Hobo @ Hobo @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

It also isn't true. LBJs approval rating absolutely tanked because of the Vietnam war.

Johnson's approval ratings had dropped from 70 percent in mid-1965 to below 40 percent by 1967

https://millercenter.org/president/lbjohnson/foreign-affairs

I've never used one of these services. Are they like a credit card in that they have interest/fees only if you don't pay off your balance? Or are there upfront fees to using the service?

The kind of hilarious part is there was right wing pushback in the southern US when they came out because it was "teaching kids witchcraft." Which is so fucking funny to me now. It's just so plainly obvious that they were literally judging a book by it's cover. I read the first two books as a young adult because of the right wing pushback and even the 2nd book was an absolute slog. To my dismay I didn't learn any witchcraft along the way either.

On the other hand, my youngest brother absolutely loved those books. I remember sneaking him one of the new ones when we were staying with our Southern Baptist grandparents for the summer. They absolutely were his first books that he really read independently. He was quite bitter when JKR decided to be all anti-trans and shitty. If you even bring it up now it sends him into a tirade about how shitty she is.

I think we're probably in more alignment than either of us realize. You hit the nail on the head in a lot of ways especially calling out differences in what we were taught. Down to brass tacks, we have much different life experiences so we're coming at it from different angles. I'm filling in the gaps that weren't taught to me and I had to discover for myself. On the other hand, you're filling in the gaps that weren't taught to you and you had to fill in for yourself.

In the 80s and early 90s there was a sort of veneration of the founding fathers where I grew up. There was also a ton of propaganda about how the, "The evil north just wanted to destroy the south." The cotton gin, as you correctly pointed out increased the demand for slaves, was reframed as a tool that would end slavery because you somehow magically wouldn't need slaves to to pick cotton anymore. Reconstruction was reframed as the North needlessly trying to punish the south. The founders were enlightened individuals that just didn't know that slavery was wrong. It feels kind of shit to go out into the world and have completely re-learn the history of the place you grew up because people didn't want to admit that your own country has flaws.

With that being said, I see how a swing in the other direction could be damaging. It sucks no matter which way to be taught just one side of history. It doubly sucks for it to be the history of the piece of land you're standing on.

I do find it interesting that it somehow swung that far back in the other direction, or that it was taught so much differently regionally (not sure if it's an age difference or a regional difference between our experiences). I think perhaps the best way to make sure we all stay on the same page is to have conversations like this though!

I get where you’re coming from and why you typed up 4 paragraphs condemning his horrible actions before we are allowed to acknowledge that he did one or two okay things.

I think it's important to me personally for this specific figure. I grew up a leftist atheist in the deep south. When I learned about TJ, he was a very appealing figure to me. He was largely anti-establishment, anti-institutional, and at least mildly anti-religion. He was also, on the surface level, pro-science and pro-scientific method. He went as far as to re-write the Bible with all the miracles removed.

I say all this because when I was a teenager I pointed to him a lot as a bastion of progressiveness in America's founding, and often used him to argue that the US was not founded as a Christian state because he clearly wasn't Christian. The stuff I learned about him in textbooks and in school conveniently left out the much darker shit he did. It wasn't until I started reading his own writings and finding non-history textbook recounts of his life that I saw the complete picture. He was sort of my first experience with a hero that falls short of expectations, and he fell extremely short.

It’s just frustrating that we still live in a such a racist society that you felt like you had to type that up before you could approach the nuance.

I don't quite follow. I don't think those were my motivations and I don't quite understand the logic. I thought I did approach the nuance in my comment, but there's way more that's left out about the man. He was incredibly complex for sure!

I wish we could talk plainly to each other without this underlying paranoid one of us might accidentally come across pro the thing we are obviously very anti.

I don't quite follow, but I personally don't assume anything about you. I do agree that lemmy, and the internet at large, has become a weird obstacle course. I honestly can't quite figure out the new purity test on the left that seem to be everywhere. I feel like you need to find your allies where ever you can (within reason). I do think paranoia of being infiltrated by right wing activist, and the long history of that happening, plays a big part in that paranoia. I agree, though, it's more than mildly frustrating.

[My quote that you quoted for context] "I for sure agree that it is nuanced, but it’s also rather reductive to just leave it at, “he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.” [

I specifically said “While there’s no shortage of slave related evils to blame him for this is also the man who ended the trans atlantic slave trade.”

... down through ...

I didn’t reduce anything, I specifically acknowledged his evils before giving him credit for ending the slave trade.

My apologies! I see how that comes off as directed at you specifically. Should have phrased that better for sure! I meant that more in the more esoteric, "when people at large do this." Poor wording on my part! Didn't mean to accuse specifically with that.

While that is exactly what ended up historically happening, especially due to the invention of the cotton gin, I would appreciate a source that this was Jefferson’s stated intentions.

I don't think he ever outwardly states that was intentions because that would be far less self aware than he was about slavery. Here's the source for his "breeding woman is worth more than a man". I'm not sure if I can find the orginal source for it without really digging, but it's widely accepted that he was in massive debt and perpetuating slavery was his only way out. He planned on ending the slave trade, but his actions and many of his writings seem to indicate that he planned on maintaining the system of slavery for his own gain.

I think there's a few things in the quote you linked that seem to support that my position though.

... by bettering (Jefferson used the term “ameliorating”) living conditions and moderating physical punishment.

Is an example of a good thing within context. Which is kind of the equivalent of turning down the orphan crushing machine to a slower pace. Not even turning it off, just making it slower. Like yeah sure you aren't as bad as those other guys but holy shit that's still really bad. Which doesn't really indicate to me that he was trying to stop it as much as make it more palatable.

Third, all born into slavery after a certain date would be declared free, followed by total abolition.

That date was conveniently far into the future where he would be able to keep slaves to pay off his debt. That seems... dishonest at best. It's what several politicians do still. It just seems to indicate that he was attempting to keep slaves while also virtue signaling that he didn't like slavery. Which again seems to support my position.

Jefferson’s belief in the necessity of abolition was intertwined with his racial beliefs... [to the end]

This seems to also point to him be hugely racist and believing that he could use black people like cattle to get out of debt cause they were "inferior." I feel like what you quoted mostly supports what I'm saying. The dude perpetuated slavery for his own personal gain while denouncing it publicly to appear more liberal. I do agree he did several good things, and I like a lot of his more progressive writings. It's just really hard to overlook some the absolutely fucked up shit he was doing to other people. All in the name of greed and to pay off his debts.

Fair enough! I think it's a bit more complex hence the tangent that I didn't want to get into. The man had 600 slaves during his life and he is often credited as freeing his slaves. He freed two. Which is a fair bit short of the 600 he owned. He denounced the slave trade as a "human right violation" but continued to own slaves himself. So he knew it was wrong and did it anyway.

He built Monitcello to basically run on slavery. He had dumb waiters and hidden compartments in the walls so his slaves could serve him and not be seen. He didn't want his foreign visitors to know about them when they visited, because most other nations had denounced slavery as barbaric, hence the hiding them in the walls and behind pully systems. Which seems extra diabolical to make sure no foreign dignitaries brought back stories about how awful slavery was to their home country. Hiding his slaves like that really points to the fact that he knew it was wrong but did it anyway.

Yes he did end the US's participation in the slave trade. His reaction to which was to have his slaves breed more, "...woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm." Is a quote from his Letters on the state of Virginia (I believe that is the corrct source although it could be from one of his almanacs and I'm misremembering). He spent a lot effort trying to reduce infant mortality (which is a good thing) so that slavery could be more profitable (which is a fucked up psychotic thing). So he was outwardly trying to end the slave trade because he had a plan to perpetuate slavery by breeding. I don't know if needs to be said again, but that seems to point to the fact that he knew it was wrong but figured out a way to do it anway.

He often had "relationships" (read raped) with his slaves, which seems to be more like prolific raping of black women than a "relationship" when held up to the light. He raped so many black women that there's a absolute ton of his ancestry in the black American population still today. During his lifetime, and even for a while after, he hid the fact that he was doing this. In fact, it's theorized that some of the children that worked on Montecello were in fact his own mixed race children. The fact that he hid his prolific raping and own children seems to point to the fact that he knew it was wrong and did it, to an unconscionable level, anyway.

I for sure agree that it is nuanced, but it's also rather reductive to just leave it at, "he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves." He was outwardly antislavery, because he was trying to portray himself as progressive at the time while running an extremely regressive slave farm. His life and his views are just brimming with these sorts of contradicting actions too. So, you are absolutely correct in that it's reductive on both sides of the discussion! I for sure think he was a monster and kind of think of him as a modern day "limousine liberal." He ran around saying how slavery was bad while owning and perpetuating slavery. Much like limousine liberals run around saying the rich are destroying the country while riding around in their limo.

I feel like that's incredibly reductive and it just kind of bothers me every time I see it. The Constitution was almost not ratified because there was a contingent of founders that opposed slavery. What's important about that is that it completely destroys the moral relativism argument for the rest of them. Founders that supported slavery knew it was wrong and did it anyway cause they were greedy.

Well, except for Jefferson. His reasons are more rooted in being an incredibly lazy psychopathic rapist who had created a slavery powered life of luxury for himself. But that's going off on a completely different tangent.

One of the best programmers I've ever met told me, "All you need is Knuth everything else is just syntax." And I don't know if that's 100% true, but can say I learned more from reading The Art of Computer Programming than I have in basically any other textbook/textbook series I've read on the subject.

Just rename Estonia to EstoniAI and people will apparently send you $1.5 billion no questions asked.

I don't have to know what will work in order to know what won't work. What do you think killing 600,000 people indiscriminately accomplishes? Blowing up a nuke in the US will only make every brown person on the face of the planet suffer and by extension everyone else as well. The retaliation would make the Crusades look like a mild skirmish. Every single right wing evangelical whack job would be voted directly into office. There would be muslim extermination camps created. Not to mention the barbaric notion that killling 600,000 people for vengence is downright evil. What you're proposing though has extreme consequences that you haven't even begun to fathom.

I also don't think you'll approach the conversation with any unbias point of view considering you already decided whatever I say won't work. Maybe I think you should wear a silly hat and ask Congress nicely to quit killing kids? That would be more effective than killing 600,000 people and way less evil.

Indiscriminate murder of 600,000 people won't solve anything. Do you have an actual point or did you just want people around you to know that you have a bloodthirsty power fantasy?

Opens notepad.exe

This... this one?

That's a good tip. I'll keep that in mind next time this topic comes up.

I should have been more precise, I was really just talking about length measurements and less so on the holy fuckshit of everything else. I, too, would be super on board with a base 12 measurement system...

If we invent it we can have 3 competing standards!

It's also the one advantage Imperial has over metric. It's easier to do mental math in a lot of cases in base 12 rather than base 10.

Now excuse me while I bar my windows and doors from the mobs of angry people that show every time I point this out.

It's really not even advice. It's just self aggrandizement and dumbass people looking for a circle jerk to join. It doesn't address the issue that OP has in the slightest practical way, and is kind of callus to their actual problem.

I have no problem with unions and I'm extremely pro-union. I'm also practical and not naive enough to think that you can join a union in every job. They don't exist for a lot of jobs at all and you have to be very diligent to be able to form one without losing your job from unjustly being fired.

What I hate is people giving shitty advice so they can feel superior. "Join a union" is great advice if your job/field already has one. "Join a union" when someone has a work dispute with their clearly non-union employer is idiocy and belittling to the person that is asking the question. I made the analogy above, so I'll turn your question on its head, do you think depressed people should just try to be happy? Because it's the same level of advice as, "Join a union" in this instance.

Holy fuck you all are a bunch of callous assholes. Telling someone to "join a union" or "ask your union" about it are fucking mental. Do you really think OP is working a union gig or are you really that stupid to think you just go out to the union store and ask for one union card? How is this helpful to anyone who is in a non-union job working for a non-union company. I'll bet you all are the same people that tell depressed people to "just be happy." It's just useless, if not ourtright malicious, advice to give someone.

This is such a terrible thing to say in a thread about a propaganda campaign to cover up a genocide. If I was more conspiracy minded I'd start to think it was a planned effort to distract from the topic at hand considering how often it comes up in these sorts of threads.

Unfortunately, I actually think it's just some asshole that wants to feel superior. Since that's probably the case, I'm also pretty sure you'd label like half the midwest as Texas, and probably think that a trip to New York is just a quick 30 minute drive for people in Florida.

So now that we've gotten our trite digs in on one another can we focus on the matter at hand? Cause I seriously doubt that the people being genocided give two fucks about this conversation.

Always has been. The flag they fly wasn't even the Confederate States flag, but a made up amalgamation resurrected in 1948 by the Dixiecrats to opposed Civil Rights. All modern bullshit about the Confederacy is rooted in some post reconstruction era racist asshole trying to bring back the Confederacy for some other racist ass motivations.

Never trust any racist ass inbred fuckwit when they say, "Heritage not hate" because that flag is solely based on hate. So was the confederacy for that matter. Now excuse me while I got back to writing petitions to get Confederate statues replaced with statues of John Brown.