In his recent post about writing through turbulent political times, Ginger made a strong case for authors to document the world around them as honestly as possible. The article drew passionate responses from readers on both sides, with some agreeing with his concerns about authoritarian patterns while others pushed back on his characterization of modern America. Rather than ignoring that feedback, he’s using it as an opportunity to dig deeper into the role writers play when history is still unfolding and certainty is in short supply.

In today’s follow-up, Ginger reflects on the dangers of historical hindsight and the importance of preserving multiple perspectives, even the ones we may disagree with. As usual, he draws on examples from memoirs, novels, and firsthand accounts of controversial eras to show why the historical record is only complete when it includes voices from every side. Regardless of your perspective, embracing your truth has value, and by writing honestly about your own experience, you help create the layered, human record future generations will rely on to understand what this moment really felt like.

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My recent article about documenting these “unprecedented times” struck a nerve. While many readers resonated with the call to bear witness to what they perceive as democratic erosion, others felt I was being unfair, even reckless, in describing modern America as fascist.

They’re not wrong to push back.

Now look, I said what I said, and I believe it. The truth is, I do think we’re witnessing authoritarian patterns that echo historical fascism, and that’s something I know a little about.

I have a Joint Honors degree in History from the third-oldest institute of higher learning in England and Wales and while I was there, I specifically studied the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1930s. I’m seeing exactly the same pattern happening in America. There’s the systematic undermining of press credibility, attacks on electoral integrity, the scapegoating of vulnerable populations, and the normalization of political violence. These aren’t abstract concerns, they’re documented behaviors that scholars of authoritarianism recognize as warning signs.

But here’s what I failed to adequately address in my original piece: The people who feel comfortable, safe, and even optimistic about our current political trajectory aren’t monsters. They’re not stupid. I have friends from all sides of the political spectrum, including people who identify as MAGA, and I accept that they’re living their own truth, experiencing their own reality, and their perspective matters just as much to the historical record as mine does. Many of them are good people—in some ways, better than me!

And that’s what I want to talk about today.

The Danger of Historical Certainty

We talk about history with a confidence that people living through it never actually possessed. We know the Nazis were evil, that slavery was abhorrent, that McCarthyism was paranoid overreach. We speak in moral absolutes because we have the luxury of hindsight.

But the people who lived through those times? They were far less certain. They had competing narratives, conflicting information, and vastly different lived experiences that shaped how they understood what was happening around them. Some saw fascism rising while others saw necessary order being restored. Some experienced Jim Crow as brutal oppression while others genuinely believed in “separate but equal.” The clarity we have now simply didn’t exist then.

Back in the 1930s, for example, many people assumed Portugal was descending into fascism much like Spain, Italy, and Germany was, with António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo movement featuring one-party rule, a secret police force called PIPE, and propaganda that pushed the “Three Fs”: Fado, Fatima, and Football (Music, Religion, and Sports) to keep the population united.

However, Portugal remained neutral during World War II, clung to anti-expansionist policies, and followed “Lusotropicalism” as an ideology, which recognized Portugal as a multi-racial nation and rejected the “master race” concepts which defined Nazism. If you were a socialist student in Lisbon in 1960, you might have called the system fascist (and might have even spent some time in a jail cell because of your beliefs.) However, with the benefit of hindsight, Salazar’s Portugal was a relatively benign regime that was overthrown bloodlessly in 1974 by the very same military which supported it. 

Examples like that are precisely why we need writers documenting all perspectives during contentious times. Not just the perspectives that history eventually validates, but the ones that defended the status quo, that questioned the alarm, that experienced the same events completely differently.

If all we preserve are the accounts of those who opposed the prevailing system, future generations will lack the nuanced understanding of how that system actually functioned and why real people—good people—supported it.

Books That Defended Controversial Systems

History is filled with powerful books written by people who lived within systems we now condemn, yet their work remains invaluable precisely because it captures complexity we might otherwise miss.

I’m going to bookend this list of books with two of my favorites, which my mother forced me to read when I was a teenager. My parents were married in Africa in the 1960s (my older brother was born in Nairobi) and to them, the conscientious history of that colonized continent was far more nuanced than people might talk about it sixty years later.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller is a great example. Fuller’s memoir about growing up white in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the bush war doesn’t apologize for colonialism, but neither does it demonize her family. She writes with unflinching honesty about loving a landscape soaked in injustice, about the bizarre normalcy of her childhood amid violence, about her parents’ complicated relationship with a country that was fighting for its right to exist under white minority rule.

Critics could easily dismiss her family as villains in history’s narrative, and in many ways they were on the wrong side. But Fuller’s account shows us something essential: how ordinary people lived within an extraordinary system, how they rationalized their position, and how deeply they belonged to a place that wasn’t really theirs to claim. That nuance matters.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines, though fiction, captures multiple perspectives on slavery and its aftermath through a 110-year-old former slave’s recollections. Importantly, Gaines doesn’t make all the white characters cartoonish villains or all the Black characters heroes. He shows how some enslaved people internalized their oppression, how some white Southerners genuinely believed they were being benevolent, and how the system created moral complexity that resists simple categorization. The book’s power lies in its refusal to flatten history into comfortable narratives.

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves presents a World War I memoir that challenges our neat narratives about that conflict. Graves loved being a soldier. He found purpose, camaraderie, and meaning in military service even as he witnessed horrific carnage. His account doesn’t celebrate war, but it honestly documents why young men rushed to enlist, why they stayed despite the horror, and how they made sense of senseless violence. For modern readers who view WWI as pointless slaughter, Graves provides essential context about what it meant to those who fought it.

House of Stone by Christina Lamb examines Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe through multiple perspectives, including those who initially supported him. Lamb, a journalist, captures how Mugabe’s liberation rhetoric genuinely inspired hope, how his early policies seemed progressive, and how gradually the authoritarian tendencies emerged. The book is valuable not because it defends Mugabe—it doesn’t—but because it shows how a liberation hero became a dictator, and how people experienced that transformation differently depending on their position.

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) is one of my favorite books, and presents colonial Kenya through rose-tinted glasses that many modern readers find troubling. Dinesen romanticizes her time running a coffee plantation, describes her Kikuyu workers with patronizing affection, and mourns the loss of a world built on exploitation. Yet the book remains important because it authentically captures how white colonials saw themselves—not as oppressors but as adventurers, farmers, and even benefactors. Understanding that self-perception is crucial to understanding how colonialism functioned.

Why These Accounts Matter

In many ways, these books make us uncomfortable, and they should. But their value lies precisely in that discomfort.

When we only preserve accounts from those who recognized injustice and opposed it, we create a false impression that moral clarity was obvious and abundant. We lose track of how systems of oppression maintained themselves, not primarily through violence (though that mattered) but through the everyday complicity of ordinary people who genuinely believed they were doing nothing wrong.

Future historians studying our era will need accounts from people who feel safer under the current administration’s law enforcement policies. They’ll need memoirs from those who experienced economic prosperity and attribute it to current leadership. They’ll need novels that capture the worldview of people who see border security as patriotism rather than xenophobia, or who experience religious freedom protections as necessary rather than discriminatory.

These accounts won’t be “right” according to many current opinions, but the way history is written about America in 2026 might be very different to how people like me view it now. Perhaps we are unaware of events that might change everybody’s opinion on our current government, and in that case, books written from a perspective defending it will be incredibly important because they’re sincere. They’re true to someone’s experience even if that experience is different from our own, and that truth matters.

Your Responsibility as a Writer

If you read my original article and thought, “he’s being hysterical—things are fine, actually,” then you have a responsibility to write that down.

Document why you feel safe. Describe the specific policies or changes that make you optimistic. Capture the conversations you’re having with like-minded friends and family. Write about how you experience media coverage as biased against your values. Detail the mundane aspects of your daily life that continue unchanged and unremarkable.

Don’t self-censor because you worry future generations might judge you harshly. They might! But they’ll judge all of us, regardless of our positions. What matters is that they have access to authentic accounts of how diverse people experienced this moment.

Be honest about your position and your reasoning. Acknowledge the criticisms and explain why you reject them. Document your doubts alongside your convictions. Give future readers the raw material they need to understand not just what happened, but how it felt to live through it from multiple vantage points.

You are writing history right now! And it’s your voice that will be part of the tapestry that gets woven into text books and documentaries in the future.

The Complexity of History

History isn’t a simple story of heroes and villains. It’s a complex tapestry woven from millions of individual experiences, many of them contradictory. My own family history is deeply intertwined with Britain’s uncomfortable colonial history, but it’s a history I’m still fascinated by and proud to learn more about. Being “good” or “bad” requires more than just supporting the “right” side of history. It’s dependent on the actions you take, the people whose lives are affected by the decisions you make, and whether you choose humanity or ideology to guide you.

Just look at how Alexandra Fuller writes about her parents in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. She writes about them with a deep love and admiration, even though they were on the “wrong” side of that conflict. The same historical moment that felt like liberation to some felt like oppression to them. Likewise, the same leader who seems like a savior to some might seem like a tyrant to others, and the same policies that protected some people might have endangered others.

This isn’t relativism, some positions genuinely are more “just” than others. But justice is determined by outcomes and hindsight, not by the certainty of people living through events as they unfold.

Your job as a writer isn’t to be objectively correct about everything. It’s to be honestly subjective about your specific experience. Write your truth, acknowledge other truths exist, and trust that the collective documentation will give future generations what they need to understand us.

In terms of modern America? Whether you believe we’re sliding toward authoritarianism or you think we’re finally restoring order—whether you’re terrified or relieved—write it down.

All of it matters. All of it is history, and all of it needs to be preserved.

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