Thucydides Roundtable, Book IV: History Is Written by the Losers
&gt;Those who rule do not have the time to write about it.<p>History written by the losers... because those who rule cannot write about it?<p>I think this article is interesting, but the underlying premise of the article really bothers me.<p>I can think of several glaring examples of manipulation of history that we are guilty of in America today, despite how we feel about ourselves being &quot;free&quot; and generally too good for that.<p>Here are some glaring examples off the top of my head:<p>My observations have been that most people in America believe Japan just attacked Pearl Harbor for no good reason. This story is told in the hollywood movie Pearl Harbor. In the movie, there were just kids playing, good people BBQ&#x27;ing, and beach volleyball and then these evil bastards just attacked for no reason. They don&#x27;t know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened.<p>I have also heard people say, time and time again, that they believe the atomic bomb &quot;saved lives,&quot; so the argument in my high school textbook goes, &quot;more people died in the fire bombings than the atomic bombings.&quot; This is perhaps the most outrageous manipulation of history. They don&#x27;t know American generals were begging to not use the bomb, or to at least not use on a civilian target. They have no idea of the history, of Japan&#x27;s confusion, of our unwillingness to compromise despite they were saying they would surrender. President Dwight Eisenhower said: &quot;the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn&#x27;t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.&quot; Another quote from a US General: &quot;The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.&quot; However, conveniently most Americans now don&#x27;t believe the atomic bombs were crimes against humanity, nor that the fire bombings of Tokyo were, either! The US General who oversaw the fire bombings of Tokyo himself said they were a war crime.<p>I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon&#x27;s hero, told of this).<p>It takes very strong character to be able to stand up and say that you made a mistake, and make good on it and make sure it doesn&#x27;t happen again. I think one of the best ways this will never happen is just erase those mistakes from history, and declaring history written by the losers would be a good way to argue for that.