I read an article recently
that covered about an eighty-year period of our history. It was very well
written, with significant documentation by way of links. But was it true,
accurate? I believe the answer to that depends on whether one is predisposed to
believe its core premises or not, does one trust the source?
History is generally written by individuals that
were not there, or were and have a specific point of view or an axe to grind.
As a kid I was fascinated by the stories of the outlaws, Bonnie and Clyde,
especially the ambush that ended their lives. I remember being confused by the
different narratives I read or saw about the event. What was true? Thinking
about it now it is obvious that it all depended on where the teller stood -- some had actually been at the ambush, some just reported on the ambush, some where
in unconnected law enforcement, some had a personal connection to the love-bird
criminals and some simply found a sensational event to publish a book about.
There was truth in that storytelling milieu, but what was it?
Isn't it simply a matter of trust? Doesn't one
have to trust the source of editorials and histories to accept the material as
fact? The larger question is what effect does the lack of trust in media, in
all of its forms, have on a society? It also raises the question is it better
to trust media even when it is not absolutely factual then to distrust media in
toto, with the exception of the media one chooses to approve of and trust,
which may not be news but propaganda, information simply to be memorized and
weaponized. Will this not cause a society to falter and seize up?
Back in the days with Cronkite and Chet and David and Brokaw, before ubiquitous cable news, folks would argue, but it would not be about the truth of the report, but the substance. Was the news all true and accurate, free of spin back then? Of course not, but the vast majority of the country believed it was. The news also assisted in developing and supporting the country's mythology, its story.
Today we watch the country's story splinter and crumble, change, revert, cease to be a cohesive story -- become a disjointed cacophony of yelled or mumbled sentences.
Vietnam, The Warren Commission, Watergate, Howard Zinn, Abbie Hoffman, Oliver Stone, James Baldwin, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Edward Abbey -- all metaphorically exposed the lie of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. The Left embraced the deconstruction, hoping to construct something new. The Right denied it, hoping to maintain the land of myth and obfuscation. This social conflict has simmered and sputtered for many years, now a raging fire. Trump supplied the match. The country supplied the fuel. We are burning our collective story. We still have the fact that we are all Americans, however America has never really been much more than an idea, an idea supported and held together by stories.
Anthropologists must be chuckling and shaking their heads, if not wringing their hands. There was a singular, very important component of the rise of civilizations -- story. Without it we would have stayed just a bunch of loosely connected hunters and gatherers, individually avoiding catastrophe, trotting into oblivion.
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