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
History is written by the victors
Submitted 4 months ago by balderdash9@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/d8a79489-5f92-473a-9b5a-978629a8e2ed.webp
Comments
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 months ago
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
To be fair, I hear US history education varies wildly by state. Thanks states rights!
kamenlady@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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?
aidan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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 genocide, 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.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 4 months ago
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
aidan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Because people can do good things and horrible things in their life. Essentially no one is universally evil in everything they do.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 months ago
If it ain’t a retelling that it’s all shit ala 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.
duderium2@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
awwwyissss@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Americabad, what a new and refreshing take thanks lemmy
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
Just because you’re personally tired of hearing about it doesn’t mean it’s wrong
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Maybe there’s a reason why Americabad is such a common take? Just something to think about…
awwwyissss@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Yes, Kremlin, and more recently also CCP, disinformation on social media.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
I get what you mean. But something about the fourth of July just brings it out of me
GBU_28@lemm.ee 4 months ago
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
pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
In Austria and Germany at least we’re extremely critically viewing our history. It’s not “look at how good we are” but at “look at what we have to prevent from happening again” - and that’s for most topics, not only national socialism.
splonglo@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
lugal@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You talk about memes. I don’t know them. I think all states, including Germany, teach the story of the Victors in school
UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
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
duderium2@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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 (not because it’s the most effective way to destroy Nazism).
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Clean Wehrmacht mythos was critical to get West Germany fully into NATO by 1955.
Papergeist@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The Lost Cause myth is the same thing
iamanurd@midwest.social 4 months ago
blazera@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“Justice will prevail? Of course it will! Because the winners will claim justice!”
boatsnhos931@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
Bread@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Are you telling me we didn’t get our land by making friends, providing a great handshake and striking a good deal for everyone?
boatsnhos931@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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. 😽
jg1i@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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!
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Graduated high school with the believe that the US was a perfect, infallible nation.
Got to college. Couldn’t get any classes. Wondered into a history class in attempt to get a class, any class.
Was blown away. Ended up getting a history degree and becoming considerably more cynical and jaded about the whole thing.
boatsnhos931@lemmy.world 4 months ago
*** Wandered professor. You got to college and weren’t able to register for any classes?
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
mlg@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“We won WWII, absolutely nothing happened for 25 years, we landed on the moon, and now we’re all caught up!”
orcrist@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Well doesn’t that depend on this history books? Try again, my friend. :-)
HRDS_654@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
null@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
What’s that quote? History is written by the winners. Yeah, something like that.
…you mean the title of the post?
blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Attention spans just keep getting shorter.
Num10ck@lemmy.world 4 months ago
reminds me of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States
HRDS_654@lemmy.world 4 months ago
My bad. I didn’t even read the title, just saw the picture. lol
VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world 4 months ago
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.
atro_city@fedia.io 4 months ago
Make another one about the US abroad.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
One like = one cry for those poor American that got PTSD from mowing down the Vietnamese.
aidan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The Vietnam war was unjustified(blame French colonialism too though), but American soldiers were tortured- see Stockdale