Having many years of experience writing and publishing books, I suspet the American literary machine must be shifting into high gear now that the U.S. election is in our rear view mirror.
Not a moment is being lost as all the politically motivated or hired-gun historians are putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard and are busy reserving a space for the Democrats’ outgoing president and vice president on the grounds of Mount Olympus.
Book publishers are seeing visions of dollar signs dance in their heads in what promises to be a tsunami of exposés, biographies, and revisionist history manuscripts that will soon wash over their desks in a frantic attempt to explain why Kamala Harris and by extension the Democrat party lost the election so convincingly.
But they have another motive, one which is every bit as pointed and purposeful, and it is to lionize the outgoing president as a modern day Horatius who stood at the Tiber bridge.
It will be written that Joe Biden, hero of the Liberal patriots, defended democracy from the onslaught of the Republican invaders.
But unlike Horatius, Biden had to burn the bridge in order to save it. According to the revisionist historians, Biden’s choice of stepping down in the final months of the campaign will be written as a noble one and will deserve much more than just an honorable mention in the pages of political reporting. To them, Joe Biden offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb, passing the torch of freedom, diversity, equity and inclusion to his standard bearer, the vice president, who will also be regarded as another sacrificial lamb who fell on her sword to enshrine the Democrats’ reputation as valiant warriors.
I can see it now, very clearly, before me.
As the nation’s book publishers gear up for their orgasmic denouement of pushing the ‘start’ button on the printing presses, the ivy league academics will be putting the finishing touches on a new 2025 course called, “How the Democrats saved the country, by losing an election.” Theirs is a deeply-entrenched community and they are ubiquitous. They hold positions of authority and are revered by many, especially those in the media as the last word in intellectuality, so it is no wonder that their writings on this subject will be met with open arms.
We are obsessed with our own words.
While publishers may not have the same power as they did before the advent of self-publishing, they still managed to release 10,000 new titles last year and they still have considerable influence on our recorded history.
New history books numbered around 700 and there were 402 new books on politics published. Today, we are exposed to a barrage of words via the mainstream media and its upstart relative, social media, that make the task of separating truth from fiction or history from literary hysteria almost impossible.
With that in mind, now is the time to get the facts straight about the election, quickly, so that the American public can reject or accept the as-yet-to-be-published books, treatises, reports, monographs and history books as gospel. This is especially true for those which would attempt to color our view of what was truly an existential election or try to persuade us that those who lost really won or that those who won did so by cheating those who lost.
George Santayana said words to the effect, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” And while that may well be true, I would add that “those who do not question history before it is written deserve the kind of history they get.”
Stephen Helgesen is a retired career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in 30 countries for 25 years during the Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush Administrations. He is the author of fourteen books, seven of which are on American politics and has written over 1,400 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He can be reached at: stephenhelgesen@gmail.com
Image: PxHere // CC0 public domain
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
