Mis-Labeling History

One thing Americans love to do is rewrite their history.  Almost every one of our beloved historical stories has an insane amount of inaccuracies, like in the story of Paul Revere.  A lot of his story, as taught to us as kids, isn't true, and the celebration of Revere has diminished the legacy of real heroes (have you read about 16 year old Sybil Ludington?  She was the real hero that night.).  Sometimes the revised stories border on entire fabrication.

For examples, think of Reagan and Al Gore.  Reagan, by 1992, four years after his term, and after the scandals he'd kept at bay had all come to light, had an approval rating in the low 40's, lower than Carter's at the time.  Even at the RNC Convention in 1992, Reagan was not greeted warmly by the crowd, his onetime magic gone.  Then after the Republicans got control of the House and Senate in 1994, a massive campaign was initiated to rehabilitate Reagan's image, establishing a new standard for all Republicans.  It helped that they had the 92 loser H.W. Bush to throw under the bus. Ninety percent of this Reagan mythos was a complete myth, but it fired up the base.  This project was an incredible success, with Republicans still today talking about the Reagan standard for all Republican nominees.  I'm not fan of Reagan, but he would've NEVER allowed Trump into the GOP.

Republicans felt Al Gore's legacy had to be destroyed for one simple reason; the Supreme Court decided the election of 2000, overturning what should've been an Al Gore victory.  Republicans desperate to validate W. immediately started a massive campaign to vilify Gore, destroying his record and mocking him relentlessly.  They had right wing owned media attack Gore, even the Republican owned sports talk networks (this was confirmed by a friend who worked at one, where he was told "you don't have to mock Gore, but the ownership would really like it if you did."  More than a few people asked, 'aren't we a sports station?').  When 9/11 happened, after numerous right wing pundits initially stated 'thank goodness Al Gore isn't President because it would've been FAR worse' (what?), the campaign to smear Gore ended, but its legacy lived on far longer than expected.  Three months ago, I heard a national sports radio host make an Al Gore joke.  Unbelievable.

In the real world, revisionism is everywhere. In January 2017, I wrote about how the family behind the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota is all about revisionism. Whether it's their anti-govenment screed (while definitively depending on the US government for support) to their flawed Western can-do gumption narrative (on a project which has taken far longer to even get even one tenth of it finished [when compared to Rushmore]. At current pace, it won't be done for AT LEAST 100 years), the owners, the Ziolkowski's, put forward a narrative they themselves are the real monument.  They wrap themselves in what seems to be the bare minimum of charitable work to cover their money making venture, trying to add a false Ziolkowski nobility to the whole project.  The Native Americans deserve that monument built and it should've been done 20 years ago.  Read about it at: Rushmore Verses Crazy Horse!

Another great example of trying to turn stupidity into something far more respectable is Harry R. Truman (no relation to the President with a similar name).  This fool ignored repeated warnings from the USGS and law enforcement, deciding to stay at his lodge even though it was in an evacuation zone.  His lodge was on a beautiful piece of property, on Spirit Lake, at the foot of Mount St. Helens.  Even though it was clear the volcano was going to explode, and even though the research implied it might be massive, Truman insisted he knew more than the ones begging him to leave.  He insisted, 'I'm one mile away from the mountain with a bunch of trees to protect me from anything too big.'  He stayed, becoming a short term media celebrity; the man who stared down the mountain.

Truman, a poster child for stupidity, died the morning of May 18th, 1980, when Mount St. Helens decided to drop an entire flank on his lodge.  You'd think people would use him as a cautionary tale.  Instead, he's a bit of a folk hero, even fondly mentioned at the official Mount St. Helen's site.  The Ranger stated "Harry wasn't going to let the mountain bully him."  I wanted a rebuttal; "yeah, he was a real tough guy.  He could've died peacefully someplace else, but he decided to go out suffocating on acidic toxic gases, while being crushed under 150 feet of lava hot rock and ash, as he burned to death with his 16 cats."  When you put it like that, he doesn't sound too smart at all.  They've never found his body.

Revisionism is out of control when it comes to the actions and deeds of Confederate soldiers.  Over the last few years, my family has visited numerous Civil War sites, many of them still well laid out and preserved.  This year we went to Fort Sumter and to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.

Fort Sumter, South Carolina, nestled in Charleston harbor, is a source of Southern pride today, but like a lot of Southern Pride, it's based on the beginning of the Civli War, not the end of it.  The importance of the historical moment should be preserved, as the South's capture of the fort was the catalyst for the war.  The southern perspective gets ludicrous when they get to the north taking the fort back.  Sherman's troops had just broken Georgia over their knee as they turned northward to take the Carolinas.  The fear of Sherman in the south was justified.  As Sherman's men marched toward Charleston, wanting to make an example of the town and Fort Sumter, Confederate forces holding the fort abandoned their posts and ran in terror for their lives.

Or as the South describes it "the South never surrendered Fort Sumter. They let the north have it back."  PLEASE!  Frantically rowing away from the fort, screaming with dread and horror as Sherman and his forces marched to the city with blood in their eyes is a FAR CRY from shrugging their shoulders, implying some sort of benevolent "we'll let them have it" intent, as they strolled away, leaving the doors open.

This summer, we went to Lookout Mountain, outside of Chattanooga Tennessee, and they have a similar excuse for Confederate troops running in fear.  Somehow, the South screwed up defending a 2000 foot, near vertical mountain. Union troops took Lookout Mountain in November of 1863 with a shocking amount of ease.  When Confederates at the top of the hill realized they were about to be overrun, did they stay and fight bravely until the last man?  Nope, they ran away in the middle of the night.  They ran off the mountain and eventually fell back into Georgia, leaving Chattanooga and the surrounding country to the Union.

Or as the South describes it, "the South never surrender the hill.  They made a tactical decision to abandon it."  They ran in terror.  There was no honor in what those Confederates did at Fort Sumter or Lookout Mountain, but by allowing the South to rewrite history, they've been able to dictate whose actions were honorable (Confederates) and whose actions weren't (damn yankees, and particularly Sherman).

When you see those Confederate statues in southern towns, remember, the person they're honoring was responsible for murdering thousands of US soldiers in an attempt to keep slavery legal.  There is no nobility to these people or their actions.  The revisionist South puts them up as a source of Southern Pride; pride at slaughtering US soldiers as they romanticized keeping blacks a property.  Never forget that.  We should've never allowed the South to erect a single one of them.  It'd be like allowing Germany to put up Hitler statues everywhere 40 years after WWII.

The South's revisionism in regards to the war is legendary.  Not only do they insist the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery (spoiler alert:  it was about slavery), they also have a local delusion which is incredible.  Little Confederate museums are scattered throughout the rural south.  Stop into one and you'll be surprised to hear how local Confederates from their neck of the woods managed to stave off the entire Northern Army horde  These phantom southern wins are everywhere in the south, and I have yet to see one stand up to historical scrutiny.  Their famous battle victory of the local swamp is in truth a Northern speed bump of a military skirmish, or an outright Southern surrender.  Many southerners will never allow the truth get in the way of their revisionist history: 'even though the Confederates won every battle they ever were in, they somehow surrendered at Appamatox.'

If you don't nip this crap in the bud, it goes from myth to legend to accepted historical fact over time. Our reluctance to rub the South's face in their mess after the Civil War is partly of the reason we have Trump today.  'Don't tell us the truth!  We'll tell you what the truth really is!'  We have enabled a fake reality world by allowing people with an agenda to rewrite historical fact.

It's important we strive to live in an honest world.  We owe it to ourselves, to our kids, and to the legacy of those involved, to clamp down on the fabrication of history.  Without a doubt, Trump's supporters, even if he ends up resigning in shame, will try to vindicate him for decades to come.  I will strive to never allow such ignorance to become fact.