Matthew Walther in Compact:
The English historian J.A. Froude was famously gloomy about the ultimate prospects for his chosen branch of literature. “To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not difficult,” he said. “It is impossible.” Froude’s words came to mind the other day when I encountered Tucker Carlson’s interview with the podcaster Darryl Cooper, whose opinions about World War II may politely be described as “controversial.”
No summary could do justice to the parade of oversimplification, decontextualized pseudo-astonishment, one-sided gotcha-ism, casuistry, and moral lassitude on display in the conversation. But moral preening shouldn’t be our response to what Cooper is doing when he calls Churchill “the chief villain of the Second World War” or blames his alleged aggression on the influence of unnamed “financiers.” Outrage will only feed Cooper’s self-conception as a Promethean figure, carrying his benighted listeners out of the darkness to which they have been consigned into the pure light of historical knowledge.
The Cooper imbroglio is symptomatic of a larger problem: the epistemic gulf between the current consensus—however broadly defined—of practicing historians on any given subject and the attitudes of the ordinary person of general education. This holds true, as far as I can tell, across all subject areas.
More here.
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