President Trump hasn't even taken the oath of office yet, and
our
leftist adversaries are already hard at work redefining the history he
thinks he's written. Thanks to constant hammering by media
liars, it's become received wisdom that Mr. Trump won because of
racist,
sexist appeals to Angry White (ignorant Neanderthal) men, despite the
objective fact that Mr. Trump received a higher proportion of black,
Hispanic, and even white female votes than "Mr.
Clean" Mitt Romney.
In years to come, no doubt history books will portray the
Trump Era with black borders, as one San Francisco teachers union is already
preparing at (indirect) taxpayer expense. Perhaps
they can add
it to the late Howard Zinn's infamously dishonest
People's History of the
United
States, which even the left admits is riddled with falsehoods while
still using it widely.
Yet, as insidious as the outrageous bias of our educational
institutions is, there are effective ways to combat
it. Winston Churchill's is the classiest:
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Which he did, and sure enough, it was - Sir Winston is
regularly rated the greatest Briton of all time, certainly the last
conservative to be so honored.
When that's not an option, it's still relatively
straightforward to confront the bias of foaming lefty teachers and
professors. Not all students can see through it, but a fair
number do, and some have even founded lifelong
careers by doing combat with them.
No, overt bias in academe is not the primary cultural problem
we have as conservatives. Your humble correspondent has just
encountered a gold-plated example of the real problem.
Default Democrat Deities
We turn now to Ken Follett, author of such celebrated
historical potboilers as The
Pillars of the Earth and many, many
others. Mr.
Follett has great skill in evoking a given historical era
- the Middle Ages, say, or Edwardian times - by telling the story of
fictional but plausible people living through it. Think Downton Abbey in
prose at Harry Potter
length and you've got the idea.
The politics of the time is not Mr. Follett's key motif,
though naturally whatever was happening in history affects his
characters as they endure and participate in it. Yet by his
graphic rendition of realistic human beings, their hopes, dreams,
fears, aspirations, inner thoughts, loves, hates, etc., the reader
comes away with an apparently better understanding of that particular
time in history.
What really did motivate peasants to build
cathedrals? Why
were the elites of the Gilded Age so incapable of seeing
the vast societal changes that were about to sweep
them away? How
were so many ordinary, decent people seduced by Fascism
and, later, unable to resist the evils of Communism? Mr.
Follett's books will give you an answer, and you'll be smarter for it.
Or so you
think, as you are meant to. In actual fact, the
worlds Mr. Follett's characters live in are slanted heavily to the
left. They don't notice, and neither do you unless you're
paying attention, but the end result is profound.
Mr. Follett's most recent work is the "Century Trilogy," a
series of three heavyweight doorstops that follow the intertwined lives
of an international group of families - Russian, American, German,
British, Welsh - through the trials and tribulations of the 20th
century. The saga begins in 1910, and ends in 1989 with a
brief epilogue we'll mention later.
It contains all the usual suspects and vignettes you'd expect:
the low-class maid who has an affair with an Earl, bears his child, and
maneuvers this opportunity into a remarkable life; the Russian
immigrant who becomes an American gangster then Hollywood studio
magnate; no shortage of families of Senators, Members of Parliament,
German politicians of various sorts, and Russian mid-level leaders both
before and after the revolution.
Given even the most minimal knowledge of the times, you'd
expect a wide array of villains, and for a while you aren't
disappointed. The Russian aristocracy is portrayed as just as
brutal and corrupt as you've heard; the Communists are too, though only
in passing.
The British aristocrats act entitled of course but overall are
not
really bad chaps; the working classes are the heroes who routinely lift
themselves up to the heights once the boot is removed from their
backs. Strangely, those who don't barely put in an
appearance; the
retired coal miner of 1910, by the end of the series, has an array of
descendants including two MPs, a baroness, a world-famous rock star and
TV personality, a Hollywood actress and Shakespearean diva - need I go
on? The Earl shares the same descendants by virtue of his
dalliance with the housemaid, but he doesn't acknowledge them until his
deathbed; his acknowledged heirs are ignored save one rotter who
redeems himself by dying heroically in combat against the Nazis.
Speaking of Nazi Germany, here things begin
to seem ever
so slightly strange. Obviously the Nazis are evil and are
portrayed as such, but somehow, we don't really meet
many. Yes,
the Jews are rounded up somewhere offstage; a minor
character who's lucky enough to be sent to England in time loses her
parents who were stuck in Germany.
Far more vivid literary treatment is given to the inhuman
abuse of a deeply sympathetic and innocent German homosexual.
Did
Hitler abuse homosexuals? Certainly he did, as well as just
about every other sort of person within his reach; he
also had loads of them wear his uniform.
How can you set a story heavily in the Nazi era and barely
mention the Holocaust? Only one evil Gestapo agent makes a
significant appearance, and he does get what's coming to him, but we
never see anything about him as a person. He's just a
cardboard cutout in jackboots, so we can unreservedly applaud when
he's incinerated.
Yet there are heroes even in Nazi Germany: Communist
spies. And this is where Mr. Follett's - bias? worldview?
true
objectives? - really begin to shine through.
One can understand and even sympathize with the desire of
Russian peasants and workers
to overthrow their evil overlords, and barbarities always take place
when you hold a revolution. Ten years on, why are innocents
still being brutally murdered? One of the characters has his
concerns, but that doesn't prevent him from taking his place in the
Kremlin and enjoying the comfortable life of a Red Army general.
Again, the gulag is largely offstage; a minor character is
sent there and rescued some years later in a state of poor repair, but
he becomes an internationally celebrated (albeit anonymous) protest
author. Mr. Follett's complaints about Communism could almost
be restricted to a desire for prison reform.
East Germany has harsher treatment, but here too, there are no
real villains. The one Stasi agent who fights a running
battle with the central family through the last entire book, is
eventually revealed as a sad and tragic figure motivated by unrequited
love for their daughter.
We
can disagree with his courting methods but
we're meant to sympathize with him, not condemn him for his injustice
which is mostly rather picayune. In the real world, the Stasi
had
a foul reputation even among the Communist-bloc countries who
were used to generic evil.
So throughout the 20th century - a century which included such
monsters as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Al
Capone, Charles Manson, and Jim Jones - Mr. Follett cannot find even one real, genuine,
black-hearted villain?
Oh, but he can.
The Party Which Shall Not Be Named
The American central family is that of a senator
from upstate New York - Democrat, naturally, but that's fair enough
since 1910 was the Progressive Era. His son works for, and
worships, Woodrow Wilson; to hear Mr. Follett tell it, the worst
disaster of a disastrous century was the death of President Wilson
before dragging America into the League of Nations.
What of his running for re-election on a platform of "He kept
us out of war" then
joining the First World War? Merely a necessary step on the
road to end all wars.
Indeed, until the final book of the trilogy, you might be
excused for not even realizing Republicans exist. President
Wilson is a hero; Calvin Coolidge doesn't exist, nor was Teddy
Roosevelt so much as mentioned even though he was so impactful as to be
enshrined on Mr. Rushmore. Of course Franklin Roosevelt is a
pillar of goodness and strength.
Bizarrely, Dwight Eisenhower
doesn't manage to rate a name-drop even as a main character parachutes
into France on D-Day! Speaking of historically great
conservatives, Winston Churchill himself barely squeaks in - in the
context of the First
World War, where he's castigated for fluffing the Dardanelles invasion at
Gallipoli. He
hardly appears at all in the Second.
It's in the final book, covering the Cold War, that this
supposedly realistic history takes a heavy turn for the
absurd. If
President Wilson is heroic, John F. Kennedy is godlike, even while
impregnating a virginal intern who's a main supporting character and a
bunch more that aren't. He abandons his harem by death,
though it's made crystal clear he would have abandoned them all
eventually anyway - yet somehow his sterling self is not so much as
besmirched! The aforementioned ex-virgin even maintains a
shrine
to St. Jack for nearly the remainder of her spinsterly life as a senior
bureaucrat, having survived the abortion he courteously sent a henchman
to (illegally) procure.
At least JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis is
portrayed more as accident than design, rather than as the inspired
brilliance usually found in modern textbooks. That's about
the only historically-accurate bright spot, because another major theme
of the 1960s was the Civil Rights era.
As you'd expect, a young black descendant of a senatorial
dalliance emerges as a leader and main character, participating as a
Freedom Rider and being brutally assaulted and beaten by... well, by
whom? White racists, white men, white bigots, and every other
perjorative that can be attached to the color white, with one notable
exception.
George Wallace and Bull Connor put in appearances as minor
villains. They deserve every bit of this, yet, oddly,
despite being elected politicians, they are strangely without
party. The one Jim Crow-era group who is never named as
abusing blacks is
"white Democrats" - even though, to a man, that's exactly what they
were.
No, the true villain of the century isn't the political party
that endorsed and supported Jim Crow - namely, the
Democrats. It's
not the political party that escalated the war in
Vietnam into the quagmire it became - namely, the Democrats.
Nor is the hero of the piece the President that ended up
withdrawing and losing the Vietnam War, as you might suppose - because
he's Richard Nixon. The Paris Peace Accords don't rate a
mention.
Watergate does, and that's understandable. In a
strange way, Mr. Follett accidentally provides some historically
accurate context by showing that the conspiracy against Nixon was very
real. Leftists embedded in the government and journalism
worked tirelessly to take him down just as he'd feared. Of
course, Follett portrays this as the righteous triumph of justice
against a lying, cheating demagogue, overlooking the fact that St. Jack was every bit as bad if not worse.
What of Nixon's actions that even leftist academics and fictional future Vulcans praise,
like going to China? Mr. Follett mentions this from the
perspective of how
inconvenient and discomfiting it was for the Russians!
That's right - for Mr. Follett, the Communist era was just a
sadly misguided but understandable side road through
history. Sure, free speech was mercilessly squashed, but all
the
while, farsighted reformers were working to reform the system and
better the lives of the peasants.
Indeed, one main character, a high-ranking Russian
apparatchik, is presented entirely sympathetically even while he
crushes people's lives and sends them to the gulag, because it's for
the greater good, don't you see? Those poor banished frozen
souls were hardliners who wanted to stop reform and deserved what they
got. There are no more moral absolutes in Mr. Follett's world
than there were in Communist Russia.
Republicans, Those Devils Incarnate!
Thus, neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Fascism nor Communism win
Mr. Follett's nod as True Villains of the 20th Century. Who
does, then? Who could possibly be so foul, so soulless, so
irredeemably deplorable as to out-evil those mass-million-murderers?
Ronald Reagan, that's who.
And here is where Mr. Follett shows his true master of the art
of propaganda: unlike President Wilson, President Kennedy, President
Nixon, Josef Stalin, and even Adolf Hitler, the Gipper
doesn't appear onstage. He's only ever standing to the
side,
referred to by others, with absolutely no discussion of the issues
surrounding his election or his administration. Yet he's the
only 100% wicked character devoid of any virtue whatsoever.
Just what did Mr. Reagan do to put himself in that blackest of
black
pits, in this seductively persuasive alternative world created by Mr.
Follett?
He supported the Contras in Nicaragua, who fought against the
Sandinistas who are portrayed as honorable freedom
fighters. In
actuality the Sandinistas were murderous Communists, who
only
somewhat reformed after Mr. Reagan left office.
He didn't further the cause of civil rights, we're told -
despite
Reaganism leading to more prosperity for black Americans
than they've had before or since.
Most slanderously of all, the Reagan administration - led by
Mr. Reagan offstage, though again without his specific appearance -
specifically
and intentionally used terrorism in the Middle East. One
entirely fictitious scene is rendered in loving detail, in which a
Reagan official goes to Lebanon to oversee the assassination of a
(innocent, naturally) Muslim cleric. He's blown up with a car
bomb planted by independent contractors that also takes out - stand by
for cliche - an entire crowd of emburkhaed women and
children. Even the Republican is shaken, though unlike
Communists,
Nazis, and gangsters of all stripes, in Follett's world regret isn't
enough to redeem someone so evil as a Republican.
Get Liberal, Get Laid
Speaking of this Republican character - the only one in the
entire century, apparently - he is unique in other ways
too. While literally every other character is having wild,
passionate sex with an awe-inspiring array of human gods and goddesses,
this one
sad individual has to make do with happy endings from a cheap
masseuse. When he finally does acquire an attractive mate,
she's
foreign and clearly a gold digger merely doing a job no American would
do.
This underscores the insidious effect of the entire literary
and cultural world being populated nearly exclusively by
liberals. The "Century Trilogy" is not a tale of
politics. It's basically a historical soap opera.
Conservatives, when they write, usually write high-minded and
rational articles such as you find here at Scragged. The sort
of person who reads such fare is, generally, also high-minded and
rational even if they hold a different opinion.
Let's face it - normal people, to say nothing of
low-information voters, will never, ever darken the doors of
Scragged. Yet Mr. Follett reaches millions who come expecting
to be
entertained, and without any conscious realization, leave having taken
on board his entire far-left worldview.
Without rational analysis, how is Follett's fiction any
different than history as presented in school? It's actually
far more vivid and
memorable because it portrays (apparently) real people living somewhat
realistic albeit idealized lives. Readers will remember
mostly the appealing characters, yes, but they'll have picked up
knowledge about history along the way - largely false knowledge,
with neither the resources nor the desire to set the record straight.
Combined with the anti-conservative propaganda spewed from
every public mouthpiece, it's no wonder that the meme of "Republicans
are evil" has become all but received wisdom. What's shocking
is not merely that Hillary Clinton lost, but that a Republican even
cracked
double digits.
The fact is, Mr. Follett is an excellent writer. His
stories are gripping, fascinating, and interesting even when, like
yours truly, the reader knows they're based on
lies. It's striking to note that as the tale strayed further
and
further into the realm of leftist fantasy, the story grew weaker.
At the end, in full fulmination against Mr. Reagan, he
basically
just let the threads of his tale completely drop. We don't
even get to find out what happened
to most of the characters; the fall of the Berlin Wall is literally the
end of the story. He should have called it the "8/10 of a
Century
Trilogy" given that he skipped the first and last decades.
Except, that is, for the epilogue. What was of such
worth as to be the capstone of the entire century, the culmination of
the lives of all of his characters? By now, you will not be
surprised to hear that it features nobody but his black characters,
all gathered 'round
the television watching Barack Obama attain the Presidency.
The fall of Communism? Naah - that was dismissed as
one of those things that was bound to happen when the reformers finally
got a chance. Pope John Paul the Great had nothing to do with
it. Ronald Reagan had less than nothing to do with it - his
famous "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech was presented as
merely a pretext for his evil Republican partisans to falsely give him
credit. Margaret Thatcher had so little do do with it that
she, like nearly every other conservative of the entire century,
doesn't get so much as mentioned.
And Mr. Follett has one last surprise remaining: he's a
Brit. If
conservatives are the enemy, why doesn't he target the
British
Conservative party he's most familiar with? But no - he takes
aim
at the political party of an entirely different country. What
does this say about the worldview of the global left?
Learning Life Lessons
What's the lesson here? It's simply this:
Politics is downstream of
culture.
Mr. Follett's works are not works of politics or history,
they're just entertainment. Yet people learn from them anyway.
When conservatives try to teach lessons, we generally try to teach them, with
all the success of Ben Stein
teaching economics in Ferris
Bueller's Day Off. Liberals do this too,
particularly Bernie Sanders-style granola socialists, but there's
another branch of liberalism that has mastery of the art of building
their worldview into everything else
that isn't inherently political.
Why are there next to no conservative
comedians? Novelists? Actors? Hollywood
directors? OK, maybe those industries are so exclusively
occupied by
liberals that it's impossible for conservatives to get their noses in,
like the professoriate at most universities. Money always
talks,
however,
so why are there no conservative movie producers?
There's
certainly plenty of conservative rich people.
Once upon a time conservatives did at least attempt to
participate in the culture. Ayn Rand and George Orwell
exposed
liberalism and communism for the socialist
tyrannies that they are, achieving world renown without the backing of
megabucks. National
Review was
founded and carried on the back of William F. Buckley's father's vast
fortune. Rupert Murdoch invested great sums into Fox News
before it became profitable, - and, we note, in recent years it's
become
significantly less conservative.
The Koch brothers spend their billions on electing
center-right politicians. Bully for them - why not instead
buy a movie studio or a TV network?
Alas, most of us have no hope of doing any of this.
But
that doesn't mean we can't enter the cultural arena. Anyone
can write a book, and thanks to Amazon, anyone can
publish one too.
What's holding us back? As one of Mr. Follett's
belovedly deified Democrats once said:
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.