Revisionist Theory
  
Oliver Stone's Showtime series on the "Untold" history of America is of a
piece with the tide of books contesting the truth of all that has happened,
anytime, anywhere. The RCJ
wonders if this is going anyplace?
"History will be kind to
me, for I intend to write it." -
Winston Churchill
"Historical sense and
poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the
little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living,
constantly remake." - Robert Penn
Warren
"History does not repeat
itself. The historians repeat one another." -
Max Beerbohm
"History has to be
rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or
antecedents that we are interested in." -
O. W. Holmes, Jr.
By RAR
Humans
are pretty much incapable of accurately reporting on anything, let alone
history, which requires contrast and perspective and some standard by which
honesty can be calibrated for the purpose of context; a context that will change
with the next telling of the same event.
Every
crime investigator in the world, and every criminal defense lawyer, knows that
there is nothing in this world less reliable than eye witness testimony. People
do not perceive details consistently and do not remember events accurately,
particularly if they are traumatizing in nature. And if you can't rely on the
reports of people who witnessed an event taking place, what have you? This is
why the American legal system has provided itself with some weasel words, so
that accused people could be convicted by a jury on evidence that is beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Beyond a reasonable doubt is the
highest standard of proof that must be met in any trial. In civil
litigation, the standard of proof is either proof by a preponderance of the
evidence or proof by clear and convincing evidence. These are lower burdens
of proof. A preponderance of the evidence simply means that one side has
more evidence in its favor than the other, even by the smallest degree.
Clear and Convincing Proof is evidence that establishes a high probability
that the fact sought to be proved is true. The main reason that the high
proof standard of reasonable doubt is used in criminal trials is that such
proceedings can result in the deprivation of a defendant's liberty or even
in his or her death. These outcomes are far more severe than in civil
trials, in which money damages are the common remedy. - from the
Legal-Dictionary at freedictionary.com
Over the past decade, advances in DNA analysis has proven to be
a window into the inadequacies of a justice system founded around such squishy
criteria as reasonable doubt. The Innocence Project has freed 311 individuals
who had been wrongly convicted of crimes. The reasons that organization lists
for the grounds upon which these innocent people were convicted include:
- Eyewitness Misidentification Testimony was a factor in 72 percent
percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S., making it the
leading cause of these wrongful convictions.
- At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a
cross racial identification (race data is currently only available on
the victim, not for non-victim eyewitnesses). Studies have shown that
people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their
own. These suggested reforms are embraced by leading criminal justice
organizations and have been adopted in the states of New Jersey and
North Carolina, large cities like Minneapolis and Seattle, and many
smaller jurisdictions.
- Unvalidated or Improper Forensic Science played a role in approximately
50 percent of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing.
- False confessions and incriminating statements lead to wrongful
convictions in approximately 25 percent of cases. 29 of the DNA exonerees
pled guilty to crimes they did not commit.
- Informants contributed to wrongful convictions in 18 percent of cases.
Whenever informant testimony is used, the Innocence Project recommends that
the judge instruct the jury that most informant testimony is unreliable as
it may be offered in return for deals, special treatment, or the dropping of
charges.
The disaster of the U.S. criminal justice system, which imprisons a greater
percentage of the U.S. population than does any other nation on the planet, is a
useful viewing port into the process of writing history.
History, after all, is written by the winners. It may be written by the
losers, too, provided there are any left, but the loser's version will not
likely be published. The winners hold all the cards and therefore their account
will be the version that sticks, and that will subsequently be repeated by other
historians, until finally the truth of anything that happened will be lost with
time. What will remain will be myth and legend, the narratives around which
cultures and civilizations and nations are built.
Put bluntly, history has always been bullshit.
Academics have sought to make it otherwise by codifying historical research
and writing and by defining historiography as using authenticated accounts,
referenced to historical documents, and narratives to piece together
chronologies of events. Also allowable are referenced depictions of situations,
circumstances, and social patterns in certain places and specific points in
time. That is why your high school and possibly even your college history
classes seemed so dry, even while involving the most intriguing topic on the
curriculum; the one that carries predictive value and hope for change.
Modern historians have been associated with universities so they have
maintaned the integrity of the scientific process, but from that class there
long ago developed a brand of popular historian. These are the historians who
are known to the general public: the Theodore Whites of the world, with their
"making of the president" accounts; the Doris Kearns Goodwin and the Michael
Beschloss of your TV talking head communities, and others like them. These
hybrid celebrity historians typically got early exposure to White House
opportunities that left them intoxicated by the heights at which they wished to
remain, and so they have developed a popular historical treatment that provides
themes as overlays of "historical facts".
Repetition of a story, plus time, will tend to cement that story as truth in
the minds of those who are exposed to its ongoing cycle.
"History consists of a series of
accumulated imaginative inventions." - Voltaire
Beyond the popular historians, there exists another class of celebrity
revisionists, whose vision it is to select from parts of the established
historiographical method for the purpose of adding political or social
commentary, or some form of biased analysis. Here we have the Bill O'Reilly's
and Chris Matthews of the world, and a thousand just like them.
The history of states and nations
has provided some income for historiographers and book dealers, but I know
no other purpose it may have served. - Borne
There is the problem again, in a nutshell. Even as our histories are
tormented by inaccuracies and skewed perceptions - even our eye witness
observations cannot be trusted - the lack of capacity for human kind to
recognize the patterns of history and take actionable steps toward progressive
change brings the entire value of history into question. History, after
all, promises a potential of navigational perspective and prescience that could
be useful in maneuvering human kind around the craggy shores that have wrecked
our kind before.
More profoundly, history shows patterns of change to be
virtually non-existent regarding those other patterns that defend the status
quo. The conquerors write the histories they wish to have read, and the winners
remain the champions of the established narratives and the desired conclusions.
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