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History is a bitch in the hands of the current political arrangement. There are indisputable historical facts about things in the past that have happened - wars
by bluetomcat 6y ago
History is a bitch in the hands of the current political arrangement. There are indisputable historical facts about things in the past that have happened - wars, civil conflicts, inventions, works of art. Then there are endless possible interpretations and viable (but not provable) causal relations between the facts. Heck, we can't even identify the proper causal relationship for events happening around us right now. Then how about going N centuries back and trying to reason about the involved parties and their intents? We don't know what conversations took place between them, what their internal agenda was, etc.
- kungito 6y agoOne thing is for sure. A big boat was stuck in the Suez Canal recently.
- christophilus 6y agoThat was a deep fake.
- willismichael 6y agoI can't tell if this is a joke.
- brazzy 6y agoI'm willing to bet money that there are conspiracy theories around that say the whole thing didn't really happen and was just a coverup for something.
- hutzlibu 6y agoWith real flat earthers out there (and a lot more than I thought) - no one is probably taking that bet.
- curation 6y agoConspiracy theories are products of our ideological process of the western sovereign subject believing it is is outside of ideology.
- krapp 6y agoQAnon apparently believed it was secretly trafficking child sex slaves for Hillary Clinton. Also apparently QAnon is still a thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThere were a lot of satirical conspiracy theories involving the Clintons, Epstein, Israel, etc. Some of them were actually quite funny and managed to have no obvious conflicts of interest in them. In 100yr when someone not knowing the context reads them the satirical part may be lost.
- hutzlibu 6y ago"Heck, we can't even identify the proper causal relationship for events happening around us right now. Then how about going N centuries back and trying to reason about the involved parties and their intents" Part of the reason we do not understand much of today, is that much is done behind closed doors. So historians does have an edge when trying to make sense of an event 80 years ago with (allmost) all relevant documents now open and the people dead, than trying to make sense of an event 5 years ago, with people involved still trying to influence every investigation etc. Going further back in time, especially to a time with no or burned down archives, is harder, agreed.
- bluetomcat 6y agoDocuments and other preserved artifacts are often a very "low-res" view of what actually drives the course of events. Even with a well-ordered chronological archive of documents, there are far too many dots to connect between any two of them. Connecting the dots ultimately comes down to interpretation and creating a narrative. And narrative-based history is almost always wrong, deceptive and politically-inspired.
- gumby 6y ago> History is a bitch in the hands of the current political arrangement Isn’t the point of the essay that that is ever true?