Gore Vidal, Writing History

GORE VIDAL never attended college, preferring instead to educate himslf. In that he was quite successful, and earned his living as a writer by the time he was twenty years old. Although he obviously didn't need a college education, I would have recommended one anyway; he probably knew a great deal more about history and political science than about chemistry and physics. One never stops learning. I much prefer his non fiction to his novels, although both are of the highest quality. He described himself as the official national historian of the United States, not because he actually held that position, but because he claimed that of all the historians writing about American history, only he told the truth about it. Most American hstory, he asserted, is hagiography, history written for the primary purpose of making its subject matter look good. Vidal died several years ago. Had he lived,he might have developed a revised view; nowadays historians are more inclined to provide a balanced assessment of American history, rather than an intentionally flattering one. Vidal's contribution consists mainly in having directly and unabashedly confronted the substantial "dark side" of the American sage. Westward expansion he saw not as a glorious taming of a wild frontier and the establishemnt of civilization to replace primitive, barbaric, savage native culture, but rather, as genocide. The post Civil War industrial revolution in the United States he saw not only as the emergence of an industrial, capitalistic economy which brough unprecedented prosperity to the American people, but rather, as an era of brutal exploitation of the wroking class. He pointed out that the factory and hourly wage system which emerged late in the nineteenth century was seen by many of its contemporaries as a form of slave lavor. He informed us that in the United States there are two governments; the cosmetic one,which exists only for appearances, consisting of the three well known branches of government, and the actual government, which consists of the corporate oligarchy, the corporate plutocracy. This he called "our corporate masters". Like most historians Vidal was a progressive. Progressives are drawn to the historical profession largely because history itself is a progressive process. History is change. Not all change is progress, but all progress is change. Conservatism, rooted in tradition, is less concerned with actual history, but more with maintaining the status quo and cultural traditions. Since conservatism resists change, it resists history. Vidal detested Ronald reagan, as did most liberals, and called him the "ancient, acting president". A juicy thought is contemplating how Gore Vidal would have dealt with Donald Trump in his articles for "The Nation" magazine. Not kindly, we can assume. By nt having a formal college education, Vidal contradicted the norm. The pattern is: people who attend college and attain college degress tend to be liberal, those who do not tend to be conservative. The pattern is clear, and well established. Hence college campuses are seen as, and in fact are, bastions of liberalism. Intelligent, well educate people tend towards progressive ideology. This is why it is amusing when consrvatives denigrate the intelligence of liberals. Liberals are not the ones dwelling in ignorance, lacking education. College campuses have not been "taken over" by liberals. They, and education generally, are merely more attractive to liberals than to conservatives. Vidal believed that conservatives tend to lack a basic understanding of historical provesses. This is born out simply by speaking to an average conservative. We will never have a Gore Vidal assessment of Donald Trump. The loss is ours.