Educating Twitter: The Best Yankee Free Agents

Those of us who are interested in history and write about it recognize that it’s not for everyone. We know it can be dense, or boring, or slanted, or all of the above. A seemingly endless string of dead white guys with dates attached to their names. It’s become, sadly to me and those like me, sort of a niche subject, one that’s all too often given attention only when it serves some other purpose.

Historical facts are now often viewed as malleable, up for dispute, ready for misrepresentation to further a pre-determined agenda. I don’t mean opinions or “takes.” I mean iron-clad, guaranteed, 100% proven, factual things. You know, facts. Fact facts. The “Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball” facts. Those facts. The things that are supposed to be settled suddenly aren’t.

So, in a world in which people don’t really study history to learn anything anymore, at least not as much as they once did, you’re going to run across a lot of statements that are demonstrably, certifiably not true. Sometimes that’s intentional, a clear attempt to manipulate or mislead people. And then there are statements like those made in this tweet, which is neatly summarized by the information on this screen grab: