I don’t know what history books y’all read but the one I got wasn’t shy about the shit we’ve got on our heads, even if some previously lesser known atrocities weren’t part of the material
To be fair, I hear US history education varies wildly by state. Thanks states rights!
So, there’s a chance to meet someone from another state that may really have been taught a different history at school. How different depends on the state’s political majority?
That is correct. That’s what it’s like living here every day. Though largely it’s just two categories.
The people your meet are either ignorant religious nut jobs, or they’re not from the south.
What state portrays US history as utopian in the past 20 years? I grew up in Kentucky and definitely got a lot of stuff about slavery, Native American betrayals and murders, civil rights, Mexican American war, Hawaiian colonization, the only reason they didn’t cover the Vietnam war or Filipino is because they ran out of time from assigning pointless art projects.
Edit: Other stuff that was covered, bonus army, workers rights and child abuses
My schools and textbooks weren’t shy about the acts of evil that were committed, but somehow found ways to speak highly of those involved in said acts
Because people can do good things and horrible things in their life. Essentially no one is universally evil in everything they do.
I agree with that 100%! I still think it’s weird that we national holidays to celebrate slave owners, regardless of what good things they did that have no relation to their owning of slaves.
To ignore slave owner and slavery apologists we’d have to get rid of all abrahamic religious holidays leaving… Juneteenth, Labor Day, MLK Day, and Veterans Day. Those are fine holidays- but not exactly the most festive/family fun.
I think the British(under Churchill) made starvation of hundreds of thousands of colonial subjects was horrible, those same people can still be celebrated for fighting Hitler though.
If it ain’t a retelling that it’s all shit a la Howard Zinn it really tends to be rose colored glasses trying to explain how the true nationalistic spirit of freedom loving America always strives to win out in the end. But it’s really a rotten foundation leading to a rotten house.
https://libcom.org/article/peoples-history-united-states-howard-zinn-0
Zinn still begins his book by complaining about Stalin, who, last time I checked, never set foot in the United States. A People’s History is still a liberal text, one that insists that the USA is flawed but good. We read it in my APUSH class, and even today the teacher is a hardcore Biden supporter who thinks that communism is evil and that workers should allow capitalists to drain their blood. People who are actually interested in american history should read Gerald Horne.
Make another one about the US abroad.
- Movies and other media: USA = savior
- Reality: USA = murderers
One like = one cry for those poor American heroes that got PTSD from gunning down Vietnamese rice farmers.
The Vietnam war was unjustified(blame French colonialism too though), but American soldiers were tortured- see Stockdale
I fully acknowledge the us has huge issues now, and has had them historically as well, but this is true for every single country on the planet.
Never meet your heros
In Austria and Germany at least we’re extremely critically viewing our history. It’s not “look at how good we are” but “look at what we have to prevent from happening again” - and that’s for most topics, not only national socialism.
Actually History isn’t always written by the victors. After WW2 a load of german officers fled to south America and began writing books about how great they were and could have won if only they had finished developing all their wonder weapons in time. This is the origin of a lot of persistent and false memes about how advanced and brilliant the nazis supposedly were. It’s history written by losers.
You talk about memes. I don’t know them. I think all states, including Germany, teach the story of the Victors in school
Actually History isn’t always written by the victors… This is the origin of a lot of persistent and false memes…
You may remember history but your reading comprehension needs a little work
What does writing history mean to you? Making memes no one knows about, isn’t. Making memes that enter public consciousness (as the word combination “a lot of persistent” seems to suggest or at least leave open) maybe. But what do I know, I lack basic reading skills apparently.
Writing history is more than just what’s actually written down. Stories passed through word of mouth, that stick around, are a part of history a la German Scientists making themselves seems smarter after losing. Which is a reoccurring trope throughout Media.
So yes, history is sometimes ‘written’ by the losers
The Lost Cause myth is the same thing
Interestingly, the CIA also rescued thousands of high-profile Nazis and brought them to the USA, where they were given positions of power and authority (Operation Paperclip, Operation Bloodstone), and began teaching people that changing anything is impossible and we need to fight communism because it is evil and authoritarian and goes against human nature and always fails (not because it’s the most effective way to destroy Nazism).
Clean Wehrmacht mythos was critical to get West Germany fully into NATO by 1955.
Guys named Victor:
lelz. can relate. I was at a family’s house for the holiday and they had a book about California history… Shit was funny as hell. The first 30 pages was basically just shit talking Californios, Spanish, and Mexican settlers. They quoted a lot of English, French, and United Statian visitors instead of the people who lived in California… Comments ranged from “the Californios looked uncivilized” to “they wasted the land they had”. Then on page 31, they had 1 small paragraph were they talked about “an event” where the US acquired the land. Uh, ya mean the bullshit war where the US invaded Mexico and stole half of it?! The book continued with a whole chapter on the gold rush. XD Fucking trash!
You mean in height school billy? Every college level course gives it pretty raw that I’ve had anyway…If you dare read between the lines, nobody is going to get that amount of land without a lot of blood and tears.
Are you telling me we didn’t get our land by making friends, providing a great handshake and striking a good deal for everyone?
Well kind of… you know…new world diseases with a little raping, pillaging and slavery on the side. Technically the Native Americans did the same thing to other tribes when pulling for better hunting grounds just not on the massive scale. Jussstt kidding, we brought Taco Bell, KFC, and Walmart…then they realized how superior we were and just gave us the land followed by suicide. 😽
“Justice will prevail? Of course it will! Because the winners will claim justice!”
Graduated high school with the belief that the US was a perfect, infallible nation.
Got to college. Couldn’t get any classes.
WonderedWas blown away. Ended up getting a history degree and becoming considerably more cynical and jaded about the whole thing.
*** Wandered professor. You got to college and weren’t able to register for any classes?
It was 1990. Everything you did was on paper. I had to mail in my desired class schedule and got zero classes so I had to wander (pardon the fuck out of my early morning typo) around with a bunch of paper add slips trying to get classes.
So very much not in a fucking mood for pedants right now.
Paper add slips?
US History (College and any sane public school) actually does do a good job of describing all the crazy stuff the country has pulled against people.
It just conveniently skips explaining anything global in the past 40-50 years that has a direct effect on lots of things happening today.
Stuff like SEATO, Israel, how OPEC was neutralized, Iraq, Iran, KSA, Israel again, Afghanistan, 9/11, etc.
“We won WWII, absolutely nothing happened for 25 years, we landed on the moon, and now we’re all caught up!”
Americabad, what a new and refreshing take thanks lemmy
Just because you’re personally tired of hearing about it doesn’t mean it’s wrong
Maybe there’s a reason why Americabad is such a common take? Just something to think about…
Yes, Kremlin, and more recently also CCP, disinformation on social media.
Ah yes, the ripe target of state propaganda known as Lemmy. You know, the place where SEO bots barely even make an effort on penetrating.
The place where there’s no coordinated effort to fight disinformation, and one of the leading instances constantly spreads obvious propaganda.
I get what you mean. But something about the fourth of July just brings it out of me
Even if you look past the cruelties committed, it’s still disappointing.
I’ve read a variety of books on various wars and those that we were involved in were mostly disappointing in regards to tactical decisions. Everything after the revolution either feels like a fluke or just simply feels as if we brute forced our way through with resources until the post WWII era where various campaigns failed due to guerilla warfare. I’m oversimplifying but especially early on in its life the country’s militia was a bit unimpressive.
Well doesn’t that depend on this history books? Try again, my friend. :-)
What’s that quote? History is written by the winners. Yeah, something like that. Not to say the alternative would have been better, but bad historians will always leave out the worst parts of a country’s history.
What’s that quote? History is written by the winners. Yeah, something like that.
…you mean the title of the post?
Attention spans just keep getting shorter.
reminds me of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States
My bad. I didn’t even read the title, just saw the picture. lol
