Kathleen Edwards wrote:
Studying history is, for all I can see, nothing but a picking and choosing of the human race of what they want to sell from the past and and what they want to sell to the future. There is as much truth to the stories chosen as there is on Saturday morning TV commercials. And, just as much marketing to the innocent.
I replied:
Far too cynical. You have the spin right, but what’s spun is objectively checkable. “History is lies agreed upon,” Napoleon called history. He, too, wanted to impose his own views. Sifting from a myriad sources, most of them involved but many also sidereal observers, allows genuine historians to become detectives of a convincing view of what happened. Beyond that, none of us can go, being human. Even our own recent past is an edited selection of snippets and false impressions, after all.
Interestingly, many police departments employ a sketch artist as well as photographers to record major crime scenes. This is because, while the camera records objectively what is in front of it, the human eye, and mind, notices things more clearly in context, and thus a sketch can often reveal details the camera actually obscures. History is like this, as well.
History is not written by winners so much as it is won by writers. Best story lasts. That’s how it generally works. Now examine what the best story would be comprised of, and you’ll see that, while much may be spin, there has got to be truth or it simply won’t fly.
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