benefit from the fear he works overtime to instill, like the EFoods Direct company that sells food for the survivalists in our country who are stockpiling food and arms and silver and gold for the disaster that is coming: drought, flood, famine, nuclear disaster, Obama’s youth army or the UN forces, whichever comes first. I still tune in every once in a while to hear what they are saying, but not with hope of gleaning any truth.

I do investigate stories that are important so that I can be sure that I’m not just hearing what I want to hear, but I often have to dismiss them because they are (choose as many as apply):

• Factually incorrect: They state something as a fact that is either untrue or is actually an opinion that can’t be substantiated.
• Contextually flawed: They “cherry pick” a quote so that the intent of the speaker or writer is perverted.
• Drawn from unreliable sources: To support their position, they refer to research or sources that are not qualified to be an authority on the subject or who are not objective because they stand to gain monetarily from their position. I can often be heard crying, “Follow the money!”

I’m not going to do the rhetorically obvious here and follow up with examples of each of these offenses. You have found or can find them for yourselves. Some good topics to start with include global warming, vaccinations, abortion and conception, Regan’s legacy, and “you didn’t build that.”

When I was visiting England this past fall, I read (most of) Allison Weir’s The Princes in the Tower, which tackles the subject of the fate of Richard III’s shady ascension to the throne amid the mysterious disappearance of the child heir apparent, Edward V. I really appreciated that she devoted the entire first chapter to explaining the sources upon which she would base her book. She explained who each person was, the person’s relationship to the action, the geographical locations of each person, what their possible interests were in the doings of the court and so on. It is a great example of laying out the reliability of sources and it added invaluable context to her historical account of events that took place in the late fifteenth century, which she states plainly, is a “poorly documented period of English history.”

We don’t live in the fifteenth century. We can verify our sources and our facts. It’s never been easier to verify recent events. And yet, it seems obvious that very few people do that. It seems that more false information than ever abounds out there in the “Internets.” It catches all information in its nets regardless of the veracity. You can “verify” any point of view you choose, so you need to be willing to dig just a little and think critically about your sources. And you may need to dig beyond Wikipedia, a digitally myopic source that only can accept digitally accessible citations.

But please, ask yourself some questions when you read or listen to the news or watch documentaries: Is this inaccurate or slanted for some reason? Did he really say that? Where does that raw data come from? Who is funding that research? Who stands to gain from this?

I contend that we don’t live in much of a democracy—at least not any more. It’s a combination of an oligarchy and plutocracy. Jefferson said, “Whenever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government.” If we no longer have our government entrusted to us, do we have ourselves to blame? Well, I feel cheated. I work at staying informed and yet my democracy is hobbled to the point of uselessness. We don’t all need to spend hours sorting the truth from the lies, but I can only conclude that a large part of our population spends plenty of time listening to information from limited sources that are not reliable. We can disagree on the reasons that our people are not well-informed and what can be done to rectify that situation. But I think we are viewing recent history through a window so flawed that it’s nearly opaque. While it may be more colorful, it does not serve us in seeing our path.