Google Analytics - Filters Don't Apply to Historical Data

The fact that filters don't apply to historical data is crazy. What's the point of a creating a filter if you can't see the results change. This is akin to using sql without being able to use a WHERE statement. You Google folks are super smart but maybe sometimes you're too smart and over think these type of things. It would suck badly to have to export each report to excel just so I can do what/if analysis. Ugh, Google, ugh.