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Captain Oblivious posted:I've spent too much time in university history departments, sometimes I forget that "MacArthur was an egregious fuckup on every level imaginable" is a controversial stance I read quite a few histories of the pacific war recently, and all of them were pretty down on him. Allan Schom especially. Hastings and Beevor, too. They all acknowledge that he was a brave man in his youth, but was a posturing blowhard by the time he was posted to the Phillipines. Hastings is the softest, saying that even if Macarthur had prepared the Phillipines it wouldn't have made a difference (probably wrong) but still acknowledging his neglect and his astonishing, destructive ego. These are all popular historians, so I'm surprised to hear you say that. One that only works on a certain group, but works really reliably, is suggesting that Bruce Lee was almost definitely on a shitload of steroids. It only works on martial arts nerds, and a small subset that give in to that particular brand of hero worship, but gently caress it works.
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Feb 7, 2018 06:10
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Blue Star posted:Yeah a lot of white Americans get weird when you bring up the genocides and the slavery. Genocide and slavery have been a part of humanity since the stone age, almost every culture and civilization partook in these things and they still happen today. America is no different. Its time we owned up to our country's history and move on, evolve. Then we can rub it in other country's faces: "Yeah we acknowledge our history. Now its your turn to acknowledge yours, Mr. Rape of Nanking. And what about you, China? Or should i say, Mr. Dzungar Genocide? And Russia, what with your 'conquest' of Sibera" Oh man its gonna be so sweet. And they'll just have to take it too. Especially since America isn't a particularly young country. Even if they need to rationalise it away, they can just say it was 'a different time' or whatever.
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Feb 7, 2018 09:57
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A Buttery Pastry posted:"It was a different time" doesn't work that well when your country never ended slavery, just its most blatant form. That's probably why they get cross. It's pretty hard to deny that racial inequality is still alive and well in a really institutional way. Then again, I live in a country that runs concentration camps, and I know people who rationalise that.
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Feb 7, 2018 10:18
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Captain Oblivious posted:I think you misread my post, I was saying precisely because I've been primarily exposed to the kind of historiography you're describing I forget that normal white Americans don't think of MacArthur as a Giant Fuckup. Oh, I got that. I was just surprsied, since even popular histories of the war acknowledge that he falls far short of the legend, to put it lightly.
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Feb 8, 2018 07:01
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