Ann Ferro: ‘History is different now’

It was last summer, when my grandsons and nieces told me that “history was different now”. “OK”, I replied. “Tell me how it is different.” They launched into a list of changes in how people interact with “history”, namely by relying on social media as well as the fact that text books are written to sell rather than teach. I couldn’t disagree with them, but I did have to point out that history gets written by those with the ink, however you describe ink, whether a chisel on stone, a pen to paper, printing presses or social media “influencers”. The writers often took differing views on any subject, any event or person in history.
They weren’t impressed. Par for the course.
I have never been able to teach my children much of anything. I always wonder how homeschool Moms and Dads achieve success. I do hope that I passed on, by precept and example, the values that I believe are right and true and given them the tools with which to live those values in everyday life.
But, are things are different? We seem to have, in accepting different ways of living, also decided to accept ignoring the truth, creating fairyland expectations, concocting falsities in everything from presidential news conferences, TV and radio news programming to writing resumes.
I used to teach people how to write resumes. The first rule for the job seeker was to find out what the potential boss wanted in an employee and then wisely choose those parts of their educational and job experience to highlight in that resume. There actually are lists of words that you can peruse in deciding how you will emphasize those things. Those words encouraged a bit of embellishing. For instance, being someone who was a file clerk could be described as “ held critical position for information maintenance and retrieval.” Not a lie, just a brighter color.
Sadly we have the example of George Santos, an individual who is now a member of Congress based on his sterling resume, a collection of lies, so outrageous that it boggles the mind how he passed any kind of vetting procedure by the Republican party. His resume is full of falsities. He said he went to Horace Mann high school in New York City. He said he attended Baruch College and NYU. Neither school has any record of him attending. .He claimed to have worked for Goldman Sachs and City Group. Again, neither company has records of him every working there.
He claimed to be Jewish but he is a practicing Catholic as was his mother at the church that noted that while he claims to be very wealthy, he had to ask for financial help when he needed to bury his mother.
There is much more to the questionability of his qualifications for holding a seat in Congress particularly his sources of income. Investigations by the media say that he lied on his resume. While he claimed that he embellished, what he did was outright lying.
He is the poster boy of the “big Lie’s younger generation. Believing and practicing that truth is what you say it is. Or as Flip Wilson used to say, “a lie is as good as the truth as long as you can get people to believe it.”
He will probably stay in Congress. Removing him would entail a new election for the seat in the House where the Republicans have only the slimmest of leeds. While they may limit what he can do as an elected official, his vote will always be important.
We have lived through a president refusing to accept the will of the people and creating a posse of followers who believe his lies. We have people in Congress who are a part of that following and now we have George Santos. Perhaps he was vetted by his party and they found him perfect for the job.
And I have news for my grandsons and nieces. There were charlatans, liars and nincompoops in Congress before. The good history books are full of them.
The more history changes, the more it remains the same.