WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? | 2006-06-24
If you will read the piece below on Revisionism, you will see that you should never read
anything as if it is true.
But it is not wholey untrue, either.
You should read everything produced by the mass media, historical, current, and futuristic, as if it were an infomercial.
And please keep in mind that, as usual, much of what I am about to say SOUNDS like a joke.
But the reason it sounds funny is because it is so TRUE, not because it is false. So on to which history to believe and which not to believe.
On an infomercial, if the person talking says he has a little dog named Scottie, you can be
reasonably sure that, if he does have a dog, its name is Scottie. If he is just telling a
side story that doesnot ERQUIRE that he have a dog,but can be about anything else, you may
be reasonably sure he actually has a dog.
In other words, in an infomercial, the further you get away from the PRODUCT, the more you
can believe what is being said. By hte same token, when reading history or social
commentary or futurology, the further you get from the PRODUCT, which is how the present
intellectual fashion wants to have been or to be or going to be, the more you can believe
what they say.
So if a history book says George Washington was born in February of 1732 instead of June of
1732, there is no reason to doubt it. But if it says he only survived because an old
black slave woman who was later thrown to the wolves came up with a brilliant cure for the
illness he was dying from as an infant and murumurred to herself, "It takes a village to
save a child" in her native Manica language, you can be be pretty sure it's not true.
All history, all news, and all futurology are infomercials. You know what the Product is.