Chopping Down a Cherry Tree
You know the story about protesters spitting on Vietnam vets at a San Francisco airport when they came home? It's not true. This isn't to say there weren't confrontations between some people against the American war in Vietnam and others. But there is no record of any such event actually occurring. At least there is no such record in any publicly available archive. I'm not saying no protester ever confronted any veteran, but the story's ubiquity is not from its actually having occurred in Airports around the country back in the 70's. It came to be told in movies about Vietnam, like Hamburger Hill and First Blood, but it is not an actual event.
To be clearer, it's not a story told to represent what generally occurred to veteran's returning from Vietnam. Like I said, some veterans were harassed by some people, both for and against the war, but the story is not a type for the general experience of returning soldiers of the era. I don't know that there is a "general" story that represent what occurred but the idea that war protesters and veterans represented two opposing forces is silly. Many veterans and active duty personnel were a part of the anti-war movement. In fact, prior to the "Anti-War Movement" you might think of, The Ten Soldiers and Nixon's Coming-Draft Card Burning-Hippy Movement, there was an anti-war movement in the military. The point being, protesters fighting with veterans was not the typical experience post-Vietnam. There's actually a documentary coming out in May about this very subject. You should see it.
Why do I mention this? Well, what do you suppose the point of a collective "memory" like protesters spitting on GI's is for? What do you suppose it means if the story, in its kernel is also traced to Nazi Brownshirts in post WWI Germany? What do you suppose it means if a people use one narrative to describe their history and suppress another?
The stories we tell and hear give us insight into who we are and want to be. A lot of stuff happens, what we choose to remember and how we remember it is important.
If you'd like to learn more about the Vietnam War, visit your local library. Ask your librarian to help you find a book like Spitting Image. Or just watch an hour of The History Channel.
3 comments:
The difficulty, of course, is that every side lies to support its cause. Someone is just as politically motivated to say things didn't happen as they might be to say they did happen. All sides have those who eager lie and deceive for some supposedly higher cause.
Reality, like most things, is somewhere in the middle.
My college history department made shirts for the majors that on the front said: UCSB History All Lies. The reverse said: In The Past.
HAA HA.
Not every account of history is a lie, even when we attach judgment to our retelling. A certain number of veterans protested the war in Vietnam. A certain number of veterans testify to having been abused by civilians, both for and against the war, when they returned to the US.
I was making the point that telling some stories over others is purposeful. Making up other stories is also purposeful.
If by reality you mean "the actual events" or something like that, how can we have any conception of reality that lies outside of us?
Not every account of history is a lie, to be sure. But, they all are testimonies of some sort, which has biases and whatnot.
And we get to know the actual events by being good at weighing the various biases, a task interfered with by our biases, which then feeds into the biases of others, and so then we have to sit down and take an aspirin.
Oh! How about that Gospel of Judas? That's a good retelling isn't it? All those various forms of Christianity swirling about until the wicked Councils stomped out the most interesting kinds.
Oh, and being a Christian I would answer your last question by saying the Holy Spirit or some such thing. Though that's hardly academically acceptable. The more acceptable answer is we can't ever, but we can increasingly approximate by using good historical methodology. Or some such thing.
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