Each Time has its own Stab-in-the-back Legend
Rory O’Connor: In your book, you talk about the media’s use of “storylines” and what you’ve called the “Rambofication of history.”
Paul Krugman: Yes, I’m rather proud of the term “Rambofication.” In the years immediately following Vietnam, all of this stuff that now seems so much a part of the story — that we lost the war because we were stabbed in the back, that the “weak” politicians, the Democrats, can’t be trusted on national security — wasn’t very much out there. I actually went back and looked at a lot of polling and what people had to say at the time. In 1977, people still remembered what Vietnam had actually been like, and why we needed to get the heck out of there.
It wasn’t really until the 1980s that the history began to be re-invented.
[x]#3157 fan woensdag 7 november 2007 @ 17:57:25
