Questions
In regard to the Benghazi hearings I have two questions about Kevin Bracken’s October 27 letter in the Record-Bee. Why does he feel a need to demonize Trey Gowdy when it was Hillary Clinton that has done wrong? And why is he suddenly concerned about the high cost of the hearing when he apparently has no genuine concern about the national debt?
Bill Kettenhofen, Kelseyville
Take off the blinders
The Benghazi Hearing has been a mess. The Administration has been withholding subpoenaed material and inhibiting information to the House. We have found out more from FIOA Suits than the House Committee has. There is one irrefutable fact that came out, that was this administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the American People about the video causing what happened in Benghazi by Hillary’s own admission. AGAIN IRREFUTABLE! Then she blamed everything on somebody else.
Question: Who was really in charge? There was a 13 hour fire fight. Who was in charge? Where was President Obama? Where were the back-up forces? Who was in charge of that? Who had the final say that no support was given? You on the left say there is nothing there. What about these unanswered questions? And if I am so wrong on everything, how can you deny there was a 13 hour fire fight that went on virtually unsupported by this administration! Oh, that’s right, it wasn’t their problem, it was some underling’s problem, i.e. “What Difference Does It Make.” A statement that will never be forgotten in history.
So you on the left put on your blinders, join the lemmings jumping off the cliff and tell yourself there are no more unanswered questions. You on the left can go pound sand because I am not going away or straying from the truth, no matter how you try to distort me. Final word, if you want to vote for Hillary Clinton after she lied to you about Benghazi and lied to you about her server and probably lied about what she received on that server go right ahead, but you are doing a great disservice to the American People and the Constitution. Lies are lies, no matter whether they are told by Richard Nixon or Hillary Clinton or George H. W. Bush, i.e. “No new taxes,” or Bill Clinton, i.e. “I did not have sex with that woman.”
Voting for Hillary Clinton to me would be like swimming in a sewer, of her own making.
Left wing talk host Alan Combs actually said Hillary did not lie about Benghazi. You have to be brain dead to come to that conclusion. The email to her daughter and others are proof positive she lied to the American People, i.e., The Video my butt! But you Dems just bury your head in the sand and deny the obvious. Lemmings all of you! It makes Hillary look like the east end of a west bound horse, to come to the conclusion she didn’t lie. Quote by Will Rodgers, about the horse. “Don’t know, don’t care and don’t have the time to look it up.” It fits the scenario.
Remember past President Jimmy Carter, back in the 70’, saying on TV there is only 35 years of oil left on the planet. What an airhead. Just like global warming, you watch!
Mac McKay, Lakeport
History as you like it
In doing some research on historical writing I came across some interesting ideas about the process of writing which seem to address many of the issues brought up by Bill Kettenhofen in his November 3 letter to the editor.
Creationists like to think that history is written in stone and is unchanging and immutable; however, the past is not discovered or found; it is created by the historian as a narrative (a story). History is not the simple reconstruction of the past according to evidence, but rather it’s an interpretation that requires not just evidence but interpretations, guesses, and assumptions to fill in the gaps. The bottom line becomes: “who is this history for?” Does calling the text divinely inspired make the text less susceptible to errors?
When confronted with Biblical stories and prophecies one can only shake one’s head and remember what Samuel Butler said: “God cannot alter the past, but historians can.”
As long as the author does not lose his/her audience with a story that the reader dismisses as “nonsense” or “ridiculous”, the reader is “willing to suspend belief” and enter a world which the reader knows is fiction. The historian can make anything look good or bad, desirable or undesirable, useful or useless simply by re-describing it.
The past is always willing to take up with anyone without a trace of jealousy and without promise of fidelity. Nobody has ownership or a patent on the past and the past can be used or ignored by anyone.
Historical writing is now held to be a form of story-telling and the reason for choosing one perspective on history rather than another is ultimately aesthetic or moral and is certainly not based on evidence. In short, all history is created and all stories are fiction and that includes histories. This churning of the story is why we have a “new” version of the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln.
What constitutes data in the biblical world is subject to arguments till the cows come home, making the quote by Angus Deaton in his book “The Great Escape” very fitting: “And without data, anyone who does anything is free to claim success.”
In summary, Why are we so tied to the past in the first place? Shouldn’t we be spending most of our efforts on making the present better or preparing for the future?
Greg Blinn, Kelseyville
