The History Of Maryland

Maryland: A Middle Temperament 1634-1980 (1988)  by Robert J. Brugger arrived this afternoon.  This history is considered currently the definitive history of that state.  With index it's 850 pp.  It's too heavy to hold.   Sigh.

Also arrived The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland (1997) by T. Stephen Whitman.  This is a slim, but dense book, with tables and graphs and many statistics dredged out of primary economic and legal documents such as wills, legislation, sales and registration fee receipts, that sort of thing.  This is the kind of history that is the opposite in the spectrum of historical research that sees narrative, story-telling history as the end point, that also believes there are no facts in history, only 'feeling' and opinion.  But laws are facts.  Though opinions can be written about a law, and a law can be interpreted, particularly in its application by, say, a judge or a sheriff, a law is fact, just as are taxes.  I get so freakin' tired of those people.

It's sadly comic too, that these are the same people become livid if you bring up actual history that shows how little our national myths are founded in the reality of actions of the times that the mythologies of this nation describe.

The mythology that is propaganda:  I'm particularly aware of this process by watching the interminable Winds of War and War and Rememberance, the television miniseries from the 1980's that tell the tale of WWII.  According to these propagandistic mythologies on the home screen, WWII was conducted entirely in palatial offices and homes, by very attractive people wearing only the most becoming and stylish clothes -- even Jewish refugees are all very wealthy and well dressed and always end up in the homes of other wealthy people.  Yes, even in occupied Paris of 1943, all the women are dressed in the most lovely clothes -- even the Jewish women who are wearing the Star -- the star is of solid gold, pinned upon courture.  Their hair is done to perfection, their hats of unspeakable delight, their jewels in perfect taste.  Everyone eats and drinks the most splendid food and wines, served impeccably upon snowy damask and perfect china.  Now I remember reading often Simone de De Beauvoir's accounts of what it was like in Paris during those years. I recall vividly her own vivid memories of what it was like to get a new dress after the war was over -- which took a while.  This took even longer in England.  But in these miniseries, even in England all are dressed in high fashion and most becomingly, their hair and teeth are perfect and they eat so well in hallowed halls and dining rooms.  Even in the U.S. there is a slight inconvenience from the rationing of gasoline, but that matters not all -- we put our autos up on blocks and ride in military vehicles, which are always there for us when we need them.

The only people who suffer are the soviets -- and they deserve it because they're dirty commies and we're supporting them with Lend Lease. That they lose 40 million people on the course of refusing a separate peace and keeping Hitler harassed by war on two fronts instead of one, well, that's the price they should be grateful to have paid.

These kinds of mythologies are worse than fairy tales, they are pernicious lies, just like all those lies told of the War of Southern Aggression.