Context and History

Orson Scott Card is a favorite essayist of mine on the web. He's just written a new essay about context that's worth the five minutes it will take to read. For example, he says this about the media's fixation with calling Fallujah anything but a victory for us,

In short, we gave every advantage to the enemy, in order to avoid wanton destruction and civilian losses -- and still we advanced inexorably toward victory, inflicting far more casualties than we sustained.



In context, what we were seeing was not balance, it was overwhelming superiority in training, morale, equipment, and, of course, numbers.

And concerning the reporting on the Cabinet and the "revolving door" that the media is portraying the administration to have,

Reporters and commentators with any sense of history would quit their jobs before they'd be caught saying "revolving door" in the context of the Bush cabinet. All but two of Bush's original cabinet stayed the entire four years of his first term. The last time that little turnover happened was FDR's first term, which ended in 1937.

If only we had a sense of perspective. But that seems to be a real problem, we can't see past our own short memory span. How else to explain so many blatent lies that the commentators and spinsters have gotten away with?