The Vietnam War Media Myth Exposed скачать в хорошем качестве

The Vietnam War Media Myth Exposed

The war in Vietnam was a very controversial war from the very start. However, it would be wrong to assume that such controversy was necessarily a product of the war itself. Rather, it often reflected a range of already well established political, social, cultural and metaphysical beliefs held by observers. The problem facing us today is that so many vested interests and world-views rest on the belief in the rightness of the media inspired Vietnam War myth that to challenge it openly is itself to engage in revolution. If the media was wrong, if the media and political activist groups were able to subvert Congress and bring about as U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and so invert historical truth, to expose this reality would be the equivalent to setting off an atomic chain reaction. Change the narrative and you change the culture. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides writes, “History is philosophy teaching by examples.” Thucydides understood something that many historians even today fail to appreciate—namely, the role the historian’s values, attitudes and beliefs play in the way historians create models of the past. History involves three integrated elements: evidence, the narrative that spins the evidence into a plausible message and the values, attitudes and beliefs of the historian that drive both the narrative and the selection and evaluation of evidence. In short, history is a product of both evidence and the mind of the historian. Most importantly, the models of the past created by historians often have far less to do with evidence than many believe. It is the interpretive narrative hat is used primarily to position and persuade the reader or listener. We seek this at work in the court room. In a court of law it is more often than not the quality of the narrative employed by the prosecution that leads to a conviction rather than the evidence in isolation. Since all history involves the interplay of evidence, the values, attitudes and beliefs of the historian and an interpretive narrative in its construction, it is necessary for us to ask questions not only about evidence but the values, attitudes and beliefs that inspire the inquiry and the interpretive narrative used to drive it. This video explores the role ideology has played in creating the anti-Vietnam War myth in popular culture.