Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing

In the age when words were carved in stone and memory was guarded by storytellers, truth was a sacred thing. Yet even in those distant days, the victors of battle often shaped the tales that would endure. So it has ever been — the story of humankind written not by all, but by the few who held the pen. In our own time, Rick Perlstein, historian of modern politics, speaks with the same timeless sorrow when he declares: “Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory.” His lament is not for machines, but for men — for the distortion of history by those who rearrange the past to serve the passions of the present.

To understand these words, one must see how easily truth can be copied, trimmed, and reassembled until it becomes unrecognizable. The cut-and-paste is a tool of convenience — meant to edit documents — but in the hands of ideology, it becomes a weapon against remembrance. When a movement, blinded by its certainty, lifts fragments of the past and stitches them together to justify its creed, it commits an act more dangerous than the sword: it recreates memory itself, sculpting false idols out of broken truth. And those who come after, born into the shadow of those tales, may never know that the light was altered.

Consider the story of Ronald Reagan, whom many remember as a saint of small government and American virtue. His speeches are quoted with reverence; his smile painted on the banners of freedom. Yet few recall the complexity beneath — the deficits that grew under his watch, the compromises that softened his doctrine, the contradictions that made him human. In the cut-and-paste memory of his admirers, these are deleted lines, erased paragraphs, inconvenient truths left on the cutting room floor. Thus, a man becomes a myth, and the myth replaces the man. History, edited, becomes prophecy.

This art of selective memory is not confined to one age or one side, but Perlstein’s arrow strikes at the heart of a recurring pattern in right-wing politics — a yearning for a golden past that never was. The same nostalgia drove the cries of “Make America Great Again,” echoing across the land like a psalm of restoration. Yet what is this “again” but an illusion, pieced together from fragments of prosperity and pride, while poverty, inequality, and injustice are snipped away? Such memory comforts the spirit but betrays the truth, for it asks not “What was?” but “What do I wish had been?”

And so the lesson stands, carved in the silence between words: beware the editors of memory. Beware those who quote the past as if it were scripture, yet erase the verses that challenge them. The wise must seek the whole story, even when it wounds the heart or humbles the pride. For a truth divided is a lie multiplied, and every generation that inherits it becomes weaker in understanding, duller in discernment, and easier to deceive.

Let us remember the tale of Germany after the Great War, when another movement, too, cut and pasted the nation’s history — turning defeat into betrayal, complexity into conspiracy, pain into vengeance. The people, starved for meaning, swallowed the doctored story, and from that lie grew the flames that consumed millions. The lesson is written in ash and bone: to edit truth is to invite ruin. The past is not clay for our hands; it is a mirror for our souls.

Therefore, children of tomorrow, when you hear the echo of familiar words — when a leader, a teacher, or even a friend recites the past with easy certainty — pause, and ask: “What has been cut away?” Seek the uncut memory, the rough and imperfect truth that resists simplification. Read the original speeches, study the forgotten records, and listen to the silenced voices. In this practice lies the wisdom of discernment, and from discernment, the strength to resist illusion.

For truth, like a mountain, stands unmoved by the winds of fashion, yet its summit can only be reached by those who climb with both faith and doubt. Let the cut-and-paste of false memory tempt no one here. For though history may be rewritten, the conscience that seeks truth remains eternal. Guard it well — for it is the light by which the past, the present, and the future may yet be seen clearly.