The Usual Ruling Class Lies

Back in the day I read Winston Churchill's The Second World War from cover to cover. He didn't actually say that "history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." But, certainly, by writing the most well-known history of WWII he didn't do himself any harm.

And, for people like myself that have read his history, his narrative necessarily colors what we understand about the world's biggest and deadliest war.

But over the years I have come to distrust more and more the ruling-class narratives of the past. That's because I have also come to believe that the actions of nearly all governments are a story of fumbling incompetence and bad faith. Thus I tend to disbelieve all histories that present the past as a glorious victory against evil forces.

I do not say this in a spirit of spite, but from my understanding of the nature of government, and the impossible situation of most governments most of the time.

The only warrant for government action is existential peril, such as an invasion across the border, or an armed insurrection of a disaffected sector of the population. Unfortunately for would-be national heroes the incidence of such perils is very small, so most would-be national heroes have to make it up. Otherwise they are just footnotes to history.

And when a national hero does get to rescue his nation it is never a simple and glorious tale of the march to victory but a catalog of errors. That is how all human action works. You think you have a fantastic idea that will make your fortune. But usually the idea is seriously flawed, and it is only by overcoming a succession of mistakes and errors that you win through to fame and riches and the love of beautiful women.

So I regard World War I as a complete bungle. What in the world was the point of Germany and France going to war, except the memories of the Franco-Prussian War of the previous generation and the Napoleonic War of a hundred years before?

What in the world did President Wilson mean by getting the US involved in WWI? How about letting the Brits and the Krauts and the Frogs battle each other to exhaustion?

What in the world did President Wilson think he was doing by imposing a humiliating peace on defeated Germany?

What on earth did the progressives in the US and the Fabian socialists in Britain think they were doing in building a gigantic entitlement state in which their peoples were enserfed to a huge government that gave millions of jobs to the educated class and subordinate benefits to the lower orders?

What did liberals think they were doing when they implemented reverse racism on the American people after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s? Wouldn't that be switching from the anti-black racism of the Jim Crow era to an anti-white racism that continues to this day?

What was going on when the Global Cooling narrative of the 1970s switched to Global Warming in the 1980s?

And don't get me started on the War on Terror.

My conceit is to assume incompetents at work, stitching together some threadbare justification for a new government initiative and increased government power. And then writing deceitful narratives about it all when the glorious future doesn't quite live up to the hype.

Today I have been reading Ron Unz's review of Robert F. Kennedy's The Real Anthony Fauci that accuses Fauci of pushing a false narrative that the HIV virus was the cause of AIDS deaths, and then pushing the AZT vaccine as a cure to HIV-caused AIDS when in fact AZT was a real killer. On Kennedy's narrative Dr. Fauci silenced voices that opposed his narrative and policy and denied them research funding and killed their careers. And this is the guy in charge of the fight against COVID.

My point is that I would expect this. We have a guy of moderate accomplishments but with a knack for using government power against people resisting the narrative. So did he screw up the AIDS fight? Good question. Is he screwing up the COVID fight? Who knows? More research is needed.

But be sure that there will be an official narrative about how the political principals were heroes fighting to save us from existential perils, and that any objection is nothing more than conspiracy theory.

Unless the current regime is replaced by a new regime and the history dictated by the new regime naturally represents the old regime as losers and fools and knaves and the new regime as glorious heroes that have saved America from a fate worse than death.