Beware the Entertainers

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Whether on the left or the right, beware those in the entertainment industry. While they entertain you, they are also frequently trying to teach you to think about the present in the manner they think most appropriate. Any film or story you see today tends to have one or more hidden agendas embedded in it. This is because we, as beings, tend to be picture oriented. Something we see tends to imprint on us more than mere text in a book.

In addition, any "revision" or "change" to known historical facts can be written off by the entertainers as merely "artistic license". So if saying Lee Harvey Oswald could not have killed Kennedy by himself requires revising the history of Lee Harvey Oswald . . . well it is not the film maker's fault that you may not be aware that firing three aimed shots in the period is well within an experienced marksman's skills, and that Oswald actually was a skilled marksman. Not his fault that you may not be aware that an average man, unburdened and in good health, actually has no trouble walking a mile in a quarter hour so that when he tells you it cannot be done you are further involved in believing the movie's goal to make you believe that there was a conspiracy.

Is the film going to have any sort of disclaimer of these twisted facts? Nope, just the general "based on" and the laughing "If they are interested, they can check the facts themselves . . . we know they will not, and we gain a few more slack jawed converts to our cause."

Never ever accept as a fact anything that is presented in the entertainment media. Take the time to try to research the truth, whether you already agree with what is being presented (like the subtle slanting of historical facts given in the latest Indiana Jones film, or the subtle shading of facts in Ben Stein's "Expelled" film). Always assume that there is an agenda to anything being presented as mere entertainment. There almost always is, even if it might be unconscious on the part of the filmmaker (for myself, I no longer believe it is unconscious, but is quite blatant).

This, sad to say, even includes so called "historical documentaries". Anyone who would suggest the use of "horse holders" as one of the proofs that the men of the Seventh Cavalry were poorly trained at the Little Big Horn clearly has no knowledge of the operations of Cavalry. Every horse organization that relied on dismounted combat used horse holders, whether it was an American Cavalry unit, or a European Cavalry unit, or even Native American Tribes. Horses are herd animals, and if you have a group of them and one of them gets spooked, like by being hit by a bullet, and runs, all of them are likely to run. If you intend to dismount and fight for a while, and then mount and move somewhere else, you employ horse holders. Situations where the native Americans did not use horse holders were where they could pen them or hobble them, and even then they might leave a security detail. But if you intend to use the horses to move rapidly from place to place, perhaps falling back before a superior force to different fighting positions (as Reno's command did during that same battle), you use horse holders.