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Controversial History Hot Takes


XRay
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The Byzantine Empire as a term is dumb and stupid. It is the same old freaking Roman Empire, just without Rome and without the western half. If differentiation is necessary, Eastern Roman Empire is better than Byzantine in my opinion.

Afro-Eurasia should be considered one continent. Similarly, the "Americas" is dumb as there is no water dividing Northern America and Southern America, and it is just one America.

This is not controversial for most Americans, but it needs to be taught in school that the Confederacy is evil and irredeemable like the Nazis, and that flying the Confederate flag is tantamount to hating America. Every American patriot should celebrate the Fourth of July by wiping their butts with the Confederate flag.

I guess that is it from me. What are your historical hot takes?

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4 hours ago, XRay said:

The Byzantine Empire as a term is dumb and stupid. It is the same old freaking Roman Empire, just without Rome and without the western half. If differentiation is necessary, Eastern Roman Empire is better than Byzantine in my opinion.

Yeah that's the big one. Its a direct continuation of the Roman empire rather than a successor state that rose after Rome fall. The Eastern half of the empire never fell and this the ''Byzantine'' empire can't be a successor state. Rome and Italy not being in the empire isn't a big deal either since being Roman was a matter of citizenship rather than ethnicity and Rome itself hadn't been the capitol for centuries before the split between west and east happened. 

Staying on the subject of Rome I don't think Cicero was ever all that important. His writings are often informative and sometimes amusing but it was a surprise to see what a non entity he was during the civil war.

Probably a tad controversial since it risk veering into modern politics

Spoiler

but the more I hear about the American Founding Fathers the less Impressed I get with them. They are credited as near demigods with infinite wisdom but the system they build keeps breaking apart, either by collapsing into a bloody civil war because they didn't bother to do anything about slavery, or create a system to prevent a ''Caesar'' recently having downright forced a ''Caesar'' into power after the electorate rejected him. And there's that time they tried and failed to take Canada when the Brits were distracted. 

The Chad Cao Cao vs the virgin Liu Bei would sum up my view of the Three Kingdom period. And for someone so glorified as a god of war the historical Lu Bu sure seemed to lose every single fight he ever got himself involved with. 

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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4 hours ago, XRay said:

The Byzantine Empire as a term is dumb and stupid. It is the same old freaking Roman Empire, just without Rome

I think you found your answer. While a relative neologism that obviously doesn't reflect how they thought of themselves, it's there for clarity, not precision. Besides, as the Roman Empire's core was Rome, the Byzantine Empire's core was once called Byzantion. The Eastern Roman Empire had a... rocky history with the city, before Constantine made it his personal project, after all.

Still, you've obviously entirely at liberty to dislike the title regardless; just, it doesn't come from nowhere, and a distinction does help.

I wouldn't call it a hot take so much as an obscure truth, but the people of the thread could do a lot worse than trying to dig up a copy of The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson, the story of the guy who got landed the job of proving the deposed English King should be sentenced to death. Unsurprisingly he's mostly been buried / demonised by conventional English history, so.

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Okay, time for an actual controversial hot take that will probably make some people hate me. The Confederate States of America were completely justified in seceding from the US and the following Civil War was not justified. This is not coming from the perspective of a lost cause racist southerner flying the wrong Confederate flag claiming the Confederacy was on the verge of fleeing all their slaves. They weren't. They were a bunch of racists who seceded so they could keep owning the slaves that were making them rich and they would have kept slavery going until we had spaceships if they could. But they still had the right to secede if they wanted to, as I believe any territory has. The precedent the North set there means that the federal government can freely invade any state today that might try to secede for whatever reason (of course it'd be unfair to depict the USA as the only nation to do such, nations have been violently trying to put down rebellions from people looking for independence since the birth of nations as a concept, but that's something I think needs to change with some more solid international rulings on how new states can be formed).

Furthermore I think slavery was already very much on its way out. I don't think humanity suddenly grew enlightened three hundred years ago and collectively decided enslaving other humans was an intolerable wrong (of course I believe it is, but I have the luxury of living in the modern world). People did just change on mass and became more moral. Slavery persisted in various forms for thousands of years because it was the most effective way to do things, and changes in technology rendered that untrue, allowing the humans the capacity to be more moral about the whole thing. The American South wanted to maintain their power and position in the world, but it was a changing world that was making it impossible to do so. Slavery would have been abolished within a few short generations because it would become just plain economically nonviable. And while one might argue that any amount of time leaving people in slavery is too much time, I'd argue the hundred of thousands of people that died as a result of the pretty bloody conflict. Aside form some pretty crazy stuff going down in China at the same time, it was the largest war of the nineteenth century.

And the last thing forming my opinion is that it was never really about getting rid of slavery for the North. They were far more concerned with preserving the union, but that moral high ground was pretty great propaganda. To the extent that it became what the USA has been about ever since. Fighting a war to further its own power base while claiming to do it for some moral cause is what the USA has been doing to this very day. In many respects the Civil War is where American Imperialism started (well at least for those of us who aren't Native Americans). But even if it had been purely, 100% about ending slavery for the North, I still think it isn't a good enough reason to invade another nation. As I don't believe anyone has the right to enforce their moral right on others using force. There's a whole host of countries that do absolutely abhorrent things even to modern day, but I don't think we have any moral right to invade the likes of Saudi Arabia or North Korea and kill thousands of people because we think we're right and they're wrong. The only exception to this would be some kind of active genocide situation wherein a nation is hellbent on wiping out a people completely.

Now all that being said there is certainly an argument to be made that the South handled things quite badly and were the ones to fire the first shot of the war, but I think it's also fair to say they were under the impression that war was inevitable. The South had no intention, near as I can tell, to actually conquer the North. They wanted to be left alone to continue making money off slavery.

 

So yeah, there's a really hot take for you. I expect people will disagree heavily with me, and that's cool. We can have different opinions, and I can acknowledge that my opinion is largely influenced by my own country's history, so I don't really expect to actually change anyone's mind. I will try to resist getting into an argument about it as I think I summed up my feelings pretty succinctly and I just know any back and forth response is very quickly going to devolve very quickly and result in getting the whole thread locked. I'm going to go sleep now and I'll see in the morning if that happens anyway.

Also I'll toss out people don't talk about Haiti enough. Just in general.

Edited by Jotari
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Please note that certain issues are currently being pushed as active misinformation, and such "hot takes" will result in a ban.  If you're not sure if your "hot take" is such an issue, please refrain from posting.

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49 minutes ago, Jotari said:

In many respects the Civil War is where American Imperialism started (well at least for those of us who aren't Native Americans).

Mexico says "don't forget about half our territory being stolen!". Basically, the US quietly bullied Mexico via some provocative troop placement along the border into shooting first, creating a thin justification to seize everything between California and Texas.

 

49 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Slavery would have been abolished within a few short generations because it would become just plain economically nonviable.

Slavery in its form at the time might've been. However, slavery is a form exploitation of people for the sake of economics. Working for wages can be considered a form of informal slavery under the right conditions. And, that is what would've happened, the South would've found new ways to get cheap labor out of the African-American population and keep them in socioeconomic chains.

What happened IRL when slavery ended and Reconstruction was over? Sharecropping, which involved keeping the black population in perpetual debt to the whites. Some would then comment that the use of private prisons and prison labor in the US is also racist, due to the disproportionate jailing of African-Americans. I hope you're not so naive to think the end of slavery would amount to much. Britain's abandonment of the slave trade is less noble than it should be, when you realize it outsourced the "peculiar institution" to India itself, and later Africa.

 

12 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Yeah that's the big one. Its a direct continuation of the Roman empire rather than a successor state that rose after Rome fall. The Eastern half of the empire never fell and this the ''Byzantine'' empire can't be a successor state. Rome and Italy not being in the empire isn't a big deal either since being Roman was a matter of citizenship rather than ethnicity and Rome itself hadn't been the capitol for centuries before the split between west and east happened. 

Although, it is worth drawing distinctions between the earlier "Roman" Eastern Roman Empire embodied in Justinian and Theodora, and the later "Medieval" phase of the Empire Based In Greece And Anatolia That Was Orthodox Christian.

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13 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

I think you found your answer. While a relative neologism that obviously doesn't reflect how they thought of themselves, it's there for clarity, not precision. Besides, as the Roman Empire's core was Rome, the Byzantine Empire's core was once called Byzantion. The Eastern Roman Empire had a... rocky history with the city, before Constantine made it his personal project, after all.

Still, you've obviously entirely at liberty to dislike the title regardless; just, it doesn't come from nowhere, and a distinction does help.

I wouldn't call it a hot take so much as an obscure truth, but the people of the thread could do a lot worse than trying to dig up a copy of The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson, the story of the guy who got landed the job of proving the deposed English King should be sentenced to death. Unsurprisingly he's mostly been buried / demonised by conventional English history, so.

I think the clarity could have been better done by calling it Later Eastern Roman Empire or something. Calling it something else completely different feels like a denial of the Later Eastern Roman Empire's continuity, legitimacy, and Romanness. I guess what irks me the most is the removal of Rome from the name. If they called it the Byzantine Roman Empire, I think I would have been fine with it.

56 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Although, it is worth drawing distinctions between the earlier "Roman" Eastern Roman Empire embodied in Justinian and Theodora, and the later "Medieval" phase of the Empire Based In Greece And Anatolia That Was Orthodox Christian.

It may be worth drawing a distinction, but I think removing "Roman" from the name is too far and too drastic.

America went from only handful of its people having the right to vote to most of the population having a right to vote, and our culture now is a lot more progressive. But a culture change does not justify an entirely new name in my opinion, and historians from the far future calling America right now New Columbia because we had a black president does not feel right.

13 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:
Spoiler

but the more I hear about the American Founding Fathers the less Impressed I get with them. They are credited as near demigods with infinite wisdom but the system they build keeps breaking apart, either by collapsing into a bloody civil war because they didn't bother to do anything about slavery, or create a system to prevent a ''Caesar'' recently having downright forced a ''Caesar'' into power after the electorate rejected him. And there's that time they tried and failed to take Canada when the Brits were distracted. 

 

They made some dumb mistakes, but the system they made is good enough so far to last over 200 years and counting. The biggest mistake I can think of now is that it seems too easy to rig the system. If the minor party can win despite losing the popular vote due to a quirk in the system, I am fine with that as long as that is just an occasional thing. However, when the minor party is relying on the quirk to consistently win and abuse it, I think something needs to be done about it.

13 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

The Chad Cao Cao vs the virgin Liu Bei would sum up my view of the Three Kingdom period. And for someone so glorified as a god of war the historical Lu Bu sure seemed to lose every single fight he ever got himself involved with. 

All three warlords and various other military leaders are romanticized to varying degrees, although Liu Bei is generally painted as the most heroic and honorable of the big three. However, when viewed outside of a literary/romanticized lens in a more realist context, I think most people consider the three warlords to be kind of shitty due to the prolonged conflict and loss of life, and the real heroes of the story are the members of the Sima clan who reunified the country. Although the Jin is not that great either and lost northern territories.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Okay, time for an actual controversial hot take that will probably make some people hate me. The Confederate States of America were completely justified in seceding from the US and the following Civil War was not justified. This is not coming from the perspective of a lost cause racist southerner flying the wrong Confederate flag claiming the Confederacy was on the verge of fleeing all their slaves. They weren't. They were a bunch of racists who seceded so they could keep owning the slaves that were making them rich and they would have kept slavery going until we had spaceships if they could. But they still had the right to secede if they wanted to, as I believe any territory has. The precedent the North set there means that the federal government can freely invade any state today that might try to secede for whatever reason (of course it'd be unfair to depict the USA as the only nation to do such, nations have been violently trying to put down rebellions from people looking for independence since the birth of nations as a concept, but that's something I think needs to change with some more solid international rulings on how new states can be formed).

Furthermore I think slavery was already very much on its way out. I don't think humanity suddenly grew enlightened three hundred years ago and collectively decided enslaving other humans was an intolerable wrong (of course I believe it is, but I have the luxury of living in the modern world). People did just change on mass and became more moral. Slavery persisted in various forms for thousands of years because it was the most effective way to do things, and changes in technology rendered that untrue, allowing the humans the capacity to be more moral about the whole thing. The American South wanted to maintain their power and position in the world, but it was a changing world that was making it impossible to do so. Slavery would have been abolished within a few short generations because it would become just plain economically nonviable. And while one might argue that any amount of time leaving people in slavery is too much time, I'd argue the hundred of thousands of people that died as a result of the pretty bloody conflict. Aside form some pretty crazy stuff going down in China at the same time, it was the largest war of the nineteenth century.

And the last thing forming my opinion is that it was never really about getting rid of slavery for the North. They were far more concerned with preserving the union, but that moral high ground was pretty great propaganda. To the extent that it became what the USA has been about ever since. Fighting a war to further its own power base while claiming to do it for some moral cause is what the USA has been doing to this very day. In many respects the Civil War is where American Imperialism started (well at least for those of us who aren't Native Americans). But even if it had been purely, 100% about ending slavery for the North, I still think it isn't a good enough reason to invade another nation. As I don't believe anyone has the right to enforce their moral right on others using force. There's a whole host of countries that do absolutely abhorrent things even to modern day, but I don't think we have any moral right to invade the likes of Saudi Arabia or North Korea and kill thousands of people because we think we're right and they're wrong. The only exception to this would be some kind of active genocide situation wherein a nation is hellbent on wiping out a people completely.

Now all that being said there is certainly an argument to be made that the South handled things quite badly and were the ones to fire the first shot of the war, but I think it's also fair to say they were under the impression that war was inevitable. The South had no intention, near as I can tell, to actually conquer the North. They wanted to be left alone to continue making money off slavery.

My counter argument to that is that the United States has a duty to protect and respect the wishes of its people, and that includes the black population. Saying that the South simply wants to be left alone grossly ignores the will and wishes of the black population. Why should whites have a say in whether they should secede or not, but blacks should not have a say in whether they should be enslaved?

Obviously for the North, preserving the Union was the primary objective. However, preserving the Union is crucial to ending slavery early, and in my opinion, the loss of life was worth it.

Edited by XRay
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11 minutes ago, XRay said:

I think the clarity could have been better done by calling it Later Eastern Roman Empire or something. Calling it something else completely different feels like a denial of the Later Eastern Roman Empire's continuity, legitimacy, and Romanness. I guess what irks me the most is the removal of Rome from the name. If they called it the Byzantine Roman Empire, I think I would have been fine with it.

To be fair, in Chinese history, dynasties have sometimes had directional adjectives added to their name to distinguish between phases. "Northern Song" and "Southern Song" for instance, the difference being where the capital was, in this case caused by the conquests of northern China by the Jurchen Jin Empire.

The problem is that China has never been named after a capital in the Western history books, always dynasties. The Roman Empire is named after its founding city, dynasties are short-lived and hence not worth paying that much attention to. If only we could call the Roman Empire the "Caesarian Empire" -although that isn't what Romans called themselves, should we wish to respect that.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Mexico says "don't forget about half our territory being stolen!". Basically, the US quietly bullied Mexico via some provocative troop placement along the border into shooting first, creating a thin justification to seize everything between California and Texas.

That's true, the Mexican-American war did happen slightly earlier. And I admittedly don't know a whole lot about it, but I'm somewhat sure that most of that territory was lowly populated wasteland. And large swaths of the people wanted to be part of the USA, granted that was due to them actually being (US)Americans who had illegally immigrated into the Mexican lands (which two hundred years later carries a hefty does of irony). And we can also go further back to the War of 1812, or as someone in this thread as named it, their attempt to conquer Canada, in which they made war demands that had already been met before the war had even started. So American Imperialism didn't just spring up out of nowhere, though I do think there was a bit of a change in policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century that was full swing by the time the Spanish-American war started.

I have opinions on the other things that I could express, but like I said, I don't really want to get into a whole thing. On the subject of the whole time period of America, I will say Liberia doesn't get enough focus in discussions about the USA's history. To the extent that I expect most Americans who aren't into history aren't even aware of its existence. Which is a shame as it's pretty fascinating in how atypical it was as a colony (though I do think it was still colonialism and did more harm than good, but still a really interesting case of it nonetheless).

Edited by Jotari
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6 hours ago, XRay said:

All three warlords and various other military leaders are romanticized to varying degrees, although Liu Bei is generally painted as the most heroic and honorable of the big three. However, when viewed outside of a literary/romanticized lens in a more realist context, I think most people consider the three warlords to be kind of shitty due to the prolonged conflict and loss of life, and the real heroes of the story are the members of the Sima clan who reunified the country. Although the Jin is not that great either and lost northern territories.

Yeah my other hot take would be that the Three Kingdoms period was a gigantic waste of everyone's time. All it got China was a dynasty that started infighting very quickly and instantly collapsed when the barbarians invaded. The fighting never really ended until 600 AD.

Liu Bei's portrayal does seem to step from northern China being lost to barbarians. When the Song lost the north to the steppe people they found in him a comparison with themselves. The Song in their own eyes might have fled from the Chinese heartland to the south but they were still the legitimate dynasty. Just like Liu Bei had to flee south while Cao Cao got to rule the Chinese heartland. It allowed the Song to find a way to consider themselves the true China even if they had lost the most culturally and historical region of China to outsiders. They became the Liu Bei, while the steppe people represented Cao Cao.

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15 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Yeah my other hot take would be that the Three Kingdoms period was a gigantic waste of everyone's time. All it got China was a dynasty that started infighting very quickly and instantly collapsed when the barbarians invaded. The fighting never really ended until 600 AD.

Liu Bei's portrayal does seem to step from northern China being lost to barbarians. When the Song lost the north to the steppe people they found in him a comparison with themselves. The Song in their own eyes might have fled from the Chinese heartland to the south but they were still the legitimate dynasty. Just like Liu Bei had to flee south while Cao Cao got to rule the Chinese heartland. It allowed the Song to find a way to consider themselves the true China even if they had lost the most culturally and historical region of China to outsiders. They became the Liu Bei, while the steppe people represented Cao Cao.

One of the most (probably) unintentionally hilarious parts of Romance of the Three Kingdoms for me was reading about how Cao Cao's descendant feigned trying to refuse to take the throne three times in order to appear honorable when he secretly wasn't, while Liu Bei (or Xuande as he's known to me) sincerely refuses the throne three times before being convinced to accept it, completely without selfawareness a chapter later. Sure buddy, bet you have real valid sources on those two people being characterized completely oppositely for doing the exact same thing.

Edited by Jotari
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>Spread disinformation will get you banned

Anyway did you guys know that Augustine of Hippo was black?

I'll take my ban now.

NB: That's something an actual professor of religion at an actual university said.

Also, I have decided to write all my responses in pastebin because the Serenes Forest editor is absolute trash for long-form posts. That might be a feature though.

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Liberia doesn't get enough focus in discussions about the USA's history.

Liberia is pretty interesting, but it's not really a global player and never had been, so it's not surprising or unjustified that it sort of falls by the wayside.

On 6/21/2021 at 3:58 AM, XRay said:

This is not controversial for most Americans, but it needs to be taught in school that the Confederacy is evil and irredeemable like the Nazis, and that flying the Confederate flag is tantamount to hating America. Every American patriot should celebrate the Fourth of July by wiping their butts with the Confederate flag.

I object on general grounds.

Firstly, general needs do not exist.

Secondly, public schools should not be moralizing, even if the moral is correct, any more than they should promote certain religious beliefs, even if the belief is correct.

Thirdly, what do you even mean by "evil and irredeemable"? Are we talking about the people who lived in or were in any way complicit with those countries? Are we talking about every single point of their ideologies? That can't be it, since confederates and nazis have very little in common ideologically besides being racist. These aren't even extant institutions anymore, what does "redeemable" or "irredeemable" even have to do with it?

Finally, this would greatly increase the number of "Confederate Flags" (it was never the official flag of the CSA) produced, sold, and owned.

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

But they still had the right to secede if they wanted to, as I believe any territory has.

Do you join me in supporting the formation of an independent Igboland?

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Furthermore I think slavery was already very much on its way out.

And the last thing forming my opinion is that it was never really about getting rid of slavery for the North. They were far more concerned with preserving the union, but that moral high ground was pretty great propaganda.

While I agree with your general point, I don't think these are very useful arguments. It's nice rhetorical and all, but not really related to the core issue. The failures of slave-based economies and the moral failings of the north have little to do with the "legal"* "rights"* of the southern states.

A much better point is that states used to threaten secession all the time, usually over tax disputes. The northern states even floated around the idea of seceding from the Union so they could pass national anti-slavery laws without southern interference. It had always been assumed that states could secede and it was in fact assumed that they would as the United States grew too large for a single country/administration. In light of that, it was reasonable of the southern states to assume it was "permissible" to secede.

* - I neither respect laws nor believe in rights

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Now all that being said there is certainly an argument to be made that the South handled things quite badly and were the ones to fire the first shot of the war, but I think it's also fair to say they were under the impression that war was inevitable.

To be fair, Lincoln did sort of engineer that scenario. It was one of several shrewd but "questionable" things he did.

Let me go ahead and explain what happened so we can all draw our own conclusion. The Confederacy said they'd fire on any ships which...blocked ports or hung around military bases, something like that, the exact thing isn't really important. Lincoln sent a ship to do that exact thing.

My conclusion is that it probably would have worked out better for the rebels to just take the L and look like cowards, although not talking a big game in the first place would have been best overall.

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

So yeah, there's a really hot take for you. I expect people will disagree heavily with me, and that's cool. We can have different opinions, and I can acknowledge that my opinion is largely influenced by my own country's history, so I don't really expect to actually change anyone's mind.

What are you, Irish? Is it more the fact that you guys have been kicked around by England for a bit or the Scotch-Irish population faring better in the south than the north? Are secessionist sympathies, like, a thing over there? Unrelated, but do people still like Ian Paisley?

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't really expect to actually change anyone's mind.

I used to think people could change their minds, but then someone convinced me otherwise.

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

I will try to resist getting into an argument about it as I think I summed up my feelings pretty succinctly and I just know any back and forth response is very quickly going to devolve very quickly and result in getting the whole thread locked.

Well sure, but that's sort of the point, isn't it?

15 hours ago, Jotari said:

Also I'll toss out people don't talk about Haiti enough. Just in general.

I mean, sure, probably, but they're poor so nobody cares.

16 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Working for wages can be considered a form of informal slavery under the right conditions.

I mean, if you want the term "slavery" to become a meaningless pejorative, sure. The end result of "wage labor is slavery" is becoming this guy.

16 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I hope you're not so naive to think the end of slavery would amount to much.

I'm not and it didn't. See the end of my post.

13 hours ago, XRay said:

My counter argument to that is that the United States has a duty to protect and respect the wishes of its people

Counterpoint: No.

There is no such duty.

13 hours ago, XRay said:

However, preserving the Union is crucial to ending slavery early, and in my opinion, the loss of life was worth it.

Motherfuckers like you killed six hundred thousand people to change an institution's name.

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18 hours ago, Jotari said:

it was the largest war of the nineteenth century

Excuse-me, have you heard of Napoleon?

Edit: How much of him is actually taught in the US? 
I hope that don't sounds too aggressive...

Edited by Guill0
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30 minutes ago, Guill0 said:

Excuse-me, have you heard of Napoleon?

Edit: How much of him is actually taught in the US? 
I hope that don't sounds too aggressive...

Eh, Napoleonic Wars. He did enough for it to be a plural.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Do you join me in supporting the formation of an independent Igboland?

Yes, but I also support the country that surrounds your enclave for protecting their lands against you illegally crossing the border effectively locking you within the territory. On that issue I think the Native Tribes of the Americas should be given their own countries. I actually think this is something most Native Groups would prefer not to have, as they (or at least their leaders) get benefits in the current limited sovereignty situation (though I've never talked to any legit native Americans to source opinions), but I'd rather they be given inviolable sovereignty recognized internationally rather than being left at the whim of a government that could erase the remnants of their legal existence with the stroke of a pen. San Marino has managed to function as a tiny enclave nation since before the fall of the Roman empire, so it's possible. On the other hand I'm rather proud of the fact that I can name all the countries in the world and that would add like another hundred or so tiny ones to the list.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

What are you, Irish? Is it more the fact that you guys have been kicked around by England for a bit or the Scotch-Irish population faring better in the south than the north? Are secessionist sympathies, like, a thing over there? Unrelated, but do people still like Ian Paisley?

Yes I'm Irish. So 800 years of on again off again occupation by a foreign power does colour one's view on what it means to make a bid for independence.

 

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9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I actually think this is something most Native Groups would prefer not to have

This is my understanding as well, which I think is a fairly good reason to not do that. I have talked to Native Americans about this, but, like, only ones who were already in my social circle, I didn't go and check polls or anything. There are more than a few complicating factors which further make this a bad idea, but the fact that people don't really care should be enough.

27 minutes ago, Jotari said:

illegally crossing the border

Make Nigeria Great Again.

I guess them's just the break of self-determination, although for the Congo at least they got this little strip of land which extends to the coast so they weren't totally landlocked, RIP Ethiopia. I can't say whether that's the right call for Igboland though.

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

On the other hand I'm rather proud of the fact that I can name all the countries in the world and that would add like another hundred or so tiny ones to the list.

"Oh yeah? You like countries? Name every country!"

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yes I'm Irish. So 800 years of on again off again occupation by a foreign power does colour one's view on what it means to make a bid for independence.

Got any IRA hot takes?

1 hour ago, Guill0 said:

Excuse-me, have you heard of Napoleon?

Edit: How much of him is actually taught in the US? 
I hope that don't sounds too aggressive...

Public education talks about him a little bit, but most of what I learned about Napoleon I had to figure out on my own. You can't trust the school system to imbue you with the real knowledge of history, you gotta get that stuff yourself.

***

You know, since I do have historical opinions on things other than the Civil War, might be fun to mention some of those.

Justinian is a bad emperor. His "restoring" of Rome's western holding and his extensive building projects bankrupted his empire, leading to a fragile hold which rapidly crumbled after his death. Belisarius did all the actual military work, but his battles basically reduced the Italian peninsula to a 3rd world region. Secret Histories gang rise up.

This brings up a broader point I'd make about history. The way we assess historical leaders is very different from how we would assess a politician today. Alexander the Great is considered a "good leader" by most standards, but let's pause and think about this. He destroyed thousands of lives in a largely unprovoked war of territorial expansion to create an empire which immediately shattered upon his death. Would we consider someone a great choice for chief executive if they promise to conquer other nations while spending the plunder on monuments to their own greatness? No, we wouldn't. Yet historical figures tend to be assessed based on how much territory they gained, how many monuments they built, and other similar frivolities.

Gonna be honest, I don't think the British are responsible for the perpetual violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Sure, they're bad at drawing, but the English are bad at everything and that incompetence didn't have the same results everywhere else. I think the issue is more underlying, I don't think the Middle East can work as a peaceful community of different nations, their most prosperous periods historically happened when a small number of large empires ruled the region. Since history is just a tool to bludgeon people with in debates about politics, I should say this is good reason to not intervene in the affairs of North Africa, the Middle East, or Central Asia.

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1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The way we assess historical leaders is very different from how we would assess a politician today.

Yeah, because the society those leaders lived in is really different from ours.  How long was slavery okay until it wasn't?

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2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Got any IRA hot takes?

The IRA of the troubles were incompetent, bloodthirsty eejits who got far too many innocent people killed, even people on their own side that they were supposedly representing killed. Yet tat the end of the day their methods worked. There was systemic oppression and a suppression of democracy. Civil protests were not working. I'd much prefer they'd taken a leaf out of Michael Collin's book in the competency department, and having international pressure like what ended Apartheid in South Africa would be the ultimate ideal world, but the rest of the world really didn't give a toss. Except certain parts of America. And to the USA's credit they did a really great job overseeing the peace process. I'd much rather Clinton's administration was remembered for his mediation in Northern Ireland then some silly sex scandals.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

This brings up a broader point I'd make about history. The way we assess historical leaders is very different from how we would assess a politician today. Alexander the Great is considered a "good leader" by most standards, but let's pause and think about this. He destroyed thousands of lives in a largely unprovoked war of territorial expansion to create an empire which immediately shattered upon his death. Would we consider someone a great choice for chief executive if they promise to conquer other nations while spending the plunder on monuments to their own greatness? No, we wouldn't. Yet historical figures tend to be assessed based on how much territory they gained, how many monuments they built, and other similar frivolities.

I've been to Mongolia and the Genghis Kahn love is very real there. It makes me mad curious to know how the more modern historical figures like Hitler and Stalin will be viewed a thousand years from now.

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8 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Secondly, public schools should not be moralizing, even if the moral is correct, any more than they should promote certain religious beliefs, even if the belief is correct.

I agree that schools generally should not be moralizing people. However, due to the way the Confederacy is actively still being white washed by the right, demonizing the Confederacy is necessary. This will be no different from how we demonize Nazis and the Axis powers throughout the world.

8 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Thirdly, what do you even mean by "evil and irredeemable"? Are we talking about the people who lived in or were in any way complicit with those countries? Are we talking about every single point of their ideologies? That can't be it, since confederates and nazis have very little in common ideologically besides being racist. These aren't even extant institutions anymore, what does "redeemable" or "irredeemable" even have to do with it?

Prominent leaders from past to present need to be singled out. Subversive and treasonous organizations that still exist such as the UDC needs to be brought to national attention, humiliated, and crushed like the KKK.

These institutions are very much alive. They adapted to the times and split into a smaller organizations and independent cells, similar to terrorist organizations. While we still have heavily armed police forces throughout the country, we should put them to good use and hunt down Confederate traitors.

Edited by XRay
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Renaming the Byzantine Empire would be inefficient, at least in English, I think - I'm not doing my research, but that's what I bet everybody calls it and it's probably been like that for a while. So if people started thinking about it as something else and forgot it as the Byzantine Empire, it would be difficult for them to find it in older indexes or hashtags or what have you.

Quote

One of the most (probably) unintentionally hilarious parts of Romance of the Three Kingdoms for me was reading about how Cao Cao's descendant feigned trying to refuse to take the throne three times in order to appear honorable when he secretly wasn't, while Liu Bei (or Xuande as he's known to me) sincerely refuses the throne three times before being convinced to accept it, completely without selfawareness a chapter later. Sure buddy, bet you have real valid sources on those two people being characterized completely oppositely for doing the exact same thing.


The real emperor of Shu, the great and the powerful, who declined to serve Liu Bei three times, was Zhuge Liang.

There is some possible sincerity going on there I guess - it looks like Liu Bei refuses to formally state he is candidate for emperor until the Han Dynasty is officially deposed. The real question (I think) is when the crowned Han Emperors had power and when not.

Quote

Yeah, because the society those leaders lived in is really different from ours.  How long was slavery okay until it wasn't?


Maybe it's a matter of appearances VS reality. In the south, as far as I know, slaves did not get into positions of power even if they were competent - and I think there were measures to keep them from being competent in certain ways (not being allowed to read IMO). They could not even form stable families without permission. In Rome, at some point, slaves could become freed men, and sometimes they had power and influence and the ability to share in the changing world in a more human way. I'm not an expert on either place, but maybe that's a good measure of how ok it is to have slaves at all.

(I dunno if Roman slaves could have families)

Edited by Original Johan Liebert
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On 6/22/2021 at 5:09 PM, eclipse said:

Yeah, because the society those leaders lived in is really different from ours.  How long was slavery okay until it wasn't?

What if I told you that slavery was never okay?

I understand that people thought differently back then, but I don't really see why we should view them through their eyes and not our own. At the very least, I don't think it bodes well if people's first impression of historical figures is "successful conqueror = good leader".

On 6/22/2021 at 5:49 PM, Jotari said:

Yet tat the end of the day their methods worked.

Hey man, if it works it works.

On 6/22/2021 at 5:49 PM, Jotari said:

Except certain parts of America. And to the USA's credit they did a really great job overseeing the peace process. I'd much rather Clinton's administration was remembered for his mediation in Northern Ireland then some silly sex scandals.

Americans do seem to be uniquely interested in the independence of small countries from surrounding incursions by freaks with bad teeth.

On 6/22/2021 at 5:49 PM, Jotari said:

I've been to Mongolia and the Genghis Kahn love is very real there. It makes me mad curious to know how the more modern historical figures like Hitler and Stalin will be viewed a thousand years from now.

Hitler will probably always be remembered as a prick, but Stalin might actually make it out okay. We'll have to see how the next few decades go.

On 6/22/2021 at 9:31 PM, XRay said:

necessary

General needs still do not exist.

On 6/22/2021 at 9:31 PM, XRay said:

I agree that schools generally should not be moralizing people. However, due to the way the Confederacy is actively still being white washed by the right, demonizing the Confederacy is necessary. This will be no different from how we demonize Nazis and the Axis powers throughout the world.

Pick one. Either the government can tell children what's right and wrong or it can't. If it's contextually appropriate, then it will always be appropriate. As the adage goes, the problem with a professional army is that someone will always find a reason to use it.

On 6/22/2021 at 9:31 PM, XRay said:

While we still have heavily armed police forces throughout the country, we should put them to good use and hunt down Confederate traitors.

Samuel Johnson meme | Reactions meme, Funny memes, Memes

 

Are you suggesting we use the police as a paramilitary organization to suppress political dissidents?

This isn't even a historical opinion at this point.

I quit.

9 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

Renaming the Byzantine Empire would be inefficient, at least in English, I think - I'm not doing my research, but that's what I bet everybody calls it and it's probably been like that for a while. So if people started thinking about it as something else and forgot it as the Byzantine Empire, it would be difficult for them to find it in older indexes or hashtags or what have you.

Yeah my man. The point of names is to have convenient labels by which to refer to things, so there's no point in renaming something for the sake of...whatever that would be. Certainly not posterity, since it would only make research harder, as you said.

9 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

I'm not an expert on either place, but maybe that's a good measure of how ok it is to have slaves at all.

What you're noticing here is simply that wildly different institutions have been called "slavery", while some remarkably similar ones have not been. Slavery in the Roman Empire, ancient Canaan, the Islamic world, and the antebellum United States don't have much in common between all of them.

Edited by AnonymousSpeed
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5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Americans do seem to be uniquely interested in the independence of small countries from surrounding incursions by freaks with bad teeth.

It's more Americans of Irish descent with a vested interest in the conflict rather than a general sentiment of Americans, but places like New York and Boston have a large enough Irish-American population for that to actually carry some sway internationally. And well, outright monetary funding of terrorism too.

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On 6/22/2021 at 11:49 PM, Jotari said:

I've been to Mongolia and the Genghis Kahn love is very real there. It makes me mad curious to know how the more modern historical figures like Hitler and Stalin will be viewed a thousand years from now.

Its not quite the same. Genghis Khan was the founder of Mongolia. That alone will always give him a special place in Mongolian history. Hitler on the other hand is someone who left Germany completely destroyed with its eastern half being surrendered to a dictatorship no less crazy than the Nazi's for decades. With the Weimar Republic being rehabilitated as quite promising and even successful Hitler's credit of having ''restored'' Germany before destroying it will likely also be decreased, meaning he can easily be written off as a purely destructive force towards Germany. 

Hitler unlike Genghis Khan will additionally always be remembered for being barking mad. The Holocaust was done essentially because Hitler found it funny to do so. It served no real purpose for the state and was a big drain on the resources they needed to fight the war. With Genghis it wasn't quite so. There was method to the madness and while the scale was horrible the act of completely exterminating cities that were tardy at surrendering was fairly conventional in those days.

I think Stalin is the more interesting comparison. Despite being horrible and only barely more sane than Hitler he did turn Russia into a major power, and Putin's Kremlin seems to desire Stalin's rehabilitation to some extend.

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2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its not quite the same. Genghis Khan was the founder of Mongolia. That alone will always give him a special place in Mongolian history. Hitler on the other hand is someone who left Germany completely destroyed with its eastern half being surrendered to a dictatorship no less crazy than the Nazi's for decades. With the Weimar Republic being rehabilitated as quite promising and even successful Hitler's credit of having ''restored'' Germany before destroying it will likely also be decreased, meaning he can easily be written off as a purely destructive force towards Germany. 

Hitler unlike Genghis Khan will additionally always be remembered for being barking mad. The Holocaust was done essentially because Hitler found it funny to do so. It served no real purpose for the state and was a big drain on the resources they needed to fight the war. With Genghis it wasn't quite so. There was method to the madness and while the scale was horrible the act of completely exterminating cities that were tardy at surrendering was fairly conventional in those days.

I think Stalin is the more interesting comparison. Despite being horrible and only barely more sane than Hitler he did turn Russia into a major power, and Putin's Kremlin seems to desire Stalin's rehabilitation to some extend.

Yes it's certainly not a 1:1 equivalent. But the focus was more on the scale of horror and how mild that looks centuries after all those people are dead. I was tempted to just say Stalin by himself without Hitler as he does make for a better comparison, but even today Stalin's image isn't one of complete monster within Russia itself, so I added Hitler just to convey the image of what I wanted about how history will view atrocities when time makes them significantly more impersonal than they are today. I don't think Hitler will ever be viewed as a positive historical German figure (barring some fascist resurgence deifying him), but a long time from now I think he could be viewed as, well I think the best word is "significant". Obviously now he's considered very significant too. I guess what I really mean is that I expect him and others of his ilk to be viewed much more clinically in the future, and that's just sort of weird to think about, even though ideally it's what we should strive for when talking about history.

I also wouldn't really say Hitler did the holocaust because he found it "funny". That's a bit reductive. He did it because he was a hateful bastard who genuinely believed it'd make his nation stronger. It wasn't also him alone, with the bulk of the actual organization being carried out by other high ranking Nazi members like Eichmann who fully believed and supported the venture.

Edited by Jotari
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On the point of "historians celebrate conquerors", I will ask if it is actually possible to determine if any ruler from many centuries past was a genuine peacemonger. We know of those who didn't fight a lot of wars, but were they passionately anti-war, or just disinterested or incapable?

On the rulers who didn't fight and instead built a lot (although building and warring are entirely compatible), can we say their building was altruistic? Maybe for Khufu of the Great Pyramid of Giza, we could say that any excessive labor he pushed his people into was intended for their salvation via the pharaoh's salvation in the afterlife. But what of... let's say Versailles, setting aside Louis XIV's war record for the moment, if a modern government built something similar, would we deem it a massive waste of taxpayers' money? Admittedly, L14 is an Early Modern ruler, so we know well his mindset on constructing it, but let Versailles stand in this example for all the glorious palaces that have been built for millennia. War is a waste of lives and money, but constructions that benefit the masses not at all at their expense are still what we'd now consider bad.

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