Uses & Abuses of History

Legacies of Empire –

They say that the Lebanese and Moroccans speak more correct French than the French themselves.? After well over two decades in an exclusively Russian-speaking environment, my French-speaking relatives and friends are well aware that my current proficiency is now – hélas ! – abysmal.? I was once fully immersed (studied and worked) in this supremely elegant language, including living for nearly four years in Geneva.

Our company still has a sizeable number of employees in Hong Kong.? Quite honestly, my heart aches every time I receive an internal communication from an Emily Chang or a Trevor Wu.? This cultivated and formerly free people have been living in a room where the walls and ceiling are steadily closing in on them.? For many of them, the question of whether to emigrate – and to where? – must constitute a dark, brooding ostinato to their daily lives.

Working closely with my Hong Kong (and other Asian-Pacific) colleagues (such as Singapore), I am frequently amused by Hong Kong English, which often seems straight out of a novel by Rudyard Kipling.? Replies to my e-mails are ‘well received and duly noted.’? Rule, Brittania!

What’s going on here?? In retrospect, I think that future historians might refer to our era in terms such as ‘The Century of Stale Ideas’ or something similar.? One of Karl Marx’s very few accurate observations was that history repeats itself – the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce.

Abuses of History –

The ideologies driving today’s major world events are, for the most part, warmed over clichés.? Israel’s Netanyahu no doubt sees himself as a biblical warlord – a modern incarnation of Joshuah or the Maccabees; Russia’s Putin deludes himself as being a second (rate!) Peter the Great and/or Josef Stalin rolled together, for brutally shaving off 20-some percent of the Ukrainian eastern border regions; Turkey’s Erdogan harbours visions of Suleiman the Magnificent; Donald Trump, who, by all accounts, is incapable of reading more than a short paragraph before losing interest, probably envisions himself as a vaguely Gatsby-esque oligarch and political potentate; and China’s President Xi is obviously pursuing some vision of his nation’s glorious past under various emperors, of which he is the latest. The deaths, large-scale displacements and destruction of property (such as in Ukraine and Gaza) that these self-delusions cause are far from trivial – dangerous daydreaming in a combustible age.

As the author(s) of Ecclesiastes asserted: ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’? ?What’s worse, all of the above-cited attempts to roll the clock back to some ‘good old days’ or ‘golden age’ are seriously distorted – every one of them.? Our brains are hard-wired to process the past by sifting out the unpleasant bits and parading a pastiche of the better moments for our entertainment today.? This has been clinically proven.

A sort of delusional apex for reinterpreting history was achieved recently by Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a ‘Blacks for Trump’ acolyte who asserted that Black families were more cohesive under the Jim Crow laws. ?Yes, Congressman Donalds, Blacks did stick closely together during the Jim Crow era so that no one would get lynched.

As the expression goes, you can’t make this stuff up.? President George W. Bush, Jr. considered himself an astute student of history.? He was also the first US president – Trump’s warm-up act, as it were – to make his limited intellectual prowess a campaign asset – an endearing trait, apparently. ?Stupidity as an attribute.

During a White House dinner honouring (the late) William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925–2008), America’s (then) high priest of classical conservative philosophy, President Bush made a telling joke.? He began by noting that both he and Mr. Buckley had graduated from Yale University.? Next, tongue in cheek, he asserted that their respective experiences at Yale were quite similar: ‘During his studies at Yale, Bill wrote a book.? During my studies at Yale, I read a book.’? Hee-hee, ho-ho … and yet this is the president who, claiming to be a student of history, led America into two entirely elective, massively costly (in terms of both lives lost and revenues expended)?and ultimately inconclusive wars.? Stalemates all around.

The 9/11 attack on New York’s Twin Towers was planned and executed by eleven Saudi citizens who chose to become suicidal jihadists.? The only tangible connection Afghanistan had to this tragedy was that Osama bin-Laden chose the remote and forbidding Tora-Bora Mountains as his pre- and post- attack refuge.? I carry no brief for the Taliban, mind you; but there is no credible evidence to suggest that the Taliban had any part in preparing or executing the 9/11 attacks.? If the United States were to declare war adopting as their casus belli evidence that hostile terrorists are given safe haven within its territory, then America would be at war with ‘half the world.

The made-to-order ‘intelligence’ cooked up at Langley – unsubstantiated rubbish about ‘yellow cakes’ that Saddam Hussein was using as precursor elements – was presented to Bush Jr. as prima facie evidence that Saddam was about to build nuclear weapons. Bush himself is beyond prosecution by the courts of historical consensus because of his acknowledged stupidity.? His own father, Bush père, publicly warned Bush fils not to invade Iraq; but a conspiracy of four unindicted malefactors – traitors all, I would submit – was already well underway.

The security / intelligence component – i.e., the ‘yellow cakes’ proffered as evidence that Iraq was about to go nuclear – was made to order by General Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, both of whom were lifelong national security and intelligence professionals.? They each would have been able to distinguish between raw, actionable intelligence and rumour-mill gossip, but they played along.? They knew exactly what they were doing.

The real brains behind the Iraqi invasion were the nitwit president’s vice president, Richard Cheney, and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.? Collectively, they were pursuing a completely separate agenda – i.e., invading Iraq in order to tap into the rich oil deposits in the northern Kurdish regions of the country. Their primary allegiances were not to the American people, but rather to their respective behemoth multinational corporations, Halliburton and Bechtel. ?It was they who planted and stoked the idea of going after Saddam Hussein for an attack on the US by eleven Saudi citizens.? Why this foursome didn’t each spend the rest of their days behind bars is beyond me.

Where does this leave the American people?? Sadly, either not knowing their own history, or knowing an intentionally (tendentiously) distorted version of the relevant facts.? The Internet and social platforms have siloed what, in the past, was a free and open exchange of opinions and policy positions.

It may boggle the minds of ?many of my younger readers that, when I was growing up, there were only three television channels and a handful of newspapers and magazines ‘of record.’? This paucity of technology forced advocates of competing viewpoints to pitch their arguments, by necessity, to a far more diverse audience than is the case today. People, such as Trump’s hard core MAGA followers, simply refuse to even consider opposing positions.

In all instances, say a prayer for the objective historical record kept in bondage to the conflicting geopolitical agendas of the current age.