On Objectifying History, or, 2016 is Not a Sentient Thing Out to Get You

Indeed. Note this too:

Something incredibly important is missing here: the human agent. The very thing, the only thing, that makes history. The objectification of history represents a negation of human agency, of our operation of intelligence and will, of our shaping and reshaping of the nature of society through ideas, engagement and revolution. This negation has been explicit in 2016. The investment of this year with a kind of menacing power, the treatment of it as a uniquely disruptive year, the according to it of the qualities of cruelty and unkindness, is fundamentally a means of nullifying, or at least mystifying, the cause of political disruption over the past 12 months — which was electorates, individuals, conscious and alert, thoughtful and engaged. And decisive too.

So, knock it off.

While I'm at it, let me say here what some historian friends and I were discussing recently: STOP SAYING THAT 2016 IS "THE WORST YEAR EVER." This hyperbolic nonsense boils down to the unwitting admission of the complainer's own vast ignorance. Is 2016 worse than 1347 when the Black Death burst on the scene in Europe and began its destruction of some 30% of the population? Is 2016 worse than 1939 when Hitler's invasion of Poland started World War II, a conflict that would kill tens of millions? That's just 2 years for example. I'm sure you can come up with many more. 

On a related note, stop saying that "the country has never been more divided." Regardless of how you feel about Trump or Hillary or whatever else, this statement is obviously silly. Is the country more divided than it was during - oh, let's say - 1861-1865? Pfft.

Movie Review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

Schlock like an Egyptian.

It should tell you something that after I saw Exodus: Gods and Kings on opening weekend, I went home and watched 1998's DreamWorks animated The Prince of Egypt on Netflix ... and had a much better time.  I would have watched Cecil B. DeMille's monumental 1956 production of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses, but - alas - it wasn't streaming.  Then when I sat down to write a movie review, I seriously contemplated framing it all as a "I'm sorry, please take me back, I love you!" letter to Chuck Heston.

Come on, babe.  You know it's always been about you.

OK, OK, let's get to Exodus: Gods and Kings (and why in the world do we need that colon and its little subtitle?  Isn't Exodus enough?)   All cards on the table: I wanted to like this movie.  I wanted to like it a LOT.  There's no disappointment quite like dashed hope.  I almost entitled this review Exodus: All Washed Up.  In fact, it would probably take the entire Red Sea to wash all the guyliner off Bale and Edgerton ... though I suppose I must give some kind of grudging acknowledgment of an entire movie in which the men wear more makeup than the women.

ISIS, the Caliphate, and the War On History

So ISIS (or ISIL or you say tomayto, I say tomahto, you say bloody-minded extremist, I say violent jihadist) has renamed itself IS (Islamic State) and declared a caliphate.  Bold and risky move.  See too the role of history, mangled and otherwise.  While we're on the topic,  don't forget this:

By formally abolishing the Syrian-Iraqi border ISIS doubtless hopes to evoke memories of the Ottoman era before supposedly artificial states were constructed for the convenience of European powers—a time when frontiers were porous and the ways of Islam were universally observed. The fatal flaw in this utopian vision—apart from its obvious historical inaccuracy—is its failure to recognize the division between Sunnism and Shiism that long predated Western interventions in Iraq and Syria. ...

However much the leaders of ISIS seek to draw on the imagery of an international Arab jihad rolling back a century of Western imperialism, the growth of ISIS feeds on these sectarian tensions that have been reanimated across the region. Politically, the jihadists have gained support from the widespread hatred of the Shiite cronyism of the Maliki regime, which replaced the cronyism of Saddam Hussein’s, as well as from the brutality of its counterpart in Damascus. And to the extent that foreign powers are driving the situation, the underlying dynamic flows less from the West than from the rivalry between the Sunni monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on one side and Shiite Iran on the other. 

Forgetting Tiananmen Square

It's been 25 years, and three new books consider how it has been suppressed.  If you're in a hurry, you can jot down the titles of the books and take a look later:

• The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim, OUP USA
• Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, by Rowena Xiaoqing He, Palgrave Macmillan
• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos, Bodley Head

Well, here we're not forgetting!  Please take a look at:

• NatGeo's story of two photographers (twin brothers!) who were there
• (still imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner) Liu Xiaobo's poem from his collection June 4 Elegies
• Another poem inspired by those events
• How a gangster became a savior: the story of the Triad who helped smuggle 100+ dissidents to safety after the massacre
• Footage of Tiananmen survivors telling their stories at the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee; one is Chai Ling, founder of All Girls Allowed, an organization combatting gendercide in China.
• The world's first Tiananmen museum that has opened in Hong Kong
• Demonstrations in Hong Kong and Taiwan

25 years ago I was only a child watching the news on TV, and from that year I remember two overwhelming feelings that were so intense that they probably shaped my adult take on foreign relations more than I realize: 1989 was defined by the joy of the fall of the Berlin Wall with all its jubilant crowds ... and the absolute, stomach-churning horror of Tiananmen Square.  God, what kind of monstrous, despicable, (what the hell, let's use the word and call a spade a spade) evil government sends its tanks and troops to mow down unarmed students?  And you wonder why I practically have an allergic reaction to people saying that Taiwan should be part of China. 

UPDATE: The Onion nails it again.

History Nerd Fun: If You Could Mess With History ...

If you had a time machine and could go back in history to rescue someone, whom would you save?   Pericles?  Julius Caesar?  Lincoln?  Gandhi?

PJ O'Rourke Imagines Obama in History

"I Came, I Saw, I Skedaddled."  Hey, did PJ take a leaf out of Dignified Rant's book?

Quote of the Day: Politicizing History

NERD FIGHT! It's journalism professor versus historian as David Greenberg excoriates Howard Zinn.  Here's a piece of it (my emphasis in bold):

... historians are obliged to explore the viewpoints of elite actors, however unattractive, not to parcel out sympathy in proper proportions, but to show, in a faithful account of the past, the interconnectedness of the rulers and ruled, and of all strata of society, and how one group’s experiences influence another’s.  But Zinn reduced historical analysis to political opinion.  He assessed a work of history by its author’s partisan loyalties, not its arguments about causation, influence, motivation, significance, experience, or other problems he deemed “technical” in nature. 

... the fatal flaw of Zinn’s historical work is the shallowness, indeed the fallaciousness, of his critique of scholarly detachment.  Zinn rests satisfied with what strikes him as the scandalous revelation that claims of objectivity often mask ideological predilections.  Imagine!  And on the basis of this sophomoric insight, he renounces the ideals of objectivity and empirical responsibility, and makes the dubious leap to the notion that a historian need only lay his ideological cards on the table and tell whatever history he chooses.

I don't need to tell you how dangerously enstupidizing this is.  The "nerds behaving badly" tag belongs to Zinn, of course, whose book has warped countless impressionable readers and still makes life harder for honest, responsible teachers of history.

"Argo" and Mangled History

I was actually going to get around to this, but someone else has saved me the work.  Here, read this.  

I'm on the record as loving this movie, but if I had to point out the one thing that bothered me, the fly in the ointment, it was the intro that purported to give the audience the historical background to the crisis of 1979.  The whole thing was only a few minutes long, but I hated it.  Still, the rest of the movie was absolutely splendid storytelling.  The creative liberties taken for the plot and its fantastic drama were fine by me.  It was the intro that rubbed me the wrong way, because I'm sure it's given a whole bunch of ignorant moviegoers a totally wrong idea of what happened. Well, we  should all know better than to expect actual history out of Hollywood, for goodness sake.  But you knew that already.  

I have to say, though: What may be more remarkable - and worthy of praise in this age of "America is always the bad guy" media - is the fact that the movie does not attempt to make the Iranian hostage takers sympathetic.  It does not glorify them at all.  We are clearly shown the revolutionaries' brutality not only to the captured Americans but also to other Iranians.  I think the flick deserves some kudos for that.

The writer of the article is also quite exercised about the Jimmy Carter epilogue to the film.  I can understand his annoyance, but I thought Carter's voiceover spin-doctoring was so flat-out ludicrous that I just laughed it off.  Come on, all Jimmy's done lately is try to revise his (disastrous) legacy.  Nobody mentioned Ronald Reagan at all in connection with the end of the Iran hostage crisis, but he was the elephant in the room and was conspicuous by his absence.

Oh, you might want to read the 2007 Wired article that started the whole moviemaking ball rolling.  You may also be interested in the new book The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations.

Headline of the Day: "Nazi buddha from space might be fake"

I swear I'm not making this up.

EUrocrats Not Even Bothering to Hide It Anymore

Why bother since you've already snagged the Nobel Peace Prize?  Take a look at this EU propaganda "yay for us" poster.  TAKE A GOOD LOOK. 

Whitewashing Afghan History Textbooks

Teaching history?  YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.  Just look at this plaintive lament by one Afghan teacher:

"One of the primary objectives of studying history is not to repeat past mistakes. If students will not learn about past violence, how will they avoid it in future?"

Indeed.

FDR, Reagan, and the WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans

Read this and sigh.

Fun with History: Famously Bad Opinions

This is delightful!  History indeed is 20/20 hindsight.  When some people got it wrong, they got it really wrong.

Of Memes and Mangled History

The 19th president of the US Rutherford B. Hayes becomes an Internet meme and takes off.  Why?  Here's why, as Mark Steyn explains.  What a cocktail of ignorance and condescension.  *Sigh.*  UPDATE:  Gentle reader Dignified Rant has contributed a meme!

More Thoughts on Bombing Auschwitz

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before (though I can't seem to find the actual post since apparently I'm a blithering idiot today), but here's a new iteration: "Politicians, Historians, and the Holocaust."

Quote of the Day: On a French Bill

Quote:

"I suppose it'll add some spice to history exams though. Get the wrong answer and you not only fail: you get carted off to jail as well."

Some un-studious undergrads of my acquaintance should be quaking in their books, ha!  The quote refers to a new French bill that, if made law, would criminalize denying that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians in 1915-6.  (For what it's worth, I think this bill and others like it are a bad idea in principle.)  Anyway, the bill is currently stalled because of questions of constitutionality, and Turkish EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış flatly denied the charges of genocide and dared the French to go arrest him. Oh, my. 

Don't Know Much About History

ALAS.  Nevertheless, some of us are still fighting the good fight.  I refuse to give up.  I know you do too.  

History, Mangled and Not: Gavrilo Princip's Sandwich and Start of World War I

Fascinating.

Nerd Fun: Hilarious Alternate History

Check out these images of history re-interpreted to include robots, aliens, and (of course) zombies.

Poor Poor Pitiful Me

Oh, PUH-LEEZ!  By the way, I'm sure we'll be hearing all sorts of whining and dipstick comments by politicians in the days and months ahead until November 2012, so note the new blog tags.  Also, I cannot believe the sheer scope of the "poor me, it's soooooo hard" undergrad-esque whinging coming persistently from the White House.  If you didn't want that job, you wouldn't have that job, so don't come crying to me about how hard that job is now that you've got it (and are plainly angling to keep it).  Man up already.  Geez.