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Lago PARANOIA
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### Neutrality in History IS a bias.

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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:22 am

So I'm studying for an American history final exam and one thing that continually strikes and enrages me is how neutrally they can describe utter bullshit like the Southern Strategy and the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment as just an inconsequential farce or outcome. You know, rather than the pure selfish evil that it really is.
It's like the whole 'both sides are liars' or 'both students get suspended for fighting' crap. In your pursuit of neutrality you're actually taking the side of the actual liar or bully.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Whatever
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Post by Whatever » Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:39 am

To be fair, a lot of the time both sides really are assholes.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:01 am

History has a rather infamous "left wing bias" as you may know. And I don't mean the stuff they teach in schools, I mean actual history the stuff they teach tends to TRY an "balance out" or ignore a lot of the bias presented by reality. You remember my comments on Australian Anzac day and the thread about the Sydney Harbor Bridge, surely.
You Americans have one of the BEST examples of "neutered" history sitting in your laps influencing your lives every day.
The way you guys look at the Civil War is just... wrong.
One really needs to remember. The South and virtually everyone who consented to fight for them were evil on a level EASILY matching if not exceeding that of Nazi Germany.
And look how you guys treat that piece of history...
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Cynic
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###

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Post by Cynic » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:46 am

> PhoneLobster wrote:
> You Americans have one of the BEST examples of "neutered" history sitting in your laps influencing your lives every day.
> The way you guys look at the Civil War is just... wrong.
> One really needs to remember. The South and virtually everyone who consented to fight for them were evil on a level EASILY matching if not exceeding that of Nazi Germany.
> And look how you guys treat that piece of history...

I totally agree on this point. I came to America as a 13-year-old. After the first two weeks of history class, I raised my hand and asked why aren't the confederates treated like the nazis?
I was met by a very condescending laugh from the teacher who told me that as a non-native english speaker, I had to learn the nuances.
I shut up about it. But, seriously, I've been in America for almost 15 years now. I still don't really see what the fucking nuance was.

> Ancient History wrote:We were working on Street Magic, and Frank asked me if a houngan had run over my dog.

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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:44 am

I really want to explain the civil war thing, and how it wasn't about slaves and racism, but rather economics and states rights against a federal government perceived as being oppressive, but:
a) I really don't know that much about it
b) Just because not every rebel soldier was out lynching blacks when not in battle doesn't mean that the people who decided to go to war are not reprehensible, just as the fact that not every wehrmacht soldier agreed with Hitler doesn't mean that the whole nazi movement isn't reprehensible.
But, overall, I'm just currently very confused with "status quo perspective" and "but I can kind of see the point of those people over there" and "but those people are being overly sensitive wusses!" and "well it's all very well and good for you to say that, have you ever experienced it?" ...mostly because I was just going over the whole PA dickwolf debacle...
Basically it comes down to "I have no clue why the people who fought for southern succession are not condemned like the nazis were." Although I do kind of cringe whenever I see a southern flag....
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Neeeek
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Post by Neeeek » Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:50 am

> Prak_Anima wrote:I really want to explain the civil war thing, and how it wasn't about slaves and racism, but rather economics and states rights against a federal government perceived as being oppressive, but:
> a) I really don't know that much about it

While it wasn't about racism exactly, the Civil War was absolutely about slavery to a large extent. The document that put South Carolina in rebellion(the first state to rebel) explicitly listed slavery as one of the primary reasons for their desire to leave the Union. I guess it would be more accurate to say the Civil War was about preserving the Union, and the main reason the Union was fracturing was because half the country were fucking evil slave-holding fucktards (well, half of the states of the country held them at least. Only a minority of people in those states actually owned slaves).
It's kinda funny, actually. The free states had far, far more to bitch about on the state of slavery-related laws in the run up to the Civil War than the slave states. Dred Scott made every state a slave state under federal law for every meaningful purpose, and most statutes passed regarding slavery were pro-slavery.
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Gx1080
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Post by Gx1080 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:08 pm

Lago, neutrality is easy. You just have to write about any country except your own. And sit for the lesson:
Wars aren't good guys vs. bad guys. They are bad guys vs. worse guys. Even the precious WWII. Neither the dictator-supporter Yanks, the colonialist British Empire or the fucking Soviets are "good guys" in any sense of the word, they were just better than the alternative.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php ... LOCK_ID=35
BTW, is not like the Bankstas are using the North vs. South bias to keep the rabble on each other instead on them.....oh wait.
And finally, for the amateur socialists on the board (like Frank), you could have all the socialism on the world if you let the South secessionists have their way. Because is a lie that one side will lift a finger if it means to help the other. Period.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:29 pm

> Cynic wrote:I totally agree on this point. I came to America as a 13-year-old. After the first two weeks of history class, I raised my hand and asked why aren't the confederates treated like the nazis?
> I was met by a very condescending laugh from the teacher who told me that as a non-native english speaker, I had to learn the nuances.
> I shut up about it. But, seriously, I've been in America for almost 15 years now. I still don't really see what the fucking nuance was.

The North couldn't just take the best and brightest slave owners, give them citizenship, and then turn the rest into cartoon villains. Villainizing the South would have defeated the purpose of of the war, which was keeping the country together.
There are too many Americans who are descended from those who fought on the wrong side of the war, and still want to romanticize great grandpa's attempt to create an evil empire as a fight against oppression.
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Ancient History
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Post by Ancient History » Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:45 pm

A historian once told me (and I forget her name now) "The Civil War is." Because in many respects the issues of the conflict (racial equality, federal vs. state powers, disproportionate political and economic representation) are still with us today, not totally resolved, and because people are still fighting and debating it.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:27 pm

Another important factor is that the victor of any conflict can to some extent filter the history to its favor. This can have an influence in historical accounts for centuries. This is especially the case for the Civil War where we also see a cult that formed around the assassinated Lincoln.
A good argument can be made that the real cause of the Civil War was the imposition of massive tarrifs on the part of Lincoln in order to pay for the Trans Continental Railroad. (No, Mr. President, not the Inter Continental Railroad.) Tarriffs hurt agriculture states the most because they depend on international exports. (Industrial states can easily get revenue through interstate sales.) The federal government had tried this before Lincoln and the states threatened to leave the Union. Then the president backed away. Lincoln refused to back down.
Had he not been so stubborn over tarriffs, the world would be the opposite of what it is today. It was Lincoln himself who had proposed a constitutional admendment that would have barred the Federan Goverment from making any law that would have prohibited slavery in any state, leaving the matter purely to the states to decide. (This would have satisfied the problem with no slavery in the territories, which was feared that they would enter the Union as non slave states and allow a prohibition of slavery in the slave states to be rammed down the states by the Federal Government. That's exactly what happened post civil war.)
Lincoln didn't want to "free" the slaves as much as he wanted to get rid of them. He continued to look into proposals to send ex slaves back to Africa all throughout the Ciil War.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:50 pm

Hey, tzor, I know you don't ever remember shit like this, but the last time you pulled out this exact line of malarkey, I linked you to the various declarations of causes of secession, with a note about how the word 'tariff' was mentioned exactly zero times. So no matter how big a deal you think it might have been, the actual people involved didn't think it was even worth mentioning.
On the other hand, all of them mention slavery, an average of more than ten times each. So, yeah.
Here's the link again.
Here's the link to the last time this came up.
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sabs
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Post by sabs » Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:09 pm

People in the South still talk about the War of Northern Aggression. It probably would not have been so bad, if it hadn't been for the 'Reformation' phase, and carpet bagging that happened between the end of the Civil War, and the Early 20th Century.
The South used a lot of propaganda to get young men to die for them, then the North made it worse with how they treated the South after the war.
Add to that the fact that it's been less than 50 years since the Civil Rights movement.
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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:30 pm

There is a substantial qualitative difference between chattel slavery and genocide. Don't get me wrong, forced labor is bad, but it's not as bad as death.
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Maj
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Post by Maj » Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:35 pm

> CatharzGodfoot wrote:Villainizing the South would have defeated the purpose of of the war, which was keeping the country together.

Intuitively, this seems obvious, but seeing it actually written out makes it seem absolutely brilliant.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:36 pm

> hyzmarca wrote:There is a substantial qualitative difference between chattel slavery and genocide. Don't get me wrong, forced labor is bad, but it's not as bad as death.

Having been in the dungeons in the actual slave castles in the Gold Coast and in the actual work camps in Eastern Europe, I can say that: No. There really isn't a difference.
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hyzmarca
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Post by hyzmarca » Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:43 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:

> > hyzmarca wrote:There is a substantial qualitative difference between chattel slavery and genocide. Don't get me wrong, forced labor is bad, but it's not as bad as death.

> Having been in the dungeons in the actual slave castles in the Gold Coast and in the actual work camps in Eastern Europe, I can say that: No. There really isn't a difference.
> -Username17

The Gold Coast isn't the Antebellum South. One had a pretty much constant supply of cheap slaves. The other didn't. To put it simply, slaves in the South were expensive. Working them to death wasn't economically feasible.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:53 pm

Relevant article.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:25 pm

> hyzmarca wrote:There is a substantial qualitative difference between chattel slavery and genocide. Don't get me wrong, forced labor is bad, but it's not as bad as death.

While I certainly agree, I would think many would prefer (an implied quick) death to forced servitude. I just thought about the difference, and realized that, because I'm a proud motherfucking idiot who fully agrees with the saying "It's better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees," if someone said "Ok, you can be my property, and work back breaking labour for 15 hours a day, or we can kill you," I'd take the second option. This is borne out in real life by the number of slaves that risked death in escape attempts.
So, certainly, chattel slavery is not quite as bad as genocide, but when you're the victim, there is a non-zero percentage of your fellows who'd prefer to die.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:36 pm

The point is that the Southern slaves came from somewhere, and the place they came from was the slave castles of the Gold Coast. They dies by the millions in conditions that were only different from the Nazi camps in that they were lower tech. Meanwhile, the majority of people who died in the Nazi camps weren't gassed to death, they were worked to death and allowed to die of disease.
With the exception of the gas chambers set up at the end, there really was no difference. People died by the millions and were worked to death and forced to live in subhuman conditions. The acts are equivalent save for the fact that the Nazis managed to use higher technology levels to get things done faster.
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:50 pm

The United States stopped importing slaves in 1808. The states of the Confederacy hadn't used the Gold Coast dungeons for over half a century at the time of the secession.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:12 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:The point is that the Southern slaves came from somewhere, and the place they came from was the slave castles of the Gold Coast. They dies by the millions in conditions that were only different from the Nazi camps in that they were lower tech. Meanwhile, the majority of people who died in the Nazi camps weren't gassed to death, they were worked to death and allowed to die of disease.
> With the exception of the gas chambers set up at the end, there really was no difference. People died by the millions and were worked to death and forced to live in subhuman conditions. The acts are equivalent save for the fact that the Nazis managed to use higher technology levels to get things done faster.
> -Username17

I didn't know that about the Gold Coast (or even what it was), and I just remembered the slave ships, which were actually worse than the transport trains (well, maybe they're equal too). The modern mind thinks of slavery, not what created and perpetuated it. So, you're right, Frank, they were pretty much the same, save for ovens and gas chambers.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:46 pm

> angelfromanotherpin wrote:Hey, tzor, I know you don't ever remember shit like this, but the last time you pulled out this exact line of malarkey,

And I think you went off on an insane tangent on how you thought the author I brought up in defense of the argument was a moron. I'm not going to preach to the preverted. You can believe the Lincoln Lie all the fuck you want.
You perfectly prove my point that history cannot be really told under hundreds of years after the fact because the lies of the victors of the war (or in this case the people who wanted to make Lincoln the American Jesus Christ ... marytered for the nation) after the fact.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:49 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:With the exception of the gas chambers set up at the end, there really was no difference. People died by the millions and were worked to death and forced to live in subhuman conditions. The acts are equivalent save for the fact that the Nazis managed to use higher technology levels to get things done faster.

People who can't tell the difference between slavery and the persecution of the Jews probably can't even tell the difference between the planet Jupiter and the Sun. There is a major differecne of magnitude.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:52 pm

> Prak_Anima wrote:I didn't know that about the Gold Coast (or even what it was), and I just remembered the slave ships, which were actually worse than the transport trains (well, maybe they're equal too).

They were vastly worse, but that may have been a problem of duration rather than conditions; the ocean voyage took far longer than the train journey. Lots of Africans never made it. It is one of the main reasons why the average African American is vastly different in a number of respects (mostly medical) from the average African.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:55 pm

So Tzor? Why do you love slavery, lynch mobs and massive and deadly oppression so much?
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