Photo: Jan 6 pipe bomb, cropped; author: FBI; public domain
Have you ever watched the Capitol security camera footage from January 6? It’s not easy.
I have watched thousands of hours of the January 6th video in the US House. There is a lot of it and it’s slow going. If you watch it for a while you realize that 99.9% of it is normal people doing normal things: sauntering around and through the Capitol grounds and building, taking selfies, etc.
And yet, the media and the prosecutors have shown America (and the world) an edited version of Jan 6th that makes us all look bad. They highlight violence, windows breaking, and injuries. It’s not a true picture of January 6th.
What is it? More and more, I think we have to admit this: we are not just a victim of Fake News but also Fake History. When modern-day political issues are on the line, the left will revise history to fit their own interests. This is the spirit that drives Constitutional revisionism, the myth that our Constitution is a living document.
Once you start looking for Fake History, you will see it everywhere. One book I read, Get Trump by Alan Dershowitz (published by Hot Books, a Division of Skyhorse Publishing), recounts the famous story of John Adams heroically representing the unpopular killer British Redcoat soldiers who massacred the innocent protesting Bostonians. Turns out, according to transcripts of the trials, the soldiers were cornered by a murderous mob and might have acted in self-defense. And, Adams’ clients were far from an unpopular cause: much of Boston was sympathetic to the soldiers.
So, could the history of the Boston Massacre be fake? It’s possible, and this is why you have to be on the lookout for fake history. Ronald Reagan said we must ‘Trust but Verify.’ In the age of fake news, kangaroo courts, and partisan sensationalism, my motto is Distrust Then Verify.
