A Quick Introduction to History
Time + History Neither Stops Nor Starts.
In many ways, history is comprised of – and compromised by – the stories we employ to inform us about our historical legends and our verifiable histories.
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Sometimes “legends” and “verifiable histories” are essentially indistinguishable from one another.
However, this is rarely true.
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When thinking of history as stories, a few things should be kept in mind.
- Fundamentally, “history” means somebody, somewhere, for a legitimate historical purpose, wrote “a story about something” deemed worthy of the “history books”; then, over time, other people – historians, presidents, dictators, military leaders, religious leaders, and the occasional random stranger – looked it over, reviewed the content, edited the stories, and thus left their mark on recorded history.
- Over that time, historians + public opinion typically arrive at uneasy & uncertain agreements & disagreements about the truth of a historical “story about something”,
- Historians should be understood to be professionals, just as Doctors and Attorneys are professionals. Being a professional doesn’t mean one is always correct; however, being a professional – in any discipline – lends authority, credibility, scholarship & training, and
- For anyone who believes “so-called professional historians” can be disregarded, we suggest you have your cancerous thyroid tumor removed by a veterinary assistant.
The problem with people misunderstanding history is that people will believe all sorts of nonsense, such as:
How the American West Was Won.
Over time, much of what is known about history becomes lost due to, for instance, the emotional appeal of a “legend” steeped in patriotism obscuring fact-based history.
Then there comes a time when events of historical significance are either irrevocably lost or becomes buried in archives which may or may not ever see the light of day.
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We expect this quote:
“11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”
Is meaningless to almost everyone reading this.
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Quite frequently, history is argued, debated and disputed with the ferocity we employ when discussing current events and/or oppo podcasts and/or drill-baby-drill and/or crazy critters & adorable kittens and/or how John Wayne tamed the “Wild West” and/or Charles Darwin was mistaken.
Our ‘current history of stories’ (otherwise known as “current events”) is being written by folks and AI in many formats of print & electronic media.
History-History has, historically, been written by historians to preserve our knowledge of the past.
‘Future history’ will someday be written by people or AI, some of whom will be trained historians with access to the same headlines, and the same print & electronic media currently available to you.
At some point or another, the history of any given “something” you either witness and/or know something about either will or won’t be enshrined into what we affectionately call the ‘history books’.
In case you’ve been wondering + rest assured, trump 2.0 is destined for a meaningful place in the “history books”; the only real question, in that regard, is this:
- Will Trump be reviled as a villain or will he earn facetime on U.S. folding money?
The ‘future folks’ will enjoy the advantage of seeing more than any one individual alive today can witness; however, the ‘future folks’ will always be hampered by vast amounts of relevant information which we colloquially refer to as:
Lost to History
Sometimes it’s very difficult to figure out who the “winners” are.
To that I will simply offer 3 links and a brief note:
Only the glorified version of the Custer History was included in U.S. textbooks prior to 1980.
The other 2 links found their way into the “history books” over the course of the past 50+ years; however, as they are now considered to be DEI relics, we anticipate they will be systematically erased from U.S. History.
We realize some of you may have never heard of Lt Col George Armstrong Custer or perhaps know nothing more than he has a “Last Stand” tied to his name.
Bottom line: He was – and is – a fascinating character with controversies worthy of many enduring pages – in our American & United States history.
"How the West Was Won"
To the left is the MAGA version of Hollywood History;
To the right is the Revisionist History
NOTE 1: The revisionist version is, by Hollywood standards, a remarkably accurate portrayal of the massacre, based almost entirely on the writings of Lt Col George Armstrong Custer.
Per the written accounts of the Washita Massacre, the battlefield was much more gruesome than is presented in the scene from “Little Big Man”
History, in its purest form, is very much like very, very, very, very, very slow social media.
Ghosting is common.
We’re glad you’re down here at the bottom of a long page… with lots of words… the thing is, this is about history and history is long.
For the most part, all history has are words – sometimes too many; sometimes too few; sometimes the words are reduced to little more than the names, dates, and places… along with a guesstimate about what the “something” is that happened – which may or may be accompanied by pictures and/or drawings.
Now we have movies… like
“The Revisionaries”
To remind us that we never really know who f**ked with history.
