The General US Politics Thread

Sorry, i admit my views are a bit colored by my college interest in the subject and my "woke white boy" reaction to the horrors of the conflict.

I grew up on a very heroic diet of Westerns and was shocked to discover.

Wait, the US was the BAD GUYS.

The point about Custer is not that he was an amazing genius, it’s that he was more or less average and was demonized to make the actual architects of these atrocities look better.

Buying into that narrative absolves said architects of guilt and reduces Native peoples to props.

I'll drop it too. But not before I address this bit:

History doesn't work that way. You don't get to "bury" the bad parts you don't like. Yeah, we shouldn't whitewash or lionize Custer. Nobody here was suggesting that. But we shouldn't try to pretend he either didn't exist or was some uniquely awful monster or a completely incompetent oaf.

It's a weird idea that Custer has been demonized as we still have statues of the man across the United States and people teaching that his actions were a heroic last stand against a vastly superior force.

The attempt to rehabilitate Custer's legend is an inherently Right and conservative view. You can't redeem the man's military legacy without overlooking the fact the man was a terrible officer BECAUSE he was a horrible racist and utterly demeaned the Native Americans he was going to fight. He expected an easy victory and his loss was because his idiocy is innately tied to his racism.

It also ignores the perspective of Native Americans on the man. People who were the first to point out he was dishonorable, foolhardy, and possessed of neither tactics nor skill. Who should, at the very least, be the people who make the call rather than white historians.

But I'll drop it. I get way too invested in these things.

edited 20th Jun '18 9:33:00 PM by CharlesPhipps

You’re sort of conveniently missing the point here. There’s no need to rehabilitate Custer’s legacy. He doesn’t need to be made out to be a genius. He’s not really an outstanding figure. He was all but average for his era.

If you want an example of how well the smear campaign worked, 40 years ago we named a tank after Sheridan, despite the fact that he was a genocidal monster. Having a tank named after you is one of the higher commemorative honors you can get. Sheridan’s legacy has been pretty well rehabilitated, thanks in part to the myth you’re perpetrating.

This is not dropping the issue, guys. Seriously, if you want to discuss it this much you can do so in a thread dedicated to the topic. Let's please get back to current politics.

Sheridan was definitely treated poorly by history.

So, I doubt we'd agree on that either.

So everyone back for hating on Trump?

edited 20th Jun '18 9:39:36 PM by CharlesPhipps

Mod edit: Do not comment on other tropers -Septimus

This deep seated need for Custer to be an idiot isn't reflective of any good scholarship. It's reflective of white refusal to grant agency to Native Americans, a vision of history in which indigenous populations are victims of genocide, but never actors in their own right, a vision which, at the end of the day, is only slightly less bigoted than the "vile savages" narrative that came before it.

Custer was a competent Civil War officer with a solid career behind him, fairly moderate-for-the-day views on the "Indian question", and a flair for dramatics. That's not disputable, it's a matter of public record. He went down to defeat, not because he was uniquely incapable, not because he was an avatar of evil, but because his superiors screwed up and his Lakota and Cheyenne opponents did not. That's it, that's all. He's ultimately a very minor figure in the history of American colonialism, and the fixation on him to this day is a product of the press hysteria of the day, and the inability of modern white liberals to identify the actual villains of the story.

Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero, is the man who gave the kill order on all the Plains tribes. He's the mastermind behind a deliberate starvation campaign on a scale that won't be repeated until Stalinist Ukraine and Kazakhstan. There are tens of thousands of deaths on his hands. And yet all the focus is on one of his less brutal henchmen.

I said before, I'll say it again. American politics can't be fixed, not in its entirety, until the myths of the past die. And one of those central myths is that America is a land made by white people, for white people, in which the only decisions that matter are those of white people. The choices made by Native Americans matter. The choices made by African-Americans matter. The choices made by Asian-Americans matter. The choices made by Hispanic-Americans matter. They matter in a historical context and they matter right now, in the fight against Trump, against the Republican Party, against the alt-right, and against reactionary forces in general.

We have to push back against anti-intellectualism, and we have to push back against the idea that white people's choices are the only ones that matter. Those aren't two separate issues; in this context they're one and the same.

I don't enjoy having this conversation. But in an era of triumphant anti-intellectualism, it's sadly necessary. The reason Republicans push their "know-nothing" agenda is because they know, deep down, that an actual understanding of history will show that they're wrong. The left does not and should not need to do the same. We are right, and they are wrong, and the reason we are right is because we acknowledge facts, and we acknowledge reality, and we don't let our narratives get in the way of that. We have to be better than they are on that front, or there's just no point.

Now in an effort to actually move us on: Politico reports on three Republicans refuting Trump's narrative on some remarks he made.

I think it's genuinely sad that we are so desperate for signs of Republican opposition to Trump that we keep printing stories like this one. We want to believe they'll stand up to him one day, and so we keep holding out hope, and investing our time in articles like this.

edited 21st Jun '18 10:42:51 AM by SeptimusHeap

Sure, man, whatever.

It's exactly like you think. You are the genius, I'm the idiot.

edited 20th Jun '18 10:04:57 PM by CharlesPhipps

Who wants to come up with Space Force Recuitment slogans?

Here's some of my favorites I saw.

edited 20th Jun '18 10:11:32 PM by megaeliz

Join the Space Force. Pick up a gun. Get mocked by Newton from beyond the grave.

"Join the Space Force. Leave Trump behind."

That one I can approve of, and it would be a nice Take That!.

In the vanishingly unlikely event this Space Force thing actually works, it will backfire completely on Trump and lead to some kind of resistance forming from the space people.

I may have Gundam and the like a bit too much on the brain.

edited 20th Jun '18 10:16:12 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

Protect america from illegal aliens!

Build a wall around the earth!

edited 20th Jun '18 10:22:06 PM by megaeliz

I find Space Force to be a horrible idea because any power in space can wipe out all life on a planet with boundless ease.

It is the ultimate nuke.

You too can be your own Little rocket 🚀 Man by joining Space Force today!

Space Force: we exist because people think Star Trek is real life.

edited 20th Jun '18 10:32:17 PM by megaeliz

Any port in a storm I guess. I for one have more or less given up on the GOP standing up to Trump. In large part because the GOP was becoming the Party of Trump even before Trump became their candidate in 2016.

Yeah this mess with the kids and labor make me think of douchbro Silicon Valley types exploiting them for shits and giggles.

Also Elon Musk probably would use them for his Space Force / Mars Liberation Fleet.

I can see it now - him making poorly adjusted teens pilot shitty Leos and other garbage MS units.

"This is a Leo. It...functions."

I mean, indentured orphans being made to pilot war machines (and later choosing to for Martian independence) is quite literally the plot of Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.

Elon Musk is the kind of guy who would find 14 year old pilots perfectly normal.

Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space!

And he wouldn't give em Gundams or anything. That's for other Techbros. No, the teens get to pilot the garbage and the ridiculous - shit like Leos, the perplexing wheel fetish machines of Zanscare, this fucking thing, and ...pfft...

edited 20th Jun '18 11:32:43 PM by NickTheSwing

I assume they'd pretend to be Char and kill them.

As far as helping separated immigrants goes, this person has some suggestions to charities and services.

For me, it's not that I expect them to be decent people- they've told us who they are multiple times. I'm looking for signs that the rats are leaving the ship.