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I admit to mistrusting the Canadian history speech about when he referred to American elected officials around the War of 1812 as Republicans. There were no such capital R Republicans in America at that time, the party being formed in the 1850s. I don’t know enough about Age of Good Feelings American politics to know if he meant Whigs, or Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, but given the latter evolved into the modern American Democratic Party, it was a blunder either way.
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Oct 22, 2022 14:18
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Oberndorf posted:I admit to mistrusting the Canadian history speech about when he referred to American elected officials around the War of 1812 as Republicans. There were no such capital R Republicans in America at that time, the party being formed in the 1850s. I don’t know enough about Age of Good Feelings American politics to know if he meant Whigs, or Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, but given the latter evolved into the modern American Democratic Party, it was a blunder either way. Comedy option: he meant anti-monarchists
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Oct 22, 2022 15:28
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Nenonen posted:Either way, they're dead. It's game over for them, they will never know what happened next. Sure but that just negates the concept of sacrifice entirely. I mean, poo poo, on a personal level if my wife’s life was threatened I’d risk mine to protect her and maybe that means I get got. I’d be OK with that if she lived. Does that make me a rube? Maybe, but it’s still something I believe and it’s going to inform my choices.
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Oct 22, 2022 15:38
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If Einstein was so smart why's he dead
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Oct 22, 2022 15:47
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Oberndorf posted:I admit to mistrusting the Canadian history speech about when he referred to American elected officials around the War of 1812 as Republicans. There were no such capital R Republicans in America at that time, the party being formed in the 1850s. I don’t know enough about Age of Good Feelings American politics to know if he meant Whigs, or Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, but given the latter evolved into the modern American Democratic Party, it was a blunder either way. He means Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans, who were, at the time, called the Republicans. Their main party rivals were the Federalists, who fell apart after the War of 1812 because they were seen as pro-British and anti-American. (The Hartford Convention, which i can go into if you want, didn't help the view of the Federalists. You then had what was called the Era of Good Feelings, which was basically one party Democratic Republican rule, until Andrew Jackson got elected president. He was controversial, and the pro-Jackson group became known as the Democrats, who are the direct ancestors of today's Democrats, with the anti-Jackson group calling themselves the National Republicans and then becoming the Whig Party.. The Whigs fell apart just before the Civil War because of internal debates over slavery. The modern Republican party started as a coalition of anti-slavery Democrats, "Conscience Whigs" (Northern Whigs opposed to slavery), Free-Soilers(A party that supported further western expansion with free farm land in the west given to settlers), and remnants of the American Party (an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant nativist party)
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Oct 22, 2022 16:06
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Thank you!! I re-watched Hamilton recently and couldn't for the life of me work out why Jefferson exuberantly reps "motherfucking southern democratic republicans" :o
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Oct 22, 2022 16:09
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Someone needs to create a timeline of US parties showing their alignment and opinions. I could never understand how Democrats and Republicans could switch sides and this is just incomprehensible. Why do the current parties seem so enthrenched? Why aren't they falling apart or get erplaced by another party? Has something changed in the election systems?
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Oct 22, 2022 17:00
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In broad strokes, the republicans were the party of anti-slavery currying favour with rich Northern industrialists to get their way and the democrats were pro-slavery types cynically playing up their protector of the downtrodden status in a general lost cause thing to make the civil war about not getting bullied by elitists instead of the preserving the plantation owner class. After the civil war the republicans got increasingly in bed with the interests of rich people while the democrats ran on economically interventionist policies to benefit the poor. (The debate about Free Silver is a big example of this) Fast forward to the mid 20th century and the democrats start to implement civil rights reforms which piss off the original people who thought helping poor people meant helping *white people*, while the republicans thought, hey, we can make our "low taxes" position more effective by adding racism to it. Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 17:13
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The biggest shift was that after the end of Reconstruction and institution of Jim Crow so that free blacks would no longer be an appreciable voting demographic, racial issues started to disconnect from being the priority of either party, even though Democrats established their foothold in the south as the party of opposition to Republican reconstruction. And when the time came that blacks reemergerd politically asserting themselves, it ended up being Democrats who picked up the issue of voter's rights, and at the same time, various Republicans did moves to entice all the racist white southerners to their side, and that ended up causing a big flip of all the deep south states going from blue to red. There's a lot of other issues, but the weird thing about trying to plot out the alignment of the parties along various issues is that the two parties have always been big umbrellas full of a bunch of factions (they have to be, for just two parties to cover the entire range of american politics), and with all the opinionated people, there's often many who go against the grain of the party. Historically, we've only had a party get replaced when another party undergoes total collapse. Teddy Roosevelt did briefly overwhelm the Republican party with his own splinter party in a presidential election, but that didn't do either of them any favors, and his splinter party didn't get many people into office in lower down positions, so after Taft and Teddy's rivalry was no longer on the ballot, there was no reason to not just reconsolidate into one Republican Party again. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 17:33
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Saukkis posted:Someone needs to create a timeline of US parties showing their alignment and opinions. I could never understand how Democrats and Republicans could switch sides and this is just incomprehensible. So without doing the alignments and opinions its actually incredibly simple 1790 - two parties, Federalists and Republican-Democrats 1800 - Federalist get their asses kicked and go into terminal decline 1816 - Last time Federalists have a presidential candidate at all 1824 - Republican-Democrat party splinters, leaving us with the still only real parties of Republicans and Democrats There were a few periods of other parties getting some amount of political power (Whigs for example) but like this is the basic gist. As for the realignments, I don't know what country you're from but the US is very wedded to very old systems, our the process of our elections is very old, still very much a First Past The Post system oriented around individual candidates rather than parties. A mental model that I find helps to understand US politics is that the FPTP system means that if you want a given political issue to win, you have to get it on the agenda of one (or both) party(s). There's just no advantage to trying to make some sort of actual 3rd party (insurgent parties to exert leverage over existing incumbents however have a pretty good track record). So a given political interest group instead of trying to form their own party or break an existing party spends their resources lobbying an existing party, and over time this has meant that a given party is not so much a commitment to a given philosophy as it is a coalition of different interest groups that can tolerate each other. Which means that as interest groups emerge or die off, the basic composition of a party changes. And sometimes these are dramatic. Boomers are old enough to remember when The Southern Baptist Convention was pro-choice. The pro-life movement is incredibly recent and is arguably the defining division between the parties at this point. But again that division didn't start until like...the 60s. The interest groups that were willing to throw all of their votes behind one side or the other of this particular debate did not exist 70 years ago. So I mean there's absolutely more detail that could be gotten into, easily several lifetimes worth, but I think the pattern is a lot more comprehensible if you keep in mind that the US has had several major demographic shifts and the political parties are primarily big tent coalitions of various interest groups, and nobody really has any interest or means to try to make a real go of a 3rd party.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:28
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The way I've seen it put is that the American political system means you build the coalition in the political party, not after the election. I also think the USA's formal political schedule of elections, which I don't think has ever been adjusted and which I doubt ever will be, save by statutory adjustment, is a large contributor to the perpetual campaigning that nobody actually likes, except political consultants and political addicts, but which nobody can quit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System I think the political nerds say this is where America is right now.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:41
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Arguably, the resurgent christo-fascism of the hard right that is clashing with the servants of capital for leadership of the republican party and the resurgent socialist left which is clashing with the liberals (who are also servants of capital) for leadership of the democrat party make this the seventh party system.
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Oct 22, 2022 21:34
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wiegieman posted:Arguably, the resurgent christo-fascism of the hard right that is clashing with the servants of capital for leadership of the republican party and the resurgent socialist left which is clashing with the liberals (who are also servants of capital) for leadership of the democrat party make this the seventh party system. It's probably something we can't define in the present moment. Ten years from now, hindsight will help us determine if this is a seventh party system or a weird aberration of the sixth. Measures of party polarization say that the parties are more polarized than ever. One theory is that the House's ban on earmark spending in 2010 had the unintended effect of hurting incentives for bipartisan cooperation. Another theory is that racism in the wake of Obama's election, and anti-2SLGBT bigotry in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges, drove a wedge between the parties and helped create the TEA Party.
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Oct 22, 2022 21:55
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wiegieman posted:Arguably, the resurgent christo-fascism of the hard right that is clashing with the servants of capital for leadership of the republican party and the resurgent socialist left which is clashing with the liberals (who are also servants of capital) for leadership of the democrat party make this the seventh party system. You’re a servant of capital.
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Oct 22, 2022 22:59
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chitoryu12 posted:You’re a servant of capital. Indeed, I too am trapped by the systemic effects of captured labor and the coercive relationship between workers and those who own the means of production, and the greater knock-on effects that this relationship has had on the American political system in the era of unlimited PAC spending.
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Oct 22, 2022 23:13
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Man, glad to see your first year of college worked out well.
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Oct 23, 2022 00:10
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Im just eager for when boomers get too old or too dead to keep their stranglehold on American politics. Only then will we get a realignment
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Oct 23, 2022 00:17
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Scratch Monkey posted:Im just eager for when boomers get too old or too dead to keep their stranglehold on American politics. Only then will we get a realignment not milhist
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Oct 23, 2022 00:21
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I miss when the weird commies in here were actually funny enough to make new thread titles.
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Oct 23, 2022 00:25
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they didn't swap sides as others put better. boomers dying won't fix anything gen x is getting more conservative as they age unfortunately despite previous demographics suggesting that wouldn't happen using the term servant of capital is fine but def not fitting in this thread military history itself is boring political economic history is cool and interesting you should play victoria 3 this tuesday it's gonna be a lot of fun
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Oct 23, 2022 07:27
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Something like half a year ago, I posted about how I got a copy of a neighbor's self-published novel about multiple generations of a Scottish family and their super-duper-high-honorable exploits in historical conflicts up to the present day. Well, it's not the best prose but it at least didn't do the stupid thing and start out with a bunch of making GBS threads on the King of England in the 1600s and moving to America or something. The first in the line starts out serving the King of England in the War of Austrian Succession in the 1740s. That's... different. I only skimmed the first half of it and the first chapter's preview of the modern family and it's rugged Texas ethos was getting me ready to have done a rage read, but it then went somewhere way else. It's got another chance for the series to go, well, south when he decides to write about them being in North Carolina and Texas for stuff during the Civil War and "did their duty." Also, I don't think anybody involved could speak a complete sentence of English with it being buchr'd somehow.
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Oct 23, 2022 07:49
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Less talking about capitalism, more talking about capital ships.
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Oct 23, 2022 15:45
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Was anyone in US leadership ever seriously concerned that the US might lose WW2, even through a negotiated peace? Like was anyone genuinely worried about Hitler turning Europe into a truly impregnable fortress that would be prohibitively expensive to invade, or worried about Japan causing enough damage that Congress might end up suing for peace? Reading through Wages of Destruction now and it kinda seems like the US could essentially afford to outproduce everyone period at every stage of the war and they knew it - so for anyone in the top ranks of leadership who knew the score, was anyone really worried about the final outcome for the US?
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Oct 23, 2022 16:34
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Quick sanity check on something--the proper term for the last phase of redcoats as actual (at least theoretical) combat uniforms is "home service uniform", correct? I'm trying to figure out how to describe a rather fancy officer's uniform that carries ceremonial implications, but also isn't "dress" in the modern sense and is intended to be worn into combat.
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Oct 23, 2022 17:19
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Tomn posted:Was anyone in US leadership ever seriously concerned that the US might lose WW2, even through a negotiated peace? Like was anyone genuinely worried about Hitler turning Europe into a truly impregnable fortress that would be prohibitively expensive to invade, or worried about Japan causing enough damage that Congress might end up suing for peace? Reading through Wages of Destruction now and it kinda seems like the US could essentially afford to outproduce everyone period at every stage of the war and they knew it - so for anyone in the top ranks of leadership who knew the score, was anyone really worried about the final outcome for the US? Errr, well, for the first, if the UK had sued for peace before the US had entered the war, or shortly after it - Europe would be prohibitively expensive to invade. It was hard enough as it was over the 2 miles or so of the Channel, it would absolutely have been a non-starter from the US East Coast with the RN out of the war. Nobody's invading the US any time soon but by exactly the same logistics there is certainly a scenario where the US isn't invading anyone either. That's before the political impact of 'if the UK has made peace/been defeated, why should we bother?'.
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Oct 23, 2022 18:10
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Ensign Expendable posted:Less talking about capitalism, more talking about capital ships. the battleships lets play was one of the best threads on the forums
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Oct 23, 2022 19:04
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So what's the point at which we get "capital" ships? I've never really read a true broad overview of naval history and its never really been my thing; I just know that at many points in history there would be periods/places where you just converted some merchant ships into combat ships briefly alternating with more purpose built warships (e.g. ancient greece sometimes using penteconters and sometimes using triremes). At what point do we start seeing not just purpose built warships but a division between different combat roles for different warships down to the level of construction? And how did that evolution happen? How continuous is it with current warships?
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Oct 23, 2022 19:31
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Tulip posted:So what's the point at which we get "capital" ships? I've never really read a true broad overview of naval history and its never really been my thing; I just know that at many points in history there would be periods/places where you just converted some merchant ships into combat ships briefly alternating with more purpose built warships (e.g. ancient greece sometimes using penteconters and sometimes using triremes). At what point do we start seeing not just purpose built warships but a division between different combat roles for different warships down to the level of construction? And how did that evolution happen? How continuous is it with current warships? You are kinda asking two questions here, and to answer one of them: the existence of a Capital ship implies the existence of and contrast with Light ships. So in the late 16th Century you have the first Frigates emerging in the Meditteranean as Galley sized vessels with a sophisticated sail setup, meanwhile in Northern Europe they are building the first big ocean going ships that can also be warships (because at this point you are inventing something that sails first and then sticking guns in the sides). It does not take too long before people start combining the two to generate fleets that have a core of slow heavy ships of the line, with fast and nimble frigates acting as screens.
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Oct 23, 2022 20:33
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Surely the contrast is with a Labor ship. (Potentially also Lib-Dem ships in the Royal Navy)
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Oct 23, 2022 20:38
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Tulip posted:So what's the point at which we get "capital" ships? I've never really read a true broad overview of naval history and its never really been my thing; I just know that at many points in history there would be periods/places where you just converted some merchant ships into combat ships briefly alternating with more purpose built warships (e.g. ancient greece sometimes using penteconters and sometimes using triremes). At what point do we start seeing not just purpose built warships but a division between different combat roles for different warships down to the level of construction? And how did that evolution happen? How continuous is it with current warships? Who built the first warship isn't known for certain, but it was probably the Minoans or the Phoenicians. The latter were the first to build biremes, and perhaps they counted them to be capital ships.
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Oct 23, 2022 20:54
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Tulip posted:So what's the point at which we get "capital" ships? I've never really read a true broad overview of naval history and its never really been my thing; I just know that at many points in history there would be periods/places where you just converted some merchant ships into combat ships briefly alternating with more purpose built warships (e.g. ancient greece sometimes using penteconters and sometimes using triremes). At what point do we start seeing not just purpose built warships but a division between different combat roles for different warships down to the level of construction? And how did that evolution happen? How continuous is it with current warships? That’s an interesting question that I’d need to spend some time I don’t quite have right now to answer fully (mostly to make sure I’m not talking out my rear end). Off the top of my head, though, it’s worth noting that “capital” ships is as much a question of politics as design - IE when Parliament votes to spend more funds expanding the Royal Navy, how are they doing that? Are they simply mandating more ships, never mind size or design? Are they mandating more ships of a specific tonnage? Are they requiring more ships of a specific design or class? A ship getting counted as “capital” isn’t just a question of battlefield roles, but also of political weight and how politicians who might not be technically informed about the navy gauge the strength and power of said navy. Edit: Again off the top of my head, though, while it’s probably not the earliest point the Royal Navy classification of ships into rates based on their size and number of guns and the acknowledgment of the line-of-battle ship as the standard unit of a fleet’s strength is an early use of the concept of capital ships, if not the strict usage of the term. I’d have to dive down a bit into the early modern to remember how things are classified and organized there, though. To be honest really nailing this down would require a specific and shared definition of “capital ships” though, and I’d argue that as a concept it is slightly fuzzy and, again, as much a matter of politics as of technology. Tomn fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Oct 23, 2022 |
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Oct 23, 2022 21:21
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feedmegin posted:Errr, well, for the first, if the UK had sued for peace before the US had entered the war, or shortly after it - Europe would be prohibitively expensive to invade. It was hard enough as it was over the 2 miles or so of the Channel, it would absolutely have been a non-starter from the US East Coast with the RN out of the war. Nobody's invading the US any time soon but by exactly the same logistics there is certainly a scenario where the US isn't invading anyone either. That's before the political impact of 'if the UK has made peace/been defeated, why should we bother?'.
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Oct 23, 2022 21:35
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DTurtle posted:The US managed a cross Atlantic Ocean naval invasion in November 1942 (the invasion of French North Africa, Operation Torch). I'm sure the US also managed many naval invasions over humongous distances in the Pacific Ocean. Against France with 100k guys, mind you. If Britain had changed sides then Gibraltar strait would have been under Axis control and the Royal Navy wouldn't have given any assistance to US Navy in crossing the ocean. And any German forces in Africa would be fully concentrated in Morocco. An invasion of mainland Europe with million men would have been quite tricky without Britain as a staging area and an active ally. Obviously a full British capitulation doesn't seem likely after 1940. But things were still tight at the start of 1942. Only after Midway, Alamein and Stalingrad the tide turned clearly. But for some time there must have been concerns about Russia suing for peace like in 1918. Britain dropping out would have been bad, but without Soviet Union, how could the west have defeated Germany short of bombing all of Central Europe into radioactive rubble? Lend & Lease was meant to ensure that that wouldn't happen.
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Oct 23, 2022 22:18
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DTurtle posted:The US managed a cross Atlantic Ocean naval invasion in November 1942 (the invasion of French North Africa, Operation Torch). I'm sure the US also managed many naval invasions over humongous distances in the Pacific Ocean.  Tulip posted:So what's the point at which we get "capital" ships? I've never really read a true broad overview of naval history and its never really been my thing; I just know that at many points in history there would be periods/places where you just converted some merchant ships into combat ships briefly alternating with more purpose built warships (e.g. ancient greece sometimes using penteconters and sometimes using triremes). At what point do we start seeing not just purpose built warships but a division between different combat roles for different warships down to the level of construction? And how did that evolution happen? How continuous is it with current warships? Capital ships were legally defined in the various 20th century naval treaties as battleships and battlecruisers. Cruisers and carriers were not considered capital ships at the time lol. However, there have always been warships of differing importance and size. Categorization as "capital ship" was a semantic issue even in the '20s legalese, so it's all a matter of interpretation. There have been various periods when navies had ships that were too big and cumbersome to use for purposes outside of pitched engagements. The war galleys of the Mediterranean for example, featured "quadriremes" and ships with larger prefixes.
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Oct 23, 2022 22:33
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DTurtle posted:The US managed a cross Atlantic Ocean naval invasion in November 1942 (the invasion of French North Africa, Operation Torch). I'm sure the US also managed many naval invasions over humongous distances in the Pacific Ocean. Not at all an area of expertise for me, but my understanding is that the offensive force of Operation Torch was launched from the UK, and the only true trans-Atlantic element were the fast convoys heading straight from the US to North Africa, scheduled to supply the invasion force once it had landed - the convoys carried ammunition, fuel, vehicles and supplies but not units that were embarked in the States and came off the boats in North Africa into action, as was the case for embarking units cross-Channel for Overlord. Were there any true trans-oceanic invasions in the Pacific? Obviously nearly everything ultimately had to come from the mainland USA but in terms of the actual operations my impression is that they were mostly launched from staging areas and existing toeholds. You can't island-hop your way into occupied Europe from the USA. Not without going via Greenland, Iceland and Norway, anyway... But the Americans did at least conceive of the need to conduct some sort of war from home soil - the original spec for what became the B-36 was for an intercontinental bomber capable of carrying out missions against targets in Europe as a round trip from airbases in North America.
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Oct 23, 2022 22:37
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BalloonFish posted:Not at all an area of expertise for me, but my understanding is that the offensive force of Operation Torch was launched from the UK, and the only true trans-Atlantic element were the fast convoys heading straight from the US to North Africa, scheduled to supply the invasion force once it had landed - the convoys carried ammunition, fuel, vehicles and supplies but not units that were embarked in the States and came off the boats in North Africa into action, as was the case for embarking units cross-Channel for Overlord.
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Oct 23, 2022 22:58
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Nessus posted:I mean there are the Azores but I would assume Mr. Hitler would fortify them. They'd invade Ireland, use it as a springboard to invade Britain, then use that to invade France.
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Oct 23, 2022 23:21
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Yes, as that image shows, Task Force 34 embarked in the US.BalloonFish posted:Not at all an area of expertise for me, but my understanding is that the offensive force of Operation Torch was launched from the UK, and the only true trans-Atlantic element were the fast convoys heading straight from the US to North Africa, scheduled to supply the invasion force once it had landed - the convoys carried ammunition, fuel, vehicles and supplies but not units that were embarked in the States and came off the boats in North Africa into action, as was the case for embarking units cross-Channel for Overlord.
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Oct 23, 2022 23:54
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Tomn posted:That’s an interesting question that I’d need to spend some time I don’t quite have right now to answer fully (mostly to make sure I’m not talking out my rear end). Off the top of my head, though, it’s worth noting that “capital” ships is as much a question of politics as design - IE when Parliament votes to spend more funds expanding the Royal Navy, how are they doing that? Are they simply mandating more ships, never mind size or design? Are they mandating more ships of a specific tonnage? Are they requiring more ships of a specific design or class? A ship getting counted as “capital” isn’t just a question of battlefield roles, but also of political weight and how politicians who might not be technically informed about the navy gauge the strength and power of said navy. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Capital ships were legally defined in the various 20th century naval treaties as battleships and battlecruisers. Cruisers and carriers were not considered capital ships at the time lol. Excellent thank you. I mean I did assume it was not some sort of Transhistorical Truth. And to some extent I guess I'm going for the question of like formal doctrine. If we want to be more restricted I'm interested in the post-medieval history of it and kind of the process of how we got from early gunpowder ship types through to our modern classifications (which seem to be treated as kind of transcendent and apolitical), because I know enough that in the middle ages there wasn't much of a formal doctrine or even generally a standing navy in Europe.
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Oct 23, 2022 23:56
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DTurtle posted:Yes, as that image shows, Task Force 34 embarked in the US. Well there we go! I (clearly) didn't know that. An impressive bit of long-range operations and logistics - Hampton Roads to landings in Safi and Mehdya in one movement.
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Oct 24, 2022 00:19
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