PEAK OIL & THE JACKLEG HISTORIAN

I was pleased to see the phrase “Jackleg Historian” enter the blogosphere this week, even if it was used negatively. Political commentator Kurt Nimmo’s blog “Another Day In The Empire” refers to neoconservative Jonah Goldberg as a propagandist and a “jackleg historian.”

Now, I can’t weigh in on the opinions of either man, but I’m a little disturbed to see jackleg historian used as a pejorative. I think we need more jackleg historians, not less.

Nimmo’s blog seems to be one of a growing number of sites devoted to a looming collapse of American society. Whether it’s Peak Oil, global warming, financial Armageddon, imminent war or The Rapture, a growing body of evidence points to a horrible Doomsday looming just over the horizon. Even the Comptroller General of the United States recently warned that America may well collapse just like the Roman Empire. When a Washington policy wonk begins talking about the Fall of Rome, it truly means something scary is at hand.

But a jackleg historian knows that this is not the first time America has faced collapse. I just spent a week on a farm in Maryland, re-creating a famous battle for a cable network, and I can tell you that the boys who re-enact the Civil War have done enough research to know what Societal Collapse is all about.

The worst-case scenarios of even the most dire predictions of Peak Oil are no comparison to the reality that our ancestors faced just a few generations ago.

Currency became worthless. The financial markets evaporated. Jobs disappeared. So did entire families. Cities became unsustainable, in some cases leading to rioting that took hundreds of lives. Martial law curtailed individual freedoms, and some of those freedoms were not restored for a decade. Farmlands were laid waste by armies of men who stripped the countryside, then burned it after they passed. It was called the American Civil War, and it was Collapse writ large. Never before had the nation literally turned on itself. Never before had American slaughtered Americans. Never before had Americans burned American towns, destroyed American farms, killed American civilians.

The citizens of America knew that the Civil War was apocalyptic, and some even saw it as the beginning of the Tribulation from the Book of Revelation. Don’t believe me? Just listen carefully to the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the COMING OF THE LORD…” Later verses are even more outwardly apocalyptic, and its chorus could be sung by any desperate fundamentalist who eagerly greets the imminent End of the World with a starry-eyed “Glory, Glory Hallelujah!”

Read about the citizens of Gettysburg as they prepared for a military invasion, for a first-hand account of what “Survival Preparedness” really is all about. Read Gabor Boritt’s THE GETTYSBURG GOSPEL for a look at what “collapse” really means for a small American town – 10,000 dead men in the streets and fields. 40,000 desperately wounded men crowding every building, home and alley. Farmland destroyed for a generation. No doctors. No water. No food. And no help coming from anywhere. It makes Hurricane Katrina look like a Sunday School picnic.

So a jackleg historian can tell you that societal collapse is nothing new… and he doesn’t have to go back to the Fall of the Roman Empire to find comparisons. If we are indeed facing some sort of horrific collapse -- from Peak Oil, international terrorism, financial Armageddon, housing bubbles gone awry, water shortages, global warming, or any one of the many suspects – then a jackleg historian may be exactly what this country needs to see how we got out this kind of mess before.

In Praise of Re-enactors

Civil War re-enactors are an interesting bunch. In making historical documentaries, I’ve worked with re-enactors from eras that ranged from the Roman Empire to WWII. But the Civil War guys seem to be the most hard-core. For better or for worse.

All re-enactors are sticklers for accuracy, by definition. But it’s only the Civil War re-enactors who will refuse to go on camera or even call “cut” if they notice a historical inaccuracy. It’s the Civil War re-enactors who will come to the director after a shot and earnestly explain why the shot was wrong. It’s the Civil War re-enactors who write impassioned letters to networks when an extra in a re-enactment is wearing a uniform with the wrong insignia.

Now, this can be heaven or this can be hell. Sometimes in the process of making a television show, historical accuracy can take a back seat to visual storytelling. Walking the thin line between making TV and being 100% accurate is one of the toughest jobs of a documentary producer. And the last thing you need is 23-year-old volunteer who insists that you can’t roll the cameras because the rifle in the corner of the frame is the wrong caliber.

Fortunately, the Civil War re-enactors I just worked with were a crack team that not only knew their history, they knew filmmaking.

I just returned from a week in Maryland, shooting a Civil War battle for a cable network. And the team of re-enactors came from Russ Richards, who runs an outfit called “Historical Entertainment.”

It’s a very interesting business model – one-stop shopping for historical documentaries. Russ was a re-enactor who worked on several movies and documentaries. He realized that film companies were desperately in need of historically-accurate extras, but didn’t know where to find them. Russ became the go-between – delivering squads of perfectly costumed extras for shows that wound up on the History Channel Discovery, National Geographic and numerous feature films.

Russ sent us a team of fit, skinny young re-enactors who looked like they could have stepped out of a Matthew Brady photo. And they each had two uniforms – one blue and one gray – so they could play both sides in big battle scenes (oh, the wonders of CGI). Best of all, they were film-savvy as well. They never argued with the director about accuracy – they simply found a way to make his vision work AND make it accurate. Which wasn’t always easy. I suspect this attention to detail may be lost on most viewers. But it was not lost on me or on the crew. And I suspect (and hope) that when the five million or so Civil War re-enactors in America watch this show, they will have nothing to write to the network about.

I guess the real pleasure in this project for me was working with an entire crew of, yes, Jackleg Historians. Russ and his boys are self-taught, but they know more about the Civil War than many tenured professors. And they are passionate about getting it right, even if the details are going to be lost in the deep background of a shot. But the Jackleg Historians in the audience will notice. And the Jackleg Historians behind the camera and in front of it can be proud.