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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The literal market place of ideas: Americans spend a fortune on their preferred historical narratives.
While I am all for diversity, I am not for changing history in the name of some hipster nonsense. History can be funny, tragic, and defiantly morally challenging all on it's own. But our media and schools never show us this, instead they ether feed us simplistic propagandistic "narratives", or, in the case of our schools, give out "social" history, which, while important, bores most to tears and makes it difficult for them to learn.
And above all else people, when you adapt history to fiction, do your fucking research. I can't tell you how often I've seen historical events that could provide genuine drama, tossed aside because some hack writer wanted to throw in a stupid love triangle, or make a point about "Clashing cultures" *Couch Vikings Cough* This applies to both US and World history.
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.Reminder that Sanders' big speech on the meaning of democratic socialism as he considers it was today (now yesterday), but of course nobody covered it in any great detail, although they were certainly happy to compress a half hour speech to three minute clipshows and soundbytes and say that was all you needed to know about it. Thanks media! Very diligent of you!
Granted, I don't know about how cable news covered it, since I forgot to check as it was happening.
edited 19th Nov '15 10:54:10 PM by darksidevoid
GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.Surprising exactly nobody who gave the issue any thought whatsoever, attempts by women to do amateur abortions at home has spiked in Texas since it passed a multitude of laws aimed at restricting abortion
Perhaps just slightly more surprising is that US schools are effectively segregated
by race
.
In recent years, a new term, apartheid schools—meaning schools whose white population is 1 percent or less, schools like Central—has entered the scholarly lexicon. While most of these schools are in the Northeast and Midwest, some 12 percent of black students in the South and nearly a quarter in Alabama now attend such schools—a figure likely to rise as court oversight continues to wane. In 1972, due to strong federal enforcement, only about 25 percent of black students in the South attended intensely segregated schools in which at least nine out of 10 students were racial minorities. In districts released from desegregation orders between 1990 and 2011, 53 percent of black students now attend such schools, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
This is by no means a Southern problem either, as many liberals in more progressive parts of the country have fully embraced "white flight
" and have no problem with leaving black schools to operate under conditions they would never accept for their own children.
Economists test to find if welfare programs make people lazier and the answer is NO!
Trump wants a database of all Muslims.
Not to invoke Godwin's Law, but it's kind of hard NOT to.
Especially when he's not even bothering to hide the analogy. Trump is a Fascist, pure and simple. God help us all if we elect him President.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh Trump. God ruined a perfectly good asshole when he put teeth in your mouth.
Wait. I've made this joke before with Rubio. Well fuck off I still like it.
edited 20th Nov '15 7:02:45 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesThe latest polling in the wake of the Paris massacre has Trump leading Carson by a significant amount. I am relieved to the extent that it looks like we will not be nominating someone for President who can't find Europe on a map. Of course, the fact that Trump might be the one who gets the nod is scary enough in its own right that I think... I hope... it will spur Democratic voters to a fervor not seen in decades to keep him out of power.
Will the history books look on this decade as the one in which we nearly elected our own Hitler?
edited 20th Nov '15 7:56:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If that guy becomes president, he'll probably be the first president not being wanted to visit our country. I mean seriously, Trump's policies are a NPD member's wet dreams come true. You can't say that kind of stuff over here without ending up on a watchlist, even if you try to phrase it different.
Normally, I'd go on about people not learning from history, but I then I remember that the US never had to suffer under a dictatorial regime of any kind, as far as I know.
Genuine question: How much of the political climate - i.e. the fact that people like Trump can say the stuff they say and be applauded for it - can be attributed to the US not having suffered under an authoritarian regime (of any kind) or a devastating war on its own soil (past-civil war)?
We learn from history that we do not learn from history![]()
Valid question. Until you've suffered under the iron fist, you can't know what it's like, and so you may not appreciate the danger of electing someone who will wield it. Something like that was famously brought up in the Dune series, wherein a super-powered individual deliberately makes himself the God Emperor of humanity for thousands of years just to drill in the lesson about enslaving oneself to a tyrant.
More applicably, Revolt In 2100 (by Robert A. Heinlein) is a story that presents an America that gets taken over by a "democratically elected" theocratic tyranny; it takes a few generations of this to convince people that it's kind of a bad idea. (In Methuselah's Children, its in-universe sequel, America is a country dominated by a "live and let live" libertarian ethos wherein everyone subscribes to an explicit social contract when they come of age, or gets kicked out.)
I hope that the fascist demographic can become sufficiently diluted in American politics by liberalism that we don't have to suffer through such a regime so that people can get the point. I cannot be certain that it will happen that way, though.
The problem is that Trump's brand of fascism, while not shared directly by most people, causes raging boners among people who are racist fucks and see him as an opportunity to stick it to Those People. Most Germans weren't fascists, either, but they were afraid of Others, and Hitler exploited those fears.
edited 20th Nov '15 8:25:24 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In other news today, traitor Pollard freed
after 28 year imprisonment. I wonder what the Israelis had to offer for him. . .
Andrew Cuomo rolls out $15 minimum wage for all NY State workers by 2021
Sounds like the left is finally making some tidal waves.
![]()
Didn't the guy serve a 30 year sentence? Unless it was commuted from "life plus 300" or something, then I'd say he's paid his due and may now do whatever a 30-year convict does to make a new life for himself. Being called "traitor" wherever he goes is probably punishment enough for the rest of his life.
edited 20th Nov '15 9:49:31 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Pollard is almost certain to move to Israel at some point, where his wife already lives and he's considered a hero.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Many in this nation fetishize the appearance of being Israel's staunchest ally and friend. "We must back our fellow Abrahamists against the onslaught of the black sheep of the Abrahamic family, Islam." There also seems to be a sort of Sunk Cost Fallacy involved with respect to the amount of financial and political support we've given Israel in the past, and there exists to this day a very strong Jewish lobby in Congress that works tirelessly to make it politically toxic to talk badly about them.
edited 20th Nov '15 11:42:19 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

And so i said "oatmeal, are you crazy?"
Did i do good, Tomu?
edited 19th Nov '15 1:38:32 PM by Ogodei