Literal truth of a historic event is a hard thing to grasp, even if participants are still alive. So much of what we know is handed down to us through fallible human testimony. For example, I’m struck by the difference between Michael Shaara’s portrayal of General James Longstreet in The Killer Angels and Steven Sears picture of the man in Gettysburg. In Angels, he’s an unselfish, far seeing prescient hero who was able to predict and plan for the then new nature of defensive combat. In the other, he’s a vacillating, self-serving liar who’s exaggerated the magnitude of his differences with other generals, and who’s actions showed that he fully bought into the tactical paradigm of his time, not only not objecting to the offensive nature of Lee’s campaign, but completely supporting it to the point of defending it in detail prior to its execution.

What’s the truth? Two people researched the Battle of Gettysburg to the nth degree and have come up with differing opinions of a participant. Is one more correct than the other? Or is it that the reality encompasses both, as well as other elements hidden from us over the long years, and the seeming contradiction is merely a necessary artifact of composing a complex narrative?

Literal truth and myth most often are mistaken for one another. Too often, what is asserted most ends up being the dominant belief regardless of any real grounding or lack thereof in factual truth. I’ve seen too much of that in 9/11 fact finding; too many “truthers” still believe canards and outright misrepresentations such as “the 9/11 hijackers are still alive”, “a scientist found evidence of explosives at Ground Zero”, and “witnesses heard bombs”, not realizing that the repetative nature of the echo chamber compromising this field of misknowledge isn’t a sign of accuracy, but of obsession, and obsession does not encourage high accuracy. Or even low. Electric transformers and enterprise-sized uninterruptible power supplies exploding because of a huge fire can sound like bombs; so can ceilings and walls falling. Disgraced “scientists” speaking outside their field of expertise know enough to bamboozle crowds into thinking aluminum and iron oxide (rust) are signs of incendiaries being used. And the obsessed too often discount simple errors, such as confusion between two people with similar or same names in a foreign language, and find more comfort in believing a conspiracy narrative spun by unscrupulous fools unconcerned about taking credulous idiots for a ride. To them, the lie is the truth, verified by lies and distortions spun in order to make the whole narrative seem self-confirming. But what is really the truth? Observers themselves do not always remember accurately; contradictions in the description of the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania demonstrate that. So do inconsistencies in the testimony of various first responders and other rescuers. Do these seeming inconsistencies indicate a problem with the dominant narrative? Or do they simply show that complex events are not easily reducible to the form necessary to translate history into something digestible by observers? A complex event has little care for how it’s portrayed in future retellings; ignoring the fact that they are not conscious beings, events unfold on their own terms, with the full complexity of reality and the full demonstration of every little bit of human experience that goes into an individual participants actions during the event. We can no more unreel the full narrative behind Joe Montanna’s pass to John Taylor in Super Bowl XXIII (“The” Catch, as it’s called) than we can the full narrative behind any of the experts who concluded that the Titanic did not break in half, contrary to some witnesses testimony. There’s too much that goes into the individual’s actions to fully understand. And these cases are highly individualized ones; how do we untangle the multitudes of interacting narratives, motivations, and experiences for more complex events?

The answer is that we can’t, but we can try to understand the thurst, and see if our understandings make predictions that are verified by other strictly factual aspects of the event. As incomplete as such understanding is, it would at least be factually based. For General Longstreet and the question of the self-serving nature of his memoirs, we can see that his letters prior to the Battle of Gettysburg do not show the sorts of doubts he retailed later in his own memoirs (although I’ve yet to read far enough to see whether he had doubts during the battle itself). We can predict that, if “controlled demolitions” were truly used in the Twin Towers, cleanup workers, the New York Police and Fire Departments, and others would have noticed the various signs, from the remains of devices used in explosives demolitions (“det” cord, remains of electronics, things like that) to explicit signs on the recovered structural supports (neither has ever been found). For other events, we can follow similar processes, applying Occams Razor when unable to decide between multiple compelling explanations. In short, we can attempt to divorce opinion and proceed from fact. That itself is not proof against error, but it is an attempt at unbiased understanding. That humans cannot reach perfect understanding is simply a limitation we all have to live with, but 50, 60, 90 percent understanding based on factual analysis always beats 10% understanding based on emotional or selective acceptance of history: It provides a more solid, more reality-based foundation for conclusions. Selective acceptance of history, or outright distortions of such – like what Holocaust revisionists, Apollo Moon “hoaxers”, and 9/11 Conspiracy peddlers practice – is a bed of quicksand unable to support true interrogation.

So, how do we discover “what really happened” in history? We try our best to proceed from facts. And who wants to know? Mostly people who have a care for accuracy, thank goodness. But unfortunately, some people who only have a care for rewriting history to suit a viewpoint also “care”. But only one of those pays any real tribute or care to those who were participants in prior events.