If I ever lose the desire to continue learning things, I know it will be time for me to just toddle off into the woods and disappear. The sum of all human knowledge is unknowable and continues to grow exponentially, but at least I can keep pecking away at it.
That’s one of the reasons I like to read history and biographies. If you dig around into what really happened, you discover that outcomes we accept and take for granted could have gone in radically different directions. All it would have taken, over thousands of years and tens of thousands of moments, was for one thing to be altered — a human action, a communication, a weather pattern, a natural event, a mechanical breakdown, a political upheaval, a change of mind or heart — for what we know as “history” to be entirely different, and current reality unrecognizable. Maybe that’s why sci-fi time travel fiction and movies are popular — they allow us to reimagine the course of fate and events.
Delving into history is also a reminder that whatever we’re dealing with now, we’ve probably dealt with some form of it in the past. I’m reading a book by the historian H.W. Brands, “Our First Civil War, Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution,” which reminds us (in case we forgot why we don’t all speak with British accents and do tea) that our country’s founding was a contested affair and not a foregone conclusion.
I’m working through a section of the book about the notorious Stamp Act, which generated riotous violence in the colonies before it was repealed by Parliament — thanks in large part to the testimony of Benjamin Franklin as to the act’s harmful effects.
But, even victorious, Franklin soon discovered that he needed to wage a vigorous battle in the press against disinformation and misinformation campaigns that advanced untruths about the colonies’ dependence on and relationship with Great Britain. He had to fight a lot of well-circulated “big lies” (and doesn’t that sound familiar?), more than two centuries before the social media explosion made the spread of falsehoods ubiquitous. All he had was the printed word, and his reputation.
Franklin refuted the bad information by relying on a time-tested methodology: He checked the records, documented the facts, cited actual evidence. We in the legitimate news business still follow that example, to mixed reception. I suspect that Franklin had his doubters as well. Some people, as was memorably proclaimed in the movie “A Few Good Men,” just can’t handle the truth. Others, as we are witnessing these days, simply try to suppress it.
We are of course living in the midst of history as it is being made, and if as some folks say history is written by the winners then we all better hope that Vladimir Putin is stopped. He and his cohorts are desperately trying to craft their version of events in real time, but the Russians are for the moment losing that information battle — because Putin has a losing message.
The implications of social media’s reach range from beneficial to downright evil, but one of them is that tactics work in both directions. It’s just as easy to show and tell about Russian’s real and murderous depredations as it is for Putin to blather about a campaign to suppress Nazism in Ukraine (not just a big lie but a really stupid lie) as his motivation. Globally, opponents of Putin’s terroristic, opportunistic and historically inhumane assault on freedom and democracy have a winning message. But Putin has the boots on the ground and the missiles in the air, and while he can’t control the narrative he does control the action. The rest of us can only react.
So, as history hurtles along day by day, I have to wonder what human action, communication, weather pattern, natural event, mechanical breakdown, political upheaval, or change of mind or heart will make the difference this time. We have no idea of how things will turn out and it weighs heavily on us — psychologically, economically, politically, socially, morally. Most of us cannot comprehend the nightmare scenarios that now seem closer to real than we expected in our lifetimes. That’s history for you.
Meanwhile, we all do what we can, and this week in the Methow Valley News we have chosen to use the colors of the Ukrainian flag in the “banner” space at the top of page A1 to show our solidarity with that country’s brave and defiant people. Some day their story will be fully and honestly told. I look forward to reading it, with the perspective of having lived through it.
