With all the
division in this country, I wonder how the history of the Trump presidency will
be recorded? It all depends on a
possible second term.
History, at
best, is a fictional story of an incident in time, recorded through the bias of
the writer. Often the writer is chronicling
an event that he did not actually experience.
For the most
part, history is written by the winners of wars; by the ruling political party;
by the rich and powerful that control the media and can influence the minds of
the people.
Recorded history has been filtered
through the writer’s biases; his or her gender, race, religion, politics,
education, intelligence and cultural mores.
Nine-eleven
was a viscous attack on a civilian population by religious fanatics, that took
three thousand innocent lives. That
is how the destruction of the twin towers will be chronicled in our history.
America’s
nuclear attacks on the Island of Japan took three-quarters of a million civilian
lives: women, children, old people; and leveled entire cities. We won, so we chronicle that as ending a tyrannical
war.
It wasn’t
until lately that I considered the word: history: His story.
A glaring bias
in the recording of history is that for thousands of years the chroniclers have
been men.
I wonder how
events would have been recorded if it were herstory: Her story?
the Ol'Buzzard
That's an interesting idea. I wonder how history would be written if only women wrote it. It would probably have a recipe or two tucked in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteYou have voiced a LONG held belief of mine. A lot of history is a fiction story written about a real event.
ReplyDeleteHerstory WOULD be entirely different, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteWe'd certainly learn about women scientists, mathematicians, brilliant minded women in general, rulers, etc. I think the only female scientist I learned about was Marie Currie, nothing about people like Heddy Lamar who came up with several patents for encryption or the whole group of women doing calculations for NASA, the lab assistant (name escapes me now) that really discovered DNA in photos, etc. I'd add Ada Lovelace, but at that time, computers were not even mentioned at school. So many brilliant women who's discoveries were put under men's names if not outright stolen. My whole history instruction in the 1960s-70s was white male military viewpoint. Now I know why I didn't really care for the classes and not much was retained.
ReplyDeleteAfter posting my comment - I began to second guess my memory. Not a lab assistant - a full blown scientist named Rosalind Franklin that discovered DNA and was pretty much written out of the story in history classes and the book
ReplyDeleteRosiland Franklin actually her data “utilized” (cough, absconded with) by Watson and Crick in their rush to publish in 1953. It was uncovered fairly early.... but by the time the Nobel Prize came out, unfortunately Franklin had passed away (tragically). Nobel does not award posthumous prizes, and so she missed out then as well.
ReplyDeleteVery sad.
PipeTobacco