“History Will be the Judge” — It’s Not the Most Compelling of Threats.

Jason Healey
5 min readMar 18, 2023
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

History as the judge is one of the most tepid threats imaginable, yet I see it touted continually.

When the most damning threat that can be made towards an individual who’s running low on the integrity stakes is that history will judge them, we’ve entered a phase of hopelessness.

When this Declaration is the best we’ve got, what does it Tell us?

  1. Justice is selective and too many of the world’s leaders are avoiding it despite unequivocal wrongdoing.
  2. There’s no faith in the system. We exist exclusively in the first half of the wheels of justice metaphor; the grind extremely fine conclusion but sand through the hourglass.

I’m not Sure that Anyone this Comment is Directed to is too Concerned About History.

According to this Gallup Poll titled Americans Expect History to Judge Trump Harshly, Richard Nixon, was the least ranked of the nine presidents listed, with a net positive score of -48. The article namesake at -32.

Nixon died 20 years after being removed from the office of the Presidency. In 1994 he received a state funeral which was “attended by world dignitaries from 85 countries and all five living presidents of the United States, the first time that five U.S. presidents attended the funeral of another president.”

Without trying to take too firm a position on it, I don’t get the sense that history has been particularly cruel to the former President. He’s not an effective illustration of the concept in action.

Do you think any of the people you can name from the Republican House of Representatives, with their conspiracies, lies and straight up propaganda are hand wringing lest an unfavourable history hex be placed upon them?

In Order for a Legacy of Shame to be a Threat, you First Need to be Able to Feel Shame.

We’re talking headlines without the nuance of a story at this point, but it’s a simple position of alignment to commence with — for the threat of ill repute to bear any sort of burden, you need to be able to feel shame.

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Jason Healey

I split my time between writing about music, leadership, management & organisational culture articles. Digital Agency Operations/Record Collector/Parent/MBA*