|
Pauline Kael posted:If Jefferson hadn't been around, or explicitly kept American east of the Appalachians, do you think history would have turned out any differently?
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
rkajdi posted:The settlers were invaders. They had a place to go back to-- it was called Europe. The natives had no place to return to. You know, good point. There had never in human history been a case where a weaker group of people were pushed out by a stronger group of people. Maybe Sedan and his fellow travelers are onto something.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
Ernie Muppari posted:Wait wait wait, are we actually having an argument over whether the genocide of native americans was a genocide? Like, fer serious? I'm not sure what led you to that? My elementary school (2nd grade in 1977!) actually taught us that many of the founding fathers owned slaves. That, however, does not discredit the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as Sedan and Company would claim.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Just empire building? How about the standard fare of human history? What happened to the Native Americans, while deplorable and horrific by modern standards, was pretty well par for the course any time 2 civilizations collided. Like someone else said, the fight was over before it started because of the Native Americans' lack of exposure to old world pathogens. If Jefferson hadn't been around, or explicitly kept American east of the Appalachians, do you think history would have turned out any differently? Then, ask the same question of the Holocaust. If there was no Hitler, would there have been a Holocaust? I think you're giving too much credit to Hitler. If you don't see that the Nazi movement picked up a zeitgeist that was already in existence in Europe, I don't know what to tell you. Anti-semitism had a huge history there, and violence/injustice against Jews was a common thing.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:You know, good point. There had never in human history been a case where a weaker group of people were pushed out by a stronger group of people. Maybe Sedan and his fellow travelers are onto something. It happens, but we have a word for it now. And we stop it because it is a crime against the human loving race. How hard is it to get through your head?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:44
|
|
|
twodot posted:"If I didn't do it, someone else would!" Seriously, your moral reasoning here was refuted by Dr. Seuss (The Lorax), people were talking about educating 7 year olds earlier, and we literally teach 7 year olds that this reasoning is unacceptable. Answer the question. If Jefferson didn't kick off the Indian wars, do you think they wouldn't have happened? Also, same question for Hitler. Remember, we're testing the notion that Jefferson==Hitler, otherwise known as the SedanChair Hypothesis.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:44
|
|
|
rkajdi posted:I think you're giving too much credit to Hitler. If you don't see that the Nazi movement picked up a zeitgeist that was already in existence in Europe, I don't know what to tell you. Anti-semitism had a huge history there, and violence/injustice against Jews was a common thing. Hey I can do that too! I think you're giving too much credit to Jefferson. If you don't see that the expansionist movement picked up a zeitgeist that was already in existence in America, I don't know what to tell you. Anti-indian had a huge history there, and violence/injustice against Native Americans was a common thing.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
rkajdi posted:I think you're giving too much credit to Hitler. If you don't see that the Nazi movement picked up a zeitgeist that was already in existence in Europe, I don't know what to tell you. Anti-semitism had a huge history there, and violence/injustice against Jews was a common thing. Hell, Theodor Herzl had advocated since around 1895 of the need for a Jewish state as a result of pogroms and stuff like the Dreyfus Affair (and later the Protocols of the Elders of Zion).
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
rkajdi posted:It happens, but we have a word for it now. And we stop it because it is a crime against the human loving race. How hard is it to get through your head? "We" stopped it? Who stopped it? When did it stop?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:47
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:There had never in human history been a case where a weaker group of people were pushed out by a stronger group of people. Yeah if you make an omelet you have to break some eggs. Sometimes you have to force people off their land because your citizens want it, sometimes you have to round up undesirables to serve as forced labor for your racially-pure thousand year reich.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:47
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:OK then, I will hold my breath Whatever happened to this?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:48
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:That, however, does not discredit the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as Sedan and Company would claim. Sedan has never claimed in this thread that the Constitution or Bill of Rights is bad because Jefferson engineered a genocide. Just that Jefferson engineered a genocide. The current popular thinking on Jefferson was that he was a "man of his time" and merely owned slaves (without exploring what that actually meant in his case), and nothing more, because that's simply what landed white men did back then as a matter of fashion, you see. It's a startlingly ignorant view of early U.S. history and boy howdy is it alive and well in this thread.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:48
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Answer the question. If Jefferson didn't kick off the Indian wars, do you think they wouldn't have happened? Also, same question for Hitler. Remember, we're testing the notion that Jefferson==Hitler, otherwise known as the SedanChair Hypothesis. Ok, now that the question is answered. Why the gently caress does this dumb counterfactual matter?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
Wow, sorry I got busy at work for a bit. Let me run through...oh nope, just a bunch of arguing with holdouts who don't want to admit the US was founded on genocide.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:51
|
|
|
McDowell posted:Yeah if you make an omelet you have to break some eggs. Sometimes you have to force people off their land because your citizens want it, sometimes you have to round up undesirables to serve as forced labor for your racially-pure thousand year reich. I'm certainly not justifying it! We've moved a long way from the original point, but simply put, there was nothing *uniquely* evil about early America, no matter how much Sedan and friends want it to be so.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:52
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:I'm certainly not justifying it! We've moved a long way from the original point, but simply put, there was nothing *uniquely* evil about early America, no matter how much Sedan and friends want it to be so. Nobody claimed it was uniquely evil. I mean it's unique, and it's evil, but it's not like the last page on salon's click through "TOP TEN EVIL FOUNDING ORIGINS." It's probably like number five at best.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:54
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:there was nothing *uniquely* evil about early America, no matter how much Sedan and friends want it to be so. Why do you keep doing this? Nobody said anything remotely like this.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
The Trail of Tears is an example of ethnic cleansing by forcibly removing people from the land they live on so that white settlers can move in. Which is a heinous, monstrous crime. But it still isn't the same thing as literally building industrial machines designed to efficiently murder people. I've always been under the impression that genocide is an extreme form of ethnic cleansing, which is something the US most definitely took part it in. It was cruel and inhumane but I don't think it ranks up there with the genocides of the 20th century when millions were rounded up into extermination camps.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Wow, sorry I got busy at work for a bit. Let me run through...oh nope, just a bunch of arguing with holdouts who don't want to admit the US was founded on genocide. To be fair, you mostly were going on about the founding fathers were no better than Hitler, I guess trying to fit in with the cool kids like the OP. If you meant to say that perhaps Europeans should have stayed in Europe and left the Native Americans to their own devices, then you should have said that.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Hey I can do that too! Yup. Neither were required to commit these acts, but both did things to officially kick them off. We curse Hitler as a monster, so I guess that means Jefferson is one too. I don't buy the logic fully (I don't see the purpose in ranking historical great men in that way) but I do think the great man hagiography that's taught to us in school as history is a horrible thing that should be dismantled.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:This text is actually less damning than the actual reality. Maybe we should? Its part of the reason I detest a lot of the South to kind of continue this in a different tangent. A large majority of the white people in the South that has wealth, land, and good place in society has it because of the literally enslavement and murder of other people. People that still hold power to this day. I kind of feel like I can kind of hold the antebellum south and those that actively participated in it for making the area a lovely place for "American" ideals. As for SedanChair Chat, I don't think its entirely off base when we look back through the lens of history to see Jefferson in the same light in SOME of his policies as Hitler. He was a white supremacist that had some good ideas that ultimately encouraged genocide of a people he felt undermined his way of life. Despite plenty of evidence that he was inconsistent in his opinions, he maintained a pro-slavery attitude and encouraged his own myopic view of the world. Was he a super charismatic speaker that riled millions to kill their fellow citizens? Well, no. But he did perpetuate and endorse a lot of the worst aspects of American history. It wasn't Jefferson alone, mind you, but I don't think we can shy away from that. In general we shouldn't care what the FF's thought. We should instead look upon the ideals that they created and do a serious rational analysis of what policies lead to a more free and fair Republic and which ones don't. Times are different now, and we don't have all the answers, but we absolutely have better answers than they did in the 18th century. And really, whenever someone says "The Founding Fathers...." when encouraging new legislation, I know they have no argument and they lose all credibility with me, and ought to with anyone that has a critical thinking bone in their body.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 19:59
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:To be fair, you mostly were going on about the founding fathers were no better than Hitler, I guess trying to fit in with the cool kids like the OP. If you meant to say that perhaps Europeans should have stayed in Europe and left the Native Americans to their own devices, then you should have said that. Was the United States founded upon genocide? No need to bring up any other historical regime. Was it?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:I'm certainly not justifying it! We've moved a long way from the original point, but simply put, there was nothing *uniquely* evil about early America, no matter how much Sedan and friends want it to be so. American chattel slavery and the whole white supremacist push to cleanse (not conquer but outright remove for specifically white settlement) the continent of indigenous populations as a whole are somewhat peculiarly uncommon in the grand scheme of history though.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
!!!DOUBLE POST!!! The one angle I can see the US being uniquely evil in that the very ideas upon which it was supposedly founded were immediately and completely refuted in the actions of its own states. For the Mongols their motto is kinda "We are going to rape, pillage, and kill everyone to make our Mongol empire the greatest in the world!" Nothing in there about equality to every citizen, fair representation, or non violent means to solving proplems. The US has all the good flowing stuff about men created equal, and fair treatment by the government, and a more perfect union, etc. It directly contradicts itself in an Orwellian fashion from Day 1. Which is worse? The villain that cackles gleefully as he murders the innocent, or the handsome clean shaven knight that convinces you it was for their own good?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
Mustang posted:The Trail of Tears is an example of ethnic cleansing by forcibly removing people from the land they live on so that white settlers can move in. Which is a heinous, monstrous crime. Genocide is genocide, independent of score-counting. "Well, this genocide didn't make efficient use of the industrial revolution" is hilariously inane quibbling.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Remember, we're testing the notion that Jefferson==Hitler, otherwise known as the SedanChair Hypothesis. He literally explicitly said that this wasn't the case multiple times. Pauline Kael posted:I'm certainly not justifying it! We've moved a long way from the original point, but simply put, there was nothing *uniquely* evil about early America, no matter how much Sedan and friends want it to be so. Not a single person said it was uniquely evil. Just that it was, well, evil. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:07 on May 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
twodot posted:The US would have definitely genocided the Native Americans with or without Jefferson, because it was (and is) run by a bunch of assholes. My knowledge of German history is not nearly good enough to guess at whether the holocaust would have happened without Hitler, but Hitler didn't spring into existence fully formed, and he didn't utilize mind control technology to convince everyone that his ideas were good, so I wouldn't be surprised either way. No one is claiming that Jefferson==Hitler, that is a dumb strawman, we all know they are different people (you can tell because they have different letters in their names!). This doesn't seem like it excuses Jefferson's contributions of course. There would seem to be little burden to having assimilated the Cherokee and treating them as brothers, which the Cherokee themselves were clearly trying to do; however, the rapacious thirst for FREE LAND (often explicitly for the purpose of using slave labor to farm cash crops) drove that decision. However, I think that you can make a better case, if we must compare and contrast T-Jeff and Big Dolph, that Jefferson was not initiating new and vicious actions. Jefferson had a long life as an influential member of his class, which included several neutral or positive contributions, such as founding a university, that Declaration thing, etc. I don't think it is somehow wrong to highlight the positive things here in the context of teaching small children, though I don't think his ownership of slaves or treatment of natives should be hidden, save to the extent consistent with grade-appropriate information. "Jefferson was a thoughtful man and made many arguments for the colonies' freedom, but he also owned a great many slaves, despite that" seems to introduce the facts and the inherent paradox there, without either subjecting second graders to a discourse on slave rape or being a titanic bring-down Betty (or, the unstated third rail, setting the PTA after you, the hypothetical schoolteacher.) Anyway, Jefferson, for all the evil things he did, did not seem to innovate in his evil acts the way Hitler and his cronies did. I myself am not persuaded by the theory that there is some deep-rooted exterminationalist impulse that is inherent to the Germans that wasn't also arguably true about the English (witness the colonies! Jefferson was basically an Englishman, after all) or the French (one fellow said once 'if you told me after the Great War that in the next European war, a major power would seek to murder all of Europe's Jews, I would say: Nobody could be surprised at the depths to which France can sink'). Some new European war, probably involving Germany, was pretty drat likely, but there was no great clamoring demand for "mounds of dead Jews" the way there was for "stealing the Indian land" or even "killing our political enemies." Jastiger posted:!!!DOUBLE POST!!! Basically, our history books need to suck the dicks of New-England abolitionists and Honest Abe more than that of a pack of slave-driving plantation owners, if we're going to suck anyone's dicks. Nessus fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
If I punch somebody in the face I don't get a free pass because somebody, somewhere, at a different time was punched harder and with brass knuckles. That argument would be stupid. This argument about "well that genocide was worse" does not invalidate the other genocide. Seriously, stop this poo poo, it's loving stupid.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Genocide is genocide, independent of score-counting. "Well, this genocide didn't make efficient use of the industrial revolution" is hilariously inane quibbling. Then you should tell that to the academics that write the textbooks for human rights classes at universities.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:08
|
|
|
Berke Negri posted:American chattel slavery and the whole white supremacist push to cleanse (not conquer but outright remove for specifically white settlement) the continent of indigenous populations as a whole are somewhat peculiarly uncommon in the grand scheme of history though. Chattel slavery was certainly NOT uncommon in history. That's dumb. Name me 3 recorded societies previous to the 18th century that didn't have chattel slavery. As far as the white supremacist stuff, I'd argue that that was represented historically in the old world as more of a cultural chauvinism, not necessarily skin color based, but more tribal. Certainly my Celtic ancestors, while white, got swept aside by the Francs and God knows who else, for being in the wrong tribe. That any survived is probably more a tribute to the fact that nobody wanted to live in the God forsaken places they ended up.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:09
|
|
|
Mustang posted:But it still isn't the same thing as literally building industrial machines designed to efficiently murder people. Just curious, why is the industrialization of murder the thing that makes it awful, and not something more sensible, like the actual number of people killed? If all men's lives have equal value (and good luck coming up with a justification for why that isn't so), than the absolute value is the only thing that matters. And to the people who said that we can't lay the whole thing at Jefferson's head so he's not that responsible, I have a question. Exactly how many people do you have to be involved in murdering to make it worth criticizing you for? Maybe I'm too simple, but I put that number at 1.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:09
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Genocide is genocide, independent of score-counting. "Well, this genocide didn't make efficient use of the industrial revolution" is hilariously inane quibbling. But what if my sense of self worth is tied up in the idea that I live in a nation founded by ancient dead guys who were better than other ancient dead guys? Mustang posted:Then you should tell that to the academics that write the textbooks for human rights classes at universities. I'm 100% serious, post examples of human rights class textbooks that do that. It sounds loving hilarious.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:10
|
|
|
Mustang posted:Then you should tell that to the academics that write the textbooks for human rights classes at universities. Noted academics who keep a Dave Letterman's Top 10 Genocide by Confirmed Kill Count List, explicitly invalidating the rest as not-genocide:
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Nessus posted:The contradiction wasn't even some great mystery that only came to light in the blessed glow of our modern day. At the time English people were saying, "why do we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?" and of course A. Lincoln spoke at length about how slavery, as well as the insolence of the slave power, was destroying the image of democracy and liberty. Which is exactly why I think the argument that the US was a bit more evil holds a little more water. Its not like the Founding Fathers didn't know or were blind to the idea that slavery was a blight upon them. They knew and didn't care, or were willing to concede the point in order to get the assholes to join the Union. A political move, maybe, but still a terrible and lovely thing to do. "A bloo bloo, I'm not free to not pay taxes on my slaves. What about muh freedom!" - Southern and some Northern American Colonists. They knew, they just didn't care, which I would say makes chattel slavery WORSE in the US than in other civilizations.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Was the United States founded upon genocide? No need to bring up any other historical regime. Was it? Genocide as we would define it today? Sure, between slavery (pre-dating political United States, and ended by US political regime 100 years later, started by colonial powers) and the Native American Genocide (mostly thanks to pathogens introduced by old world 'explorers') America was built on a pile of bodies. Does that invalidate the principals upon which our political culture was formed? Should we say gently caress it and go old-world, maybe a 2 bit dictatorship like Russia because our founding fathers were less than pure?
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:15
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:Which is exactly why I think the argument that the US was a bit more evil holds a little more water. Its not like the Founding Fathers didn't know or were blind to the idea that slavery was a blight upon them. They knew and didn't care, or were willing to concede the point in order to get the assholes to join the Union. A political move, maybe, but still a terrible and lovely thing to do. This implies that there was ever an accidental genocide. "Whoops! If only I had the printing press, then we could have avoided all this."
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:16
|
|
|
Pauline Kael posted:Chattel slavery was certainly NOT uncommon in history. That's dumb. Name me 3 recorded societies previous to the 18th century that didn't have chattel slavery. American chattel slavery did not do that; it defined a system of indentured service which happened to include some black people into a permanent, commodified caste system. What is more, the American Southerners drat well knew better - you could claim a Roman would have difficulty concieving of having no slaves whatever with some justice, I expect - and built up an ideological structure to defend their horrible system and try to turn it into some greater good, which we see in so many of the attested Confederate documents.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Jastiger posted:Which is exactly why I think the argument that the US was a bit more evil holds a little more water. Its not like the Founding Fathers didn't know or were blind to the idea that slavery was a blight upon them. They knew and didn't care, or were willing to concede the point in order to get the assholes to join the Union. A political move, maybe, but still a terrible and lovely thing to do. So in your mind because slavery existed, the United States should not have? Would slavery have gone away if the colonies had never formed a nation? The FFs knew that if they tried to address slavery in the early republic that it never would have gotten past go, in no small part because many of them were slaveholders themselves. Yes, we all understand that. Is you contention that it would have been better for the US to not exist then? I imagine that would be pretty popular in D&D, but its the dumbest sort of alt-history.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
OneThousandMonkeys posted:Genocide is genocide, independent of score-counting. "Well, this genocide didn't make efficient use of the industrial revolution" is hilariously inane quibbling. This is unacceptably stupid. It trivializes the Holocuast by grouping it as one of 10,000? incidents across human history
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
Mustang posted:Then you should tell that to the academics that write the textbooks for human rights classes at universities. Uh, they call both the Indian removal and the Holocaust genocides, hth. I think the best quote I ever heard about the Holocaust was something along the lines of saying the Nazi's crime was treating Europeans the way the Europe treated the rest of the world.
|
|
#
?
May 22, 2014 20:23
|
|