A politician in a democracy thinks his first task is to be elected. If he is elected, he can do other action items but he first must be elected. This is his prime purpose. He will talk long and hard about "practical politics," but this is mostly a facade covering his agenda.
A peace officer wants to go home after her shift. A preacher heaves a big sigh on Sunday evening about eight.
A writer feels good when the page is full and revised a half dozen times. On this page we may hold up our heroes for acclimation or our enemies for ridicule. We may immortalize a spot, mistakenly, as Breed's Hill was misplaced for Bunker Hill, or as the Greazy Grass was mistaken for Little Big Horn or San Juan Hill on the San Juan Heights takes precedence over Kettle Hill. You get the idea. We assign history to a spot and that is the site where the plaque goes.
No matter if the blood was fifty meters to the right flank. A writer puts his information on truth and a myth becomes a fact.
"When the myth becomes larger than the truth," a fictional editor once intoned, "print the myth."
William Wallace was either BraveHeart or a rogue knight, depending upon the media version you follow. Mel Gibson called Wallace Braveheart. Winston Churchill named him a rogue knight. History is left to decide, but, history, like the law, is often a donkey.
We are trapped in this world wherein men fashion the truth after their own likeness and breathe it in the fetid stink of their own foul life. A writer can point to this corrupted being but he does so at his own great peril. He, and he alone, decides how much truth he will tell, how well he tells it, and forecasts what he will do with the embers.
So it is that we have sought to tell the truth some years here at aintsobad and its attendant sites. We will hope to do what a writer does, the pillory be cursed in the process.
Opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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