History And Perspective: Part 2

[Before I begin, please understand I’m not a historian and the specific historic details aren’t important.  I’m not trying to talk about the events in history so much as to explain how they make me think differently about the events of today.]

Years ago, my truck’s audio hosted The Skeptic’s Guide to American History (Professor Mark A. Stoler, Ph.D.). (It’s a 24-lecture series on Great Courses, and I don’t get a single dime if you buy it.) Stoler was examining a topic; I can’t recall what it was. While setting the stage for a point he was trying to make, he mentioned in passing a time of relative corruption in American governance.

He mentioned, only as a minor detail, the vast corruption within the Warren G. Harding administration. It was a fact, like any other fact. Simply a thing to know about that era; like that it was the time of the Model T (1908-1927), and the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (1914) led to World War I (1914-1918).

This is where history is invaluable, it was a long time ago and I could listen without having any opinion at all. Talk about Obama, Reagan, Bush, or Clinton and I have a pre-conceived notion. More emotional folks will lose their goddamn minds. History lets you use your mind because you’re looking “far away”.

It’s my blog and I roll with the esoteric, so I’ll describe it to you: Harding was sworn in as president in 1921. Harding was popular at the time. He was also corrupt. Then the shit hit the fan (as it usually does in such situations).

Harding, for his part, had the good sense to die in office. Good move! He was planted and pushing up daisies before the depths of his failures came to light among the nation at large. In his aftermath, a lot of work went into uncovering his activities. With time and reflection, people tended to conclude “that guy was a hoser”.

Notice the advantage of time? Nobody is calling me a Nazi. Nobody is threatening to kick me off Facebook. Nobody knows if Harding was a Republican or a Democrat (unless they check Wikipedia). Having no opinion of Harding allows us to absorb a fact without taking sides. We don’t have the knee jerk impulse to form up teams and post slogans about how people with contrary opinions on Harding are baby killing, redneck, shitweasels and/or vegan, posers with limp dicks.

I can’t remember exactly what the lecturer said but it was something like this:

“This came after the Harding administration, which was, of course, incredibly corrupt.”

That was it. Harding was “incredibly corrupt”. Just a fact. A fact so widely known we get an “of course” thrown in. I wasn’t listening to a lecture on the Teapot Dome scandal so it was merely a backdrop for other action.

I’ve since sniffed around the issue and verified the sentence. Pretty much everyone who knows anything says he was a lousy president. He appears to have fomented corruption and spread scandal like a monkey with a firehose. Not a lot of handwringing about it. It’s simply a fact. It’s known. It’s all been aired out. It’s old news. Nobody bats an eye when you say Harding and his cronies were corrupt.

I took that thought into my head and spent a long time examining it; looking at it from all angles. Eventually, I realized that all things ebb and flow. One shouldn’t be surprised by eras of corruption. In any nation, be it the Roman Empire, the United States of America, or a suburban HOA, there will be times of increased corruption and times of “cleaner” governance. This is simply a fact.

For some reason, we’re primed, pumped, and propagandized that we must, are, and should be living in a “clean” era. Why? Because we’re more advanced than turn of the 20^th century dipshits that didn’t yet have smartphones? Really? ‘Cause when people talk like that I start to laugh.

Harding was popular. He was corrupt. This is a fact.

Here’s the other part; in the end Harding’s manifold shortcomings came out. Congress faffed about, various laws were passed to keep shit like that from happening again, a few people went to jail, etc… In general, the dirty laundry was necessarily aired. This is good.

With time and further reading about many eras in many societies I’m starting to get the feeling that most of the time the truth comes out. Dirty laundry tends to get aired. It’s not a hard and fast rule but more of a general trend. Chickens really do come home to roost; they shit all over the place when they arrive but it allows society to understand what went down and to promise (almost always ineffectually) they won’t do that dumb crap next time. I’m not much of an optimist but I find this is heartening.

The other thing I’m noticing is that (usually and in general) the “trip to truth town” takes longer than one would hope. It’s never a concise 30-minute made for TV morality play where Perry Mason tricks the bad guy into confessing under oath. It’s more often a few years gathering public knowledge and a bunch of boring semi-inconclusive Congressional testimony. There might be a few books nobody reads, various audits, a lawsuit or two, some laws and regulations that don’t work, possibly speeches are made, and then eventually you get to the place where some historian says “of course that guy was horribly corrupt” and nobody raises an eyebrow.

With time, everyone sees it in a new way. They agree that guy back then was a jerk. It takes time to get there because folks aren’t ready to deal with malfeasance from this guy right now. Often, at least in the case of Harding (and Hoover an idiot I’ll talk about later), things play out after the main character is safely planted in the ground. This makes sense. For example, Stalin was an asshat. This is a fact and there isn’t a person on earth who would disagree; now. Back then he had a habit of genociding people who showed even a hint of disagreement. It’s simply safer for everyone if you discuss Stalin’s proclivities after the monster is dead.

Harding’s fall from grace is a lesson. It was ugly and I’m sure for the people of the time were very upset. People of the future (like me) don’t fret. It’s just a fact.

Stay tuned for more…