History as a Parade of Dunces

or Keystone Kops if you prefer

Winston Churchill famously said that "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Actually, the real quote is a bit different. But you get the point. The most famous history of World War II is The Second World War by Winston Churchill. In six volumes.

In other words, history is an official narrative written by the victors. Or the ruling class. Or whatever.

But the more you get away from the official narrative the more you experience history as a total mess. And what gets left out is usually the most interesting.

For instance, I was reading the latest episode in Ron Unz’s American Pravda. And his latest rant is about the things like the Kennedy assassinations and the number of gunmen. The point is that, just as you are not allowed to believe that the 2020 election was a stitch-up, you are not allowed to wonder about anomalies in the official narrative about the assassinations of JFK and RFK. Then he also talks about Louise Day Hicks, the anti-busing activist, and Anita Bryant the anti-gay activist. They were not evil rabble-rousers, as we have all been taught to believe. Then there was John Connally, that all the experts believed would win the GOP nomination in 1980.

And then there is World War I, according to Ron Unz. Did you know that the Germans put out peace proposals in 1916, after the flower of England had perished in the Battle of the Somme?

[T]he government of Germany had publicly proposed international peace talks without preconditions aimed at ending the war, suggesting that the massive, pointless slaughter be halted, perhaps largely on a status quo ante basis.

But the Allies weren’t interested.

Unfortunately, the Allies flatly rejected this peace overture, declaring that that the offer proved Germany was close to defeat, so they were determined to hold out for complete victory with major territorial gains.

Yes. What “major territorial gains?” Here we are, a century later, and Europe’s boundaries are pretty close to 1914, except that the Austrian empire has broken up into nation states and the Russian empire has broken up into ethnic states, to the fury of Our Vlad.

And one of my pet themes is that, if the Brits hadn’t abandoned in 1901 their policy of no alliances in Europe, first by allying with France in the Entente Cordiale and then with Russia in the Triple Entente, maybe there wouldn’t have been a Great War in 1914.

Of course, that’s crazy. There would have been some other “damn fool thing in the Balkans” or elsewhere and the politicians would have gone to war, if not in 1914 then 1924.

Or let’s retell the history of the late 18th century, with troublemakers like Sam Adams riling up the Yanks and the Brits with his inflammatory journalism. Well, that led to the Revolutionary War and Ben Franklin in Paris encouraging the French to send money to the Yankee rebels. And that led to France running out of money. And that led to the Freanch Revolution. And that led to the meltdown of the Reign of Terror. And that led to Napoleon marching the Grande Armée all over Europe until he went a bridge too far and invaded Russia. Pretty cool guy, that Sam Adams.

Meanwhile there is Lord Montgomery’s advice in the House of Lords on 30 May 1962.

Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: ‘Do not march on Moscow’…[Rule 2] is: ‘Do not go fighting with your land armies in China.’

Good old Monty. But let’s make it Real Simple so that State Department experts can understand:

Rule One: Don’t invade Russia.

Rule Two: Don’t invade China.

But you knew that.

The point is that the more you cast around and read outside the official narrative the more you realize how accidental and contigent life and history really are.

Let’s revise Churchill’s dictum. History is written by the survivors.

I suspect the same is true about our current situation in the good old USA. It is missing the point to say, on the one hand, the election of 2020 was stolen. But it is also ridiculous to say that everything was above board and anyone that disagrees is guilty of seditious conspiracy. Let’s just say that, in the current 50-50 America, each side plays the game as far outside the rules as it dares. But the members of the Inner Party obviously have an advantage over the members of the Outer Party. To say nothing of the Plebs.

But, I would say, the Inner Party, the ruling class of educated people, is feeling the heat after a century of being on top. And when people start feeling the heat, in business or in politics, that is when they start to cheat. And the perfectly natural and physical thing for a ruling class to do is lean on the media to keep the crazies off the airwaves. Did you know that a bunch of journalists in the 1930s disappeared from view after criticizing the glorious successes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It wasn’t that they were “terminated.” It’s just that they didn’t have jobs any more.

That’s not conspiracy theory; that’s just common sense.