Historonic

July 14, 2024 7:00 PM

"Changing nominees at this point has literally never happened before—not even once. Richardson’s assertion that “in the whole picture of American history, if you change the presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses”—so clear, so forceful, so authoritative—is totally invented." 'Is the Age of the Resistance Historian Coming to an End? (via A&L Daily)

Jan. 2023.
"History, as the historian Matthew Karp has written, has become “a new kind of political priority” for people across the political spectrum, a means to fight over what it is to be an American:" (archive link)

posted by clavdivs (9 comments total)

{I'm interested in communities perspective on the historcity of current American political history.}
posted by clavdivs at 7:06 PM on July 14

As someone who has an MA in medieval history (though didn't go into the field professionally) and learned just enough historiography to be dangerous, I think the control of the history curriculum in the US has pretty much always been political. If the point of history as part of "civics" is to teach us how to be good citizens, you have to figure out what being a good citizen means. That's a subject for argument depending on your political views.

Not related specifically to the links, because I don't really have time for bitching about Heather Cox Richardson or complaining about the 1619 Project as bad history because that's what public historians do: write history in a way that's relevant to current events, which is, again, inherently political, but I think about this a lot with respect to not the high medieval period I studied but particularly early Norse/"Viking" history. That's incredibly contested turf because white supremacists have some firm beliefs about How Vikings Were and What Norse History Means and they don't like it when (liberal, POC, queer, women, etc.) professional historians/researchers say it wasn't the way they think it was.

Modern medieval history in Britain and a lot of the US relies a lot on Victorian foundational documents. For example, the Victorians published a lot of royal legal documents in English and law French so you could research cases without actually getting into the manuscripts. This was great but it also meant a lot of Victorian prejudices got baked into medieval history. As someone who dropped out of the field (the great medieval history boom of the 90s did not pan out), I don't see these discussions/fights up close but I read enough professional blogs/journal article discussions/book reviews to see it happening. Plus there's all the fighting with the white supremacist Viking-wannabes I mentioned above. Medieval history was a long time ago; if it's contested so heavily for modern political reasons, how can US history NOT be contested equally heavily for political reasons?
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:42 PM on July 14 [11 favorites]

I'm just really tired of historians coming across like it's really exciting or unexpected when something about a presidential election is unprecedented. We haven't even had fifty of them. Most of the weird shit that can happen with elections has never happened before. It's like when a 48-month-old experienced a new thing this month, you know?

I guess maybe that's just how they keep getting calls from the media - "yeah, this has never happened before, most things haven't" doesn't really sell ads - but it annoys me anyway.
posted by potrzebie at 7:49 PM on July 14 [9 favorites]

Relevant xkcd.
posted by Sophocles at 8:27 PM on July 14 [6 favorites]

From the xkcd link:

'No Dem incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in scrabble (until Bill Beat Bob)'

This is kind of how I often view 'historical' comparisons about elections in the media. Particularly for young countries like the US and Australia, there just isn't enough history to support legitimate statements, so people make up precedents in an attempt to give weight to their arguments. I feel this is exacerbated by a common view that something happening once before means it's bound to happen again sooner or later.
posted by dg at 8:39 PM on July 14 [3 favorites]

interesting I'm reminded of Croce who wrote: "the accusation forgets the great difference that our tribunals, whether traditional or moral, are present-day tribunals design for living, active, and dangerous men, while those other men have already appeared before the tribunal their day, cannot be condemned or absolved twice. They cannot be held responsible before any tribunal whatsoever, just because they are men of the past who belong to the peace of the past and as such can only be subjects of history, and can suffer no other judgment than that which penetrates and understands the spirit of their work.…those who on The plea of narrating history bustle about as judges condemning here and giving absolution there, because they think that this is the office of History.... and generally recognized as devoid of historical sense."

-History as the story of liberty
posted by clavdivs at 9:04 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]

Hogeland’s newsletter Bad History is good btw.
posted by johngoren at 11:42 PM on July 14

eponysterical? metahistory relates [:g]

Americans must do everything in their power to avert the end of history
didn’t fukuyama already say it’s over?

seriously Gramsci explicitly called for an “anti-Croce” to overcome the Idealist and Spiritualist hegemony [global dialogue]
posted by HearHere at 12:20 AM on July 15

I think Richardson failed at talking honestly to the public about the prospect of replacing Biden in a similar fashion to the CDC's repeated failure to communicate honestly with the public about Covid.

When you're facing an immediate catastrophe it must be very tempting to tailor your message to try to achieve a certain outcome rather than informing the public about what is happening and trusting them to react in the way that you think will prevent the catastrophe.

Telling people that replacing Biden makes a Trump victory a certainty must feel like its more likely to make people support Biden the same way telling people that masks don't work must seem like it would stop people hoarding masks.

But people will always dig into public pronouncements that seem dodgy - the conventional wisdom as represented by betting markets has replacing Biden as a lower risk strategy - and now Richardson looks like a Nate Silver level moron without swaying anyone.
posted by zymil at 1:41 AM on July 15 [1 favorite]