On Writing, History, and the Limits of Convincing

A Sunday Article

I’ve been thinking for the last week and a half about how to write this piece without sounding like an old man yelling at the clouds. I can’t find a way to do it. On the one hand, I pride myself on being rational, logical, and able to look at both sides of an argument—always examining an issue through the lens of applied history—and then drawing a conclusion or comment. But now, I’m struggling, and it’s disconcerting.

Part of my difficulty is that I’m trying to parse things in a way that doesn’t offend or drive off not only my readers, but also people I consider good, rational friends—even though we may not see the world the same way.

When you’re playing a game and have a lead, many coaches fall into the trap of playing not to lose. They get conservative with their play-calling, forgetting what got them into a winning position in the first place. As a result, they wind up becoming too cautious (not in the political sense) and lose the game. Caution, deliberation, and over-carefulness cause them to fail.

If I’m being honest, that’s where I am right now. I’m struggling with how to write a thoughtful, history-based article on recent events, and I simply can’t find the right words to strike the perfect balance. I’m a high-wire act losing my balance.

I wrote one draft and then discarded it, because it didn’t allow me to maintain objectivity. So, it sits unpublished, gathering dust. For a writer—and I do consider myself a writer—that is a dangerous place to be. For what is a writer if not a purveyor of thoughts, an observer of life and conditions, and someone with the courage to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard?

The answer? Maybe he’s not a true writer, just someone who thinks a lot, calculating the best soft landing he can find. It doesn’t make it any easier when that writer is also an author trying to sell books or attract listeners to his podcast. Alienating anyone—a potential customer—is never good business. As Michael Jordan once said when asked why he doesn’t comment on politics: “Republicans buy sneakers too.” He’s right.

C.S. Lewis didn’t care—he just wrote. John Locke drafted his Two Treatises on Civil Government in the late 1680s while in exile, knowing he could face imprisonment if discovered. Though the final publication in 1689 came after the Glorious Revolution, when the immediate risk had passed, Locke’s work was nonetheless born in a climate of danger. Martin Luther risked his life to write against the most powerful entity on earth, the Pope. So did countless others. Without their willingness to put pen, quill, or stylus to parchment or clay, we might not have the great works that changed the course of history—and that’s no exaggeration.

So how do I say what I wish to say, ensuring it’s grounded in history and fact? Let’s take the latter first.

The great scientist and thinker Stephen J. Gould once said about fact:

“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.’”

Gould argued that fact is established by overwhelming evidence, so much so that it would be irrational to dispute it. However, fact can and should be changed if contrary evidence arises. Science is not absolute but malleable, based on the evidence available. Fact must be open to revision.

So it would seem a fact is not an “in-stone” truth, but something to be revised when new evidence emerges. Yet how many are unwilling to accept that? How many are ostracized, criticized, or even shunned for providing evidence contrary to accepted fact?

Accepted fact. Once facts have permeated collective consciousness, to question them—despite contrary evidence—is to invite ostracism, outrage, or worse. Galileo Galilei faced such a fate for stating and proving the heliocentric theory. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, chief theologian for the Roman Inquisition, wrote in 1615:

“I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve around the earth, but the earth round the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the Scriptures which appear contrary; and we should rather have to say that we had not understood them, than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated.”

And the Decree of the Congregation of the Index in 1616 was even harsher:

“The proposition that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable from its place is foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical, because it expressly contradicts the sense of Holy Scripture.”

It seems humans, despite evidence to the contrary, will cling to what they have accepted as truth. Thomas Jefferson recognized this when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Once a fact has been accepted, it is nearly impossible to change people’s minds.

If men in Jefferson’s day clung to governments, and in Galileo’s day to cosmology, then today many cling just as tightly to memes, half-truths, and online slogans. That brings us to history.

We cannot understand where we’re going until we understand where we’ve been. History is the story of humankind—our story—told through many different methods, but primarily through the written record: tangible proof of what we’ve done, what we’ve learned, and how we pass on that knowledge. This is why it is imperative that we relate history honestly and without the goggles of bias or partisanship.

As Leopold von Ranke, father of modern historical scholarship, wrote:

“To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).”

To tell it how it really happened.

But how does one do that in a politically charged environment, where even documented evidence comes under scrutiny? How does one tell history properly when people refuse to believe their eyes or ears, preferring their narrative—what they’ve accepted—to what actually is?

Such attempts feel like salmon swimming upstream.

It is futile to bring reason when the air is filled with passion and people are unwilling, or unable, to listen. They hear only their truth—a notion so frivolous that truth itself gets lost in the noise of over-analysis and justification.

I can’t help but wonder if Galileo thought the same thing as he stood before the Inquisition, or if Martin Luther felt the hopelessness of reasoning with people who, at their core, were unwilling to understand truth.

Nothing I say will change the course of history. I’m just one person, at the tail end of the Boomer generation—a generation often used as a punching bag for its views and attitudes, many of them forged in the haze of post–World War II, Vietnam, and drugs. Many of the criticisms are valid.

In truth, I don’t know if I’ll ever be a great writer because of this trepidation—at least not in politics or current events. I’m not willing to take a polarizing stance unless it’s grounded in historical fact. I won’t engage with people who post memes that seem truthful but are usually exaggerations, half-truths, or outright lies.

I prefer to ground my writing in history—the real history of the Rankian school—rather than the words of internet populists or Marxist historians, the latter a contradiction in terms since most of Marx’s interpretations and predictions were wrong anyway.

And yet, if past generations clung to Scripture or monarchy against the evidence, our age clings to digital ephemera. I’m astounded at how many people believe memes without doing any research. If it sounds good, they post it—sullying their reputations with one group and elevating themselves in another.

So I no longer engage. I scroll past, ignore, or hit “snooze for 30 days.” I don’t unfollow. That feels too closed-minded. Someone might say something worth hearing, and I don’t want to miss an opportunity to learn.

So, despite the burning in my gut when I see foolishness posted by people I respect, I bite my tongue and still my fingers. There’s no point in doing otherwise—it only raises tempers and fuels endless back-and-forth threads that waste time, drain energy, and deliver nothing but aggravation. Who needs that?

Maybe my admission makes me a coward—or at least not a very good writer. It’s hard to be a good writer, to build an audience, when you try to write about the present with history as your only guide. It comes off as benign, uncontroversial. It just is.

And that’s the problem with Rankian history. It’s boring. And no one wants to read boring.