Imagine if some President of the United States were to start a project of whitewashing the history of the United States. We can imagine such a president thinking that Americans should be very proud of their country, and that it is a terrible thing when Americans think that their countrymen ever did great evils. We can imagine him launching a project called "American History Glorified." The goal of the project might be to get everyone to think that were never very bad deeds committed in American history. For example, the project might try to teach people that there never was much slavery in the United States, that there never were very many American Indians who were killed or had their lands stolen, and so forth.
A project so untruthful would have no chance of success within a four-year elected term of a single American president. There would be too many people who would pop up and loudly say, "That's a lie -- we know facts that contradict such claims." Projects of whitewashing history have little chance of success over a short period such as four years. But the most outrageous whitewashing of history can occur successfully over a very long time period such as 80 years or 100 years.
I can imagine such an "American History Glorified" project succeeding if it had a project time length of about 75 years. Things might go like this:
Phase 1 might be to somehow get control over history textbooks and the publication of history books. The initial goal would not be to deny any claims that great evils had been done in American history, but simply to avoid mentioning any facts that might support such claims. So we can imagine American history books being written so that virtually no mention was made of slavery, and virtually no mention was made of the American Indians, and no mention was made of events such as the unnecessary firebombing of Dresden or the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities or the unprovoked US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Also no mention would be made of the hundreds of thousands who died from US bombing during the Vietnam War, and no mention would be made of the very bad mistreatment of those in the Philippines during the period from 1898 to 1946, when the US held that country as a colony or territory.
Phase 2 might be to gradually try to raise more and more uncertainty about claims that great evils were done during American history. For example, attempts would be made to label people asserting the reality of slavery in the US (between 1776 and 1865) as "slavery theorists." And attempts could be made to label people asserting the reality of mistreatment of American Indians as "American Indian mistreatment theorists." Phase 2 would also include attempts to shame, defame and slander such claimants.
Phase 3 might be to gradually erect a kind of speech taboo in which any discussion of great evils done during American history was made into some kind of unacceptable taboo. It might gradually become the case that whenever anyone in a college class or high school class asserted that great evils were done in American history, such a person would be treated as some outcast who had done something as unacceptable as stripping off all his clothes.
We can imagine all kinds of techniques that would be gradually introduced to cloud the waters and cause great doubt about whether there ever had occurred great evils in American history. They might include techniques like this:
(1) People might say that we cannot know whether there ever were a great number of American Indians, because the American Indians never engaged in a proper census of themselves.
(2) People might say that we cannot know whether there ever were a great number of slaves in the US, because the American slaves never engaged in a proper census of themselves.
(3) People might say that maybe all those who reported seeing lots of slaves in the southern United States were just hallucinating.
(4) People might claim that very few books were written by people who claimed to have been slaves (ignoring how the vast majority of US slaves were never taught to read).
(5) People might say that there were few people who wrote accounts of their family members being destroyed by napalm during the Vietnam War (ignoring how unlikely such an account would be to get published and noticed if it were written).
(6) After about six or seven decades of the funding of the "American History Glorified" project, people then might start claiming that "experts largely agree" that no great evils had been done in US history, or that there was a "consensus of historians" that no such great evils were ever done. At that point it might be that no such agreement of opinion existed, but it is very common and very argumentatively effective to appeal to a consensus even if one does not exist.
Innumerable similar tricks might be used. If funded for seven decades, the "American History Glorified" project might well largely succeed. We can imagine a United States of the year 2100 in which almost all American citizens believe that there were no great evils ever done in United States history. It would not be a situation in which people were saying "no one ever says that there were great evils done in the history of the United States." It would be a situation in which people might be thinking, "Sure, there are some people who claim that great evils were done in US history, but such people are out of the mainstream, so I can ignore them." By the year 2100 the whitewashing of US history might be largely successful.
One reason I suspect this is that I know of a case in which a similar whitewashing of history has occurred. What I refer to is the whitewashing of observational history by the materialists who largely control mainstream information sources. Such materialists have engaged in a whitewashing of history as big as the "American History Glorified" project described above.
The type of historical whitewashing done by materialists is a whitewashing that attempts to hide or minimize the very abundant reports of paranormal phenomena that have occurred for two hundred years. It was reports of paranormal phenomena such as clairvoyance and unexplained healings that caused the arising of the French Royal Academy of Medicine commission that lasted between 1825 and 1831. The commission found resoundingly in favor of clairvoyance, declaring it to be a fact established by their careful observations. Throughout the nineteenth century the reports of the paranormal came frequently, particularly after 1848. Around 1852 knowledge of such reports was very widespread. A newspaper article from 1852 states, "Every one has heard of certain spiritual manifestations in various parts of the Union by rapping and other mysterious sounds." Another newspaper article in 1853 says this:
"In almost every paper which we take up, foreign or domestic, we find something the subject of spiritual manifestations. A mania has spread throughout Europe, and in London, the capital of the civilized world, in Lisbon and Madrid, even in old Rome, the professors of the occult art of table turning, are daily, winning proselytes."
Similarly, in the July 9, 1853 Spiritual Telegraph we have a report from the Paris correspondent of the New York Times, writing about table turning, the observation of mysterious unexplained movements in tables:
In the middle of the 19th century, a doctor wrote this: "The distinguished Parisian Professor of Medicine, Rostan, gave at the time his corroborative testimony to the existence of this power in the article ' Magnetisme,' in the ' Dictionnaire de Medecine,' wherein he remarked : 'There are few facts better demonstrated than clairvoyance'." Later the same doctor wrote this: "Innumerable instances are recorded of the possession of the faculty of clairvoyance by persons in the normal state, in sleep [hypnotism], and in some abnormal conditions of the system."
But soon materialists began their attempts at whitewashing history to exclude such accounts, and their efforts went on for more than 170 years. The biggest tactic used was simply avoiding mentioning any of the inexplicable things that had been seen. So, for example, Charles Darwin made no mention of any of the inexplicable paranormal phenomena that were "the talk of the town" in London when he was writing his main works. And Thomas Huxley refused to participate in a committee making an investigation of the phenomena (a committee that eventually issued a report finding resoundingly in favor of the reality of the spooky phenomena). Another tactic was character assassination, in which the witnesses were portrayed as kooks and frauds, even though there was abundant testimony by very respectable and accomplished people who had no motivation to misspeak. As the decades passed, people read more and more science books that failed to make any mention of such phenomena, even though the spooky phenomena continued to be witnessed in great abundance.
In the 1880's the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and it eventually produced a massive two-volume work documenting that reports of apparitions are very common, a work you can read here and here. But mainstream academia ignored the Society's activity which continued to document the paranormal for many decades. Mainstream academia kept teaching a story line that went like this:
"People don't have mysterious psychic powers or inexplicable psychic experiences."
"There is no good evidence for the paranormal."
"When people report seeing ghosts or other inexplicable phenomena, they are hallucinating, or maybe being fooled by someone else."
This was the most unhistorical whitewash, a whitewash as deceptive and misleading as the American History Glorified project imagined above. But the whitewash of observational history was able to largely succeed, because it occurred over very many decades, and was funded by the huge endowments of universities where materialism had become predominant.
Let us compare the imagined American history whitewash and the whitewash of the paranormal that has occurred over many decades. I imagined a situation in which the whitewashing of American history was largely successful because a social taboo had been erected in which it was considered wildly inappropriate and socially unacceptable for a student to act like the student in this conversation:
Year 2100 Professor: So, as you can see, there is a consensus among professors like me that no great evils ever occurred in American history.
Student Smith: That's not true. Americans stole the land of the United States from the American Indians, treating them like dirt, and killing them like crazy, before sticking the remnants in impoverished reservations. And so many millions of black Americans suffered the living hell of slavery for their whole lives. I could go on and on.
Year 2100 Professor: Why such speech sounds so crazy! Where did you get such ideas? Can't you hear all the students laughing at your strange claims?
We can imagine a similar event occurring today. Student Smith would simply refer to observational truths documented by many hundreds of written accounts by reliable witnesses in newspapers and books by scientists.
Year 2025 Professor: So, as you can see, objects only move when forces that we understand act on the objects, forces such as magnetism, gravity, electromagnetism, wind and collisions.
Student Smith: That's not true. In the nineteenth century innumerable witnesses reported that tables would undergo all kinds of strange movements and levitations, when no one was touching them. Countless reports signed by multiple witnesses would say that untouched tables moved around by themselves, or stood up at a 45 degree angle with two legs raised in the air when no one touched them. Countless times witnesses would report tables fully levitating in the air when no one touched them. And endless reports would say that very loud mysterious raps would come from different directions in a room, and that musical instruments would play beautifully, when no one touched them. This was before the age of electronics. Many said they saw the medium Daniel Dunglas Home levitating, and the witnesses included William Crookes, one of the 19th century's greatest physicists.
Year 2025 Professor: Why such speech sounds so crazy! Where did you get such ideas? Can't you hear all the students laughing at your strange claims?
Why do we not get exchanges like this today in university physics classes? Because observational history has been whitewashed for 170 years. This whitewashing occurred along the lines of how I described that the "American History Glorified" project might work. The only difference was that instead of there being a whitewashing of evil deeds in American history, what was whitewashed were the reports of inexplicable paranormal phenomena. So the average person has never read anything about the observations reported in my "Spookiest Years" series of posts that you can read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here and here, even though such events were very widely reported long ago in newspapers and books written by respectable people, witnesses who observed the spooky phenomena and wrote up what they saw soon after they saw it. Such spooky events have been whitewashed from the history books and science books of academia. The result is a public of the year 2025 that has been as badly educated about reality as the US public would be in the year 2100 if the "American History Glorified" project had run full blast for most of the twenty-first century.
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