The first time I ever heard about the Lost Cause was when my good friend Zack Fry chided me for saying that the Civil War was not solely about slavery, but other issues as well. I did not mean that slavery was not an issue, or even that it was not the main issue, only that it was not the only issue the lead to civil war. Zack explained the concept of the Lost Cause and all that it entails and we moved on to a less heated topic. It may have even involved Monty Python and hovercrafts being full of eels.
Since that time several months ago, I have come across many blog entries pointing out Lost Cause-ers, stating annoyance and/or disgust with their beliefs. I came across one today as I sat at my desk at the train station, bored out of my mind. And suddenly it hit me. I had a philosophical, historical, and social epiphany.
Now one must know before reading the rest of this post the type of person I am. I am historically unbiased in most cases. Unless someone has done personal harm to me or my loved ones, I am likely to see both sides of every conflict or situation. There are constantly recounted stories at my school about me taking on entire classes in debates because I am the only person able to understand where both sides are coming from. I've found this especially helpful in my academic pursuits. Whether I personally agree with something is immaterial to me when dealing with historical research. As a student of the Civil War, I have remained sympathetic to neither North nor South. Instead I have become sympathetic to individuals - mostly the misunderstood ones - from both sides of the conflict. This leaves me in a position in which many historians are not, and thus I feel this is one of the few things I am actually qualified to comment on.
So about that. Back to my epiphany.
The Lost Cause, from my understanding, started primarily as an artistic movement. It was the South's Norman Rockwell version of the war. Whether it was correct or not, I don't care; that's not the point here at all. The point is, rather, that the Lost Cause today is an actual belief. It has been in the culture so long that it is now considered true by many. And whenever those people are insulted or berated for what is actually their belief, it is the equivilent of telling someone they are wrong for being a certain religion. Just because you do not believe that what they believe is accurate does not give you the right to be rude. Is it so unbelievable that someone could have an outlook on something that is completely different from yours? The point is, to tell someone they are wrong does not make you right.
Don't think this is me going after the pro-Union guys because the Lost Cause-ers are just as bad, stirring up just as much trouble on the internet.
I suppose the accuracy of the Lost Cause itself lies in whether you are talking about the political causes of the war or the personal causes. The government was surely fighting for different reasons than the common soldier was. But that's not the point either.
I am a firm believer that to understand a conflict you must take note of both sides. The Lost Cause is actually part of history but everyone is too focused on deriding it and the people who seem to believe in it to take note of this.
Chances are you are disagreeing with me. "What a silly little girl," you may be saying. That's fine with me. I don't need you to agree with me. All I ask is that you understand my point. And if you don't due to any lack of clarity on my part, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to clarify.
Disagreeing is one thing; insulting is another.
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Anger
I've mentioned before that I have an intense dislike for Jeff Shaara. I was looking through today's Civil War news and saw mention of a new addition of Shaara's battlefield guidebook and it refueled my anger. So I decided that perhaps I would take this time to explain my reasons for being so very anti-Jeff Shaara.
Jeff Shaara is a pretty horrible writer. His sentences are incredibly long, comma-filled ramblings. Take this excerpt from Gods & Generals:
She walked out to the back, down the porch steps, looked across the yard, the new furrows in the clean brown soil, the bed of the new spring garden, waiting for the seeding, the new crop, and she knew he would not be planting it, that he would not be working his beloved field outside of town. She looked up to the porch, saw the cloth bags, the seeds. She had just bought them this week, had hoped to sit with him, to poke small fingers into waiting dirt, the beginnings of the new life, and she thought of him, the look of pure joy, sitting in the dirt, part of it, brown smudges all over his clothes and face; thick, caked dirt on his hands. He loved it, would ask her to sit with him, share the feeling, the good work with God's earth.
To find that excerpt, I just hit "Surprise Me!" on the Amazon look-inside-the-book thing and found a perfect example. Number of sentences: 4. Total comma count: 22!
It bothers me that Jeff Shaara has made money off of his father's name. His father was much more talented. And he acts as if he's carrying on the legacy when in reality he's just capitalizing off of it.
Then there's the ego. The tooting of his own horn and crazy self-importance really, really bothers me. When I used to work at the museum and he was doing the book signing, I was sitting nearby for most of the day and the whole time he just told everyone about how great he is. "My father wrote this book," he'd say, pointing to The Killer Angels. "And I wrote all of these other ones." About his battlefield guidebook, he said something about how he tried to recommend the more unknown ones so that people would go see them. Because, you know, if Jeff Shaara didn't recommend them, there'd be no point in going. Then his speech at the cemetery on Remembrance Day this year was so offensive to me that I have still not gotten over it. If you do not remember my post mentioning it, Jeff Shaara basically said "Today is not about me. So let me tell you about how great I am. History is boring, but I make it worth learning. Kids would hate history if it weren't for me. Who wants to memorize dates and stuff? Oh and by the way, when Lincoln spoke here on this day, he didn't know what he was saying." To top it all off, he got the casualty figures wrong.
As I've stated before, for some reason people do not feel like they can publicly state their dislike for Shaara. And it's not that people do not dislike him; so many people I have talked to (including historians) feel he is overrated and simply riding his father's coattails. Perhaps my age/inexperience in the "real world" is making me blind to some sort of unwritten rule stating that one cannot say anything negative about Jeff Shaara or else. Once again, I inquire as to why this is. Why are we so afraid of Jeff Shaara? Or why is the history community so afraid of him? I know I'm not.
Jeff Shaara is a pretty horrible writer. His sentences are incredibly long, comma-filled ramblings. Take this excerpt from Gods & Generals:
She walked out to the back, down the porch steps, looked across the yard, the new furrows in the clean brown soil, the bed of the new spring garden, waiting for the seeding, the new crop, and she knew he would not be planting it, that he would not be working his beloved field outside of town. She looked up to the porch, saw the cloth bags, the seeds. She had just bought them this week, had hoped to sit with him, to poke small fingers into waiting dirt, the beginnings of the new life, and she thought of him, the look of pure joy, sitting in the dirt, part of it, brown smudges all over his clothes and face; thick, caked dirt on his hands. He loved it, would ask her to sit with him, share the feeling, the good work with God's earth.
To find that excerpt, I just hit "Surprise Me!" on the Amazon look-inside-the-book thing and found a perfect example. Number of sentences: 4. Total comma count: 22!
It bothers me that Jeff Shaara has made money off of his father's name. His father was much more talented. And he acts as if he's carrying on the legacy when in reality he's just capitalizing off of it.
Then there's the ego. The tooting of his own horn and crazy self-importance really, really bothers me. When I used to work at the museum and he was doing the book signing, I was sitting nearby for most of the day and the whole time he just told everyone about how great he is. "My father wrote this book," he'd say, pointing to The Killer Angels. "And I wrote all of these other ones." About his battlefield guidebook, he said something about how he tried to recommend the more unknown ones so that people would go see them. Because, you know, if Jeff Shaara didn't recommend them, there'd be no point in going. Then his speech at the cemetery on Remembrance Day this year was so offensive to me that I have still not gotten over it. If you do not remember my post mentioning it, Jeff Shaara basically said "Today is not about me. So let me tell you about how great I am. History is boring, but I make it worth learning. Kids would hate history if it weren't for me. Who wants to memorize dates and stuff? Oh and by the way, when Lincoln spoke here on this day, he didn't know what he was saying." To top it all off, he got the casualty figures wrong.
As I've stated before, for some reason people do not feel like they can publicly state their dislike for Shaara. And it's not that people do not dislike him; so many people I have talked to (including historians) feel he is overrated and simply riding his father's coattails. Perhaps my age/inexperience in the "real world" is making me blind to some sort of unwritten rule stating that one cannot say anything negative about Jeff Shaara or else. Once again, I inquire as to why this is. Why are we so afraid of Jeff Shaara? Or why is the history community so afraid of him? I know I'm not.
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