History is replete with examples of individuals who are wrongfully blamed for something they did not do, or who are wrongly believed to be responsible for something for which they bear no responsibility.  Once public opinion is set on the matter, it is easier to move mountains than perception, and often times any effort to change the perception only reinforces the opinion.

An interesting example comes from an unexpected place: Pre-Revolution France.

For most of the middle and late 18th century in France, France tiptoed around numerous political, social, and economic issues.  Tax structures were absurd; there was no real freedom of movement of goods without tariffs at every conceivable intra-national border; laws applied differently to different people in different regions; old nobility thought themselves better than new nobility who often bought their nobility from a French government eager to make up budget shortfalls.  France was, to put it less than delicately, an absolute mess with a high likelihood of a storm.

Into this woodchipper flew many high-minded individuals who thought they could improve the system.  Enlightenment ideas did in fact exist in France, just as they existed in the colonies that were declaring their independence from Britain and in Britain itself, and many prominent Enlightenment figures were French.  Reason and logic could save the day in France!  Only give it room to grow, to flourish, and all would be set aright.  Reason and logic would lead to a Truth capable of fixing what was wrong.

Unfortunately, logic and reason are rarely valuable commodities among everyday humans.  We are emotional, impulsive creatures.  It was no different for France in the late 1700’s.  Nobles were not keen on paying more than they were already (which was not much), and were resistant to reforms that might infringe on their titles, power, and luxuries.  The average peasant people paid more in taxes than they should, and every time a crop yield was significantly less than expected or even non-existent due to blight or some other calamity, starvation and anger churned.  The people on the bottom were being feasted upon, and the people on top were living the high life.  All the while, the French government was falling massively in debt.

Jacques Necker, a banking savant of Swiss birth, entered into the fray and had plans to fix the horrible financial situation of the French government.  His greatest feat was his greatest con: he cooked the books, in a manner of speaking, and made it seem that the French government had far more money than it actually did by separating debts into two groups, and only reporting on and revealing one group.  Meanwhile, all the loans he secured for the government with these false statistics plummeted the nation further into debt, which he covered up with a massive publication to the French people that stated how great the finances were.  He masked the untruths with what many people took for absolute truth.  The finances of the monarchy, and thus of France, were sound.

Enter Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who, when the country’s finances fell into his lap, was shocked to his core.  The country and the monarchy were in debt.  And not small debt, no, he saw that the monarchy was indebted to around 100,000,000 livres.  An insane amount of money (most likely around $700,000,000 in today’s money).  He tried to ring the alarm bell and pass reforms, but the common people, many of whom learned how to read by reading Necker’s untruthful publication about how great the monarchy was doing financially, did not really believe him, and the nobility caused him no end of problems.  The falsity of Necker’s claims jeopardized the country, but his claims felt right, and were more palatable and believable than Calonne’s fearful proclamations.

Reigning over all of this was Louis XVI, who seemed reluctant to take action on anything and seemed to be, to some degree, timid.  A firmer hand might have won the day, but Louis let far too many issues go unanswered.  He was very young when he became king, and he was shortly married off to Maria Antonia of Austria, who would become Marie Antoinette.  However, they failed to consummate the marriage for years, and Marie Antoinette began to be the target of a great deal of gossip, much of it negative as she spent her time with her friends buying things and living a more or less luxurious life as a queen.  Louis, meanwhile, went out hunting and participated in many other activities, neglecting for quite some time to consummate the royal marriage and produce an heir.

So we are set with the scene, of a populace being told one thing (the monarchy is on extremely sound financial footing!), then being told another (the monarchy is in enormous debt and has no money, and we must make reforms!), with royalty that seemed ineffectual and disinterested, and a queen who seemed to be unperturbed.  Whether these accusations against Marie Antoinette are fair is a matter of opinion, but the opinion of the common people at the time was an angry one.  There were concerns that the royalty were fudging numbers and playing games with finances to draw even more out of the people by way of taxes and the like, where the common peasant was already being drained financially while nobility rode easily above it.  It was not fair.  The perception of disinterest and duplicity weighed heavily on the crown.

Into this scene strolled Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Remy, who played up a questionable noble heritage, who was married to a man who also played up a most likely not truly noble heritage.  She would turn out to be, in essence, a con-woman.  Much like Necker, she would introduce untruth to combat truth.  She sought a way to make her way in this tumultuous French economy and political and social structure.  She found her mark: the Cardinal de Rohen.

When King Louis XV was still alive, he had a mistress at his court.  He ordered jewelers to make a necklace for her that would be far grander and of greater beauty than anything else that existed.  Obviously, such a thing would be expensive ($14 million in today’s dollars, 2,000,000 livres back then).  The jewelers set to work collecting the necessary jewels, but by the time the necklace was ready, Louis XV was dead, his mistress was kicked out of court, and Louis XVI sat the throne with Marie Antoinette by his side.

The jewelers tried to recoup their losses by selling the necklace to Marie Antoinette.  She refused them.  They tried a second time.  She refused them again.  King Louis XVI offered to buy it for her, but she didn’t want it, perhaps even requesting that the money be better spent outfitting warships and the like.  It was hardly a situation where she was outright demanding these precious jewels that cost so very much; she might even have gone so far as to say that the money could be spent better on other things (and not on herself).

Jeanne de Valois, meanwhile, was pretending that she was in Marie Antoinette’s court, and became the mistress of the Cardinal de Rohen.  Rohen was desperate to improve his lot in life after making Marie Antoinette angry by reporting on her to her mother in Austria.  Jeanne de Valois offered her assistance, as she was so very close to Marie Antoinette (she was not).  She gave his correspondences to Marie Antoinette (which she really didn’t do), gave him Marie Antoinette’s responses (forged by her), to the point that Rohen thought that he and the queen had a secret, perhaps romantic, relationship.  Jeanne de Valois even hired a prostitute who looked like the queen to meet Rohen one night and give him a rose, the prostitute declaring that their past disputes were forgotten.  Jeanne de Valois further fleeced Rohen of his own money, saying the money was going to the queen’s charitable causes while pocketing the money for herself.

When the jewelers heard how close Jeanne de Valois was to the queen (she was not), they tried to get her to get the queen to buy the necklace.  Jeanne de Valois struck on an idea: she went to Rohen and said the queen desperately wanted the necklace, but it would look too inappropriate for her to buy it herself.  Would the Cardinal be so kind as to enter into a transaction with the jewelers for the necklace and guarantee payment, and then the queen would give Rohen the money as the installments came due?

Rohen jumped at the chance to please the queen, entering into the deal with the jewelers who were also none-the-wiser, and Jeanne de Valois gave the necklace to her husband, who then traveled to England to have it disassembled and sold.  The queen did not get the necklace, nor want the necklace, nor did she know any of this occurred.  The Cardinal thought that he was doing the queen a favor.  The jewelers thought the queen had finally purchased the necklace.

When the jewelers came for the first installment, Rohen asked where the money from the queen was.  But, there was no money to be had.  The jewelers went to the queen directly and demanded their money, but she declared she had no idea what they were talking about.  There was an uproar.  Was the queen lying?  Were the jewelers crying?  When all was revealed, courts were held, accusations of guilt were made, and the public was made aware.

Surely the truth would show the public that the queen and the monarchy had done no wrong.  Lies on top of lies were told by some con-woman seeking to enrich herself; the monarchy was innocent.

However, the common person found the opposite.  They were under the impression that the queen and the royal monarchy had tricked or deceived honest hard-working jewelers for an extremely expensive piece of jewelry, then tried to get out of paying for it, all while claiming that the monarchy was in dire financial straits and trying to accuse another woman of guilt.

Was any of it true?  No.  A con-woman had tricked the jewelers and the Cardinal.  The queen had nothing to do with it and had a clear history of never wanting the necklace.  But, the perception and opinion of the queen was being etched in stone over the years.  An Austrian (where did her loyalties lie?), who took her time trying to produce heirs (why the delay?), who lived a life of luxury (if the finances of the crown are in such bad shape, how does she afford these luxuries while we suffer?), who scammed the hard-working (how could she try to keep the jewelers from their due?), who then lied to try to maintain her wealth.  Lies, lies, lies!

How is a person to overcome a perception of themselves over which they have little control?  Missteps can be made (it’s simply human nature), mistakes are common for everyone, but in the public eye, in an office of power, how can one convince the already convinced of the opposite of what they are convinced?  Marie Antoinette found herself in the unenviable position of someone who had done nothing very wrong, and only done things that were disagreeable but which were common for those in her position all over Europe.

She did not have control of the narrative (journalists of the time largely did, and feasted on these situations; gossip like this was like mana from heaven), and any attempt to prove the narrative wrong would likely only lead to the conclusion that she had been, in fact, caught doing something wrong and was trying to distract an angry populace from the truth.

A reputation is a hard thing to recover.

The reason that this history lesson is necessary is that it shows how primed people can be, over time, to believe the worst of someone, and then, even when evidence is shown that a person did not do a specific thing, the reputation that has been (unfairly) cultivated for them works against them.  The people will not believe, because they believe otherwise (whether fairly or unfairly).  It’s likely to be perceived as absurd to use Marie Antoinette as the subject of such a point, but perhaps it drives the point home better than it would otherwise; it reveals your preconceptions on Marie Antoinette and her reputation, and the confusion you feel at considering the idea of defending her speaks yet further to the strength of the point.  Marie Antoinette was not to blame.  (But wasn’t she?, your gut might say)

Apply this lesson to the modern day.  In the current American race for President, we are presented with two candidates.  For our purposes, our focus will be for now on one of them, Hillary Clinton.

There is a well-documented timeline of Hillary Clinton’s life, from her education, to her work after law school, to her marriage to Bill Clinton and his governorship, to his Presidency and his affairs, to her Senate career, and her career as Secretary of State.  For much of her life, and at least for the last 25 years or so, she has been a target of political attacks.  One need only look back in time to television interviews decades ago, where reporters ask Hillary Clinton why she seems to be unlikeable or untrustworthy.  With every passing year, as those questions are asked again and again, with or without basis, the public hears the echo in their mind: Is Hillary Clinton unlikeable?  Is she untrustworthy?  She must be, since I keep hearing it everywhere and all the time.

Hillary Clinton has been given this reputation, and must fight against it.  Of course as a human she has made missteps and mistakes.  Of course as a person seeking office she will seek to mollify her detractors and encourage her supporters.  But if she tries to show she is likeable, she is ‘trying too hard’ or masking her more duplicitous plans, whatever they may be.  If she tries to show that she is trustworthy and present evidence that there is no evidence that she is as untrustworthy as she is claimed to be, or more untrustworthy than the average politician, her efforts are dismissed with ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ and her every attempt is met with a perception that has been decades in the baking.

The people were primed over time to believe the worst of her, and then, even when evidence is shown that she did not do a specific thing, the reputation that has been cultivated for her works against her.  The people will not believe, because they believe otherwise.

Very often you will hear that we live in a post-fact United States.  Facts no longer matter.  Opinion, perception, these are the things that matter.  Hillary Clinton competes against Donald Trump for the Presidency, a man who has a documented history of racism, of being unfaithful to his wives, of cheating the average person out of money, of benefitting from the loss of American jobs to overseas competitors, of advocating violence, of embracing conspiracy theories and creating a political home for the extreme right wing of politics.  Instead of pursuing these topics into the ground to get to the absolute truth on these matters, many journalists now engage in the game of ‘optics.’

Imagine, if you will, if Marie Antoinette stood accused, but meanwhile another monarch who had indeed done all the things of which she was accused, and much more, stood unmolested by the people and the journalists of the time.

The waters have been muddied so badly now that many are not even certain of what the truth is.  Politics in the United States have become so polarized after the election of President Obama that if one side believes something, the other side must believe the opposite, to a fault.  Truth no longer has any objective value; the truth is what you believe it is.  With broader access to broader audiences, online ‘news’ sites peddle less-than-true stories to people who consume it quickly and without critical thought.  If the site says it, they do not investigate it, because they rely on the reliability of news entities.  But when the news, and facts, become the slaves of opinion, the news loses its value.  Facts lose their value.

Objectivity is gone.  Long Live Subjectivity.

For years now, people have been flooded with news from different sources that absolutely conflict with each other.  News has become just as polarized as politics.  Both sides of the aisle now believe two different sets of facts about something that has a true, objective reality.  If you have an outlandish idea or extremely radical thought, you are more than likely to find at least one site that supports your position, which then further reinforces the idea in your mind.  The ‘echo chamber’ effect insulates you from contrary opinions, until all such opinions must be false in the face of your own beliefs.  It is an environment well-suited to foster and perpetuate a negative reputation.

For what is the best way to combat an untruth?  With the truth.  But when the truth loses its power, there is no way to combat an untruth.  A reputation constructed on a series of untruths, then, must also rely on truth to rescue it.  But if truth cannot be believed, then a reputation cannot be saved.

To this day, Marie Antoinette’s reputation cannot be saved.

And now, Hillary Clinton’s reputation likewise has little hope of recovery with the way things now stand.

Facts no longer matter.  And for someone like Hillary Clinton, who bases policies, answers, and yes, at times truth-stretching, on actual, verifiable facts, she enters the arena at a disadvantage against a man who lies more than any other public figure in American politics, who treats the truth as an inconvenience, who values belief over reality, and who the polarized sides of journalism cannot adequately combat after feasting for so long on opinion instead of objectivity.

The lesson of the necklace is a lesson without a solution, and all the worse for Hillary Clinton.