“If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur” — Anonymous
I imagine some people would chalk up my writing habits to sheer laziness. Every week, on the night before my article is due, I scramble to find the latest news story that I can write about. I do not do this because I don’t keep up with the news. I do this because by the time I have formed an opinion on a news story, it has left the news cycle. My search for news usually takes about 20 minutes. Last night, however, it took about 30 seconds.
This week, what caught my eye was that President Trump asked Alaskan officials about reversing President Obama’s decision to change Mount McKinley to Mount Denali. Most people’s reaction to this story was: “DOESN’T TRUMP HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO?” My conclusion was less aggressive, but rather unnerving: Trump is trying to rewrite history. Again.
Historical revisionism is nothing new. One could argue that what we call history is just the edited transcript of what actually happened. But sometimes, historical revisionism is confused with editing or changing history.
Changing history means adding events to it. For example, Elvis is not still alive, no matter how many tabloids say he is.
Editing history means taking things out of the narrative for sake of brevity. We also edit history because we believe some voices are more important than others. If you have ever been on a crowded train, you know what I am talking about. Whatever is being said by the crazy preacher or the old woman talking too loud on the phone or the drunk guys singing “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones is not as important as whatever the train conductor is saying.
Similarly, William Shakespeare wasn’t the only famous Elizabethan playwright. People like Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe are regularly edited out of the historical narrative because they did not have as great an impact on Western Literature. This doesn’t mean they were bad playwrights, they just aren’t deemed as important.
Historical revisionism used to be something primarily liberals did. They would reevaluate history and shed light on new parts of the narrative. Often the greatness of some individuals (Woodrow Wilson comes to mind) is thrown into question. Wilson is often thought of as this great president who helped the allies win World War I. Now, however, we remember Wilson for being incredibly racist, and for passing the Sedition Act to basically try and do away with freedom of speech.
Jumping back to the 21st century, some historical scholars will argue that what Trump is doing is not historical revisionism, but rather historical negationism. Historical negationism is the denial of history. It is an established fact that Trump has denied history before. But what he has tried to do with the recent debates over the Affordable Care Act, with the Paris Climate Accord and with Mount Denali, is to revise history. He is trying to scrub the great decisions of Obama out of the historical record and out of the public consciousness.
It is easy to revise the past. None of my readers fought in the Civil War, all of us learned about it through our teachers and textbooks. We were taught a narrative. We weren’t there, so we have to trust these sources. Sometimes this narrative is positively revised, and sometimes it’s negatively revised. The latter has been happening more frequently recently.
So why do we revise history? I believe Trump and his fan base are revising history because they are uncomfortable with the narrative. Trump isn’t a huge fan of the negative aspects of American history. Sometimes he denies these things, and sometimes he revises them.
Think of the confederate monuments debate. Instead of agreeing with the historical fact that the Civil War was fought over slavery, he tried revising the revised history! He would not admit the fact that some of the founding fathers were not exactly these heroes we think they are.
According to legend, the Roman orator Cato the Elder finished every speech by saying “Delenda est Carthago,” which translates to “Carthage must be destroyed.” Trump’s Carthage is the achievements of Obama and the uncomfortable aspects of American history. For Trump, every trace of Obama must be destroyed. His quest to do this has turned into a revisionist and denialist rampage. Trump spends more time attacking people and trying to revise history than actually trying to change it for the better.
