Ten years ago, we were collectively bemoaning the phenomenon of people choosing their own ‘facts’ to suit their biases. Today, we’re worried about AI inventing things and leaving us unable to tell the difference.

As an aside, I’d like to point out that none of this is new. As for AI, the present iteration is… well, it’s artificial, but otherwise the term doesn’t really apply.

But more on that later.

I’ve written before on the issue of people choosing the truth they want to believe. The perfect illustration of this is the American Civil War.

There are those who will state, unequivocally and with the borrowed authority of their carefully chosen experts, that the South didn’t fight to preserve slavery but rather states’ rights. Their arguments are persuasive, often echoing those of a century ago, and some make perfect sense. For example: Since the average volunteer was a poor farmer with no slaves, one who was actually in competition with massive plantations, it was actually against their interest to permit the South’s ‘peculiar institution’. They certainly wouldn’t fight for the benefit of that higher class which systematically oppressed them.

It does make sense when put that way. However, it ignores the context of the present reality, when, in wars over oil, our soldiers risk their lives for the interests of Exxon-Mobil, Wall Street, and the price of gas at the filling station. The average American will never own an oil well, and if they happen to they’d actually profit from a price exceeding $100 per barrel. Yet the Army never wants for volunteers, especially in the present jobs market, and Texas, known for its oil, sends more than its fair share.

Don’t mistake me: There is virtue in patriotism, and an aspect to military service that has nothing whatsoever to do with moneyed interests. I would never insult our service members by stating otherwise. Nevertheless, it would be a disservice at least as great to ignore that our national policies are often little more than profit motive.

Back to the Civil War. A second camp avers, quite as positively, that the North was entirely virtuous, that there existed a great and justified campaign to abolish slavery, a crusade against a South steeped in age-old villainy. There is a far more recent group of authorities whose scholarship is founded on the moral superiority of their position.

To their credit, they are correct — at least in part. Abolition was indeed a major political cause, one to which its adherents pledged their lives and fortunes, often raising whole volunteer regiments a thousand strong composed entirely of those dedicated to freeing the slaves. They proved their conviction more than once, marching valiantly into Confederate guns and dying in droves.

The part that isn’t true is implying that Abolitionists were in the majority. Judging by the difficulty the various Northern regiments had in attracting volunteers after the first year, the number was quite small — and, judging by casualty figures, smaller still a year in. Massive cash bounties and eventual conscription was required to man the army.

And, as an additional counterpoint, it’s also true that the South needed the same, and that their draft laws were far more comprehensive, the punishments harsher and more readily enforced.

The lessons of this aren’t the simple ones you might expect. Certainly, it’s in error to rely on either preference or perceived virtue rather than fact; that much is obvious, or at least should be. It’s also undeniable that the actual truth on any issue is invariably far more complex than at first appears.

A bit more on that last, with specific application to the question of Why People Fought In The Civil War:

Speaking generally, soldiers enlist in national armies for various reasons ranging from pay to having the right and obligation to shoot other human beings. It’s a pretty broad variety. When in battle, however, the reason they stick around when the bullets start flying is usually because they couldn’t bear to let their fellow soldiers down — not even the occasional psychotic ones.

When someone defaces a cemetery of the war dead, a battlefield preserve, or a memorial statue, and justify their behavior on moral grounds, they’re ignoring a very simple and compelling truth: Had they been born in a different time and place, that could very well have been them in that grave, or named on that monument. There but for the grace of God, and so on.

“Oh, but I’d never have fought for slavery,” they say. “It’s evil!”

Sure you would have, just the same as anyone else who was raised there in that way. Be grateful you weren’t.

But Heaven help anyone who says that.