1/5/23
Newsletter #210
The Crack of Dawn
There is a war on facts right now. For many people there seemingly aren’t anything called “facts,” there’s only opinion. A ridiculous number of Americans are running around saying that Joe Biden isn’t the president, even though the facts prove otherwise. But these folks don’t “believe in” the facts; they instead believe in faith, which is an integral tenet of religion. You can’t be religious without faith. Faith is the cornerstone of religion. However, as Mark Twain said, “Faith is believin’ what you know ain’t so.” Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true.
For instance, I caught 2-3 minutes of a CNN special about the American Civil War the other night. I actually thought they were reshowing Ken Burns’ Civil War (which I could watch again), but instead it was a new show about Americans present-day view of the Civil War. In my 2-3 minutes of watching, I saw two elderly southern men who tend a few confederate Civil War graves putting forth their opinions on the Civil War. First off, they both stated, it wasn’t about slavery, nor was it even a civil war; it was the “War of Northern Aggression,” as they put it several times – the north attacked the south for no good reason. Even if that were true, which it isn’t, if half the country goes to war with the other half of the country, it’s a civil war.
However, if it is indeed the “War of Northern Aggression,” then one might assume that the war began when the north attacked the south. In fact, though, the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when South Carolina militiamen and military cadets began firing at a supply ship coming into Fort Sumter, a Union fort off the coast of South Carolina. Why did these southerners start shooting at these northerners? For fun, and for no other reason. Wouldn’t it be fun to kill the sailors on the supply ship so that the soldiers in the fort can starve to death? Sure, let’s open fire. Firing on Fort Sumter and the supply ship was an act of pure idiotic malice, undoubtedly perpetrated by a bunch of giggling, drunk, 18-year-old, redneck morons.
These idiots felt that they had the right to shoot and kill Union soldiers because South Carolina had seceded from the Union upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, who hadn’t yet even taken office. And why did South Carolina (and soon thereafter 12 more southern states) secede? Because everyone knew that Lincoln was going to abolish slavery.
So, these two southern men in their 80s, who proudly tend confederate graves, deeply believe that they are displaying their patriotism by perpetrating a blatant fiction called “The War of Northern Aggression.” But they are taken seriously because they have faith in the myth; they “believe” their story, which isn’t true in any way.
Facts become facts because they are corroborated by multiple authoritative sources. Some northern newspaper didn’t dream up an incident where southern militiamen and cadets started shooting at a supply ship at Fort Sumter; it was first reported in numerous South Carolina newspapers, then picked up by everyone else. These dumb assholes were proud of this act of lethal juvenile idiocy.
Here’s a fact: the American Civil War was not the War of Northern Aggression, and if you believe that it was, you’re not displaying patriotism, you’re displaying a blatant distaste for reality.
And I only watched 2-3 minutes of the show. But I got the sense that CNN wanted to show all the points of view on this presently contentious issue, the Civil War of 1861-65. Showing these two jerks sitting at this little patch of cemetery somewhere in the rural south getting to voice their opinions on the American history that they blatantly don’t know, on TV, is as useful as getting to hear their views on brain surgery or astrophysics.
I’m certain that they both have faith in their story, except it just isn’t true.
I’m put in mind of Second City TV’s Farm Film Report, where two farmers on local access cable tell you the price of wheat and pork bellies, but also review movies. I mean, why shouldn’t they? Everybody’s opinion is JUST as good as everyone else's, right?
Lovely day, lovely day, such a lovely dayyyyyyyyy . . .