I grew up with the Vietnam war in the background. It wasn’t the hippies, or the protests, or the myth of people spitting on returning veterans that made me doubt my country: it was the National Guard raising their guns and firing into a crowd of students at Kent State. It was a duplicitous Richard Nixon resigning in disgrace. It was Henry Kissinger committing war crimes and being rewarded for it.
The Iranian hostage crisis was the dominant news item when I went off to college. It was wrong, and Iran’s descent into theocracy was a catastrophe. But what troubled me was my country’s long support for the tyrannical Shah of Iran, which had led to this crisis, the way Ronald Reagan stole credit for its resolution, and how that administration smoothly segued into total corruption, trading arms (can we stop doing that?) to Iran to shuffle money under the table to murderous right-wing killers in Nicaragua. It was Oliver North becoming the ‘brave’ face of American policy.
I’ve read the sanitized propaganda we’re given in public schools, and at the same time read the more complex histories. I hear about courageous pioneers bringing civilization west, and I read about Jeffrey Amherst and his genocidal plans, the rabble-rousing hatred that led to the massacre at Wounded Knee — and by the way, did you know that 20 medals of ‘honor’ were awarded for the murder of men, women (excuse me, ‘squaws’: wouldn’t want to humanize them), and children in that event? I lose all respect for the concept of honor. I am instructed in the heroics of the Civil War, and no one explains that the seeds of that brutality were sown in the cowardice of our noble Founding Fathers, who could talk a good game about liberty but but shied away from doing anything that might cost them some property, the human beings they owned as slaves. I had to learn on my own that we whipped around from a war to emancipate the slaves to an era of Manifest Destiny, in which plutocrats declared that they had a right to the lands of uncivilized yellow and brown people.
All my life I’ve been watching fools, criminals, and villains wrapping themselves up in their loud patriotism and being lauded for it. Do you wonder that I find flag and country tainted? Are you surprised that I find little cause to celebrate today? Do you think it’s all the fault of godless commies and leftie lies? No. It’s because the people who most thoroughly embrace that unthinking love of country do not love it for the high-minded principles stated at its founding: liberty and justice are nothing but words. They don’t love it for its past openness to immigrants; we no longer lift the lamp beside the golden door, we’re gonna build a Wall. Our Constitution isn’t about protecting our rights or guaranteeing equality, it’s about making sure every one gets to own as many guns as they want.
This is what our independence day has become.
This should be our national day of mourning, a day we grieve at how the great has been betrayed by the petty.
PZ:
It’s also become this – there just aren’t words for the stupid.
I did my Colonial Day post yesterday, but fwiw, Happy Colonial Day.
I still remember going into work, really happy that they’d convicted Ollie North. One of the women in the office was upset, because he was cute. Granted, I was working in a Navy hangar and the boss was a Marine colonel, but I was pretty floored by that response.
North was supposed to be cute? I remember him as downright ugly. But then again I was a teenager at the time, so my standards of beauty were probably impossibly high at that point.
PZ, I read your blog daily, but have rarely commented. This post gives an excellent representation of my own feelings. Fine job. Awesome, even. Thanks.
And now you know why I rarely comment on blogs. I really don’t have much need or desire to give my opinion, especially when you give your opinion so well, and I agree with it, like, always.
Much as I quail to quibble with Politifact and our esteemed host, many journalists have made a strong case that Reagan (or at least his campaign manager William Casey, promptly appointed head of the CIA) had a great deal to do with the release of the US hostages in Iran (probably delaying it, but clearly setting the terms [weapons deals] surrounding it).
Dianne – must’ve been those puppy dog eyes and the sincerity he was able to fake during the hearings. Let’s see, I would’ve been around 18 or 19 at the time, and the woman making the comment probably in her late 20s / early 30s.
What a crappy job that was – I pulled staples out of documents all summer for the Navy, because they needed to shred outdated orders and the shredders couldn’t handle staples.
@Derek Vandivere (#7):
Well, that explains it. Ollie must have been the poster boy for shredders* at the time.
*The machines, not so much the people who operate them.
Derek@7: Sincerity? Seriously? I was a teenage Aspie* at the time and even I knew he was lying his ass off. Oh, well, we’ve all got our vulnerabilities, I guess.
*Sounds like a D-list horror movie, doesn’t it? It was.
Over at Scientific American, a look at Thomas Jefferson: For Independence Day, a Look at Thomas Jefferson’s Egregious Hypocrisy. No big surprises, but a good summary of morality compromised by power and privilege.
robro @ # 10: … a look at Thomas Jefferson: For Independence Day, a Look at Thomas Jefferson’s Egregious Hypocrisy.
See another damning, and sfaict historically accurate, takedown by Robert Parry: Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath.
Today we DECLARED our Independence. We did not achieve independence until Sept. 3, 1783.
I guess that’s why fireworks are so representative of the _beginning_ of the independence struggle.
It is good to be reminded that we are not _purely_ good. We’ve done plenty of bad things also, deluded that “good intentions” are good enough, that methods are irrelevant. Too bad all of American History is thoroughly filtered to enhance all the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. To Correct that imbalance it is important to monitor that we don’t overemphasize the “mistakes” of the past.
Liberty and justice for all is not and never will be a finished goal for America. It’s a direction. We’ll never get there, but we do occasionally make steps forward — and backward.
I worked hard during the summer and fall of 1978 in the campaign to defeat California Prop. 6 (the “Briggs Initiative), which would have barred the employment of homosexuals (or anyone who defended the rights of homosexuals!) from employment as a teacher in the public schools. The measure was clearly unconstitutional, but the polls showed it winning through much of the summer. It finally went down to defeat by a margin of about 17%. The people of California had learned something. I can’t help thinking that this may have been one of the seeds of the political change that has made California one of the most solidly liberal states in the US.
One year ago this summer, the people of the United States had become sufficiently educated on the subject that it was clear that the majority favored recognition of the right of homosexuals to marry; and so the Supreme Court did their duty and removed that particular unconstitutional denial of equality before the law.
But it was only a step — the Court can’t remove the petty bigotry, the irrational hatred, or the murderous impulses of those who are taught from childhood that faith is holy and reason is sinful. It can, however, and eventually must strike down the new attempts to wrap that irrational hatred in a legal religious privilege and license to deny the human rights of the targets of such hate. Or, in an upsurge of renewed ignorance, the people may decide to elect a hater-in-chief to lead a retreat (an amexit?) from the progress we have made toward a more just society.
I don’t agree with those who say that “free will” is an illusion (I’m with Dan Dennett, who holds that its a problem of definition, and that there does exist a free will worth having). But even many of those who call it an illusion will agree that it is a useful illusion. In that case, “freedom and justice for all” must also be an illusion. Our question becomes, is it a useful illusion, and can it be possible that there exists, or can exist, freedom and justice that is worth having? As a direction?
Have a happy 4th of July.
I’ve become quite disillusioned with the whole patriotic 4th of July thing too.
I’m enjoying a nice quiet day inside where it is cool. The temperature outside is expected to reach 100 today, with humidity in the mid-70s. I’ve been getting some household organization done today and will cook a nice meal in a few hours.
Meanwhile, the husband is busy working on his dissertation.
I guess we’ve gotten too old to brave the heat, bugs and crowds.
When night falls, I’ll be here to keep my dog calm, since his only fears happen to be fireworks and thunder.
“They don’t love it for its past openness to immigrants; we no longer lift the lamp beside the golden door”
Why did the US famously accept all comers back in the 19th and early 20th centuries? It wasn’t to be nice: the rulers wanted to re-populate all the land that they’d confiscated from the native peoples with good christian white people (africans, asians, jews, moslems, etc. weren’t wanted; hell, Roman catholics were barely tolerated), and they wanted a larger supply of laborers to make money for them and of soldiers to impose their will on others. Now that all that land is inhabited by white people, african slaves have been replaced as agricultural laborers by hispanic migrants, and there is a surplus of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, is it any surprise that those in power aren’t interested in importing large numbers of non-white, non-christian, poor, and poorly-educated people who are perceived as bringing problems with them?
Something to ponder today:
At the Seattle Center today, 503 newly sworn-in United States citizens took their oath. From 85 countries.
Today, 65,000 active duty military folks are immigrants.
18% of Union Civil War soldiers were immigrants.
And my favorite: Since 1861, 20% of Medal of Honor recipients are immigrants.
PZ, thanks for the Politifact article on Carter freeing the hostages in 1980. It has been an article of faith for my acquaintances on the right that Reagan freed the hostages, and that Trump will similarly somehow intimidate our foes in the Mideast. The whole Reagan era is in need of a thorough debunking. It was precisely at the point of Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 that wages began to diverge from productivity, divergence continuing at a nearly constant rate since then to produce the staggering economic inequality of our present day.
#8 / Richard: On the bright side, I suppose, I didn’t have to carry all the documents I had to shred in my underwear.
PZ – you were just in Korea. While there, did you reflect on the history of that peninsula? Did you perhaps wonder what it would look like had the US not sacrificed to protect the people of the South from the evil – real, true evil – represented by the North Korean and (at the time) Chinese military forces.
For that matter, can you not find any solace in the US’ military interventions in either World Wars, fought against oppressive, tyrannical regimes hell-bent on destroying entire races. Or in the Cold War, where we pledged to defend our democratic, peaceful allies struggling to protect their people from the authoritarian expansionist communist empire.
You list this country’s myriad faults, but spare not a word for its myriad strengths. This is what I find utterly repugnant about people from your generation of your extreme ideological bent. Patriotism can be a virtue of the vicious – can be – but it can also serve to remind people why the United States is one of the greatest countries in the world. It can serve to remind people of the tyranny we repelled in the Revolutionary War and the tyranny we’ve repeated defeated around the world.
It can also serve to remind us of what is different about the American experiment. We take for granted now that human rights are inherent to each person on the planet (while we might argue about what exactly those rights entail). This was a radical idea in 1776 America, where rights were granted by the King. You can despise the fact that the founding fathers owned slaves, but you also cannot deny that they put in place within the Constitution the mechanism for the abolishment of slavery. Indeed, this was Lincoln’s entire anti-slavery argument.
But if you’re going to condemn the country’s leaders for their past transgressions, why stop at slavery? Why not condemn them for their views on LGBTQ issues? Is the country’s founding tarnished by the lack of abortion and gay marriage rights?
I’m on board the progressive platform for almost everything, but here is where I say fuck no. No country is perfect, but the US founding document codifies the notion that the people will govern themselves. No King, no tyrant, no ruler is going to tell me what rights I do and don’t have. I’m not going to prostrate myself in front of anyone, but I have and will take the challenge to persuade my fellow voters that my views are the right way for us to live our lives.
This wasn’t happening around the world in the 18th century. And its not happening everywhere in the world today. If you took the opportunity to visit the Joint Security Area while you were in Korea, if you were able to peer across the border at the creepy guy that’s looking back with a pair of binoculars, I bet you felt much better knowing that you were on the southern side of that incredibly bloody line.
If you look around the world you see other regimes who aren’t worried about their citizen’s human rights. You’ll see countries in Asia, South and Central America, eastern Europe, and the Middle East where rulers are contemptuous of freedom, and they have no aspirations of becoming a progressive, forward looking society.
In other places around the world you see democracies struggling mightily with many of the same questions being dealt with in the US. Those arguments are won and lost at the ballot box, not at the whim of an autocratic ruler.
To me, that is the meaning of Independence Day. It is a day when I celebrate the idea that people can govern themselves peacefully and live in freedom and prosperity. That is an idea worth celebrating. That is an idea worth defending. And that, in my opinion, is an idea worth dying for.
I’m glad your son decided to take an oath to defend that idea. And I’m glad that he, apparently, doesn’t put much stock in what his father says.
@ 19 mmark
Possibly because the contradiction was noticed at the time?
There is a great article at The Raw Story:
“Are you ready for some hard truths about the birth of our nation? Brace yourself”. http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/are-you-ready-for-some-hard-truths-about-the-birth-of-our-nation-brace-yourself/
“As a relevant side note, the National Anthem has its own dirty little secret. Composed during the fight with the British known as The War of 1812, its third stanza is virtually never sung today. As Ned and Constance Sublette explain in The American Slave Coast—A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, there is a reason for that. The last part of that stanza is:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star Spangled Banner” lyrics, was himself a slave owner and hard core white supremacist. The reference to the hireling and the slave is to those, including former slaves, who were fighting on the side of the British. “
mmark – Are you seriously going to site the Cold War as an example of America’s good deeds in the world? The greatest crime of the 20 century, killing many more people than the Nazi Holocaust? The one in which we(America)collapsed democratic republics all over the world, denying the people there agency to choose what system they actually desired to live under, justifying our spreading empire by telling ourselves we “Saved the world!” Your words; “This is what I find utterly repugnant about people from your generation of your extreme ideological bent.” Turn that around and take a look in the mirror next time you try to justify American Imperialism. We have not built a better world, all we’ve done is rearrange the rubble of the old. I go to work on July 4th, every Fourth,and soak up some of that OT that my fellow citizens fought my fellow citizens to give us. I detest these “patriotic” Holidays. They’re not patriotic, not to me. They celebrate a culture of death. Every time I hear a firecracker go off I know what that is supposed to represent. And on my way home I give a hearty middle finger and a loud “Fuck you!” to the flag as I drive by the local Military Base and all the poor, ignorant bastards(my cousin, killed in the outset of the invasion, my brother, killed in Fallujah) who went and died to support our latest brilliant plan to bring freedom to the poor people of Iraq. Fuck the 4th and fuck America’s arrogant agenda to spread freedom by the sword and, respectfully, fuck people like you who continue to promote this bullshit, sending generation after generation of good people to die for no good reason. Your motives might be genuine, but from where I sit that is poison you’re dishing out. I’m sure all the children who made the ultimate sacrifice to get Junior elected to a second term are proud at what we’ve achieved as they lay rotting in the dirt. I believe in those same principles you point to but they are fucking TAINTED, and they have been for a long time now. And before you say it, yes I hate it here so much I want to leave. I tried. I got pulled back in, just like the fucking Mafia, and now responsibility has trapped me here in this surreal and demented Nation. Do I sound slightly bitter?
the United States of America does not equal freedom and democracy! It still struggles to implement those ideals of freedom and self determination. What the 4th of July signifies is another step maybe not the first and surely not the final step on man kinds struggle toward those aspirational goals. It has been an inspiration to others in other countries to strive toward those same ends but it is not the end it’s self nor the greatest freest nation on earth.
Some of the reasons it is powerful (great?) is the result of it having been un-involved with the European history for so long and kept safe by distance and rich from not having been exploited and unsettled with only the inconvenience of a technologically inferior indigenous population which was easily nullified.
It would have been powerful in any case but democracy push forward here and continues to be a struggle even here today.
it at root always been all man kind not just the lucky inhabitants of the U.S. it is part of the struggle for freedom that the compromises in wording were made it is a struggle that is going on all over the f’n world.
I hate this jingoistic nationalism of America the city on the hill beacon of freedom for the world.
The 4th is a sign post on the road to human freedom and equality but it is proving to be a very long and difficult road. We ain’t there yet.
uncle frogy
Well, he was represented in Bloom County as an alien puppy.
http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/2014/01/25
how could you forget his dutiful wife setting behind him in the cameras shot wearing a gingham dress?
I thought my head would explode!
uncle frogy
You’re not respectful, don’t try to pretend you are. People like you and PZ are infected with some sort of anti-American disease I wish I could diagnose and treat. You’re filled with hate and with it the inability to reason. Like the racist who sees no redeeming values in the person not of his tribe, you show contempt for freedom and the people who would sacrifice their lives to protect it.
You claim to want to leave America. Where would you go? To China? To Russia? To Germany? To Italy? To Japan? Were it not for America, the current world would be dominated – in the literal sense of the word – by these regimes. There would be no human rights as we know them. We wouldn’t enjoy the relative prosperity we do today. The world would be a much poorer, and much more horrible place.
These things aren’t really debatable – no serious person would debate them anyway. The fact that you and PZ can’t bring yourselves to acknowledge the good that America’s done along with the bad tells me that you’re not rational. I’m not arguing that American has not acted badly in the past – and I won’t predict that it won’t act badly in the future. The only thing that I’m arguing is that no matter how the country acts, the country can change, collectively, that behavior. You can’t do that in China. You can’t do that in Russia. You can’t do that in North Korea – which PZ should well know.
I’ve never argued with a Klan member so I’m unsure how to talk to someone seething with irrational hatred. Perhaps, like an alcoholic, the first step is admitting that you’re being irrational and addressing that issue first.
I am a true US-American. And what do US-Americans do when the going gets tough and the government gets crazy? We cut and run for whatever FSM forsaken colony will take us. Forget staying and fighting or resigning ourselves to whatever nonsense is going down, WE’RE OUTTA HERE!
After all, how did the Americas get all these Europeans living on it in the first place? The above attitude. Too many US-Americans forget their traditional values.
Which values would those be?
Both PZ and Christopher Doring have repudiated ALL traditional American values. In their view, there has NEVER been anything to celebrate about being an American. The 4th of July “should be our national day of mourning” not a day where we hearken back to some mystical and mythical age where people lived in peace and harmony. This is part of the reason I find their views abhorrent.
You can cut and run to wherever you’d like, to whatever country will take you. But wherever you’ve run to has at least an equal or, probably, greater number of issues with its history, culture, and government that the US has. And had the US not prevailed in either World War or the Cold War, your choices for living somewhere in freedom and prosperity would be either slim or non-existent. To fail to acknowledge this is to fail to acknowledge history.
@28: Tsk. What did I tell you? US-Americans acting like Europeans defending their little patch of ground. Kids these days.
Actually, if the US had not “prevailed” in WWI there’s a strong chance that there never would have been a WWII. A major cause of the rise of fascism in Germany was the economic and social despair brought on by the sanctions imposed by the winning side. If the US hadn’t interfered, a more equitable settlement might have been made and history been…different. Possibly not better, but different.
I believe I have also just made THE argument for making Britain’s exit from the EU as easy as possible. There are already fascist elements active in the UK and if they get further encouraged by the inevitable economic disaster of leaving the EU, well, Farage might start to look pretty moderate.
@26
see that is the thing right there! I often hear “yes I America is bad some times but……”
always a but and while it is true America is far from being all good the message is do not bring it up ever, no time, no how. If you do the first thing some nit wit says is “why don’t leave then?” or “why do you hate America?” there is no discussion after that the door has closed shut.
Yes you probably have talked with many Klan sympathizers before you just did not notice and did not challenge them on any core issues. they ain’t space aliens they are just people with fucked up thinkers who often do not know how to listen to what other people are saying long enough before jumping to conclusions.
uncle frogy
People complain there’s no day celebrate white history ought to be thankful they have one of the most popular holidays dedicated to them. Not only that, they get to deliver a huge slap in the face to black people while celebrating it: they have somehow convinced society at large that July 4th represents black Americans’ independence too.
#19, mmark:
Ah yes, what would’ve stupid foreigners like us done in the Cold War without the good ol’ U, S and A? Probably looked on as the Soviet Empire collapsed all on its own, just this time without installing South American juntas that murdered millions of their own citizens and sabotaging nuclear disarmament negotiations so that there are now a fuckload more nukes around than there could be otherwise.
Or, you know, have lived on to never experience a Cold War. After all, the Bolsheviks were bankrolled by American bankers! American, uh, Jewish bankers, for the most part, seeing as Tsarist Russia was an Anti-Semitic hellhole.
I dunno… did YOU wonder what Korea would have been like if the Japanese hadn’t already fucked it over long before that?
I’m guessing… no.
did you ever wonder how it got split in half to begin with?
again, I’m guessing no.
you’re a brainwashed idiot… convinced you know history, when you don’t have a clue.
challenge accepted!
my country of expat choice:
New Zealand.
choke on it you idiot.
mmark: As an Australian, let me point out that the USA came in late to both World War 1, AND World War 2. Australia was involved in WW2 before the USA was – and we were further away from Europe than the USA was, and we had more to lose from the threat of the Japanese than Britain ever did.
If the Japanese hadn’t bothered to attack Pearl Harbour – if instead, they’d just gone straight through the south-east Asian peninsula, across into what’s now called Indonesia, and down into Northern Australia (and let us not forget: they reached and bombed Darwin), would there have been a single US warship coming to the aid of any of the various invaded countries there? I rather doubt it. So I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t fall to my knees worshipping your country for a “salvation” performed out of self-interested vengeance.
By the way: representative democracy? Largely a British idea. At least part of the complaints of the founding fathers of the USA were that the thirteen colonies in the Americas weren’t represented in British Parliament but were still being governed by British law and government. If the British government at the time had decided to put in a few seats in the House of Commons for the American colonies (say, one seat per colony) would the colonies have revolted at all? (Well, maybe they would have… Britain was already on the way to abolitionism when the thirteen colonies revolted, and I suspect had they remained they would have thrown a tantie and stalked off when they were told they weren’t allowed to own slaves any more).
Meg – I don’t think you understand my point. I’m thankful that Australia and others were on the right side of history in both World Wars, but it’s painfully obvious that their participation alone would not have changed the course either of those wars and, by extension, history. You have to acknowledge that the South Pacific would look quite a bit different under Japanese rule had the US not intervened, and you’d have to be a fool or a masochist to hope to go back in time and change the outcome.
Also, PZ and others here postulate that there are NO redeeming qualities of, essentially, the whole of American history. I’m not saying you should worship America, far from it. I am saying that the good far outweighs the bad both in relative and absolute terms. I’m also saying it is dangerous and repugnant to view American history only through the lens of slavery or racism or bigotry. As you must know, Australia has its own history with these issues, including quasi-slavery, yet I don’t hear too many people say that your entire history should be looked upon with mournful sadness. But I have not spent much time in your country so I might be missing it.
Couple interesting things about this. You’re defending the UK here, which has a far more extensive history of crimes against humanity around the world than the US does.
Secondly, you miss what was special about the American independence movement and the Constitution. The American founding fathers’ ideas for representative democracy many have originated in Britain, but the key point, made in the preamble of that document, is a complete repudiation of British rule.
Set aside for the moment the obvious flaws – the fact that “men” didn’t include women or slaves, and the God nonsense – the striking thing about this paragraph is something we take for granted today, although perhaps we shouldn’t: people are born with certain unalienable rights! Rights aren’t granted by the King or the Queen, as they were in Britain (or Australia for that matter).
To say that this development isn’t worth celebrating is madness. And to say that this is a development worth mourning is repugnant. You might not like America for its foreign policy up to and including the Obama era (I often wonder if he will return his Nobel Peace Prize), but that is not to say that there is nothing to like about America now, or at any point in history, is equally repugnant.
@ 36 mmark
But that’s not what PZ said. He said:
Isn’t it obvious that what he “mourns” is not the philosophical ideas, but their betrayal in practice?
Not only is it not obvious, I don’t think it is true. As I said in my original comment, he can’t find a good word for any of the founders or the documents they produced. He’s not writing a mixed review of the founding or of American domestic or foreign policy since, he’s blasting it to shreds. He’s calling the history our public schools teach “propaganda.” He sees the Civil War as the result of cowardice. He cherrypicks American history, finds the worst possible slant, and then uses the result to condemn the country as a whole. This is a fundamentally warped view that borders on, ironically enough, propaganda. There is no complexity or nuance here. Independence Day in America should be a national day of mourning. A schoolchild reading only his version of our founding could be forgiven for wondering how it was possible for the US to elect a black President, or be on the verge of electing a woman.
One further note – I meant to comment on this but it slipped my mind. While I’m on the subject of propaganda:
This is absolutely not a myth. I’ve heard some of the stories firsthand. In the late 80’s a journalist named Bob Greene wrote a few articles on the topic, which then led to him publishing a book.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-08-23/features/8703040416_1_spat-vietnam-veterans-column
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homecoming:_When_the_Soldiers_Returned_from_Vietnam
It’s a small point, but illustrative nonetheless of PZ’s extremely wrongheaded view of history.
mmark, #36
Really?
Also, when your response to the horrors and atrocities committed by a nation is “they did good stuff too”, you have issues.
mmark
Doesn’t seem like a particularly unreasonable thing to wonder, given that it took 200 years to get anyone other than a white man, and that even 50 odd years ago that white man being a Catholic was a potential problem. American history includes some noble ideals and a whole lot of betraying those ideals, and a single black president doesn’t mean that it’s past that.
So America gets credit for being on the right side of WW2, and that’s part of the reason not to criticise it, but Russia, which was on the same side and arguably had a greater effect on the outcome, doesn’t get credit for that and instead is simply included in the list of countries that America saved us from and where no-one would want to go to. A list which also includes Germany, which would be an awful choice to move to in the 1930s, but is pretty damn good now, probably better than the US.
Plus, of course, part of America’s contribution to WW2 included turning away ships of Jewish refugees and interning Japanese-Americans. Not exactly 100% heroic, even in the one war which comes closest to having a clear right side and America picked it.
jefrir, #40
And the deliberate targeting of civilians to maximize casualties in order to spread fear and panic and force a government to bend to one’s political goals.
Someone needs to come up with a word for that.
America is the only nation in history to detonate nuclear bombs on civilian population. Hey, that’s unique. I guess there is some truth to American exceptionalism after all.
I can’t quite believe you’re using “we have a black president” as a defence against America’s history of racism. If the presidency was held in proportion to the population, there would have been about 11 non-white presidents, and 22 female presidents. The fact that the actual numbers are 1 and probably 1 soon, is a pretty clear testament to the state of the country, as is the massive amounts of bigotry directed at them both.
@saad
I’m not responding to horrors or atrocities. I’m objecting to those who would define a nation exclusively by the atrocities their predecessors committed, in some cases, hundreds of years before you or I were born.
More precisely, I’m objecting to defining only the United States in these terms, as no one has the urge to perform this same analysis on any other nation in the world.
@jefrir
Agreed.
I’m not quite sure what your point here is – when you have two autocratic regimes fighting each other is there supposed to be a “good” side? Russia did have arguably a greater effect on the outcome of WWII but their conduct after the war stands in stark contrast to that of the US. We wouldn’t even think to say that the US “conquered” France or Italy or anywhere else during that war, we would say the US liberated it from Nazi rule and returned those countries to their rightful owners. Russia did precisely the opposite, and condemned countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to decades of oppressive rule.
You and Saad seem to be afflicted with the same disgusting disease that PZ is, but you’ve also got reading comprehension problems to boot. I’m not defending America’s history of racism. I wouldn’t defend any country’s history of racism. But the sum total of American history does not amount to racism, and it is simply lying, or propaganda, to say otherwise.
Really? I’m from the UK; our history is big, and complicated, and involves a shitload of oppression of basically everyone who wasn’t a straight white wealthy man of the appropriate religion of the moment. About the best I can say about our empire is that it wasn’t as bad as Belgium’s, and that we were a bit better at knowing when to let go than the French. I dislike simplified nationalist versions of history, and have objected to people trying to apply them to Britain. If we had a day glorifying our history in the way the 4th of July does for the US, I would probably react in a similar way to PZ – with a dislike of empty patriotism and a remembrance of the extent to which we have failed to live up to our stated values.
It’s not just history. Three black men have been shot dead by US police in the last two days. POC are, right now, imprisoned vastly out of proportion to their portion of the population. They have less wealth, lower pay, worse schools, and are discriminated against in many different ways. Hell, there are majority black towns that don’t even have safe drinking water. In the wealthiest country in the world, that spends the 4th of July celebrating how great it is.
Yeah, Russia’s history is complicated. It’s had stuff it got right and stuff it got massively wrong. It’s pretty similar to the US in that.
I’ve lived in Russia, and seen aspects of how history is treated there. The end of WW2 is celebrated as Russia’s glorious defeat of the Nazis, liberating Europe. While I was there, Lithuania took down a statue to the Soviet soldiers that “liberated” them, and intelligent, compassionate Russians I spoke to couldn’t understand why they weren’t grateful. There was an attempt to change the school history curriculum, to make sure children could feel proud of their country.
Really, this thread is reminding me quite strongly of those conversations.
mmark, #43
Bringing up the “good stuff” when people are trying to talk about the bad stuff is an obvious distraction technique used by apologists.
Also, it is perfectly appropriate to bring up atrocities committed by older generations here. The discussion is on July 4th. Look at pretty much any other thread PZ posts here. The atrocities being discussed there are current. In fact, there’s one going on right now where the atrocity isn’t even three days old.
Second, why should people talk about the good stuff along with the bad stuff when the whole point is to give the bad stuff as much exposure and criticism as possible so the country can have some hope of improving itself. When talking about the gradual institutional annihilation of black people by American law enforcement, what would be the purpose of pointing out something good police also does? People like you think harshly criticizing one’s country means one is dishonest or hates the country. Quite the opposite. I live in America. I personally like living in America. And I want the country to be better, not go backwards.
Who the fuck is saying there is literally nothing else in U.S. history other than racism? We’re saying racism is everywhere in U.S. history. The country was founded on racism, the country developed over the centuries on racism, and the country is currently thoroughly racist.
Is this a parody or are being serious? Your first sentence is belied by the next two.
But let’s take your last claim – “the country is currently thoroughly racist.”
By “thoroughly” you can’t mean the majority of voters who elected Barack Obama twice. You can’t mean the vast majority of people who live and work with people of other races in harmony on a daily basis. You can’t be talking about racism towards people of Asian descent, or of Jewish descent, as those groups tend to do very well. You probably aren’t talking about racism towards Latinos, there are still people flocking to the US on a daily basis – legally and otherwise – and it wouldn’t be in their interest to do so if the country were, as you charge, “thoroughly racist.”
Perhaps you’re talking about racist law enforcement, who are performing “institutional annihilation of black people.” Would that include incidents of annihilation like Freddie Gray? In that case half of the cops charged with crimes, the Prosecutor, the Judge, and the Mayor are all black. Is that racism?
If all you look for is racism, then you shouldn’t be surprised when that’s all you find.
I’m not trying to suggest that racism doesn’t exist or isn’t a problem in America. But I am saying that its less of a problem than you or others, including PZ, would like to admit.
Let’s take one more point –
A couple weeks ago, PZ wrote a post about how hateful rhetoric can lead to violence. He wrote that in response to a shooting in the UK related to Brexit, but its important to talk about also in light of what happened in Dallas last night.
More white people are killed by police than black people – about twice as more (http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/21/michael-medved/talk-show-host-police-kill-more-whites-blacks/). That’s an undeniable fact. When taken as a proportion of the population at large, the percentage of blacks killed by police is greater than the percentage of whites killed. That’s also a fact.
Something like an order of magnitude more black people are killed by other blacks every year (http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2014/09/28/fact-checker-black-black-killing-claims-examined/16184309/). In other words, if you’re trying to figure out who’s “annihilating” black people at a faster rate – cops or blacks themselves – then the answer is that black people are annihilating themselves.
In other words, if all you talk about is racist cops, then (1) you’re not having an honest conversation, and (2) according to PZ’s logic, that kind of rhetoric can lead to someone taking matters into their own hands and “getting back” at the police. And while we’re not sure that’s exactly what happened in Dallas last night, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
As you yourself acknowledge two lines later, that statement is technically true but completely misleading. Black men are 6% of the total US population but 40% or so of the people shot by the police. As to more blacks being killed by other blacks, well, that’s what one would expect in a country where segregation is a problem: people don’t, usually, kill random strangers in places far from their homes. They kill their family members in domestic disputes. They kill their neighbors in neighborhood quarrels. They kill the gang down the street in turf wars. The reason that if blacks kill someone, that person will most likely be black is because that’s who they encounter every day.
Also, PZ has repeatedly called for decreasing the number of guns available to both the general public and the police. I do not see how that can possibly be taken as a call to shoot police officers. Though, given that that’s how you apparently interpreted it, perhaps it is not impossible for a sufficiently determined person to do so.
That’s not the rhetoric I’m talking about. And let me stress once again that we don’t know what happened in Dallas or who was responsible, but it appears that the only people targeted were police officers.
Saad talked about “the gradual institutional annihilation of black people by American law enforcement.” PZ, in another post, wrote this about the police:
This is dangerous rhetoric akin to the type of discourse PZ railed about following the death of a British politician during the Brexit debate. There are charitable ways to interpret each of these statements, but for a person inclined to violence they are a clarion call. What does one do when you read that an entire race is being subjected to “annihilation”? Why should one feel sympathy for a police officer (ANY police officer, PZ doesn’t discriminate, he indicts every single one of them, in the entirety of the United States) when none of them have earned any honor?
Both PZ and Saad should be ashamed of themselves and should apologize, but something tells me neither of them will.
Apologize to who?
@ ^
whom ;-)