Hilarious Helmet History

I found this series while looking for entertaining videos for my students in my Early American history course to help them digest the events of the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts. When I was done watching this video, I was beyond doubt to have come upon what is certainly the most ill-informed, fallacy laden, farcical excuse of historiography I have ever come across in my life. What is worse is this show tries to convey itself as presenting the "actual" history, convincing those who do not know better of what is bascially a fantasy.

The video on the Salem Witch Trials especially was one of the most aggravating to watch given what the host tries to pass off as historical arguments. The first to come to mind is the one where he states the Salem Witch Trials were footnotes in history compared to previous witch trials in Europe, which had a higher body count.

While it is a fact that those who died in Salem is meager to the numbers seen in Europe, the importance to Salem is not the number of the victims who died, but to absence of witch trials afterwards. The Salem Witch Trials were the only witch trials held in the Americas, ever. That's why they are important. They opened the eyes of the citizens of Massachusetts to the potential harm of a purely theological government, which the colony was at that time.

Even my students can see that immediately, and without any prompting, spot the weakness in Mr. Schmidt's argument there.

Other facts of the witch trials are also conveniently left out to help Mr. Schmidt's central theme. For example, he states how the governor ended the trials as if he came to this decision on his own due to aggravation of the whole mess. Mr. Schmidt fails to mention that it was only after his was accused as being a witch that the trials were stopped, the other remaining accused were released, and the process of understanding of what happened began.

Nor does he delve into the account of George Burroughs, the only minister hanged during this whole affair. Burroughs is mentioned briefly to set up a tepid joke, but no mention is made to how while being prepared for his execution, recited the Lord's Prayer, an act which witches and those involved in the Dark Arts are not supposed to accomplish.

He also makes a placid point of the trials being spotted as ridiculous by the populous. In an attempt to undermine the serious nature of the persecution aimed at those the Puritan community wanted to be rid of for some time.

He also makes the argument of trials not being as important due to most of them occurring outside of Salem. My students focusing in the medical field can see the flaw in this argument. At least we'll know that if Mr. Schmidt is ever in charge of handling an epidemic, he'll focus on wherever is it the worst, and not on the origin spot to see how the bloody thing spread in the first place.

Furthermore, for a show about the past, specifically trying to convince us to reexamine the past we have been taught, there is little use of primary sources in this show. In a show about history, there is virtually no use of historical documents to support their arguments. Even the History Channel's show Ancient Aliens (which should be on the SyFy Channel in my opinion) uses historical evidence from past eras extensively to support their claims.

The vast majority of what is used to prop up these 'arguments' are secondary sources, usually two or three per episode. And only once did I see an actual primary source used, which was for a joke, rather than to support a point. Demonstrating without question the Dunning-Kreuger Effect. This is when someone knows enough to think they are an expert, yet is anything but.

History is not something you read a couple of books and *poof!* you're an expert.

Just like writing a few jokes doesn't make you a comedian, so to do does reading a couple of books fails to make you an historian. At the very least hire someone who actually is an expert in the field so the facts are straight to save everyone the embarrassment.