Comment by andrepd
Comment by andrepd 2 days ago
It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. It's also insane how 1 in 4 Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or exaggeration.
Comment by andrepd 2 days ago
It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. It's also insane how 1 in 4 Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or exaggeration.
Was widely reported but was discredited.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory.
Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
It seems more than coincidental that global fascism started to rise as soon as the generation that last defeated it had mostly died off.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generat...
Definitely controversial academically, but the idea of a generational cycle has been considered.
It's much simpler to think that as a society we've manufactured a similar set of circumstances to the last time. That is, a growing proportion of the population that feel they have very little and no prospects or hope.
I won’t enter into a conversation about inequality and social justice, even though there are indeed points to be raised.
I would however like to point out that people are not only victims of society, and that they have a responsibility as a critical member of society and an elector. Historic awareness, understanding of economics, law and geopolitics.
To give an example: Mr Trump was not just votes into office, but RE voted into office. His plan was public for all to see.
More than 50% of American voters voted for him. I am having a difficult time to believe that 50%+ of the US are economically oppressed that had no choice but to vote for Trump.
Inequalities exist but they do not justify everything, neither do they explain everything.
the power of disinformation on social media platforms is apparently stronger than classroom teaching. it doesn't help that what is taught in classrooms is just getting worse for $reasons which is only going to get worse now that states are going to do whatever they want with schools now.
social conditions are deteriorating so people are reaching for alternative explanations. you want people to reach for true history? then you have to show them true history will benefit them. fortunately, there is a way to do this, but powerful people hate it and prefer patriotic history and disciplined workforces instead. then they blame minorities for the problems they cause.
It is rather lazy that people 'prefer' patriotic history and 'disciplined workforce'. I see no evidence of this.
I do gather that some parents are rather sanctimonious and scandalized about their children learning anything but the most sanitized version of history. That seems so far to be the most presence in banning anything. Witness Harry Potter being listed as one of the most challenged book at the height of popularity.
History as it was taught in my grade school years certainly wasn't whitewashed and they are rather explicit about some of the horror. Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
>> Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
This. 100% this. At school we got an extremely biased view of history, but even then it was taught soooo badly.
History (regardless of viewpoint, correctness, or accuracy) could be an enormously exciting topic. It's full of things that would appeal to any child when presented well.
But school history curricula for me was full of meaningless names, dates, actions - endlessly repeated with no enthusiasm at all.
Fully agree. My kids consider(ed) history to be very boring, other than when I teach them about it. I thought I disliked history after coming out of high school because the classes were always so excruciatingly boring and felt so irrelevant to anything "modern day." As I went through my early career I found myself constantly wondering "why is X that way?" Personal research including reading books written by historians who actually tell the story and also describe the many various links between events, and especially the "other side" of many of the issues (that's particularly fascinating regarding the USA "founding fathers" as they were far from a cohesive single-minded unit as presented in most history classes) many things started to click. When I've taught my kids about history using the same approach, especially zeroing in on the real fascinating aspects of it, they still don't love history but they have a strong appreciation for it.
By way of example, "the founding fathers were Christians" is a classic oft-repeated phrase I continually hear, to which I love talking about Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all of whom were clearly agnostic (at the time, they were "Deist" which was essentially equivalent to "agnostic" nowadays). Thomas Paine's phenomenal book "The Age of Reason" was utterly mind-blowing and extremely radical at the time, receiving widespread banning and igniting firestorms in the culture. It's still a great read today! Especially fascinating when you consider this was many decades before Darwin would provide one of the most important scientific explanations that massively shrunk the area for God of the Gaps.
Do you have a source or are you flamebating[1]?
The myriad of trash google results on the topic aren’t even close to 1 in 4. Even an Israeli tabloid says it’s 1 in 10.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html