The thing about history and biography is that what is in any particular book about them is whatever the historian or biographer thought important and then their interpretation of the subject. A really good historian/biographer does, of course, try to stick to provable fact; additionally, if there is speculation, then it is clearly identified as such. But even the best have their biases and in addition to that, those who publish history and biography have theirs, and what you write better not be too far outside the publisher’s ideas. This does lead to a measure of conformity across the Narrative.
I bring this up because it is important to remember that what we “know” about the past is just what someone told us. Not too many of us have the time or inclination to go to original sources, after all. The Left is, these days, going “Aha!” about this – as if it were a new thing – and claiming that history has been falsified. It wasn’t that a historian had particular interests or ideas, the history was nefarious! Deliberately hiding crucial facts…usually because its all Racism and Patriarchy and such. And then the Left proceeds to produce its own histories and biographies…as if these don’t have their own biases. And given that the modern Narrative must denigrate the white/Christian/European, what we’re often getting in modern Leftist histories isn’t just the product of biases, but the product of ideological commitment…this is why you’ll seek books and articles essentially claiming that all European discoveries and inventions were actually made by some non-European ages before…what is left unexplained is why Invention X merely gathered dust until some wily European sneaked in, stole it and then presented it to the world as a New Thing.
What I advise is to take everything with a grain of salt; that is, think about it. And not just modern histories/biographies (which would be taken with a couple pounds of salt); everything coming out of the past. Take nothing at face value. I have retained my father’s books and so I go have a great deal of history and biography written before the modern Left took control of the culture, and I’m grateful for them. But even these I now question. Just to take one for-instance: in most histories of WWII, Patton is lauded as the aggressive commander pushing forward to victory while Montgomery is derided as a plodding soldier who only fought when sure of victory. And there is some truth in this – Patton did rush ahead while Montgomery very famously liked to prepare carefully before engaging in battle. But a couple things come out when you see the sequence of events and think about it.
First off all, Patton never faced defeat. This isn’t Patton’s fault, of course, but it is in defeat and retreat where a general’s qualities – if he has any – really shine. Montgomery commanded the British 3rd division in Belgium in 1940 and he had that outfit completely squared away. They moved with precision wherever high command sent them, fought very well and returned to England out of the confusion of Dunkirk intact and ready to go back into the fight. That is generalship of the highest order. To give an American comparison – in the Philippines, MacArthur’s first idea was to defend the whole country. This was wrong – indeed, downright foolish – but when it became clear that MacArthur had picked the wrong strategy, he quickly organized a double-retrograde maneuver of his forces from north and south Luzon into the Bataan peninsula, thus ensuring a prolonged Fil-American resistance there, gravely upsetting Japan’s timetable of conquest. MacArthur had many brilliant military actions before and after, but most people who really know consider this MacArthur’s shining moment.
After retreat, attack. And most histories laud the grand attack, if successful. This is because it is dramatic and often has a large effect on subsequent events. And what people like is the dramatic breakthrough; the sudden route of the foe. This is why the German invasion of France in 1940 captures the imagination – it just amazes people to think about it. But was it good generalship? I don’t think it was. Sure, the Germans got lucky – and most lucky in the lethargy of the French high command – but the bloody thing should have fallen flat on its face. The least bit of energy and enterprise on the part of the French and instead of a dramatic drive to the sea, what the Germans would have had was the catastrophic destruction of their best armored forces. Luck in war is important. Napoleon allegedly asked men newly being appointed to general, “are you lucky?”. But you also can’t count on luck…and so the more famous Napoleonic statement is, “God is on the side of the biggest battalions”. In other words, if you’ve got your act together, things are going to mostly go your way.
Montgomery was a general who always made sure he had his act together – he was prepared. Ready for anything, good or bad. This has a drawback in that it takes more time and thus allows the enemy to react…but it has the plus in that even if the damned thing doesn’t work, you’re so well prepared you can do something else (and so Montgomery’s failed Operation Goodwood on July 20th, 1944 made his Operation Cobra just five days later – which was where he always thought he’d end up beating the Germans in Normandy – as near-certain a thing as war can get). Patton does get the credit for the breakout after Operation Cobra. Hard charging his way across France…and this eclipses the fact that Patton was simply following Montgomery’s plan. And even there he sent major units west into Brittany when the only place he needed to go was east. And at the end of it Patton got hung up around Nancy when he was supposed to still be moving east up to the Rhine.
On balance after thinking it over, Montgomery was the better general. If I had to set up an army to fight an enemy I would want Patton…but only as a subordinate to Monty.
And you can do this endlessly – not looking for new information, just thinking about what you already know. And I do believe this will become increasingly important for us – for our side – over the next few years. Most of what is going on is trapped in a framework developed in the decades after WWII and now congealed into dogma. We’re not supposed to go outside the accepted Narrative. Outside the Party Line, that is. But we have to. As long as we remain trapped in the Narrative, we can’t win because that Narrative is designed to support the Ruling Class’ claim to legitimacy. My example here was to pick something politically non-controversial as an example (though I’m sure WWII buffs would have a fun and furious argument about it). But everything we know needs to be reconsidered. Was it really like that? In my view, most of what happened was very different from the Narrative.
Pull that lose thread and see what unravels.
Blogs For Victory 
Wouldn’t you love to have a functional crystal ball or come back in 100 years and see how the history of this current time is written? I’m of the belief that America’s best times are still ahead. I just doubt I’ll be alive to see them, as I do think we’re headed for a rough patch historically speaking. Hopefully my descendants will be as free as I’ve been.
On a completely different subject, but, in a way, related to history, I got in a discussion with a couple of classmates at my 60th high school reunion last weekend. I don’t know if other states did what Indiana did prior to 1951, but we had what were called “mid-term” classes. Prior to 1951, Indiana had only 1 semester of kindergarten, so if you started kindergarten in the fall like I did, you started each subsequent grade in January. I started high school in January, 1959, finished my required classes and credits by January 1963, but took some easy classes that last spring semester (played a lot of golf) and graduated with most of the rest of my class in June, 1963. Anyway, several of us “midtermers” were discussing at the reunion what the ramifications might have been if we had taken a couple of summer school classes and graduated with the class of 1962. We each knew several classmates who did just that.
For me the ramifications could have been profound. I likely wouldn’t have gone to Miami University, because I didn’t even visit the campus until November, 1962. Good chance I wouldn’t have quit school my sophomore year for a semester, gotten drafted, and ended up in the Navy Reserve. Given that, my wife’s and my paths probably wouldn’t have crossed when they did, maybe not at all, and our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids wouldn’t exist, at least not as I know them. All that just from one minor decision. The same can be applied to history across the ages.
I think Forrest Gump could just as easily have said “Mama said life is like a pinball game” because everything in our lives goes back to which direction we were bounced when we hit a bumper of one kind or another. Sometimes it’s a choice we made, A or B, and sometimes it’s something that happened to us, but we all have examples of “what if”.
We are all products of our decisions …
And BS24/7 is exactly right. I saw a meme the other day that said “the final variant of Covid is communism”. Remember when Reagan said, “if socialism comes to America, it will come in the form of healthcare”?? Reagan was a visionary.
When it comes again, the non-compliance has to be so massive that they just can’t arrest everyone, and the boycotting of woke businesses has to be so overwhelming that they go out of business.
Thomas Massie
@RepThomasMassie
If bureaucrats try to reinstate any COVID tyranny measures, resist them with a vengeance. Do not comply.
They are not empowered by the Constitution to make laws that govern your lives, so it is they who will be engaged in disobedience.
Agreed. I will never forget how people like me were treated in 2020 and 2021. I was called every name in the book simply because I refused their experimental drug and didn’t buy into the fear. My opinion of this country and my fellow citizens changed dramatically during those years and has made me even more cynical and skeptical … if that’s possible lol
I understand the original acceptance of the “vaxx” and the claims that the “experts” had a handle on how to deal with the virus. We expect our experts to know more than we do, and that they won’t lie to us, and we have a history of benign and beneficial vaccinations saving lives. But as things developed, and it became more clear that they were either lying or incompetent, I started to wonder why so many people continued to meekly be controlled by them.
The single element of our society that is newly permanently damaged in my mind, losing any claim to respect, is that of the medical profession. And not just because of its support for the “vaccine”, but for its lockstep rejection of known and proven medications like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Many if not most of them had probably prescribed these drugs in the past, or at the very least knew about them. Assuming that even if your doctor did just graduate last in his class from Bob’s School of Refrigeration and Medicine, he still had access to the internet where he could do the same research we did.
I don’t like having venal hack politicians ready to sacrifice me for a buck or a vote or even to bend the knee to a hostile and tyrannical political model, but I kind of expect it. But losing faith in doctors hurts. It comes down to “if they are that stupid why should they be treating people?” or “if they’re willing to let or make people die to follow a political parade why should I have anything to do with them?”
Not much about the pandemic scared me, but the willingness of so many millions of Americans to meekly submit to tyranny scared the hell out of me, and made me pessimistic about the ability of this country to deal with a more aggressive attack on our freedoms. And of all the villains in the entire mess—-and there were a lot of them—-the media were by far the most culpable, obediently sending people to their deaths and creating societal divisiveness in their attacks on independent thinkers. I’ve found the Agenda Media to be loathsome and dangerous for years so this is not new, just amplified.
“the final variant of Covid is communism”.
The same can be said for “climate change.” The climate change advocates ultimate goal is communism.
Seems like a lot of bad things which support the Narrative are made to happen, aren’t they?
Biden’s reaction to the Lahaina fire has been a goldmine.
Derek Hunter has a column today addressing a point I have made repeatedly, one which has the mindless troll colony melting down in outrage every time I have said it. That is, that fascism is a Leftist construct, not the “far right”.
He goes into detail but summarizes: That fight starts by acknowledging the reality that Hitler and every other of history’s greatest monsters in the modern world were wholly and firmly on the left.
He also discusses the end result if either model were to go to its extreme. The natural end of the road for progressives is absolute power, a totalitarian regime imposing its will on the people, whether they like it or not. and the logical end for the conservative side of the horizon is anarchy. The further you go down the right, the smaller the government becomes and the more personal liberty there is. The end of that is no government at all, the opposite of the left.
He also points out that ,,,to hear the Democrat/MSNBC brain trust tell it, as you work your way down the right side, as government power shrinks, there is a magical point at which it somehow spikes back up to be all-powerful, and that’s where Hitler and every other of these monsters somehow lived.
My imagination created a horizontal line with Leftism to the left of the center point and the Right to the right, just to keep it simple. Now if you imagine that center point to be zero, and 100 points to either end, think of where each political model is now on that spectrum. I suggest that the Left has moved leftward from zero toward its 100 to a point around 40 or 50. That is, about halfway to uncompromising totalitarianism with absolute and utter control from the top. On the other side, it feels that the Right has struggled to even get to about a five, in the direction of liberty.
It’s a good read and I recommend it.
I don’t know if you saw video of Ryan Preece’s Nascar crash but it was amazing. If a movie had a scene like that it would be criticized for being too unrealistic. The number of times the car rolled in mid-air was beyond belief. I wonder what happened to make him veer from the outside lane, with no obvious interference, across to push another car out of his way as he then started this dramatic crash.
I am amazed and so thankful he walked away from that. Incredible video
Wasn’t that amazing? It made me realize how little I know of things like physics, momentum, etc.
And just think—the garage was only hundreds of feet away!
From an article by Alan Josehph Bauer:
If you want a safer America with less crime, don’t vote Democratic;
If you want a more prosperous America, don’t vote Democratic;
If you want a more united America without endless focus on racial and other needless divisions, don’t vote Democratic;
If you want a stronger military, don’t vote Democratic;
If you want a more confident America with less governmental interference in your life, don’t vote Democratic; and,
If you want a better future for your kids, don’t vote Democratic.
Our future is in our hands as voters. Let’s make that future better. Don’t vote Democratic.
Though I would just change the word “Democratic” to just plain “Democrat”
Excellent article
The new reality is that legacy media and cable news cater primarily to an elite audience that is not representative of the American social and ethnic classes.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/is-mainstream-media-relic-past/
But it is so much worse than that. The “legacy media” and most of cable news are actively acting as agents of the Left, pushing the Leftist agenda and relentlessly attacking its opposition. They have only the most feeble pretense of actual journalism, when they try at all to pretend that they are merely presenting facts and not advocating for a particular political model and its policies.
They have become part of the political movement which has the goal of overturning the very structure of government upon which this country was based from its very conception, and turning it into yet another failed State.