|
RasperFat posted:E: Whoops accidental post. And thus the ability to say 'Sure Trump said (racist thing here) but...' materializes. They've had years/decades of practice.
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 01:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:12 |
|
|
i am harry posted:America is addicted to hero worship. Children are raised on it, and the obsession with who is a hero and being a hero underpins almost everything vile that the country suffers from. I agree and it's even more than that. The obsession seems to come from the narrative that we tell kids about our history. "The Puritans founding This Great Nation (tm) bravely fought back against the oppressive British religious laws to make an arduous journey across the unknown sea to build a new nation out of nothing. They survived winters and farmed the land with their determination and bootstraps. The natives helped just a little, and they even made peace with the noble savages that couldn't even understand the concepts of money and hard work." The hero narrative is basically how we tell our entire history to children. After the Puritans its the Founding Fathers (all heroes), then the expansion west with pioneers (also heroes), then the Civil War, where Lincoln is seen as super badass. Somehow the South also has heroes in this war. Then no one knows the Reconstruction period, and we get to TR, certified badass war hero. Wilson kicked rear end in WWI, then the Great Depression sucked, and then we got FDR, heroic in kicking Nazi rear end and catapulting the U.S. to world dominance. After that it's JFK getting assassinated and remembered as a legend. Then there's no more hero worship really because it's too recent or too many scandals (Nixon). Maybe Reagan, but that's only conservatives and not really taught to young kids in history lessons yet. This is how I was taught about U.S. history in elementary school. And this was in the advanced classes (GATE) in well funded suburban schools in southern CA. I can only imagine what kids that went to lovely schools learned.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:01
|
|
|
RasperFat posted:
It's probably the same thing only more shittily taught. What baffles me about the American education system is the adherence to rote memorization about social studies. At what point is it ok to say to a student, "I want you to think about this?" Joke answer: "When they're dead. School is for teaching the basics. They don't need to be taught to think."
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:20
|
|
|
RasperFat posted:E: Whoops accidental post. Yeah pretty much The right pushes that american heroes are perfect in everyway and had no faults and parts of the left(not all) react by pushing everyone in history was an evil fucks who did nothing right ever unless they were poor and or a minority.(mostly from zinn, who i love for a intro to real history, but isnt that great as an actual historian,too black and white) Like. personally i dont like jefferson, not just because the rape slaves(well yes those too) but because he was a massive autistic hypocrite who believed in bullshit(agrianian culture and land expansion will last 1000 years) and basicaly believed in constant "revolution" until of course he got into power. but at the same time, i still find him an interesting and brilliant polymath who rewrote the bible and wrote the declaration with help of adams and franklin. plus the adams-jefferson feud is facinating. Like i hate to use the term, but you kinda have to treat history like "the truth is in the middle" sure it isnt at all. but you have to take the good of complex people like jefferson with the loving awful parts. turning history into some political circle jerk scorebored where everyone has to be a black and white Hero or villain is stupid poo poo and i hate when the right or the left try to do it, because it just make being a student of history even more difficult. I mean History is hosed up and every famous person in history did awful poo poo in one way or another. some like jackson did more bad then good and others like FDR did more good then bad. many like Teddy are tossups. and then you have to go by primary sources which can be biased in either direction too. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:24
|
|
|
Everything you need to know about conservatives is encapsulated in that kid saying that he didn't know what indigenous peoples are, but he already knew that he didn't like them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:35
|
|
|
Jack Gladney posted:Everything you need to know about conservatives is encapsulated in that kid saying that he didn't know what indigenous peoples are, but he already knew that he didn't like them. pretty much.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:41
|
|
|
i am harry posted:America is addicted to hero worship. Children are raised on it, and the obsession with who is a hero and being a hero underpins almost everything vile that the country suffers from. How many essays about "Your Hero" and the like have any of you fellow Americans had to write in school? Since elementary I feel like every teacher has used such a writing prompt, and every time, righteous little rear end in a top hat I was, I nominated myself as my hero/idol because gently caress that bullshit. I think the better writing prompt would be to talk about who you admire or appreciate. However it seems we can't get away from dumb knob slobbing. (Actually I had a hard time because as a little kid the only famous people I knew about were movie or music stars, and I felt a little silly writing a paper about Paula Abdul like every one of my friends did.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:48
|
|
|
Rick_Hunter posted:It's probably the same thing only more shittily taught. What baffles me about the American education system is the adherence to rote memorization about social studies. At what point is it ok to say to a student, "I want you to think about this?" My IB history teacher in 11th grade was a Really Cool Dude and pushed us really hard to break the mold. It was entirely American History and his approach to papers was "primary sources or death", and it was intense. Also as time passes, I become more and more thankful for the fact that I was able to take an entire semester solely on the Vietnam War in high school. At the time I knew it was a bit weird, but I seriously took it because the first friend I made when I moved up to NC was Vietnamese and I liked the teacher who was offering it. I'm also extremely grateful that the IB American History teacher slammed the hell out of the first paper that I wrote for him because it caused me to change my approach to writing which made college a super easy breeze when it came to papers.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:51
|
|
|
One of the big problems comes from the right wing view of the world. The simple reality is that every historical figure that ever existed was still a human. We're all flawed and we all suck. You can't get around that. Plus we're all products of our time. It's kind of odd to look at past morality through the lenses of current morals. Some things people just hadn't thought of yet and there is also the inertia of history. People 200 years from now are going to look at some things we did and go "wow what the gently caress, they did what?" Mind that doesn't excuse or justify the things of the past, as we see with American history. Whether we like it or not our nation was built on slavery, genocide, and exploitation. We can't change that. The problem is that the current right wing has decided that our founding fathers (interesting how they kind of ignore anybody that wasn't a white dude) are all perfect and America is infallible. I didn't learn that jefferson, Washington, and pals were slave owners until after high school. Or that Washington spoke about how people can rebel if they want while also being involved in putting down multiple rebellions. They weren't the worst guys if the era but they also weren't ubermensch sent by God to create This Great Nation by His Will. But the right wing wants to teach mythology. They want the stalwart, perfect, Christian white men that just cared about freedom and Jesus and tamed a wild, untamed wilderness with nothing but grit, sweat, hard work, and faith. They don't want the reality that a significant chunk of immigrants were violent, drunken, gold crazy bastards or that the puritans were actually pretty terrible.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 02:51
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:They weren't the worst guys if the era but they also weren't ubermensch sent by God to create This Great Nation by His Will. But see that's the mythology the right cannot live without. If the founders weren't perfect and driven by god, then none of their loving drivel works. It is the bedrock of their bullshit beliefs.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:05
|
|
|
Dapper_Swindler posted:Yeah pretty much The right pushes that american heroes are perfect in everyway and had no faults and parts of the left(not all) react by pushing everyone in history was an evil fucks who did nothing right ever unless they were poor and or a minority.(mostly from zinn, who i love for a intro to real history, but isnt that great as an actual historian,too black and white) At what point did people on this board start using "autistic" as a go-to insult, and how much longer until they stop?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:06
|
|
|
@LeeMajors it's not though. it's just another means of signaling their allegiance to the America-That-Was before the rekkers came and rekt it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:08
|
|
|
Jurgan posted:At what point did people on this board start using "autistic" as a go-to insult, and how much longer until they stop? My ex broke me of this habit p hard, but Jefferson was probably on the spectrum to be quite honest.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:09
|
|
|
Mr Interweb posted:Is Rush aware that Christopher Columbus is a dirty Messican? You are getting American racists confused with British racists.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:15
|
|
|
LeeMajors posted:But see that's the mythology the right cannot live without. If the founders weren't perfect and driven by god, then none of their loving drivel works. It is the bedrock of their bullshit beliefs. Kind of my point, really; the right lives in a weird fantasy land.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:43
|
|
|
Jurgan posted:At what point did people on this board start using "autistic" as a go-to insult, and how much longer until they stop? Shortly after people started self-diagnosing their nerdiness as Asperger's and probably the heat death of the Universe
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:49
|
|
|
Crowsbeak posted:You are getting American racists confused with British racists. Not really, we were one and the same. Its just that the Brits have returned to the old "The Only White People that matter are Anglo Saxon" racism that rejects Europe while we're still in a world where Irish can Apply still. But the further we travel back down populism, hey, it could unite again.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:50
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Kind of my point, really; the right lives in a weird fantasy land. And for all their modern political skepticism, they don't leave any room to question the flawed human beings of the past because of....idealism? Exceptionalism? It's a strange dementia that I can't really navigate. Oh, and Columbus was genocidal and lovely. Probably not significantly moreso than any other exploring contemporary, but his accidental discovery of the new world is only special because it led to European colonization of this continent. He didn't do anything unique other than underestimate the circumference of the earth by like 20k mi or so and promptly beginning the extinguishing of millenia-old cultures on this continent. I'm just not sure what is so wrong or horrible about being a part of a beautiful global community instead of THE GREATEST, MOST POWERFUL CIVILIZATION AND NATION THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. LeeMajors fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 03:54
|
|
|
Jurgan posted:At what point did people on this board start using "autistic" as a go-to insult, and how much longer until they stop? I mean he was legit autistic at the very least he was on the spectrum. bunch of stuff points to it. Not a bad thing, but it didnt help him with stuff. but yeah sorry for putting it that way.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:00
|
|
|
No, he was significantly moreso. Even his supporters thought he needed to tone poo poo down. .
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:00
|
|
|
I'm trying to think of something equivalent to the way American conservatives get mad about people pointing out the flaws of Columbus or the founding fathers. Are there British people who get mad about people talking about Henry VIII's wives?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:05
|
|
|
A Fancy 400 lbs posted:I know it's not the focus of that, but that thing about not requiring American history for History majors is the dumbest thing ever. You know why they don't? Because if you're focusing on the Yuan Dynasty of China, or the Punic Wars, or ancient Mesopotamian business practices, or Aryan religious influence on Indian culture, or honestly the vast majority of topics in history you could make your specialty American history is 100% irrelevant, especially if you mean US history specifically. Also most History Bachelor degrees break require you to split your classes between a set of categories based on geography. North America, Europe, South America, Ancient, and Asia/ME/Africa are the five categories in most schools I looked at, and the one I got mine from. While the american categories do have a few native oriented classes, most are White People History. Ancient History classes are pretty much Greece/Rome. Maybe an overarching AH class mentions the middle east. China, Egypt, and the Indus get hosed. All the nonwhite classes basically get shunted into a single category you can only take 2-3 classes in for credit. The idea that colleges come anywhere close to downplaying American/European history is loving laughable. Schizotek fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:11
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the big problems comes from the right wing view of the world. The simple reality is that every historical figure that ever existed was still a human. We're all flawed and we all suck. You can't get around that. Plus we're all products of our time. It's kind of odd to look at past morality through the lenses of current morals. Some things people just hadn't thought of yet and there is also the inertia of history. People 200 years from now are going to look at some things we did and go "wow what the gently caress, they did what?" You see that whenever the mythology is threatened by trying to include anything complicated. Whenever we try to include nuance in curriculum, we get conservatives throwing temper tantrums that we're daring to question the "truth" that white Christians might not have been perfect or are being "PC" by including the history of anybody but white Christians. The incredibly inaccurate hero worship has almost certainly contributed to the stunted, bigoted worldview of the average right-winger these days. Failing to see just how many times our institutions have failed in avoidable ways has also likely been the cause of the obsession with re-introducing terrible policies of the past (some of which never were even implemented in the first place) and denial of negative societal trends. We already know that the yearning for a romanticized fantasy of the past is the large cause of some of the more baseless rage of older right wingers today.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:25
|
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:I'm trying to think of something equivalent to the way American conservatives get mad about people pointing out the flaws of Columbus or the founding fathers. Are there British people who get mad about people talking about Henry VIII's wives? Turkey's entire political identity is based around genocide denial. Japanese conservatives are squirrely at best about ww2. I feel like French conservatives might be similar about Petain and ww2 collaboration
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:27
|
|
|
Geostomp posted:You see that whenever the mythology is threatened by trying to include anything complicated. Whenever we try to include nuance in curriculum, we get conservatives throwing temper tantrums that we're daring to question the "truth" that white Christians might not have been perfect or are being "PC" by including the history of anybody but white Christians. The incredibly inaccurate hero worship has almost certainly contributed to the stunted, bigoted worldview of the average right-winger these days. Failing to see just how many times our institutions have failed in avoidable ways has also likely been the cause of the obsession with re-introducing terrible policies of the past (some of which never were even implemented in the first place) and denial of negative societal trends. We already know that the yearning for a romanticized fantasy of the past is the large cause of some of the more baseless rage of older right wingers today. It also doesn't help that America's conservatives have anointed themselves as God's chosen while declaring that anything bad was the devil/his followers deliberately sabotaging them. After all conservatism is perfect; the only problem is that some people fail to realize that or have been convinced not to.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:45
|
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:I'm trying to think of something equivalent to the way American conservatives get mad about people pointing out the flaws of Columbus or the founding fathers. Are there British people who get mad about people talking about Henry VIII's wives? I imagine there's a bit of a tug-of-war over the whole Empire thing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 04:55
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:I'm trying to think of something equivalent to the way American conservatives get mad about people pointing out the flaws of Columbus or the founding fathers. Are there British people who get mad about people talking about Henry VIII's wives? I doubt there's a culture anywhere on the planet which doesn't have near-mythological figures that it would cause strife to question or insult. We're mocking this in others, but I guarantee you that close to 100% of us have a person, or persons, who would illicit a knee-jerk defense reaction from us if someone were to attack them. We'd probably all like to think that we would be able to see reason, and integrate facts that are contrary to our beliefs, but I don't think the evidence supports that. I'm not sure who those people would be as far as figures in British history, but I'd bet money they exist.
|
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 06:35
|
|
|
Centripetal Horse posted:but I guarantee you that close to 100% of us have a person, or persons, who would illicit a knee-jerk defense reaction from us if someone were to attack them. We'd probably all like to think that we would be able to see reason, and integrate facts that are contrary to our beliefs, but I don't think the evidence supports that. I'd be pissed if someone talked poo poo about Mr. Rogers. That guy was a legit awesome dude. His biggest flaw was that he probably left the toilet seat up or something mundane like that. However, you made a good point. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 07:12
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:Turkey's entire political identity is based around genocide denial. Japanese conservatives are squirrely at best about ww2. I feel like French conservatives might be similar about Petain and ww2 collaboration It always suprises me about Turkeys denial. The founder of their countries modern state wasn't even involved durectly in the Armenian Genocide, hell I think he shot most of the "Young Turks" that were involved in it. Yet there is still this urge to go "nope didn't happen". I think that in the case of British History it isn't neccesarily a single person, but if you attack the fact that the British Empire wasn't all good all the time then heaven help you. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 07:22
|
|
|
Centripetal Horse posted:I doubt there's a culture anywhere on the planet which doesn't have near-mythological figures that it would cause strife to question or insult. We're mocking this in others, but I guarantee you that close to 100% of us have a person, or persons, who would illicit a knee-jerk defense reaction from us if someone were to attack them. We'd probably all like to think that we would be able to see reason, and integrate facts that are contrary to our beliefs, but I don't think the evidence supports that. I'm not sure who those people would be as far as figures in British history, but I'd bet money they exist.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 07:31
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:It always suprises me about Turkeys denial. The founder of their countries modern state wasn't even involved durectly in the Armenian Genocide, hell I think he shot most of the "Young Turks" that were involved in it. Yet there is still this urge to go "nope didn't happen". Ataturk didn't literally command the troops who carried out the genocide, but the country he founded would not have been possible without the ethnic cleansing of 3+ million Greeks and Armenians. So modern Turkey is very touchy about people criticizing that ethnic cleansing, because it is much more difficult to separate modern Turkey from the WW1 genocides than the UK from their empire, or even Germany and Japan from their WW2 stuff icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 08:10
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:Ataturk didn't literally command the troops who carried out the genocide, but the country he founded would not have been possible without the ethnic cleansing of 3+ million Greeks and Armenians. So modern Turkey is very touchy about people criticizing that ethnic cleansing, because it is much more difficult to separate modern Turkey from the WW1 genocides than the UK from their empire, or even Germany and Japan from their WW2 stuff Could you elaborate? Or do you have a link to somewhere to read more about how the Armenian Genocide allowed for modern turkey? I'd be interested in hearing about it!
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 08:27
|
|
|
Damonic posted:I'd be pissed if someone talked poo poo about Mr. Rogers. That guy was a legit awesome dude. His biggest flaw was that he probably left the toilet seat up or something mundane like that. He drowned kittens for fun. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 10:45
|
|
|
Deptfordx posted:He drowned kittens for fun. oooo, you've done it now!  (I wish there was a slappy emote that wasn't the 2007 thing)
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 10:49
|
|
|
Deptfordx posted:He drowned kittens for fun. That only makes me like him more 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 13:13
|
|
|
Dr Christmas posted:I'm trying to think of something equivalent to the way American conservatives get mad about people pointing out the flaws of Columbus or the founding fathers. Are there British people who get mad about people talking about Henry VIII's wives? Everyone else can be roughly split into two categories: Politicians who aren't Winston Churchill but did something significant enough to be remembered for something, and old royalty whose activities are far too well-known to be deified.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 13:18
|
|
|
Karl Marx was a drooling idiot who didn't understand economics OR government *dives for cover*
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 13:46
|
|
|
FNS and their panel is reeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyy obsessing over Bill and Lynch on the plane together. They've now decided that Clinton is hosed no matter what because of that. Predictable, yes, but it's funnier given how little they're talking about Benghazi for some reason 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 14:25
|
|
|
Kilroy posted:The difference is that in most cases they lived 500-1000 years ago or more, and have no real direct influence on that nation's laws. You can argue about what Alfred the Great thought of separation of church and state all you want - it won't have much effect on the British Parliament. Most modern European nations only really date from the 1870s. Like "shared cultural heritage" or not, at the very least Italy and Germany as we know them didn't really exist until after the American Civil War. Another important note: Most European nations are incredibly young in terms of their present systems of government (eg., going from Francoist Spain to today), so there hasn't been much time to establish those calcified relations. computer parts fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Jul 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 15:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 16:12 |
|
|
RasperFat posted:I agree and it's even more than that. The obsession seems to come from the narrative that we tell kids about our history. Hero worship as a cornerstone of conservative thought goes back to Thomas Carlyle: quote:Carlyle held "That great men should rule and that others should revere them," a view that for him was supported by a complex faith in history and evolutionary progress. Societies, like organisms, evolve throughout history, thrive for a time, but inevitably become weak and die out, giving place to a stronger, superior breed. Heroes are those who affirm this life process, accepting its cruelty as necessary and thus good. For them courage is a more valuable virtue than love; heroes are noblemen, not saints. The hero functions first as a pattern for others to imitate, and second as a creator, moving history forwards not backwards (history being the biography of great men). Carlyle was among the first of his age to recognize that the death of God is in itself nothing to be happy about, unless man steps in and creates new values to replace the old. For Carlyle the hero should become the object of worship, the center of a new religion proclaiming humanity as "the miracle of miracles. . . the only divinity we can know." For Carlyle's creed Bentley proposes the name Heroic Vitalism, a term embracing both a political theory, Aristocratic Radicalism, and a metaphysic, Supernatural Naturalism. The Heroic Vitalists feared that the recent trends toward democracy would hand over power to the ill-bred, uneducated, and immoral, whereas their belief in a transcendent force in nature directing itself onward and upward gave some hope that this force would overrule in favor of the strong, intelligent, and noble.[19]{rp|17-18,49-58}
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2016 15:57
|
|
