CSotD: Learning Curves
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This being George Washington's actual birthday, as opposed to the three-day weekend, Frazz observes that he had one birthday that wasn't a barrel of laughs.
Which is true, but, then again, given how long, and often how badly, the war went on, it's hard to fix on a date that wouldn't have, in one year or another, offered misery.
I just completed a kid's story about Saratoga, the research for which included reading a biography of Benedict Arnold, who was a conspicuous hero in that battle. It also required me to tackle the issue of replacing General Philip Schuyler with General Horatio Gates.
Both of which required me to wade into the swamp of truly toxic political in-fighting that went on throughout the Revolution and makes it hard to understand how the patriot side held it together long enough to win, never mind to survive as a nation in the aftermath.
Robespierre becomes less of an historical freak when you dip into the partisan politics of the era, particularly in Pennsylvania. Arnold was not the only rebel who felt it might be better to make peace with the British and let some rational grown-ups sort out a sensible compromise with the colonies' desire for autonomy.
Small example: History texts often show Tories being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. Aside from glossing over the effect of thick, boiling tar, the books don't discuss the number of Tories who, besides being dispossessed of their homes, were summarily shot or hanged, both POWs and civilians.
A guy on a rail covered with feathers is kind of funny. The reality was pretty horrific.
And the political wrangling of Congress totally obscures any comparison of Schuyler and Gates as military commanders, because Congress tied up supplies and manpower until they got their man in the driver's seat, and they were just as partisan and parsimonious with the Father of Our Country, withholding support until the puppet danced, but often unable to agree upon a tune.
All of which is to say, first of all, beware of what you think you know, and, second of all, beware of the simplistic explanation that history is flawed because it's written by white men and thus excludes the achievements of women and minorities.
History is written by victors, and, while the Venn diagram bulges at the crossover of "victors" and "white" and "male," there is nearly always a gap between "obvious" and "true."
It doesn't help, as Mr. Fitz suggests, that we've entered an era where expertise is suspect. While he's indirectly pointing directly at putting an arrogant ignoramus in charge of the Department of Education, it's part of a trend easily seen in social media, where — if you disagree with the person you're facing — knowing what they're talking about is dismissed as prejudicial while being ignorant rules out their opinions entirely.
If you agree, however, then experience makes you an expert and ignorance makes you unbiased.
I've said before that, when I began talking to high school students about Thomas Nast and editorial cartoons in the early 90s, I had to explain the partisan press and how most towns had two newspapers. Within a few years, I could simply say, "Like Fox and MSNBC" and they'd all get it.
It seems the day is fast approaching when explaining Robespierre, Danton and Marat may be equally simple.
Same topic, different culture
Here are a few panels from a longer discussion by Julian Hopwood and Tom Humberstone about Uganda in the wake of the Lord's Resistance Army terror. I strongly recommend you go read the whole thing.
It struck me for two reasons in particular:
One is that I had been pondering my increasing dislike for, and impatience with, "explainer" comics.
The main problem is that some explainers are no more than illustrated lectures, including several where about two-thirds of the "illustrations" are simply talking heads with word bubbles.
Some of that is unavoidable, but backgrounds and settings make a huge difference.
And about settings: It's important to note that not all Third World people live barefoot with goats among the dust, that many of them have shoes and jobs and laptops. The people with the goats may be more colorful; the people with the laptops are often more accessible to visiting journalists, and more articulate in dealing with Westerners.
However, a cartoon consisting of people sitting around their apartments talking is boring. The main solution has to do with choosing striking exemplars — barefoot or shod — which, in turn, argues against parachuting in for a few weeks.
Which fits in with the second reason I like this particular explainer:
I've just finished reading Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, by Kingsley Bray, which tells the war chief's story not in the familiar terms of his interactions with Americans, but in terms of the conflicted society in which he lived and the complexity of Lakota politics as they faced the invasion crisis.
Having lived back East and written about, and occasionally dealt directly with, the Iroquois, I know something of their internal politics, but this barely prepared me for how things were done within 19th century Lakota society.
The Iroquois are matrilinear and rigidly matriarchal, the Lakota are not. And while the Iroquois have a clan structure that reaches across the Six Nations, the social constructs among Lakota nations seem far more fluid and elusive.
Which is to say that knowing how Iroquois interacted was less helpful in understanding the Lakota than a knowledge of Irish culture would be in guiding me through Greece.
But what did help, and here's the tie-in to Hopgood and Humberstone's piece, is that I had learned to see things through the filter of the culture I was examining, rather than — consciously or unconsciously — comparing it to my own.
It's an approach that not only makes events and issues more comprehensible, but gives dignity to the people you seek to understand.
And their explainer is an excellent example.
Now here's your moment of zen
(Clegg learned Zulu language and music at the workers' hostels in Jo'burg
where they lived and worked far from their homelands.)
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