Alternative Ruminations
22nd June 2021
ZMan considers alternatives.
Alternative history is one of those things that should be more popular in Hollywood, as it opens the door for creativity. “What if the South won the Civil War” would let the filmmaker run wild with all sorts of claims about the past, for example. For the same reason, it should be more popular with people in general. It makes for a good start to a campfire story. “Imagine if our enemies from the past had won and we were forced to live in a world of their creation…” is a good scary story.
For whatever reason, alternative history is not very popular. Revisionist history, on the other hand is popular. In fact, revisionism, outside of one subject, is the norm in the history departments of the West. The only thing historians do is question the official narrative of various historical events. The new narrative usually tries to explain the past according to the new morality. Fitting the past into the great story justifying the moral claims of the people in charge is the point of history.
Why bother considering an ‘alternative history’ when you can just change the Narrative to make the Official History reflect your preferred alternative? 1619 Project, anyone? Tulsa ‘Massacre’, anyone?