History And The Curse Of Revisionism - Some Of It Happened, Some Of It Did Not , It All Depends

Harry Grillo was the historian of the Palumbo family and its little, nested corner of West Haven; and every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter he would tell one of his stories of the family's fortunes. The stories always had the same gist and direction, but each telling was a bit different.  Aunt Tilly had lived either in Fair Haven or Wallingford before her husband died; and he had either worked for Scovill or Beech.  

Little Johnny - or was it Billy Tucci? -  had been nabbed for pinching a girly magazine from Jimmy's Smoke Shop, but thanks to Uncle Charlie, the arresting officer looked the other way and later came to Easter dinner at Aunt Tilly's house. 

'What ever happened to Charlie', Lou Lehman asked?

'Disappeared 'round the bend', said Harry, 'over the hill, retired from this mortal coil and in a happier place', but in the retelling at Christmas Charlie never left New Haven, was still practicing personal injury law and doing quite well; but his brother Tootsie...

Here Harry started in on the famous Tootsie Marucci, notorious brother of Charlie who had run a chain of houses of ill repute from Boston to Philly, 'a true entrepreneur, great businessman, took good care of his family before someone snitched, the girls lost their livelihood, and Tootsie had to leave the state'

Or not, as Bindy Petrucci suggested.  It wasn't brothels, but gaming parlors, ahead of his time when you consider what the Pequots are hauling in at Mohegan Sun, what goes around, comes around.  Whatever it was, and no one at the table could seem to agree, Tootsie was a character and a legend. 

And so it went every holiday, stories by Harry, begun over antipasto and lasagna and finished only by the ham and ricotta pie. It was never a tedious affair, these fungible chronicles, because everyone had a say, and before the nougats and nuts, the story had morphed into something more fitting for the occasion, down or up, hilarious or tragic, all in good spirit and family togetherness. 

Family history for the Palumbos was not something fixed in stone.  It had parameters and common threads to be sure, but the rest was up for grabs.  Memory, they all averred, was a fragile thing, never to be counted on, especially as you got older, and by all accounts many around Tilly's table were pushing eighty and couldn't remember half the things they did yesterday let alone what Tootsie Marucci had done twenty-five years ago. 

This is all preamble, however, to the point of this story.  History whether that of the Palumbo family or that of the United States is up for grabs, a kind of pleasant chimera, shifting and changing depending on the teller; and the more distant the historical event, the more open to self-serving interpretation and reconfiguration it is.  

Over time, for example, the name Thomas Jefferson still has resonance, but the echoes are quite different.  A hundred years ago he was remembered as one of the Founding Fathers, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, a philosopher, diplomat, inventor, and man of letters; but today he is a miscegenating slave-holder, a patriarchal sexual predator, and the immoral, macho, misogynist and racist predecessor of Donald Trump. 

 

If enough Southern history is cancelled and all references to its Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow past expunged, cleansed and power-washed until no traces remain, then only one image remains - Simon Legree, overseers, fields of cotton, and Gone with the Wind. 

Something happened to create 50 million black people, most of whom are still poor, jailed, or on the loose with Uzis and drug money; but since Southern history has been erased, this legacy goes unexplained; and the more it remains a mystery, the more simplistic the explanations for it become. White privilege, systemic racism, and elitist patriarchy - that's what did it. 

When colonialism becomes the principal identifying variable describing European civilization, then the palace of Versailles, Westminster, the Alhambra, and the glories of the Spanish court never existed.  Every subjective retelling of European history loses a bit of 'civilization' and gains a piece of 'enslavement', 'exploitation', and 'oppression'.  Before long the stories of kings, courts, emperors, and shahs omit references to the spread of culture, arts, philosophy, law, and science, and focus only on depredation, oppression, and misrule. 

 

Pol Pot, former leader of Cambodia, declared Year Zero, the year that the past would be completely erased and the country would begin again and rebuild a new, pure, Maoist state of perfect equality, one without class distinctions, infrastructure of wealth and power, and capitalist underpinnings.  Kampuchea would be an agrarian, peasant, universally sharing society.  

Those who had worked in bourgeois professions were eliminated as threats to the state.  The new Kampuchea would be one, unique, consolidated peasant class with no exceptions.  From the Year Zero onward there would be no history, no reminiscences of the past, no acknowledgment of anything but Kampuchea. 

 

Of course this twisted, deformed idea - like that of Mao himself and Enver Hoxha of Albania who enforced the same revolutionary destruction of his country to rid it of the past - failed.  Today's Cambodia, China, and Albania are modern, economically productive, and relatively free societies.  They have recovered their past. 

Russian history was revised by the Soviets who had overthrown the last Tsar in the violent revolution of 1917.  The Russia of Alexander and Peter the Great no longer existed.  The Soviet Union was to be a classless, equal society without the oppression and villainy of the Tsars. Now, in a resurgent Russia, its people are looking to their imperial past for inspiration. It was Imperial Russia which expressed the heart and soul or Mother Russia, not the Soviets. 

 

One thing is certain - in the retelling, the exhuming, the revisiting of the past, the story will only vaguely recall what actually happened.  History will be retold to fit within the lines of modern Russia of Vladimir Putin.

As much as regimes have tried to eliminate or reconfigure the past to fit their dimensions, it will always return to its original form.  The Antebellum South did exist.  Slavery was a going concern.  The unique model of capital and labor was unified in a single slave, so landowners cared for both. Whether slavery would have died on its own is a still open question.  

The Cavalier South of manners and gentility was and is still an important part of American culture, and must be recognized for its influence and longevity.  The failure of Reconstruction at the hands of a retributive Congress and the Jim Crow which it produced, are lessons for all about human nature, resilience, and canniness. 

 

Shahs, emperors, shoguns, kings, queens, and courtiers all existed; and the concentration of wealth and power enabled the civilizing empires of France, England, Spain, Persia, China, and Russia.  To dismiss them because of the way they expanded their territories and amassed their wealth is irrelevant.  History is amoral.  Don't ask what good Genghis Khan did.  Be satisfied that he represents an ineluctable aspect of human nature and he recurs in every generation and must be understood.