Americans do not know jack about history

[nadinbrzezinski]

they are proud of this little fact...

And you know what? It is going to be our undoing... as an Empire (well under way).

We are right now A SECOND TIER POWER.

But... we have the largest armed forces of the world! Yep, that we do... but we don't have the INDUSTRIAL capability to replace that gear.

Let's put it this way and go back to oh WW II, not that far ago.

Back then it didn't matter if the Japanese sunk a carrier. Yes people died, but we could produce three carriers for each carrier they sunk... yes, that simple and the Cheap Carriers proved that.

On the other hand, since the Empire of Japan did not have the capacity to produce the STEEL needed, they could not afford to lose one carrier... and each ship of the Imperial Navy they lost... was a deep loss. One of the reasons actually for Adm. Kurita to pull off the slot, he knew that reality.

Well we are in that situation right now... and this does not just translate to military gear. Yes, I like my IPOD, and yes it was designed in Cupertino, but the chip factory is in China... and those same chips could be used for guidance systems for missiles we no longer can produce without importing a lot of crap.

This country has not had an industrial policy for now two generations... and it has become a second rate power. It is just a matter of time until this becomes like very official. I don't expect the children elected to the House and Senate to understand this... USA, USA, USA... but this is the truth.

If any of you wants to go in depth into this I recommend Professor Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, recently re-released in paperback. Yes the econ charts are enough to drive you instane, but that is where you will get it. Empires do collapse, great powers do colapse, we are near that point... and Republicans don't get it.... USA, USA, USA.. but neither do Democrats, USA, USA, USA... and the fall will be sudden for most people, ESPECIALLY in the DC Bubble... and chiefly painful,

But a people who know jack about history... this will be a slap in the face, and a shock and surprise... I also expect Muricans to go back to their more traditional provincialism and want to just look inwards, even more. Oh and the gay, immigrants and coloreds will get the blame for this... not where it belongs... St. Reagan and the Republican Party. After all the policies that set us on this course STARTED with St. Reagan...

Ah this will be fun... NOT... and Mr. Cantor, please do close down the government.. it will only accelerate this. Mr. Paul, please refuse to raise the debt ceiling... it will be very near then... as in immediate in historic terms. Ah life is grand! really... and I will see my savings go poof!

[RKP5637]

1. Recommend!!! n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. They need a lesson in theocracy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. We've had it

Massachusetts Bay was a theocracy run by Cotton Mather. But most people don't know this.

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. And how many American have the faintest idea who Cotton Mather was?

I despair.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. And that is fhe point isn't it? Nm

[Chulanowa]

69. My main awareness of him is from him praising god for the death of Indians

Charming fellow. Wouldn't have minded stabbing him.

[nadinbrzezinski]

81. absolutely he was charming

and his sermon on the New Jerusalem has become a central creed of the modern Republican Party.

That city on the hill crap goes back to him.

[AlbertCat]

72. And how many American have the faintest idea who Cotton Mather was?

Many more do however know about the Salem Witch Trials.... but probably think that happened in 1492. (When Winona tried to fuck up Daniel Day-...)

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

79. Edit: replied to the wrong post. nt

[WinkyDink]

112. Anybody who ever went to a PUBLIC high school.

[Odin2005]

30. I associate him with Mass. during the Salem Witch trials.

[anachro1]

50. Most Muricans think

Cotton Mather is where we get cotton.

[MilesColtrane]

53. Or a NCAA basketball coach...

[elleng]

64. 'They' who?

[Odin2005]

3. The Elites don't WANT us to learn REAL History, we get "patriotic" propaganda.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. No, Americans do not want it

it goes back over three hundred years, and Muricans also distrust book learning, again 300 years. If you know your history that is BEFORE the US became and independent state.

This is the long view... and only very harsh events, like the fall of Empire, can change that.

[Odin2005]

8. I disagree, people are very interested in History.

The Civil War is the most common area of interest, followed by the World Wars.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Yes, a few,

in a nation of 300 million the 200K in redoing the Civil War is not most.

And the same goes for WW II... which has now risen to the level of myth and the "good war," which is understandable, since we won.

Like Korea and Nam. these two wars will also be forgotten.

[watch_dog]

48. My theory

I've been working on an ongoing theory about Americans and history. Short version is that at best most Americans know only of the so-called "good" wars, starting with the Revolution.
In this view, the Revolution was where we won our Independence from England, lost in all of that are the actual events and people, the loyalists who sided with England and their ultimate fate, the various rebellions that broke out later that needed to be put down, the fact that with out the help of the French we most likely would have lost (I imagine quite a few out there would hate to hear that).
The Civil war where we freed the slaves, this is the favorite war of so many Americans because it allows them to live out their dreams about glory and dash and the like, what way too many think warfare is about rather than the blood and death it really is about.
WWII, I classify this war as something of an anomaly, its very unlike most of the wars fought in the past as to be unique among st war. After the Civil war, this is the war many Americans tend to think of when they think of war at all. They have come to view it through rose-colored glasses as typical as to why America fights wars.
Vietnam, only because we lost and it's still in the collective memories of people alive today.


These are the histories many Americans look toward when they attempt to define America historically at all. Lost are all of the many convoluted wars in-between that do not easily fit into the good-guy/bad-guy narrative that many Americans view our history to be.
No war of 1812, no Seminole war no Mexican-American war, no Indian wars, no Spanish-American war, no Philippines conquest, no WWI, no Korea.
I personally think that we have become a victim of our own success in WWII, I think that war because of it's scope and size, shaped American thinking along the lines that it currently is today, because out of all of the wars that one really did have actual good-guys vs bad-guys. Just look at all of the references to WWII there are out there, from video games to tv shows to every politician under the sun comparing this or that to some aspect of the war, it has become a dominant theme in our culture.

[JDPriestly]

122. You forgot Nicaragua, Iraq and Afghanistan.

If we had ever actually found Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, the Afghanistan war might be "justified," but we just seem to hang around there interminably. If we haven't figured out where Pakistan keeps its nukes and how to deal with them by now, we never will. And that is the real reason that I thought we were there.

[JDPriestly]

120. The three subjects Americans love to hate: math, history and economics.

Of course, most Americans don't succeed in learning a foreign language, but that is because so many of them are not really exposed to the use of a foreign language in everyday life. That's kind of understandable.

But history? It's stories. It's so interesting and exciting. I cannot understand that people don't love it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

25. And most who profess interest in ANY of those wars cannot name the

date, or even the year that they started or ended.

[dotymed]

59. Maybe

but the need to know world history, especially the history of empires, is so vital.

[AlbertCat]

74. The Civil War is the most common area of interest, followed by the World Wars.

Just knowing the dates of battles (or at least the one you're reenacting) is not being interested in history.

[JDPriestly]

116. I was going to say. It is not nearly enough to just know American history.

We have so much to learn from the history of other countries, of the world.

[chervilant]

92. Check out

Thaddeus Russell. Some of us are getting a clue, AND getting published.

[leftstreet]

4. I disagree that people are 'proud' of not understanding history

In fact, most people seem very interested in history.

When it becomes obvious to adults that 99.9% of the 'history' they were taught was propaganda and bullshit, they either embrace a new interest in truth, or lose interest.

I find the first to be the larger group

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. You think it is only the US

where people in Junior High learn propaganda?

Other places people are interested even after that.

[leftstreet]

10. well...right

But US 'history education' has been primarily about continuing the American Dream myth, and it's made our propaganda unique

I just meant I find most people aren't 'proud' to discover they've been duped

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. You remember the war of 1848?

Well instead of REMEMBER the ALAMO, it is... REMEMBER THE HEROES OF CHAPULTEPEC!!!

Those three Cadets probably tripped... but point is... propaganda is done as a matter of fact. It is to create a sense of NATIONHOOD, and not unique to the US. It is actually one of the functions of history at that level EVERYWHERE around the world.

Now unlike MOST Americans who have really created legends about 1968... their counterparts in Mexico are still writing about the meaning of 1968 and that is the point where the changes leading to the democratization of the country started.

Perhaps if Kent State saw a few more people killed and 1000 people go POOFFF!!!!

We really do not have a sense of history, we have a sense of myth... and the coming Thanksgiving is the best example of it.

[leftstreet]

16. I'm not QUITE that old

:-)

I like how you said that - "we really do not have a sense of history, we have a sense of myth"

Right you are, and my point exactly

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. I used that war as an obvious example

Of two competing mythical realities.

[Odin2005]

29. History is Myth for most people ANYWHERE.

When most people invoke Rome they do not mean Rome as it actually was, they mean the MYTH of the Great Empire, the IDEA of Rome. Same as it with most things, even WW2.

Even in literate cultures events becomes myth when the people that experienced those events die.

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. Yeah you are right, I should stop writing

and reading actual history and dragging myself to the virtual archives (things are so damn easier these days for the working historian)... after all it is myth.

You know you have presented the very American attitude about it. Why americans know jack shit about history. And why when REAL history is presented to them, they go into a bad case of ... cognitive dissonance. Here is one that induces it every time. Before there were African American Slaves, there were WHITE, CHRISTIAN slaves. That's not myth. But a far less tasty bit of data. In fact, the system developed first with Irish, Scottish and English Indentured Servants.

[mstinamotorcity]

56. Now you have hit my interest and pet peeve

You are right. They also intend on forgetting that we had Indentured Asian servants out West. And are still being transported in the U.S. to this day in Cargo Ships risking death. Some have sold themselves for thousands of dollars of their own money just to still be enslaved. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dover+deaths+tied+to+gangs+trafficking+in+human+cargo.-a063048178


Most of our young people think all of the struggles that they read in History books or on the Internet happened in the twenty minutes or how ever long it takes to read the chapter. Because this is the instant generation. But they are unaware that some of our Greatest challenges have taken years to accomplish. They don't understand that most books and articles can only give a fraction of the story due to editing. But the key elements such as letters,photos,actual people (if they are living),Historic Documents,and other bases of research material are the other things that support a true and correct History.And those things are getting lost in false pride.


TOMBStone

[nadinbrzezinski]

83. I will touch on that

when I write the article on Globalization... which is... TADDDAAAAA a new version of the 18th century Atlantic Trade.

Things echo across history.

Hell, what we saw with Keith, as well paid of an employee as he is. is part of that continuum as well. In the US workers are treated like unruly children. It goes back to that trade.

[mstinamotorcity]

117. Thank you it

feels good when you meet someone who can embrace all of true History and not just what people think is History.

[nadinbrzezinski]

119. You welcome, but for the moment I am stuck in the 18th

century and those less than tasty bits.

[AlbertCat]

76. In fact, the system developed first with Irish, Scottish and English Indentured Servants.

I thought the Dutch brought the 1st indentured servants to what is now New York in 16-something-or-other.

But your point is well taken.


I used to make period clothes for film (I've made tons of things for Halle Berry! OoooOOoooOOO!) but I got into it because I love history. And the history of clothes is the most intimate and tells a strange and amazing story of what it was like to live, day to day, hour to hour, way back when.

[nadinbrzezinski]

84. The first convict came to the new world

and never made landfall... before New Amsterdam was founded.

But if we are to be truthful, the Spaniards started it with the Third Trip of Columbus.

Timelines get really murky as to who did this first. But Europeans in general saw the New World as a dumping ground, not just the British.

[jtuck004]

126. Absolutely. When one becomes an adult, they want the truth...

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum ChangeBy JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: March 12, 2010

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?_r=1">More here...

[Hannah Bell]

12. your bloated overgeneralizations & fear-mongering = not helpful.

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. +1. nt

[Codeine]

37. +2

Hysterical overexuberance and hyper-emotional grandstanding is the OP's raison d'etre.

[Brickbat]

60. Agreed.

[mstinamotorcity]

13. And the Conservatives are trying

to see to it that you will not learn much more http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. This is another marker of Empire and it's end

not as obvious as the empty shell of an Empire we are.

The Ruskies did the exact same thing... and so did the English.

It don't stop the process one whit.

If anything the present congressional class, ignorant as shit, will help to accelerate the process.

[mstinamotorcity]

45. And it looks like they are

going to keep handing over their money for Repugs to keep doing the same thing to us. When will they stop giving the tools to do us in with. Take your money back people!!!!!!

[nadinbrzezinski]

47. Well we, (and the party) needs to go to war

you know use actual frames and go for the reptilian fear.

But as long as our "leaders" keep serving crumpets and tea while the other side is firing mini guns in their general direction... but that is a whole different rant...

[jwirr]

61. Everyone here who thinks you are fear mongering needs to read

Kennedy's book. His main point is that the ten empires he researched all fell because of one issue: overstretch. They spent themselves into a hole because an empire takes too many military resources out of the empire's home base which then deteriorates from within.

[nadinbrzezinski]

87. Fellow reader

:hi:

[LostInAnomie]

15. Second Tier Power?

With the strongest military and largest economy in the world, we're a second tier power? Are we including alien civilizations or something?

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. ...

:evilgrin:

[Tesha]

20. Consider our steel industry.

I though Nadine laid it out pretty plainly for you. Consider our
(former) steel industry: if we suddenly needed to ramp up our
steel production to meet domestic needs in the case of a real
"hot" war, could we do it? I doubt it.

And there's a whole slew of strategic materials that are in the
same sad state of affairs. Oh, we have lots of plutonium, but
how about rare earth ores, upon which so much of modern
electronics depends? In fact, how many semiconductor fabs
are still "on shore"? Or semiconductor packaging facilities?
(The answer to that first question is "few" and the answer to
that second question is "none!".)

We are definitely a "second-rate power", and rapidly becoming
nothing more than a paper tiger. And the first nation that calls
our bluff with a reasonable challenge will find that to be true.

Tesha

[anachro1]

52. Read facts?

Why should he?

[booley]

68. And then we have rare earths

Which are vital to making electronics.

The US used to be a prime supplier. Now China is. And they becoming aggressive about it. Look at the last altercation between them and China. China threatened to cut off the rare Earths Japan needs for it's industries and Japan caved pretty quick.

[Art_from_Ark]

127. China has nearly a de facto rare earths embargo against Japan

That is, they have greatly slowed rare earth exports headed to Japan, and have announced significant reductions in exports for this year and 2011.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Re-read the op.

Your answer is in there.

By the way China and India are overcoming us... They produce silly shit like steel.

Oh it took the Brits a few years and the USSR was a hollow shell for ten years before the collapse.

[Dr.Phool]

54. The steel we do produce is mostly by an Indian company.

Mittal.

[RaleighNCDUer]

27. Our strength is wide and shallow.

We DON'T have the capacity anymore to quickly gear up and replace losses such as a real war would engender. Hell, we couldn't even supply body armor for a hundred thousand troops in the field after FOUR years. Can you envision us cranking out liberty ships today? Rolling a hundred tanks a day off the assembly lines of Detroit?

We are the definition of a paper tiger. We had the world buffaloed for decades, but we have been ground to a standstill by a few thousand insurgents with home made explosives.

In WW2, in a matter of 4 years, we defeated THREE nations whose combined strength in arms was considerably more than 20 million. Now, after ten years, we can't defeat Osama and a handdul of terrorists, and they've shown that to the world.

We might as well be Belgium,

[chervilant]

100. Wow.

I think many denizens of failed 'superpowers' kept clinging to their 'superiority' far too long...

[Xicano]

17. Here's some American history.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6586926&mesg_id=6586926

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Very good and don't forget the WHITE slaves that preceded

The black slaves.

[DailyGrind51]

19. Ever since they replaced "History" with "Social Studies" in school!

[Goblinmonger]

32. Oh, yes, god forbid we actually teach

things like cultural geography, civics, political science in our schools. Should just be 12 years of history. Yep.

:sarcasm: (in case you are stupid)

[DailyGrind51]

124. We teach those as individual courses in middle and secondary schools.

"History" could be reserved for the intermediate grades 3 - 5, introducing geography and basic anthropology (early man and ancient civilizations) in the sixth grade, civics in the seventh (Constitution tests) and eighth grade. Secondary education should deal with increasingly more sophisticated examinations of economics and political science.

BTW, I am a State certified teacher with an endorsement in "Social Sciences".

[AnArmyVeteran]

26. The less our nation produces the further it will plunge.

And since republicans would like to dismantle our education system our country will fall even faster because other countries are suppassing us in math, science and information.

[SoCalDem]

31. Yoooo-essss-aaaaaay

Our people are BIGGER, HEAVIER & MORE ENTERTAINED..

Attack us, and we'll get *OPCs to go Ape-shit on you

Misbehave & we'll scream at you, head butt you and then sit on you ..maybe we'll stomp your head while we're at it.

We'll tie you to a chair & make you watch Dancing with the Stars and Jersey Shores until you beg for mercy

*other people's children



----------> :sarcasm:
(just in case)

[marmar]

33. You had me at "Americans don't know jack"

[Larry Ogg]

34. The Reagon Administration was a significant way point,

but not the beginning, on the long and slow road to the destruction of the American dream. But I guess you have to know a lot more than jack, and understand the concepts and workings of both the individual and collective psyche.

Truth is that the red carpet and welcoming mat has been long in the making, and the timing was ripe for the criminals that rose to power within the Reagon / Bush Administrations.
But blame must also fall on the Democrats who failed to correct the damages or prosecute the criminals, because doing so would be way to upsetting should the voters ever learn the truth, or, it would derail the careers of a lot of democratic leaders, so choose your poison.

What ever the excuse, justice and the working class are always the big losers. And in an effort to affix blame - most will complain about how the right arm is beating up on the left arm, or how the left arm is beating up on the right arm, but most never see the beast to which the two arms are connected, and those who do are met with censor and disdain and deemed as the lunatic fringe, and none of this is new under the sun; only forgotten.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. Iran Contra happened during the Reagan Administration

and there were more than a few crimes.

As to Watergate, it wasn't the democrats that refused to prosecute, but Jerry Ford (A republican) pardoned Nixon.

Now the Dems did NOT prosecute for Iran Contra, a big mistake... in my more than humble opinion, and they came back.

[immune]

35. A little humor

For those of who think they know jack.


For some time many of us have wondered just who is Jack Schitt?

Well thanks to my genealogy efforts, you can respond in an intellectual way.
Jack Schitt is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married O Schitt, the owner of Needeep N Schitt, Inc. They had one son Jack.

In turn Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt. The deeply religious couple produced six children: Holie Schitt, Giva Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Bull Schitt, and the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt.
Despite her parents objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school drop out. After being married 15 years Jack and Noe Schitt divorce.

Noe Schitt later married Ted Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them she wanted to keep her previous name, she became known as Noe Schitt Sherlock.
Meanwhile Dip Schitt married Loda Schitt and they produced a son with rather nervous disposition named Chicken Schitt.

Two of the other six children, Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt were inseparable throughout childhood and subsequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The wedding announcement in the local newspaper announced the Schitt Happens nupitals. The Schitt - Happens children were Dawg, Byrd and Horse.
Bull Schitt left home to tour the world and recently returned from Italy with his new Italian bride Pisa Schitt.

Now when someone says, "you don't know Jack Schitt", you can correct them.
your sincerely,
Crock O Schitt.

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Everything_that_starts_with_J__Review_5312890

That aside, we may not know much history but we're doing a damn fine job of repeating it: money changers in the temple with no one to throw them out on their ears.

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. That is a good joke

thanks...

[immune]

46. You're welcome

Everything has been so grim lately, I thought a little humor might take the edge off. Besides, everytime I hear someone say so and so doesn't know jack, it reminds me of that little ditty.

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. That is a good joke

thanks...

[GoCubsGo]

36. They don't know jack about anything.

History, civics, science, math, grammar and spelling, reading comprehension...

[zbdent]

38. I heard something really intelligent a while back ...

"Americans think a hundred years is a long time, and a hundred miles is a short distance to drive."

Essentially, it was a British insult of what Americans think.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Well true, especially when American history is 500 years old

not two hundred and change. Americans lack a long view...

[creon]

49. True enough

The average american knows very little about history, and that lack of knowledge goes back to the beginning.
A little bit of hsitory on this matter:

http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-ejournal/publications/2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html

The USA became a super power by the happy accidents of ww1 and ww2. IN ww1, three empires were destroyed and two were badly damaged.
In ww2, the USA was the least damaged. All this created a situation which put the USA on top.

The end of the cold war was the beginning of the end of the american empire, and the start of a long period of flux.

The cold war was accompanied by decolonialization. This process of decolonialization is a very important factor.

[anachro1]

51. Low Information Voters

All year long many Americans minds are crammed with unnecessary garbage like sports, TV, and anything that sparkles, and vote only based on the commercials they see close to election day. IF they even bother to vote at all.

Sadly, this is the norm in this country now, and the reason idiots like TeaBaggers can influence their stupid and uninformed asses.

Should the Democratic party dumb itself down just to get these votes?

[nadinbrzezinski]

108. yes and use fear

[MilesColtrane]

55. A war fought at the level you are discussing (an all out 'world war' type of war)

would be fought and won by the U.S.

Simply because, if U.S. military losses ever got to the point of being unreplaceable, we would end the war by utilizing a massive killing nuclear strike against the enemy.

[Selatius]

58. What if that country also possessed a nuclear stockpile?

And who says the US would be involved in such a massive war? What if India and China, both of which we depend heavily, were at war with each other and blockaded each other's ports? How would we get our goods then? The point is a lot of things can't exactly be predicted, and we're not sure if we can prepare for all contingencies, but likely, there are contingencies out there that would make the fact that we no longer are industrially capable of mass producing our own goods a weakness.

[MilesColtrane]

67. "who says the US would be involved in such a massive war?"

The OP used WWII as an example.

We did not have the industrial capacity for waging a large war in 1939 either, but Roosevelt saw it coming and convinced Congress to invest in weapons and munitions factories.

The United States is quite capable of mass producing our own goods. We don't do it because it is cheaper to get them elsewhere.

And, as I noted above, our massive nuclear arsenal backs up any inability to match an enemy with seemingly limitless resources.

[nadinbrzezinski]

86. Our industrial base has been GUTTED

there was a time, up to about 1980, that we HAD an industrial policy and STEEL production was a matter of national security. You know where those factories are? Lock stock and Barrel in china.

We produce SOME indigenous steel still, but it is not enough for even the civilian needs of a SMALL portion of the country.

[NJmaverick]

57. K & R!

[pampango]

62. We have no shortage of weapons-producing capacity. Our military-industrial complex is too big not

too small. We are the biggest weapons producer and exporter in the world many times over.

Hard to believe that anyone that our ability to produce weapons is a cause for concern. It's the excessiveness of our weapons producing capability that is the cause for concern.

[nadinbrzezinski]

88. Small arms

if we wanted to REPLACE one NIMITZ class carrier we need to import the steel. Now imagine if we lost two carriers, or three... or started losing small boys in droves...

Our tanks are not in production currently, so we would have to spin up production, and it would take a year (best case) for the first replacement to roll off the production line.

But you are right, we export a lot of SMALL ARMS and Boeing actually depends on exporting both civilian and military craft, but we mostly export small arms.

[happygoluckytoyou]

63. there was Rome... British Empire... USSR... history is happening under your very feet ! ! !

[elleng]

65. Pride in ignorance, imo.

:thumbsdown:

[TexasObserver]

66. "Oh and the gay, immigrants and coloreds will get the blame for this"

Coloreds?!

Since when is that term acceptable?

[Dr. Strange]

75. Maybe the OP does not know jack about history.

[Heidi]

77. Or much of anything else, except grasping at straws to prop up her own ego.

Among her most telling catch phrases:

"Ahem..."

"Oh, and..."

"By the way..."

ETA: "Kiddies"

Can't wait until she adds "Dare I say" to her arsenal of pretentious and condescending phrases.

[Dr. Strange]

125. Hey now! I use those phrases!

Especially "ahem," but with lots of phlegm. You know, for emphasis.

:D

[TexasObserver]

78. And this is history we have lived!

It's a term no one even uses any more.

[Heidi]

80. "Ahem..."

No one credible or informed uses it, but that leaves a small cushion for people like the OP.

[TexasObserver]

85. Indeed!

I don't understand how a fully grown person in this country can ever use the word "colored" when referring to people. How does that slip out in speech, muchless in writing?

It's kind of like the C word for women, or the F word for male gays.

[nadinbrzezinski]

89. Been to any tea party lately?

That is what they are telling you.

Wake up and smell the racism.

Don't worry, I fall in two of those categories, so go ahead and blame me too.

Oh and one last thing, when historians use the term, yes it is still used, is done in the 19th century, when quoting silly shit like bills of sale.

Like the term NEGRO, is also used when even quoting oh Martin Luther king Speeches.

[Heidi]

95. "Ahem!" It's your choice of words. Teabaggers use all sorts of batshit insane languuage.

It's disappointing to see DUers using such terms without context or quotation marks. It's almost as though you care more about the rush you seem to get from lecturing than the people impacted by your choice of words.

[TexasObserver]

102. I'm troubled by the loose use of such terms.

It is not necessary to use the language of the tea bagger to denounce their racism.

Writing that the right will try to blame "gays, undocumented workers and blacks" is accurate. If one is going to use the tea bagger pejorative for blacks, why not do likewise for gays or immigrants?"

I don't like it when people use those racist terms that we all recognize as racist. If one can use "colored" without quoting it, why not the N word? If the purpose is really to mimic the tea bagger, why not the N word for blacks, or the F word for male gays, or the C word for women?

Some words should not be used in this forum, and those terms are among them. The only time the term "colored" should be used in this forum is when someone is quoting another use of it for some specific purpose, such as this post.

[TexasObserver]

97. You seem to be trying to justifly your usage of it.

If you're going to talk about History, your language should reflect that alleged knowledge.

[nadinbrzezinski]

101. Well my alleged knowledge comes from my MA in the subject

and right now I am in the middle of readying plenty of bills of sale... and some use the words.. some also use Indent Slaves but I am sure you do not know this land was not conceived in liberty, but was a slave land. OUt of the land of bondage indeed. But I don't expect you to know that... most americans don't.

I pointed to the words, because the RACISM is there... and that WILL BE USED. In fact, IT IS BEING USED IN TEA PARTY EVENTS, why the Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out to the White Movement in the Tea Parties.

Wake up to that reality, or not, I really don't fucking care.

Now piss off... if you don't like it, fucking ignore it. YOU WILL NEVER GO TO IGNORE EITHER. YOU ARE ABUSIVE IN THE SAME WAY AS ANOTHER DU'ER, WHO NEVER WENT TO THE IGNORE LIST, NOW PISS OFF!

Now have a good day, or not, I don't give a damn.

[TexasObserver]

103. Your writing doesn't reveal it.

If your posts reflected the training and writing skills of one who has achieved a masters or doctorate (as in my case), I would not have such a problem with your OP. You clearly did not indicate you were quoting anyone in the OP when you used the term "colored." Anyone in this country who holds a masters degree or doctorate should know that is the proper way to use a term attributed to a third party.

I'm not saying you don't have a masters degree. I'm saying you don't write like someone who has a masters degree in History or any similar discipline.

[nadinbrzezinski]

104. Yeah whatever

so I need to use Chicago or MLA? What do you prefer?

You believe whatever YOU want to believe m'kay?

Go to hell.

[TexasObserver]

105. I judge writers by what they write and how they write it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

106. So you prefer passive riddle passages

that are a bore to read? Got it.

And you also prefer chicago or MLA? I really can't tell?

Fer the fucking record the AHA likes Chicago.

So what do you prefer?

As I said, go to hell.

[Historic NY]

70. China has overtaken us & they keep stealing our military technology by copying it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

93. Well they started with the Stingers that

we sold the Taliban... to be honest.

[Javaman]

71. There was a scene deleted from the final version of Apocalypse Now...

It takes place on a French Plantation in the middle of the Jungle.

The people there live as if ghosts from another era, yet no one bothered to tell them that French Colonial power had long since vanished.

They continued to lead a wealthy plantation life on the surface, however, with the briefest of investigations, one could see the fraying, the weathering, the deficit of items and services.

In essence they were continuing to live out a fantasy supported by wishes from the past.

We are now on the cusp of entering into that type of reality.

I say cusp because, we can still pull ourselves from the rubble of the trash bin of history (which seems to be our new reality), if only we act now. Alas, that would take leadership of a type this nation hasn't seen in decades.

20 years from now, that same scene from Apocalypse Now will be depicted via an Americanized version. People chugging down cokes/beer, dressed in shabby to-tight foreign made crappy clothes, living in a house poorly built by the lowest bid contractors while watching programs making fun of that same existence.

We are a wretched bunch.

[nadinbrzezinski]

91. Watch Ideocracy through that eye

[Javaman]

121. Great movie.

While that is true, I don't think we would be as funny.

[Ghost Dog]

128. Those scenes are included in the Director's Cut

of Apocalypse Now.

[Heidi]

73. "The coloreds..." you say, in the same breath in which you smear/lecture Americans

for not knowing "jack" about history.

[TexasObserver]

82. No, the US is NOT a second tier power.

It's also still a major manufacturer in world, in spite of losses.

[chervilant]

90. hmm...

We will see a LOT more than our savings go poof.

[sufrommich]

94. Why do you keep insisting that the US can't produce steel?

Of course we can, the Rouge Plant in Detroit could start producing it tomorrow if the government asked it to, using iron ore from the upper midwest.We don't produce steel because it's cheaper to buy it overseas."Can't" and "won't" are two different things.

[alcibiades_mystery]

96. I'm glad somebody said it

While the UP may have been stripped of copper, we still have massive iron stores right here, and could turn back to primary steel production in about two months time of factory renovation. The Gary Works alone could outproduce half the nations on Earth in steel production inside of six months. The OP's claims are ridiculous, and ironically (no pun intended) ahistorical.

[sufrommich]

99. Michigan and Minnesota alone could rebuild this country

if needed.

[rhett o rick]

98. I think he means we "cant" because we are not allowed, not unable. Just my opinion. nm

[nadinbrzezinski]

107. We can... but whatever, I am done

we have not been de industrialized, the Reagan Administration did not start a policy of benign ignoring of our industry... and all that happened over the last two generations has not happened.

It is indeed morning in America again...

(And yes we could, but the country has had a policy of DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION... please don't read me... read Paul Kennedy's book, Rise and Fall of Great Powers.)

[alcibiades_mystery]

111. Everyone understands what deindustrialization is

But if that's what you're arguing, you should let go of the analogies to pre-WWII Japan. The Japanese Empire was not "deindustrializing" at all: it was rapidly industrializing, so much so that it reached the capacity of its industrial production given its access to raw materials. Put another way, without cheaper access to raw materials, it could not industrialize further, which is what both the state apparatus and the capitalist class wanted desperately to do (and which would have been necessary to sustain economic growth). That's a completely different dynamic than the post-industrial United States, which, first, is never as post-industrial as the various analyses of "deindustrialization" tend to claim, and, second, retains both access to and control of abundant raw material resources for most kinds of traditional industrial production.

As the poster correctly points out, the "deindustrialization" the US has undergone since the 1970's has been a (set of) deliberate strategic decisions by the state apparatus and the capitalist class designed to increase profit and efficiency. We'd probably both agree that these decisions have been shockingly wrong-headed and short-sighted. But drawing an analogy with an economy that reached the material limits of its industrial capacity based on a lack of raw materials is historically incorrect, and very loose comparison-thinking at best. The Japanese had a problem of raw materials and constant capital; the structural adjustment that produced the "post-industrial" US was a labor (i.e., variable capital) issue first and foremost.

[riverbendviewgal]

109. I personally know people in the USA who don't know their history

One of them is my NJ redneck Obama hating brother...He is a tea partier... He is proud of not knowing anything about world. Those are his own words. Everything is America is number one....America is the best. Don't tread on my America. He even has a nickname of BUBBA...10 years ago he was HAPPY...I think he is highly influenced by his 2nd wife and the people they now hang around with. It saddens me greatly.

I grew up in the USA...History was my favorite subject. My US history teacher taught us that empires have a 200 - 250 year lifetime...Guess it is now time for the RIP for the number one slot America had....I am truly sorry. I am also truly happy I chose to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen. I love our socialized medicine... I am retired very comfortably. I didn't get bankrupt when my son and husband fought cancer. Their treatments didn't cost us...They got the best there was.. My son had the same brain tumor as Ted Kennedy and from what I read, my son had the same exact treatments, 11 years ago.

Americans do not know the history covered by Howard Zinn's book - A People's History of the United States
The book is a real eye opener.

My brother hates people from other countries. He hates immigrants. He thinks Europe is too socialized. I read a very interesting article yesterday from Germany.
"Is the American Dream Over?"
"America has long been a country of limitless possibility. But the dream has now become a nightmare for many. The US is now realizing just how fragile its success has become -- and how bitter its reality. Should the superpower not find a way out of crisis, it could spell trouble ahead for the global economy." By SPIEGEL Staff

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447,00.html

So I'll be watching from the north and I expect to see the cards collapse and wonder what will happen to America. I wish you all could come to Canada.

[nadinbrzezinski]

113. I wish at times I could join you

the only caveat is that the American Empire is but 120 years old... (you could say it started with Cuba... though some might argue it goes back to the Louisiana Purchase) But they all end the same way... and so the kind of Republics the Founders gave us... and this one has some MAJOR problems as well. I just hope in the demise we don't drag Canada and Mexico along in some interesting ways.

[Ghost Dog]

129. If you start the history with the thirteen colonies,

or earlier, then the expansion across not only the Louisiana territories and northern plains but also the West, all, including all the way up the present British Columbia and southern Alaskan coasts, of which was during centuries the Spanish sub-kingdom of New Spain (Virreinato de Nueva España) which included all of Mexico, should be considered Imperialist already.

[Enthusiast]

110. Industrial might is real might.

More than any other single factor it was the manufacturing capacity of the United States of America and the Soviet Union that decided the outcome in WWII.

[nadinbrzezinski]

114. Exactly and why at one point it was treated as a mater of

national security... then came Reagan...

[Enthusiast]

123. Imho, the intentional de-industrialization

of this nation borders on treason. And all so they could line their pockets while destroying organized labor.

[JDPriestly]

115. Excellent post.

Unfortunately, I found it too late to be able to recommend it.

Thanks. This is so true.

We can't even make enough socks for our soldiers. We import everything. And it is our entrepreneurial class that sold us out. It's their greed that depleted the country of its strength. It is really very ironic, because, by some measures, probably by the measures that count to them, they have the most to lose when our military fails us and we fall apart.

I love this country and do not want to see it happen, but it would take a drastic change of course to prevent.

Obama's trip to Indian and South Korea gives me no hope. He really doesn't get it. I don't think he knows much about history either.

[nadinbrzezinski]

118. Start readying tea leaves on that trip

he actually will support India's quest to a permanent seat in the Security Council. Of course there is China...

This is not a coincidence...

We are trying to shore up allies and China might be seen as an enemy, or starting to.

As to he ain't readying history... my opinion is that even if he did, and I am sure he did... these are forces that not even the President can stop, they can only slow down.

The thing also is that they might be talking of an actual INDUSTRIAL POLICY, and I sure hope I am reading the tea leaves correctly. And some folks are fixated on some language that they did not like, but that it is openly used by tea baggers.

Hell I was personally blamed for the ills of the country one of the events we went, since I got an accent you see