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The old History Channel was still mostly not great. I get the appeal of Great Men history and the obsession with battles, but they can only give so much insight. I mentioned it before, but the recent 2014 program "The World Wars" was kind of a throwback to the pre-reality version of the channel, but it confirmed how much people are looking at the older version of the channel with rose-tinted glasses. It pretty much told the same story of WWII we've heard before. Not too much insight beyond the familiar names, and the continuing deification of Patton and MacArthur. And it was absolutely infuriating how they interviewed people like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. No, I don't need Dick Cheney of all people explaining why appeasement was a bad idea. Not that it was all bad. I remembered the original "American Eats" being pretty good because it talked about something different.
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Jan 26, 2015 03:09
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KomradeX posted:Yeah, I had stopped watching the History Channel back when Ice Road Truckers, Pawn Stars and Ancient Aliens became a big thing so I guess I had forgotten how crap they were.I was just hoping that maybe something about actual history wouldn't have been complete crap. Since Vietnam the 10,000 Day War was such a great documentary series,( hell I use to watch it on the History Channel)and thats from 1980, so you would think something from 30 years later would aspire to be as good as that was. But well I guess that was before all those Back to 'Nam movies from the 80s and everyone's attitude changed. Stupid bullshit that panders to the lowest common denominator gets way better ratings than actual, boring rear end history. Your average American doesn't want to watch a four hour documentary about Marcus Aurelius but watching a fat guy rip people off is entertaining.
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Jan 26, 2015 03:29
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sullat posted:Once the revisionists finish work on Iraq (and how it was won by Bush but lost by Obama, or whatever the story is going to be), no doubt they'll return to Vietnam and how good ol' American boys were stabbed in the back by hippies. What I've read of the period suggests that "good American boys are being stabbed in the back by hippies" was a talking point that was being pushed while Vietnam was still happening.
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Jan 26, 2015 05:21
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Echo Chamber posted:I mentioned it before, but the recent 2014 program "The World Wars" was kind of a throwback to the pre-reality version of the channel, but it confirmed how much people are looking at the older version of the channel with rose-tinted glasses. History Channel revisionist history!
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Jan 26, 2015 06:37
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I've read of the period suggests that "good American boys are being stabbed in the back by hippies" was a talking point that was being pushed while Vietnam was still happening. The Vietnamese attacked an American vessel in international waters and didn't even have the guts to appologize for it in private. Operation Linebacker was showing dividends; if only Nixon hadn't stabbed us in the backs, we could've continued to bomb Southeast Asia into oblivion. Now, Iraq was nothing like Vietnam. Vietnam was predicated upon the domino theory and the attack on an American warship, whereas Iraq was about containing Iran and preventing Iran from acquiring any nuclear capabilities. To that end, so far, we've succeeded, but for Obama's error in setting a timetable with publicly known dates for withdrawal from Iraq.
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Jan 26, 2015 07:05
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Serioustalk the American narrative about the Iraq War is going to be how we figured out how to work with the Iraqis with the Awakening movement and then evil liberals pulled us out right as we were about to win and then Iraq was lost to either dangerous militants or Iranian stooges. Not the fault of Bush ever.
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Jan 26, 2015 07:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I've read of the period suggests that "good American boys are being stabbed in the back by hippies" was a talking point that was being pushed while Vietnam was still happening. Absolutely. Pushing this was basically the reason Spiro Agnew was chosen as Nixon's VP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYIAieVhOTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1qakxLSfRk cheerfullydrab posted:Serioustalk the American narrative about the Iraq War is going to be how we figured out how to work with the Iraqis with the Awakening movement and then evil liberals pulled us out right as we were about to win and then Iraq was lost to either dangerous militants or Iranian stooges. Not the fault of Bush ever. US history is pretty bad, but it's not outright propaganda. It might overstate the level of threat Saddam presented to the US, but the failure will be a fault of policy on Iraq from Bush and Bremer, not the principle of the invasion.
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Jan 26, 2015 08:00
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computer parts posted:I doubt you'll actually find much revisionism regarding Vietnam because of its stunning parallels to Iraq and the fact that a lot of the revisionists helped cause Iraq. I think you will find the opposite, the much of the narrative on the war has been revised into conservative talking points. Hell just from what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan you can tell the only lesson our military learned was, don't let the media see you commit war crimes, or the dead. gradenko_2000 posted:What I've read of the period suggests that "good American boys are being stabbed in the back by hippies" was a talking point that was being pushed while Vietnam was still happening. Yeah from the get people blamed those dope smoking hippies who hate America, and after South Vietnam fell they tacked on that guys in DC just wouldn't let the local commanders do what was necessary to end the war (like round the clock bombing of North Vietnam) and these two narratives are extremely popular today cheerfullydrab posted:Serioustalk the American narrative about the Iraq War is going to be how we figured out how to work with the Iraqis with the Awakening movement and then evil liberals pulled us out right as we were about to win and then Iraq was lost to either dangerous militants or Iranian stooges. Not the fault of Bush ever. Pretty much this is what the Republicans are already trying to set up. Volkerball posted:US history is pretty bad, but it's not outright propaganda. It might overstate the level of threat Saddam presented to the US, but the failure will be a fault of policy on Iraq from Bush and Bremer, not the principle of the invasion. I think most US history is outright propaganda, at least up until you hit college, so the vast majority of history Americans learn is propaganda, even when they talk about the bad things America has done its always in the tune of, well that was then and things are better now, just look at the narratives around the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Though moving forward from Iraq I think we will see a blend of the propaganda positions and the throwing Bush and Bremer under the bus while preserving the notion of US invasions as a positive change for the world. ToxicSlurpee posted:Stupid bullshit that panders to the lowest common denominator gets way better ratings than actual, boring rear end history. Your average American doesn't want to watch a four hour documentary about Marcus Aurelius but watching a fat guy rip people off is entertaining. This is a good point, and that documentary about Marcus Aurelius is expensive, reality TV is cheap thats why all the old educational channels are loaded with stupid reality tv programs now. Echo Chamber posted:The old History Channel was still mostly not great. I get the appeal of Great Men history and the obsession with battles, but they can only give so much insight. That's a good point, and one I didn't realize myself until I was in college getting my history degree where I learned just how superficial and crappy most of the History Channel was, and had fallen into the Patton/MacArthur worship that so many people fall into when I was younger, I realized just how dumb it was from Patton's crazy notion to attack the Soviets right there in July of '45 to MacArthur being a pompous rear end who cared about his fame over the lives of his men. But I didn't bother watching The World Wars. Though I feel like there is a major lacking in World War One documentaries, you would think us heading into the centennial of the second year of the war we would see some more. I saw the BBC had done one this past summer but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. And yeah the original American Eats was pretty awesome
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Jan 26, 2015 08:33
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My Imaginary GF posted:The Vietnamese attacked an American vessel in international waters and didn't even have the guts to appologize for it in private. Operation Linebacker was showing dividends; if only Nixon hadn't stabbed us in the backs, we could've continued to bomb Southeast Asia into oblivion. Sir I am by and large a fan of your work but this kind of post veers from the Trollish position of DC realpolitik satire nearly into sarcasm. I understand getting bored with the schtick but at least retire in a blaze of glory rather than run down your good name as an amoral political sociopath.
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Jan 26, 2015 13:54
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cheerfullydrab posted:Serioustalk the American narrative about the Iraq War is going to be how we figured out how to work with the Iraqis with the Awakening movement and then evil liberals pulled us out right as we were about to win and then Iraq was lost to either dangerous militants or Iranian stooges. Not the fault of Bush ever. Nah, you're thinking too small. The white conservative of the future is probably going to lean more libertarian, so it's going to be some variation of "Bush lied but those dumb savages couldn't handle democracy and any attempts by Obama just made things worse. We should've let them fight each other to the death and then deal with the aftermath." (This is literally rhetoric spouted by some people in the Middle East thread now)
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Jan 26, 2015 14:09
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KomradeX posted:That's a good point, and one I didn't realize myself until I was in college getting my history degree where I learned just how superficial and crappy most of the History Channel was, and had fallen into the Patton/MacArthur worship that so many people fall into when I was younger, I realized just how dumb it was from Patton's crazy notion to attack the Soviets right there in July of '45 to MacArthur being a pompous rear end who cared about his fame over the lives of his men. But I didn't bother watching The World Wars. Though I feel like there is a major lacking in World War One documentaries, you would think us heading into the centennial of the second year of the war we would see some more. I saw the BBC had done one this past summer but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. History Channel also played a marathon of Pawn Stars that day. I'll be honest and say despite being tangentially related to history, it was far better. It was like Antiques Roadshow. I'll take that over The World Wars.
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Jan 26, 2015 14:25
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My Imaginary GF posted:The Vietnamese attacked an American vessel in international waters and didn't even have the guts to appologize for it in private. Operation Linebacker was showing dividends; if only Nixon hadn't stabbed us in the backs, we could've continued to bomb Southeast Asia into oblivion. This is truly a fine piece of performance art.
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Jan 26, 2015 14:56
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My Imaginary GF posted:The Vietnamese attacked an American vessel in international waters and didn't even have the guts to appologize for it in private. Operation Linebacker was showing dividends; if only Nixon hadn't stabbed us in the backs, we could've continued to bomb Southeast Asia into oblivion. I take that back; there are apparently people hard at work revising and whitewashing the Vietnam War.
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Jan 26, 2015 14:57
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sullat posted:I take that back; there are apparently people hard at work revising and whitewashing the Vietnam War. There are always retards revising everything, the only thing that matters is how credible their work is. There is 0 chance for Vietnam to be saved in the eyes of history (although that shouldn't mean that it's not worth writing a history of how the US hosed up an already lovely situation in Vietnam, too).
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Jan 26, 2015 15:03
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KomradeX posted:Yeah, I had stopped watching the History Channel back when Ice Road Truckers, Pawn Stars and Ancient Aliens became a big thing so I guess I had forgotten how crap they were.I was just hoping that maybe something about actual history wouldn't have been complete crap. Since Vietnam the 10,000 Day War was such a great documentary series,( hell I use to watch it on the History Channel)and thats from 1980, so you would think something from 30 years later would aspire to be as good as that was. But well I guess that was before all those Back to 'Nam movies from the 80s and everyone's attitude changed. Perlstein's "Invisible Bridge" lays out not only how Vietnam was whitewashed as the war was winding down in order to give Nixon some political talking points, and then explains how Reagan changed the national dialogue from "what have we done?" to "America is always the best no matter what!" I compare America's experience after Vietnam with Europe's after WW2. European governments (generally) reached a point where they finally said "ok killing each other over territory is dumb and bad" and had to have an honest reckoning with what they had allowed to happen (this process took decades and is still ongoing in some ways.) America never had an introspective moment like that. Maybe you can blame Reagan for it, maybe it's just because the wars aren't fought on our soil, but in the 70's after Watergate and Vietnam (and the various investigations finding out that the CIA had been doing heinous poo poo since the 50's) there should have been a time for sober reflection of the evil we had done, and an honest attempt to say "we can not let these things happen again." But then the dialogue changed to the current City on a Hill bullshit and has never looked back, even after the two disastrous wars of the 21st century. Anyway I think that the first few hundred pages of Invisible Bridge do a pretty good job of explaining the rah rah bullshit after Vietnam (including the manufacture of the POW/MIA issue to help the country feel like they accomplished something by "bringing home the boys.")
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Jan 26, 2015 15:33
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Vietnam revisionism began in the 1980s and has continued since, but to little effect on people that witnessed the war and not much more on younger generations. Things like associating the "tiger cages" with the North Vietnamese rather than the South Vietnamese who used them, or associating My Lai imagery with the Viet Cong, are conscious and deliberate efforts to reverse what actually happened in the war. The POW-MIA fabrication appears to have been consciously created by the Nixon administration, or at the least popularized by them. There's also a nastier right-wing form that lurks in the underbelly of the internet currently. The overall tendency has been to accommodate and blunt criticism of the war by blaming it on the brass (along with reversing the crimes committed by the USA) and suggesting that if they'd let real soliders like, say, John Rambo fight the war, it would have been won somehow. Therefore, we can have the "five o'clock follies" without the terrifying prospect of the American people thinking about whether wars are a good idea or not. The right wing generally focuses more on the civilian leadership and has its own stab-in-the-back legend with Walter Cronkite preventing victory in Vietnam, and a coherent vision of how to win the war, though an inhumanly evil one. Critically, the antiwar movement has been carefully recast into ignorant college students rather than the broad movement led by older veterans and supported by many Vietnam vets who returned from the war. The unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable stories of being spat on and facing hostility from a broad spectrum of society (exemplified in "Born in the USA") have become a mass myth about how the antiwar movement hated soldiers and spat on them every chance they got (exemplified in Ronald Reagan successfully using "Born in the USA" as a campaign song). The overall effects this has had on peace movements versus the military becoming all-volunteer are unknown, but hardly positive.
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Jan 26, 2015 16:17
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xthetenth posted:I'm pretty sure by the end of the war they'd settled on turning the cities themselves into firestorms as the most effective way to break factories. It's very effective if a lot of industrial output is taking place at smaller workshops throughout the city, and it also saps economic power as people must now work on rebuilding shelter and other destroyed infrastructure at the same time as manufacturing armaments. That said, burning people to death - and by the hundred thousands - is a hideously brutal way to wage war.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:18
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:It's very effective if a lot of industrial output is taking place at smaller workshops throughout the city, and it also saps economic power as people must now work on rebuilding shelter and other destroyed infrastructure at the same time as manufacturing armaments. Things only reached that pitch of fatality in Japan with totally wooden structures, useless firefighting and massive population density. But yeah, you only have to look at the photos of Tokyo after the firebombing for a second to realise something worse even than the nukes happened there.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:24
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Disinterested posted:There are always retards revising everything, the only thing that matters is how credible their work is. There is 0 chance for Vietnam to be saved in the eyes of history (although that shouldn't mean that it's not worth writing a history of how the US hosed up an already lovely situation in Vietnam, too). The opinions of academic historians are not the same as a societal consensus. Subjectively speaking I would say a large minority of Americans actively believe the stab-in-the-back myth, and only a small minority are meaningfully antiwar
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Jan 26, 2015 22:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I've read of the period suggests that "good American boys are being stabbed in the back by hippies" was a talking point that was being pushed while Vietnam was still happening. Yep. The antiwar movement was 'undermining the American war effort' by saying the government was lying about things that it later turned out they actually were lying about. Seriously, we now know, pretty conclusively, that almost everything the US government was saying about the war was total bullshit, it was a colossal mess from day one, and there was basically no way it could have ever been anything other than a massive waste of time and lives. Even the theory used to justify the war turned out to be bullshit - not only did the rest of Southeast Asia not fall to communism, Vietnam itself has a capitalist economy now without us having had any direct input. But despite history having pretty much completely vindicated the antiwar movement of the time, certain groups have been pushing the stabbed-in-the-back myth for so long that a lot of people believe it.
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Jan 27, 2015 00:17
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icantfindaname posted:The opinions of academic historians are not the same as a societal consensus. Subjectively speaking I would say a large minority of Americans actively believe the stab-in-the-back myth, and only a small minority are meaningfully antiwar Sure, but a lot of people who have a strong emotional interest in Vietnam are still alive. I think America is extremely emotionally ill-equipped for the proposition that it lost a war, let alone that it lost a bad war, but I think that emotional apparatus is being developed at the moment.
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Jan 27, 2015 00:45
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We just lost two other wars so now we have to wait until everyone with emotional ties to those ones die too
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Jan 27, 2015 00:48
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Disinterested posted:Sure, but a lot of people who have a strong emotional interest in Vietnam are still alive. I think America is extremely emotionally ill-equipped for the proposition that it lost a war, let alone that it lost a bad war, but I think that emotional apparatus is being developed at the moment. What does it mean to win a war, to accomplish one's stated policy objectives? We stopped communism from spreading throughout SE Asia, and cracked down on hippies at home. I call that a win. I'm sure you'll say we lost the Philipino war next. Well, guess what: war is about making money while killing an enemy. That's what war means in a capitalist democracy. Who decides whats an enemy? The people, through elections. And we decided that the Vietnamese were an enemy, and that we'd go in, win their civil war, and keep asia open to capitalism. Guess what? Asia is wide open for capitalism, thanks in part to Vietnam. And if you think this is a minority opinion, go see the statements of elected officials on the Vietnamese war. So many individuals in this thread look at war as a competition between national identities: it isn't, its commercial competition by another form. Vietnam was a stimulus program for the American economy, whose end sped up the collapse of the labor movement in America.
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Jan 27, 2015 01:43
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It's hard to imagine more obvious bait than that.
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Jan 27, 2015 01:46
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I love you
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Jan 27, 2015 01:48
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computer parts posted:Nah, you're thinking too small. The white conservative of the future is probably going to lean more libertarian, so it's going to be some variation of "Bush lied but those dumb savages couldn't handle democracy and any attempts by Obama just made things worse. We should've let them fight each other to the death and then deal with the aftermath." I do wonder if the Arab Spring would have happened had the US not invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:03
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Star Man posted:I do wonder if the Arab Spring would have happened had the US not invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. That's an interesting question, which requires an understanding of why the Arab Spring occured in order to address. The Arab Spring occured primarily from two motivations: revolt against the rising costs of stappe foods and revolt against taxation. Why were food costs increasing? That has a fairly easy answer: the shale boom in North America caused a global disruption of logistic chains due to increased delays in cereal pickup, while also increasing international shipping costs due to the same fundamental cause of the shale boom, increased energy prices. The tax revolt occured due to perceptions of taxation without representation and corruption. Conclusion: The Arab Spring would have likely occured without the Iraq War, as the oil bubble occured from overly optimistic perceptions of Chinese demand growth, from the collapse of the American housing market resulting in capital flight to 'safe' commodities, and from continued decreases in excess rail capacity in order to satisfy institutional investors. So many individuals see history as something more than the applied study of business and board practices.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:12
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In that case, would there have been revolts in an Iraq controlled by Saddam? Would Iraq have resembled Syria? Questions that have unkowable answers, but it is curious.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:27
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My Imaginary GF posted:The Vietnamese attacked an American vessel in international waters and didn't even have the guts to appologize for it in private. Operation Linebacker was showing dividends; if only Nixon hadn't stabbed us in the backs, we could've continued to bomb Southeast Asia into oblivion. The timetable to withdraw from Iraq was set in the SOFA that was approved under Bush, Obama just didn't make any changes. I'm not sure how you figure that we contained Iran by invaded Iraq, we served up Iraq to the Iranians on a silver platter. In many respects Iran controls the Iraqi government.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:29
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Star Man posted:In that case, would there have been revolts in an Iraq controlled by Saddam? Would Iraq have resembled Syria? Well, we know the policy positions taken by state actors at the time and can approximate, out of the options available to them, which ones they would be more likely to take based on detailed behavior and known methodologies for policy implementation. Iraq was both willing and able to starve its population in order to surpress revolts. If the Iraqi population began to rise up against Saddam, it would most likely be a Shia Awakening and be supported by cross-border operations from Iran. This would most likely result in Iran-Iraq War, Part 2, as escalation begets escalation. Whether we'd use this time to conduct joint operations against Iran and Iraq, there was certainly bureaucratic momentum towards this end. It was no mistake that Iran was included in the Axis of Evil, as the whole OIF affair was undertaken in order to prevent Iranian intervention in Iraq. It may have been possible for rapproachment with the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, had they been willing to provide America the electoral coup of overthrowing Saddam while also requesting arms and chemical weapons for use against Iran. Certainly, no deals could have been made with Saddam himself: that loses elections by appeasing America's enemy. The best choice for Saddam, circa 2003? Resign from power and arrange to live a life in exile. We'd be more than willing to accomodate his transition out of power, so long as he gave Republicans an electoral win for 2004.
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Jan 27, 2015 02:38
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baw posted:We just lost two other wars so now we have to wait until everyone with emotional ties to those ones die too i am v curious as to the result of a hypothetical poll of americans "did we win the war in iraq/afghanistan"
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Jan 27, 2015 02:51
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Star Man posted:In that case, would there have been revolts in an Iraq controlled by Saddam? Would Iraq have resembled Syria? Quite likely. People talk about stable Iraq under the strongman Saddam keeping terrorists at bay, but in the 1991 revolution, he lost control of 14/18 provinces in Iraq at its peak. He only survived because the Shia's, anti-Saddam Sunni's, and Kurds couldn't come to terms on what future Iraq would look like, and the rebellion slowly but surely fell apart as Saddam made gains against the fractured opposition. People were out in the streets during the Arab Spring protesting against arab dictatorships, and Iraq was probably the worst offender of all ME countries before Saddam fell. Protesters would've been executed and tortured, which just fanned the flames in every other country, so I imagine something like what we're seeing in Iraq and Syria today would have happened in Iraq had Saddam remained in power. The funny thing to think about is if Iranian shia militias and Hezbollah came in on the side of the revolution, Saddam would've used the exact same narrative that Assad uses about ISIS, and might have scared Sunni's who wanted him gone into supporting him for fear of what shia militias would do to them if Saddam fell. It'd be the exact same scenario as Syria, except the Sunni's and Shia's roles would be flipped, and the two conflicts would be running concurrent with each other with nothing but a border to separate them. It would be very  .
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Jan 27, 2015 03:13
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I do think that every general's answer to a losing war is that they need more time and more troops, and that down the road people usually agree with that military position on lost wars. It's hard to come to terms with losing a war and that sort of narrative is attractive.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:21
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cheerfullydrab posted:I do think that every general's answer to a losing war is that they need more time and more troops, and that down the road people usually agree with that military position on lost wars. It's hard to come to terms with losing a war and that sort of narrative is attractive. "oh sure, if only we had made better decisions the outcome would have improved, i mean it's obvious in hindsight"
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Jan 27, 2015 03:24
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Disinterested posted:Sure, but a lot of people who have a strong emotional interest in Vietnam are still alive. I think America is extremely emotionally ill-equipped for the proposition that it lost a war, let alone that it lost a bad war, but I think that emotional apparatus is being developed at the moment. It isn't that people necessarily have trouble digesting that we lost it's that people have trouble digesting that we were the bad guy and deserved to lose. If we had won then it could have very easily been spun into "yup, we're the good guys, you can tell because we won" but in this case it turned out that we were, in fact, the wrong side. It wasn't that we were just fighting on the wrong side the wrong side was us from start to finish. Thanks to all the anticommunist propaganda that also requires admitting that the communist was the good guy in the case and we all know that communism is never the good guy.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:25
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It isn't that people necessarily have trouble digesting that we lost it's that people have trouble digesting that we were the bad guy and deserved to lose. If we had won then it could have very easily been spun into "yup, we're the good guys, you can tell because we won" but in this case it turned out that we were, in fact, the wrong side. It wasn't that we were just fighting on the wrong side the wrong side was us from start to finish. Thanks to all the anticommunist propaganda that also requires admitting that the communist was the good guy in the case and we all know that communism is never the good guy. Ironically enough, it seems DnD's base is about the only group of people I've heard who try to claim Nixon was somewhat of a good guy. My history teacher was pretty liberal, but we spent a lot of time on McCarthyism and the driving fears behind the Cold War, and the overall tone was "Everyone involved in this was a grade A piece of poo poo." YMMV.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:29
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Volkerball posted:Ironically enough, it seems DnD's base is about the only group of people I've heard who try to claim Nixon was somewhat of a good guy. My history teacher was pretty liberal, but we spent a lot of time on McCarthyism and the driving fears behind the Cold War, and the overall tone was "Everyone involved in this was a grade A piece of poo poo." YMMV. I've never met anybody that thought Nixon was OK. Even most Republicans I've met basically go "yeah totally gently caress that guy" and think he was a gigantic sack of poo poo. McCarthy, however, is a different story; I've met some extreme Tea Party nut cases that consider McCarthy a loving hero and want McCarthyism to come back. Pretty much nobody will defend Nixon but there are way too many people that thought the Red Scare was the best time ever and we should go back to it.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:32
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I've never met anybody that thought Nixon was OK. Even most Republicans I've met basically go "yeah totally gently caress that guy" and think he was a gigantic sack of poo poo. McCarthy, however, is a different story; I've met some extreme Tea Party nut cases that consider McCarthy a loving hero and want McCarthyism to come back. Pretty much nobody will defend Nixon but there are way too many people that thought the Red Scare was the best time ever and we should go back to it. He created the EPA! 
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Jan 27, 2015 03:34
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So Amazon has a new original series of Point of Honor It's about a southern family that lets their slaves free but continues to fight for the south because Reasons.
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Jan 27, 2015 03:39
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Such a missed opportunity. I would love to see the shitstorm caused by the actual class dynamics (it's like Downton Abbey!); white aristocrats rush the South into a war because they're selfish assholes, white smallholders rush to defend the new country because of "honor" and hatred for the yankee, meanwhile the the slaves get poo poo on by everyone because of course they do. Now that we've had 12 Years a Slave, I don't know why we can't have media that is willing to say "seriously, gently caress the south, those guys were assholes." Man, I'm already spinning story boards in my head. A down on their luck southern family on a small plantation in South Carolina, who have contacts with an upper aristocratic family that's crazy for secession, some sons that go off to war, some daughters that become nurses. They're semi-sympathetic right up until we routinely get reminded about their slaves and their hosed up opinions about blacks. Then in Season 4 Sherman comes and burns their house down.
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Jan 27, 2015 04:11
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.