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<\/p>\nYet another item about that anthology of historical essays. Plus items about pandemics, bestseller lists, wokeness in the military, the attraction of conspiracy theories, and violence on TV.<\/p>\n
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Slate, Paul M. Renfro and Matthew E. Stanley, 9 Jan 2023<\/strong>: The Habit America\u2019s Historians Just Can\u2019t Give Up<\/a>, subtitled “If fact-checking could fix us, we\u2019d be a utopia by now.”<\/p>\n Why the animosity toward this book? Sure, maybe correcting misconceptions about history may not save the world, but aren’t they worth noting?<\/p>\n Reading through this piece, the writers seem to think the book unfairly targets conservatives and the right for tendencies that are not necessarily partisan. With numerous examples. Well, maybe so; any generalization risks oversimplifying, and if a generalization is nuanced in some way, critics will denounce it for not being nuanced in another way. Things are always more complex than any generalization claims. And publications will respond to any claim of a generalization — like a new book correcting historical myths — by finding someone take a contrary stance. That’s the nature of journalism.<\/p>\n At the same time, the writers criticize the book’s focus on “Trump-as-exceptional thesis” to exonerating in a sense “past GOP monsters: Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes, among others.”<\/p>\n Still, these are subtle criticisms. Do the writers find fault with any of the myths and correctives discussed in the book? No; they seem only to find the balance of topics odd and perhaps unfair.<\/p>\n But then we get to this:<\/p>\n If Americans can simply stick to the truth, Myth America<\/em> implies, we might just defang the insurgent Trumpist right, suture our wounds, and start on the path toward national reconciliation. It\u2019s a bit odd to read a group of historians make this claim, however, as others in the profession have spent the past half-century arguing that knowledge, truth, and expertise are constructed, contingent, and contested<\/a>, and historical archives (and the study of history itself) often reflect<\/a> processes of dispossession, extraction, and silencing<\/a>. Who has the authority to narrate the past? Whose truths appear in dominant historical narratives, and whose get left out? \u201cFacts\u201d are hardly neutral, self-evident, or unassailable. Rather, they are often expressions of power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here is the largely abandoned (as far as I can tell) postmodernist theory that nothing (not even science) is ‘real,’ but that everything is a social construction, especially by those in power. But do the article writers endorse this position? Can’t quite tell. Perhaps they expose it to indirectly criticize it.<\/p>\n They do make the same point as the SF Chronicle<\/em> review I quoted yesterday, seeming to admit that while correcting misinformation is a worthy task, it won’t make much difference. Concluding para’s, beginning with a handy list of “easily disproven conspiracy theories.”<\/p>\n It is unclear what exactly Kruse and Zelizer hope to accomplish through this attempt to \u201cset the record straight.\u201d Of course, the desire to promote evidence-based analysis is an understandable response to birtherism, COVID denialism, QAnon, \u201cAmerica First\u201d ethno-nationalism, the \u201cgreat replacement theory,\u201d rising antisemitism, \u201cbig lie\u201d election claims, vicious attacks on LGBTQ people, and Jan. 6\u2013style insurrectionism\u2014all developments that thrive on easily disproven conspiracy theories. Yet the relentless focus on countering false claims reveals the centrist liberal tendency to see historical falsehoods more as causes than outcomes of political change. For Kruse and Zelizer, the current threat to U.S. democracy appears to center less on systems than on bad actors, whether they be conservative TV personalities, MAGA politicians, or Russian bots, who promote inaccurate and often uncritical historical narratives. There is an ineffectual particularism\u2014not to mention a whiff of elitism\u2014in their implication that historical literacy, informational authority, and the consumption of \u201cbetter\u201d information can \u201csave our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem is power, not party or personality or \u201cknowledge.\u201d A better approach might be to question if any private citizen, entity, or corporation, regardless of intent, partisanship, or competency, should possess the power and resources necessary to promote the scale of historical fictions promulgated by the Koch network, various corporate super PACs, or Fox News. Yet despite the inclusion of a minority of essays that do identify the bipartisan, elite nature of our most persistent myths\u2014American exceptionalism (David A. Bell), the demonization of immigrants (Erika Lee), and the idea that the U.S. isn\u2019t an empire (Immerwahr)\u2014Myth America<\/em> ultimately suggests that misinformation must be exposed and corrected by experts, not drowned out or destroyed through mass struggle and a fundamental transformation of material relations. The result is a work that appeals far more to individual intellect than collective condition or action, meaning that while it works well at distinguishing historical fact from fiction, its political impact will likely be minimal. As we watch the historical profession die<\/a> before our eyes, we ought to expect more from its cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\<\/p>\n The issue of whether a book like this will have any effect is, of course, a consequence of the now-truism that you can’t convince most people of anything based on evidence, not if it means abandoned previously held beliefs.<\/p>\n \\\\\\<\/p>\n Odds and Ends<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 9 Jan 2023<\/strong>: Kevin McCarthy’s debt to the ‘anti-science resistance’ is a recipe for ‘epidemiological disaster’: virologist<\/a><\/p>\n Expect more pandemics, and inadequate responses to them to the extent that Republicans are in power.<\/p>\n \\<\/p>\n Salon, Sarah K Burris, 9 Jan 2023<\/strong>: Did Pence put himself on the bestseller list by buying copies of his own book?<\/a>, subtitled “On November 9, Pence spent a hefty sum at an online bookstore, according to financial reports”<\/p>\n This wouldn’t be the first time conservatives have bought their own books to get them on bestseller lists. (Whereas Michelle Obama has no problem keeping her book at the top of bestseller lists.)<\/p>\n \\<\/p>\n Washington Post, Paul Waldman, 9 Jan 2023<\/strong>: Opinion | What the right\u2019s war on \u2018wokeness\u2019 in the military is really about<\/a><\/p>\n Congress just gave<\/a> the military a staggering $858 billion for the coming year; if there\u2019s one thing the two parties agree on, it\u2019s that we should shovel as much money as possible at the Pentagon. Nevertheless, Republicans are convinced that the military is being rapidly destroyed from the inside by \u201cwokeness,\u201d a catchall term that refers to any development related to a social issue that conservatives don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n The evidence they present for this alleged crisis is comically weak. But this isn\u2019t about evidence, or the actual nature of warfighting in the 21st century. It\u2019s about discomfort with modern society, deep insecurities about the changing nature of manhood, and an impulse to delegitimize institutions, even those conservatives used to revere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Many examples. Ending:<\/p>\n Unlike joining the actual military, service in the culture war is easy. You don\u2019t have to suffer through boot camp, or follow orders you don\u2019t like, or risk your life. All you have to do is stay mad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Finally, a nice essay by Adam Lee about the truth of conspiracies.<\/p>\n