Nothing can surpass the certainty of American conservatives, even when they’re wrong.
Right-wing blogger Matt Walsh is the latest to prove this. He has produced a seven-part series on Watergate in which he claims the history of Watergate has been a series of lies. His work is the equivalent of junk food. He shows his hand with the title, “The Real History of Watergate.”
Historian Lynn Hunt observes in History: Why It Matters, “Everywhere you turn history is at issue. Politicians (and bloggers and preachers) lie about history.” MAGA propagandists like Walsh get right in there to offer emotional responses to every historical event they believe needs revising. In the age where pathos has “killed” logos, it is open season on all history.
Rodney Kennedy
Telling lies about history has become a growth industry in the USA. Never before have the presses or the press been so hospitable to journalists, minor philosophers, amateur historians proudly brandishing their epistemological certainties and (most indispensable of all) bloggers (lacking all credentials) eager to denounce all American history, to sound frantic alarms against the danger of liberal historians and to commend the virtues of other fabulists with tall tales to tell to the gullible.
Walsh would like to be compared favorably to the productions of Ken Burns. He fails miserably in comparison.
Walsh follows a familiar trail in his effort. David Barton and Eric Metaxas think they write American history contradicting the entire fraternity of actual historians. American historians, including those at the most conservative schools, have shown the work of Barton and Metaxas to be spurious. Perhaps Walsh decided if Metaxas can do it, he can too.
Conservatives seem bent on undoing and erasing any historical event believed tainted by liberal historians. Perhaps we should expect new releases, “The Real History of Native Americans,” “The Real History of the Civil War,” “The Real History of Slavery” and “The Real History of Gay Marriage.” All these sequels will begin by denouncing actual history as a pack of lies. Oh, wait. Walsh already has produced some of those exact titles in his series.
At least Barton and Metaxas have college degrees. Walsh has a high school diploma and is obviously not an American historian. He is what St. Augustine called a “word merchant.” He strings words together to twist historical events to fit his preconceived and predetermined right-wing conspiracy theory about Watergate and all American history.
Sounding like a person trying too hard, Walsh says: “Everything you’ve been taught about Watergate is a lie. Sworn testimony, declassified files and memoirs tell a different story of a president spied on by his own government, a break-in he never ordered, and a narrative that reversed an election.” Walsh overplays his hand by insisting the “lies” about Watergate “reversed an election.” He is injecting his own prejudice about the 2020 election here. The Watergate scandal did have disastrous impact on President Gerald Ford’s campaign but it is because the American people knew the truth about Watergate. It had no effect on Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.
Here’s another Walsh whopper: “The Watergate affair is one of the most complicated and misunderstood events in American history. The key players are radically different from how they’re presented in mainstream history books: All of them (including Bob Woodward) had extensive deep state connections. Some were literal deep-state operatives. One was on the CIA’s payroll.”
The ad hominem nature of Walsh’s statement stares back at us. He attacks the character of Bob Woodward and immediately signals he will not be telling the truth.
Conservatives have a “tell” when they are not being honest. They use the word “real.” Ken Ham has crafted a profitable career out of his promotion of “real science” as opposed to evolution. Now, Walsh promotes what he calls “real history.” He is of the same mode of thought as Ken Ham and real science. “Real” history means the opposite of what it claims.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.