Adam, I might be speaking on a plane that is higher than what you were expecting from me for whatever reason.
My understsnding of language and semantics comes from my college degree in language and literacy which includes socio linguistics and semantics. The nature of language and meaning are such that they eere never supposed to replace reality as a multidimensoonal experience. Language is first an audial exprrience, a grunt, a howl, a clicking ofthe tongue in reaction to an event or an object. Also language became a means of recounting events and story telling. And eventually, it came to be written down in codes and visual signs and representations. I know you probably know all this but im jusr trying to fill you in on where im coming from.
Language is a linear experience and chromological. One word comes after the other. Realityy, at leasr MY reality is going and coming in evrry dirrction all at once. There are sounds, sights, feelings, impressions, smells, memories of the pasr relating to and pulling the present in different ways and all those things go into and affect how one tells the story. Also added to these factors are beliefs, preconceived notions, prejudice, bias, ignorance or knowledge, the limitations of language... endless influential factors. Then there is the metsphysical-the reality in its pure form before a conscious being regidters its ecistence and has time to label it with a grunt and a symbol. As a buddhist once said, by the time you can put something into words you,ve ready missed the point. The purpose of many meditation rituals is to acheive the state of conciousneds where you experience reality , being , on a level or at the point where lsnguage and even thought itself has not yet been applied to the thing, the reality. Truly living in the now. It has been said that since "then" happened, "now" isn't. And you can only affirm this ttruth if you have experienced reality and being on this level, and I have.
So consdering the former, ee walk away with a situstion like the following:
1. Reality is multidirectional, dynamic and vivid in a way that language cannot compete with
2- language is linear, too slow snd in every way insufficient to keep up with and truly capture reality
3- language comes from a single perspective, that of the story teller whereas reality may be viewed from an infinite number of angles , each one yielding a slightly different story or rrport on an event or object
4- there is bias in every story ever told no matter how hard we try.
5- the fact that we are not god all knowing and uall seeing means we cant even verify the perspective of another person cuz it will still just be our perspective on their perspective,right?
6- with all these drawbacks even to an imaginary perfect language, our own perfection assures that every story ever told is rife with error snd we cant even provide what the scientific method requires and that is a control.
7- therefore all language is to a certain unverifiable degree fiction
8- even video and audio recordings do not settle what is the whole truth and what is a lie. Your example of 9/11 wss perfect to illustrate my point because we have nothing close to a voncensus on what acyually happened thst day. There might be some details that can be established and some conclusions drawn bbut the interpretation of those events are all over the map.
9- at the end of the day, the best ee can do inwriting history, yhe definition of history being written accounts of realiyy or oyherwisee told accounts of events.
10- the more different ways of telling a story (words, writing, interpretive dance, pictures, all forms of art, video and audio recordings,, fragrance ays, music, sculpture...) the closer ee can come to knkwing the whole picture of what happened. Relying judt on words is very limited and fslls short.
If you are familiar with post modernist thought there is shades of its philosophy in what I am ssying.
So, do you still think it is absurd to say there is no such yhing as a hidyorical fsct. True there might be some hyperbole in this phrase (obviously, right?) But I would tend to think it is just as absurd to sssume that a history text book is capable of telling the whole story.