It is odd to me that news as such lasts so little time and we have to be reminded of matters of moment that are a month old because we have moved on. It is amazing to me that debates are reduced to seconds and the sound-bites are shared on social media and in news programmes as if they are the sum total of an hour debate.
They tell me it is the modern lack of concentration but I wonder of we have ever been different. Even in the radio age people quoted the memorable lines of speeches and nothing more and it falls to academics to revisit what was said to tell us actually – we remember it all wrong. I saw this yesterday when I quoted an academic on the Sykes-Picot agreement but we can do the same with the invasion of Ukraine, the machinations of Russia and America, what people said and when and what they actually mean in full.
If all we recall are soundbites then we will remember 1588 and we will forget 1589, the first when England defeated the Spanish Armada and the second when the Spanish defeated the English Armada.
Soundbites will never give us the truth of the matter.
#spain
‘#england