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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
Guys named Victor:
