|
asdf32 posted:Being unable or unwilling to use comparison to generate reasonable standards is an utterly useless position to take up. Is there any reason we should choose other standards than those of the Janjaweed? Just "fitting in" I guess?
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 22:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
SedanChair posted:How fukken dare you suggest that the teaching of history trades in cults of personality. Why at my preschool in rural Kentucky, the nice lady spend a whole month telling us how bad slave owners were. Last time I taught a World in the Twentieth Century survey, none of my students even knew what a personality cult was, nor could name any historical examples beyond the two I'd just used (Stalin and Mao, as it was a USSR-and-China lecture that day). I sensed some uncomfortable shuffling when I suggested some of the founding fathers were revered in a similar fashion by some Americans, particularly though not exclusively on the far right.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 22:30
|
|
|
The Modern idea of the Nation State - which Americans still believe in - can be 'problematic'. It is an ugly sort of double think - the nation can do both good and bad things (say 70% and 30%) in the course of events, because the role of the state/king/God is to make life or death determinations. But the nation-state also promises good things - ideally it would make society like a body composed of individual cells- a higher level of organization that is purposeful. Sort of like how cellular critters in the ocean organized into Portuguese man o'wars and then jellyfish. The problem is managing the monopoly on power that this requires on our level, and the dangers of anarchy as well.  What item is on either side of the dais in this chamber?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 23:26
|
|
|
McDowell posted:What item is on either side of the dais in this chamber?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
McDowell posted:The Modern idea of the Nation State - which Americans still believe in - can be 'problematic'. It is an ugly sort of double think - the nation can do both good and bad things (say 70% and 30%) in the course of events, because the role of the state/king/God is to make life or death determinations. Fasces.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:Ah, interesting, I did not know that. I do believe that right before the Civil War began, the most slaves were in the United States' South. Perhaps not at the time of the FF"s but still. Comparing number of slaves shipped to present day descendants is fairly chilling. Their were 8 times as many slaves shipped to the West Indies as all of North America. Being sent there wasnt far from being a death sentence due to disease and being worked to death. You see a similar dynamic within America where being sent farther south was a threat. The more tropical the climate the higher the "natural" death rate and the more slave owners were inclined to treat them as disposable as a consequence.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 00:40
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Pretty sure America has killed more natives than Hitler killed Jews. The primary reasons Hitler is so vilified is because he was our enemy and he was the most recent genocidal maniac we fought in a major war. Yes, he was among the worst but Stalin was arguably even more terrible, but Stalin was our bro. Uh, dude, America treated Stalin as a bro for about 4 years, before mid 1941 and after mid 1945 Stalin was definitely in the top 5 most hated.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 01:38
|
|
|
I remember my history books talking about our bro Stalin.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 01:42
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:Uh, dude, America treated Stalin as a bro for about 4 years, before mid 1941 and after mid 1945 Stalin was definitely in the top 5 most hated.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 02:23
|
|
|
Not to mention we sided and had sympathy for Russia, not Stalin, because they were fighting a war against our enemy, who was intent on killing the entire population of occupied Russia. You can't really call Americans hypocrites for not supporting the USSR then. Edit: Look at US or British propaganda, does any of it push a pro-Stalin image? It's all about Russia.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 02:58
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:Last time I taught a World in the Twentieth Century survey, none of my students even knew what a personality cult was, nor could name any historical examples beyond the two I'd just used (Stalin and Mao, as it was a USSR-and-China lecture that day). I sensed some uncomfortable shuffling when I suggested some of the founding fathers were revered in a similar fashion by some Americans, particularly though not exclusively on the far right. They couldn't give you any more examples!? There's a bunch more examples listed in the song! You know, the song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTjKWq9Gges
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 03:00
|
|
|
This country was founded by rich, land-owning, white (slightly less relevant), men that pandered to the middle class (much like they do today) with the "streets of gold" campaign slogan. Everyone is shocked that 230 years later poo poo is still the same god drat way. Live with the fact that you live in an industrial aristocracy, or GTFO.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 03:01
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:They couldn't give you any more examples!? There's a bunch more examples listed in the song! I'd be lying if I said playing that before class began hadn't crossed my mind, but in the end I went with the Red Army Choir singing the Soviet national anthem, given the substance of that lecture.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 04:47
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Pretty sure America has killed more natives than Hitler killed Jews. The primary reasons Hitler is so vilified is because he was our enemy and he was the most recent genocidal maniac we fought in a major war. Yes, he was among the worst but Stalin was arguably even more terrible, but Stalin was our bro...... I understand what you're trying to say, but holy poo poo, do some research before making claims like this. There weren't 20 million people in North America the year Columbus landed in the Caribbean. Most Native American tribes, by the time diseases had taken their toll, consisted of less than 10,000 people by the time they started being invaded by white settlers, that's why they had so little chance of resisting. Tallying up all the deaths tolls from every US-Indian war (and the US Army had no reason to underestimate kill numbers, they were often proud of how many "savages" had been killed during a given battle), and even including the Trail of Tears, it is unlikely that the US Army could have killed any more than 20,000 American Indians during the entire history of the United States. I'm not trying to excuse what happened to Native Americans, because tens of thousands of people died and entire cultures were wiped out, but the scale was not comparable to the Holocaust, and it happened over a period of more than 100 years, not 12. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 06:09 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 06:07
|
|
|
Mustang posted:No one has said that Indian removal wasn't an atrocity so what's your point? And no one has said that Jefferson was equal to Hitler or that Indian removal was identical to the holocaust. asdf32 posted:Yes, you basically do get a free pass for doing things that other people also do. Especially when other people do it a lot. Are you seriously comparing something like the US's displacement/killing of native Americans with killing animals and plants for food? The fact that countries have killed millions of people for territory throughout history doesn't give them a free pass; it just means that history is full of people and governments doing very bad things.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 07:51
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:Yes, you basically do get a free pass for doing things that other people also do. Especially when other people do it a lot. So what you're saying is that anybody walking down the street that wants to punch you square in the face has every right to do so because, gently caress it, who cares, people get punched in the face all the time? I want to make sure I understand where you stand on these issues because I know of a lot of faces that I think need punching. So what you're telling me is that if somebody walking down the street just randomly punches you, personally, in the face as hard as they can it's perfectly OK because billions of faces have been punched throughout history? It's OK if somebody grabs you by the neck and bashes your face in with brass knuckles because, you know, people just do that poo poo sometimes?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 09:19
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:So what you're saying is that anybody walking down the street that wants to punch you square in the face has every right to do so because, gently caress it, who cares, people get punched in the face all the time? I want to make sure I understand where you stand on these issues because I know of a lot of faces that I think need punching. No, but if most everyone went around punching people in the face with brass knuckles it'd be slightly different. Although if we really want the analogy to be accurate, only minorities could be punched, and this would be part of a greater longstanding tradition of smashing in the faces of certain classes of people, which was only now coming under question, with some people declaring themselves avowed anti-punchers. Also, while traditionally it had been acceptable for Christians to punch any non-Christians in the face repeatedly with brass knuckles, with Christians being exempt from such treatment, a new paradigm had emerged during the last century where strangely, only people of a certain group could be punched repeatedly with brass knuckles, regardless of their religion, and punching non-Christians not part of the designated punching group was no longer lawful. This was justified by certain members of the upper class of punchers stating that the group in question were in fact better off and in better health being punched in the face with brass knuckles by them. ....I have no idea why I wrote all that, but it's the middle of the night.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 10:59
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:And no one has said that Jefferson was equal to Hitler or that Indian removal was identical to the holocaust. There was a lot of moral equivocation earlier in the thread that amounted to the Founding Fathers were every bit as bad as Hitler and calling every case of civilizational displacement a genocide. I understand the moral case for that, but it seems like there is a more common (non D&D) definition that would include the holocaust, but probably not the westward expansion of the US, if for no other reason than the vast vast vast majority of Native American depopulation had occurred well before that via disease. If 5.5 million Jews had died of disease in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, then Hitler killed another .5 million in the 40s, I'm not sure if it would be considered Genocide or not? There's definitely a subtext in discussions in D&D that somehow the Jews get special treatment because of what, the worldwide Jewish conspiracy or something, and that other genocides/mass killings/displacements are ignored because of ~*racism*~. I guess we'll have to leave that to another thread because it doesn't fit with the OP's topic, at least not directly. It's fun and easy to moralize now about the actions of leadership 200+ years ago, but there's no scenario where the Native Americans remain in control of any significant amount of North America. There really isn't any argument that the Natives were treated fairly, or that people like Andrew Jackson committed acts of evil, but it takes a special sort of smug to pretend that westward expansion was anything but inevitable.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 12:51
|
|
|
SickZip posted:You see a similar dynamic within America where being sent farther south was a threat. The more tropical the climate the higher the "natural" death rate and the more slave owners were inclined to treat them as disposable as a consequence. I think it was mentioned in passing in school that it wasn't uncommon for indentured servants to be used for the particularly dangerous work in crappy malarial swamps, since slaves weren't generally a disposable investment. The indentured Irish, though, totally were (it didn't help that they weren't considered "white" back then).
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 12:52
|
|
|
Slanderer posted:I think it was mentioned in passing in school that it wasn't uncommon for indentured servants to be used for the particularly dangerous work in crappy malarial swamps, since slaves weren't generally a disposable investment. The indentured Irish, though, totally were (it didn't help that they weren't considered "white" back then). Irish Indentured servants died in droves in the malaria-ridden Caribbean and southern mainland colonies, but the ones who survived generally worked their way up as white overseers and managers, and their descendents became part of the slave-owning class, especially in the Caribbean. The sort of stuff that's became popular recently about Irish laborers in the 17th century being treated just as badly as slaves on plantations were is way overblown.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 13:07
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:There was a lot of moral equivocation earlier in the thread that amounted to the Founding Fathers were every bit as bad as Hitler and calling every case of civilizational displacement a genocide. I understand the moral case for that, but it seems like there is a more common (non D&D) definition that would include the holocaust, but probably not the westward expansion of the US, if for no other reason than the vast vast vast majority of Native American depopulation had occurred well before that via disease. If 5.5 million Jews had died of disease in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, then Hitler killed another .5 million in the 40s, I'm not sure if it would be considered Genocide or not? There's definitely a subtext in discussions in D&D that somehow the Jews get special treatment because of what, the worldwide Jewish conspiracy or something, and that other genocides/mass killings/displacements are ignored because of ~*racism*~. I guess we'll have to leave that to another thread because it doesn't fit with the OP's topic, at least not directly. If we dare to call forced relocation of natives a genocide, then it follows that the Holocaust didn't matter. This is generally what all this is getting at--genocide itself was a term invented for the Holocaust to give it special status. That status has to be protected so as not to undermine numerous political underpinnings, starting with why there's an authentic Holocaust train recreation in Texas and a national American Holocaust remembrance day, and not an authentic Cambodian mass grave recreation in Tennessee or a national Trail of Tears day. It's not because racism, it's because a confluence of more recent important events and influential groups work together to make the American contribution in World War II and the Holocaust far more a part of the national discourse than the fact that we have highways built over native burial grounds and that we finally care what the tribes are doing now that some of them are making casino money. There's not as much propaganda to be wrung from the great westward expansion (although that propaganda exists) as there is in how we attacked Germany from the flank while the Russians overwhelmed them from the east--the last major American war in which it is largely held that we were the good guys. Comparatively, it is surprising that a Trail of Tears memorial trail exists. As it turns out, mass murder is mass murder, whether or not you organize a death march or forcibly colonize lands and then wash your hands of it, as if you didn't really mean to destroy them per se--or outline and carry out a plan to conduct mass exterminations. Do you honestly think Jefferson cared if it was 10,000 or a million natives?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 13:36
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:And no one has said that Jefferson was equal to Hitler or that Indian removal was identical to the holocaust. And what use is the conclusion that everyone is bad? Whitewashing is bad but "blackwashing" is ultimately the same thing. In either case you've hidden information and handicapped yourself from making hard but necessary moral judgements. That example points out that everyone already does use moral relativism all the time because you have to. Otherwise you'd find moral outrages in every corner of everyday life. This is just another case where it has to be applied appropriately. Raping killing and invading have been rampant throughout human history and not every instance deserves the word genocide, haulicaust or comparisons to hitler.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 13:43
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:If we dare to call forced relocation of natives a genocide, then it follows that the Holocaust didn't matter. Why are you incapable of addressing the point that the vast majority Native American depopulation came at the hand of Spaniard pathogens? Is it because then it would be harder to paint the Founding Fathers as the only party who committed genocide on Native Americans? Very obviously we look at the Holocaust a certain way in large part because of the presence and influence in this country of Jews. That's not against Cambodia or any other particular ethnicity like the Armenians. If Cambodians had a major cultural/political/economic influence on modern American culture, I have zero doubt that we would have far more museums and such dedicated to the historical record there. edit: Also, no, I am quite sure Jefferson didn't care if it was 10,000 or a million natives. His job wasn't to protect the natives, no matter how post-modern you want to get in your analysis of it. You'll never understand history if you are trying to view it through YOUR morals, especially in this case, from the comfort of a relatively safe and comfortable perch rather than from the perspective of an early westward bound settler. Pauline Kael fucked around with this message at 13:51 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 13:46
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:And what use is the conclusion that everyone is bad? Why do you keep coming back around to "everyone is bad"? Not everyone is bad. Jefferson and most of the founding fathers were pretty bad though, worse than most people alive at the time. Jefferson for example engineered a genocide, raped slaves and enslaved his own kids. Even at the time some people were like "drat." Some slave owners were like "drat."
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 13:49
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Is it because then it would be harder to paint the Founding Fathers as the only party who committed genocide on Native Americans? Oh you mean something not argued by anyone in this thread but that you continue to try to tar people with? I'm glad you've spent pages defending the nobility of Thomas Jefferson as a comparatively minor perpetrator of ethnic cleansing. The difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing is a completely political debate, not a semantic one. The purpose of the debate is to justify our nation's outright obsession with the Holocaust--a curiously intense obsession for something that happened overseas 80 years ago--which goes hand-in-hand with its place as a pillar of American propaganda surrounding our Great Men. Which is where we come back around to Thomas Jefferson, who is merely guilty of ethnic cleansing because he didn't amass the kill count necessary for us to care about his crimes. Never mind that the term "genocide" was invented to describe the Holocaust or that "Indian Removal" checks every box of what a genocide is--the premeditated destruction of an ethnic group.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:01
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Why do you keep coming back around to "everyone is bad"? Not everyone is bad. Jefferson and most of the founding fathers were pretty bad though, worse than most people alive at the time. Jefferson for example engineered a genocide, raped slaves and enslaved his own kids. Even at the time some people were like "drat." Some slave owners were like "drat." And yet, here we are still operating successfully under a system/government established by Thomas 'worse than hitler' Jefferson and a bunch of like minded fellows. Perhaps this brings us back to the OP. Maybe the reason why we should care what the Founding Fathers wanted is that they, despite their flaws, were able to put together a set of ideas, even if they weren't followed perfectly in practice, that allowed for a flexible approach to governing a new and expanding nation. I realize that isn't a popular notion in D&D and can be deconstructed in an effort to prove otherwise, but in a sense the results speak for themselves. The US Government, which is really what the FFs were responsible for, has been intact and continuous for what, almost 230 years? After all, Governments don't exist to be graded by goons, they are there to assure the survival of their society, ideally. The system set up by the FF's has done that.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:07
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:
This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:11
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:And yet, here we are still operating successfully under a system/government established by Thomas 'worse than hitler' Jefferson and a bunch of like minded fellows. Perhaps this brings us back to the OP. Maybe the reason why we should care what the Founding Fathers wanted is that they, despite their flaws, were able to put together a set of ideas, even if they weren't followed perfectly in practice, that allowed for a flexible approach to governing a new and expanding nation. I realize that isn't a popular notion in D&D and can be deconstructed in an effort to prove otherwise, but in a sense the results speak for themselves. The US Government, which is really what the FFs were responsible for, has been intact and continuous for what, almost 230 years? After all, Governments don't exist to be graded by goons, they are there to assure the survival of their society, ideally. The system set up by the FF's has done that. Nobody said Jefferson et al weren't brilliant, and their ideas and actions a revolutionary advance. Of course we should care about their ideas (as if it were possible that veneration of their lives and ideas would somehow cease anytime soon). It's just that Jefferson raped slaves and enslaved his own kids and engineered a genocide, as well. Your continuous attempt to mitigate these atrocities is troubling.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:15
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Nobody said Jefferson et al weren't brilliant, and their ideas and actions a revolutionary advance. Of course we should care about their ideas (as if it were possible that veneration of their lives and ideas would somehow cease anytime soon). It's just that Jefferson raped slaves and enslaved his own kids and engineered a genocide, as well. Your continuous attempt to mitigate these atrocities is troubling. They're atrocities, yes. If I've left the impression otherwise, that wasn't my intent. Atrocities that should be viewed in historical context rather than through a 21st century SJW lens, at least if you want to be taken seriously. The OP asks... why should we care what the founding fathers wanted. That's the point, really.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:21
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:The OP asks... why should we care what the founding fathers wanted. That's the point, really. They wanted slaves, property and freedom from taxation. They wanted to be rulers of a new nation. Of course it's important to know what they wanted.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:24
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:They wanted slaves, property and freedom from taxation. They wanted to be rulers of a new nation. Of course it's important to know what they wanted. Welp, I guess that's a wrap then! Thanks everyone,
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 14:32
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:They wanted slaves, property and freedom from taxation. They wanted to be rulers of a new nation. Of course it's important to know what they wanted. Then again, if the country were more amenable to "gently caress the founding fathers, let's scrap the constitution", you'd likely have a broken up US with a southern state that may or may not still practice slavery today.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 15:23
|
|
|
on the left posted:Then again, if the country were more amenable to "gently caress the founding fathers, let's scrap the constitution", you'd likely have a broken up US with a southern state that may or may not still practice slavery today. Or we could have had a stronger federal government that spent less time concerning itself with appeasing the Southern states. We could probably come up with a million alternative universe fantasies if you like.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 15:27
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:And yet, here we are still operating successfully under a system/government established by Thomas 'worse than hitler' Jefferson and a bunch of like minded fellows. What is wrong with you? People have stated multiple times that Jefferson wasn't the same or worse than Hitler. Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb? Countless Native Americans are, in the present, still disenfranchised and suffering due to our nation's actions over a century ago. If anything, they're actually still negatively affected to a far greater extent than American Jews are by the Holocaust.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 17:10
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb? "My relatives died in the holocaust, now let me turn around and dismiss the experiences of native americans because I am not related to any/apparently believe they no longer exist (why this may be so is unimportant!)" Berke Negri fucked around with this message at 17:29 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 17:20
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb? So I guess the lesson to be learned is if you are going to ethnically cleanse do it right so people can write off the scattered survivors? But really, your callous dismissal of the native americans is kind of disgusting. AstheWorldWorlds fucked around with this message at 17:42 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 17:40
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb?  Reservation in South Dakota, "fundamentally out of the picture" with alcoholism and diabetes rates 800% above average.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 18:08
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:And yet, here we are still operating successfully under a system/government established by Thomas 'worse than hitler' Jefferson and a bunch of like minded fellows. Just because we're operating under it doesn't mean it's actually efficient in the 21st century.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 18:21
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb? Seriously? By your logic being more successful at killing a group of people off means it's less of a tragedy, since there are less of them around to suffer afterwards. I can see the logic, but it's a hosed up and broken logic. Perhaps you mean that it's important because it's personal to you, which is nice but incredibly self-centered. Or, as I really suspect, you just lack a human conscience and are unable to understand the pile of corpses we've had to stand on to reach as high as we have. Also, acting like Native Americans were just treated poorly 200 years ago is naive at best. We were comitting acts of violence against Indians to deprive them of life and land up until the 20th century. Hell, violence against Natives from non-Natives is still a huge issue, because we refuse to turn said persons over for tribal justice and many predators have figured out that this is a good way to get their jollies off without any consequences to them. Acting like the fact that these people have been pushed away from the places around you means that "out of sight out of mind" applies is a pretty monstrous logic, wouldn't you say?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
archangelwar posted:Or we could have had a stronger federal government that spent less time concerning itself with appeasing the Southern states. We could probably come up with a million alternative universe fantasies if you like. If it fails it's possibly better, because it's likely that there would have been reprisals on the Southern colonies which would lead to the damaging of slavery, which in turn would likely have decayed yet further when the British abolished slavery. It does not seem likely that the British would execute hugely devastating reprisals on the colonies after winning the war, given the situation in Europe then current and the fact that you could make a good case that it was a relatively small portion. This would lead to the 13 colonies being politically very similar to the Canadian colonies, which means you might have a super-Canada now. In the Southwest, Mexico might have done much better, and could be substantially larger, including much of the American west and the gulf coast. Mexico, for all its many faults, has not been very pro-slave in recent years, and it seems likely that what Britain did not break down, might have been broken down under the fashionable boot of Santa Anna. Honestly this seems like a better outcome overall, though I suppose it's not impossible that you'd have gotten wildcat settlers or something filling up the area west of the Mississippi. Then again, perhaps with more time and the greater degree of British control, the Native nations could have formed confederacies and more robust political entities. You might have a north American which was Megacanada in the North/Northeast, Mexico in the south/southwest, perhaps a restless nucleus where the Southern states are now, and some Native states on the west coast. Who knows? But this piece of fanfiction seems at least as plausible as 'warring balkanized states, no anglophonic North American colossus to do the various blessings of America in the 20th century'. Pauline Kael posted:This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb? Nessus fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2014 18:55
|
|