The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    [Everybody else's history] Bad stuff happened, gets forgotten...

    By artappraiser on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 3:01pm |

     sometimes later people called historians research it...

    Ireland's Forgotten Sons Recovered Two Centuries Later https://t.co/B4W8MzpZuT

    — J. W. (@wolfjon4) May 25, 2021

    Comments


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 3:04pm

    got a kick out of this subtle point about Tom Hanks' op-ed on Tulsa, that he wasn't saying you just get to learn about Tulsa, you unfortunately got to learn the other stuff too:

    Tom Hanks: Do you know that the Erie Canal is the reason Manhattan became the economic center of America?

    Chet Haze: A-yo that shits tight bro (jamaican accent) DA EERIE CANAL-- BOoyaKAA!

    Tom Hanks (smiling): very good son pic.twitter.com/tDIaFGEoU1

    — Rajat Suresh (@rajat_suresh) June 4, 2021

    [later edit for grammar mistake]


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 1:08am

    Gen Z are people who are currently 6 to 24 years old. From the sound of the voices I'd guess those were young teens in the video. How much history did you know as a young teen? I can't say I knew very much.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 12:46am

    I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at 13-14. Neighbor kids had WWII airplane models and such by 10 or so. Remember Readers Digest & Time covering lots of basic current events and history. Certainly wouldn't have had this dumb a conversation in Jr High up, likely anywhere past 3rd grade - level of seriousness and basic knowledge in the class was already pretty high. We had dumbass arguments for sure, but they came with some basic facts.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 12:56am


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 3:48pm

    Although "everybody did it" is a questionable excuse, we certainly shouldn't single out America for condemnation when it comes to imperialism. Europeans aren't  in a strong position to lecture Americans about it, at least if we're talking about the period from 1776 to the mid-20th century. De Tocqueville lamented the plight of Native Americans in this country, but he strongly supported France's conquest of Algeria. Heal thyself, Alexis.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 8:40am

    The core of the discussions are about how the ancestors of some Americans were treated by the ancestors of other Americans 

    You will get pushback when you talk about taking down a monument to Christopher Columbus or a Confederate general from citizens of the United States.

    The arguments are internal.


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 3:21pm

    Of course Columbus was not British nor a founder of the 13 British colonies - but he did largely discover America, a monumental achievement and marker in world history - perhaps the biggest. The Greeks made their gods greedy, jealous and murderous, so there was little misunderstanding or mistaken expectations when honoring them.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 4:28pm

    There were already humans on the continent.

    Native Americans get to complain about Columbus Day.

    Italians get to argue for keeping the holiday.

    South Dakota was the first state to rename Columbus Day, in 1990, electing to go with Native Americans’ Day. Alaska was second, in 2017, enacting Indigenous Peoples Day. Three other states — New Mexico, Maine, Vermont — followed suit this year. And Washington, D.C., this week renamed the holiday, pending congressional approval.

    https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/10/11/more-states-say-goodbye-to-columbus-day

    Welcome to the melting pot 


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 4:39pm

     I've made some people online angry by defending Columbus Day. We can take Columbus' name off it if he is considered too bad for the honor, but I want to keep it. I don't believe the legacy of 1492 is entirely negative(I can list the positives if anyone wants). There's also the question of double standards. If Columbus Day(and other holidays?) are invalid because of all the bad stuff, why doesn't the bad stuff in indigenous societies invalidate Indigenous Peoples' Day?


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 5:18pm

    Shhh - they were all peaceful loving natives...


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 7:45pm

    Columbus has/had his day

    Native American's get their day

    Columbus wasn't a saint

    Native Americans weren't saints

    Different groups get to tell their stories

    No double standard

    The only standard has been Columbus.

    Edit to add:

    Native Americans were actually living in North America 

    Columbus never reached North America 

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/14/christopher-columbus-3-things-you-think-he-did-that-he-didnt/


    by rmrd0000 on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 10:12pm

    Moctezuma told his story too. So did Geronimo and Sitting Bull and Buffy St. Marie & Robbie Robertson and Harry Belafinte are from where?

    Bob Marley & Fidel Castro were from where?

    Who brought tomatoes, potatoes, corn, coffee, tobacco to Europe?

    Who cinched his dick up and sailed west when everyone else for thousands of years said you gotta sail or walk south and east?

    I'm sure there are lovely people in Papua New Gunea and Burundi and Irkutsk and Pago Pago, but so far what they've said means less than 1 guy saying "I think there's a faster way to India", which completely uprooted the old world, destroyed the Ottoman and Arab trade routes and hegemony.

    1 guy. Not "a team of scientists", aside from an easily replaceable crew. Not a king nor a warrior - just a sailor and a primitive compass across a very scary ocean.

    http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/dr.shtml


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 1:20am

    Yes, but Montezuma is exacting his revenge even today after being dead for centuries. By all reports it's quite significant.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 4:40am

    There were people in North America before Columbus

    Other explorers found North America before Columbus

    Columbus did not discover America

    You really should have no problem with the 1619:Project given your explanation of Columbus


    by rmrd0000 on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 9:33am

    yes, but Columbus' discovery was a major event in the history of the world. Much changed with that discovery. While for example the discovery by the Vikings went largely unnoticed and while of historical note didn't have any impact. I think that's Peracles' point.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 4:21pm

    Yes, thank you - perhaps there's more, perhaps that expresses it. I mean, some of my best friends are Vikings, but...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 4:48pm

    The European discovery of America opened possibilities for those with eyes to see. But Columbus was not one of them     

    ........ The Arawak Indians of Española were the handsomest people that Columbus had encountered in the New World and so attractive in character that he found it hard to praise them enough. "They are the best people in the world," he said, "and beyond all the mildest." They cultivated a bit of cassava for bread and made a bit of cottonlike cloth from the fibers of the gossampine tree. But they spent most of the day like children idling away their time from morning to night, seemingly without a care in the world. Once they saw that Columbus meant them no harm, they outdid one another in bringing him anything he wanted. It was impossible to believe, he reported, "that anyone has seen a people with such kind hearts and so ready to give the Christians all that they possess, and when the Christians arrive, they run at once to bring them everything."

    To Columbus the Arawaks seemed like relics of the golden age. On the basis of what he told Peter Martyr, who recorded his voyages, Martyr wrote, "they seeme to live in that golden worlde of the which olde writers speake so much, wherein menne lived simply and innocently without enforcement of lawes, without quarreling, judges and libelles, content onely to satisfie nature, without further vexation for knowledge of things to come."

    ............   For the Arawaks the new system of forced labor meant that they did more work, wore more clothes and said more prayers. Peter Martyr could rejoice that "so many thousands of men are received to bee the sheepe of Christes flocke." But these were sheep prepared for slaughter. If we may believe Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican priest who spent many years among them, they were tortured, burned and fed to the dogs by their masters. They died from overwork and from new European diseases. They killed themselves. And they took pains to avoid having children. Life was not fit to live, and they stopped living. From a population of 100,000 at the lowest estimate in 1492, there remained in 1514 about 32,000 Arawaks in Española. By 1542, according to Las Casas, only 200 were left. In their place had appeared slaves imported from Africa. The people of the golden age had been virtually exterminated.

    Edmund S. Morgan is a Sterling Professor emeritus at Yale University.  link


    by NCD on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 6:03pm


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 10:50pm


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 11:24pm

    Deep research by Wesley Yang!

    Bias confirming newspaper snippet with no context. Not surprising as he is an AA fave, and a propaganda disinformation tool of the right.

    Turns out June C. Nash research related to the breakdown of Maya society relationships and traditional beliefs. You and Yang could look it up, although I doubt you care one iota about her or her research:

    The Increasing Resort to Homicide in a Maya Indian Community

    The breaking-down of a social-control system based on belief in the guardianship of the spiritual ancestors and their temporal agents, the curers, is reflected in a rising homicide rate as people turn to individual sanctions when threatened. ... , reflect the conflicts arising from competition in new economic enterprises, the rising suspicion of curers' abuse of their supernatural power, and the loss of belief in the guardianship of the ancestors.


    by NCD on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 5:46pm

    this thread is intended to be as serious about history as this other one it mimics, it's just intended to allow people to post about history of other peoples than just those sharing a skin color.

    (One could ask why you didn't complain about the seriousness of the writers presented on that thread, or the subject matter to get outraged about like Buckingham Palace banned ethnic minorities from office roles, papers reveal  but I won't, I already know: you come to fight on teams instead of talk with old acquaintances. And I'm getting a little too on in years TO GIVE A SHIT about that. How about you find someone else to play that game with because I AM NOT INTERESTED. You want to talk on topic, then act like you do.)

    you could learn to use other websites to communicate just like you do on old timey ones like this and your other favorite blogs and ask like this guy did

    Interesting. Where is this excerpt taken from?

    — Nadim Hossain (@NadimHossain) May 2, 2021

    If you want to ridicule Wesley Yang, who is simply sharing what he was reading at the time, he's right there, you are allowed on Twitter, go ridicule him and then he'll block you, I guess. Wish we could do that here...


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 6:30pm

    This guy know you, NCD? it sounds like he does:

    You just lost all credibility you had left with me by labeling Yang a "conservative", that's just like labeling Yglesias a "conservative." Is that where you are at now? That clueless, that deranged by the Trump years? Then I have to say that what you say is like: useless to me, utterly useless. And that's sad because you used to have an open mind that wasn't just interested in labeling the whole world "us vs. them".


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 6:40pm

    SAND CREEK MASSACRE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

    Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is located in a remote area of eastern Colorado. This site marks one of the darkest events in American History.

    On November 29, 1864, Colonel Chivington led 675 United States Troops who slaughtered 230 Native Americans (Mostly elderly, women and children) who just months before surrendered to Colonel John Chivington and the federal troops of the Colorado Military District who promised that nothing would happen to them if they surrendered. 

    Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site is one of the least visited National Park sites with only 5,701 visitors in 2019. For those who have been, it's easy to see why as it is off the main road and down several dirt roads for miles without any real signage [....]


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 12:41am

     To be precise, the pledge of safety was given to the Cheyenne not by Chivington, but by Major Wynkoop.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 5:24pm

    Thank you for that. Makes a difference, worth looking into if one is interested in truly understanding what happened. Meanwhile, who's going to tell Ranger John, tho?


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 6:53pm

    The Tuscarora War 

    was fought in North Carolina from September 10, 1711 until February 11, 1715 between the Tuscarora people and their allies on one side and European American settlers, the Yamassee, and other allies on the other. This was considered the bloodiest colonial war in North Carolina.[1] The Tuscarora signed a treaty with colonial officials in 1718 and settled on a reserved tract of land in Bertie County, North Carolina. The war incited further conflict on the part of the Tuscarora and led to changes in the slave trade of North and South Carolina.

    The first successful settlement of North Carolina began in 1653. The Tuscarora lived in peace with the settlers for more than 50 years, while nearly every other colony in America was involved in some conflict with Native Americans. Most of the Tuscarora migrated north to New York after the war, where they joined the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy as the sixth nation.

    Lawson-torture.jpg
    Public Domain, Link

    caption: An artist's depiction of the torture of Christoph von Graffenried and John Lawson by the Tuscarorans, 1711.

    History

    The Tuscarora were an Iroquoian-speaking people who had migrated from the Great Lakes area into the Piedmont centuries before European colonization. Related peoples made up the Iroquois Confederacy based in New York.

    Tensions

    As the English settled Carolina, the Tuscarora benefited from trade with the English. By acquiring weapons and metal goods from the English, they were able to develop commercial dominance over other tribes in the region. These benefits were experienced to a greater degree by Northern Tuscarora than their Southern counterparts, who became cut off from the prosperous Northern Tuscarora by increasing numbers of European settlers.[.....]


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 1:04am

    According to Von Graffenried the Tuscarora intended to spare Lawson, but he threatened them so they put him to death.  Lawson was brave, but foolhardy. I don't remember Von Graffenried saying that he was tortured himself.


    by Aaron Carine on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 5:23pm

    hey, Aaron, you're ruining the whole thing about nobody knowing nothing bout this history item; good for you.wink


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 6:47pm

    And just another example of how you can't trust artist depictions of events nor those labeling them later!


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 6:56pm

    at the same time my father was a white American teen raised on the south side of Milwaukee, of northern European heritage, didn't known any Latinos, and he proudly owned a zoot suit, which he just thought was cool. I suspect to his dying day he didn't know zoot suits had anything to do with latinos, it was more that they were like gangsta chic is today.  I guess things were different on the other side of the country? He was drafted right out of high school and thought the army sucked, maybe that had something to do with it? It wasn't the regimentation, because he later joined the merchant marine...


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/11/2021 - 1:21am

    Anne Applebaum's got a new book out on Ukraine & Stalin and how it impacts us to this day. I admit I can't read this New Republic article on it because I hit the paywall there--looking to read about it elsewhere eventually--in the meantime maybe someone else would like to read it:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 5:29am

    ran across this garden-variety history professor, but a wise and smart guy, interestingly tweeting how he navigates all the latest truthiness controversies and weaponizing of his field for political purposes, in places like, say, Texas:

    One of my graduate students is interviewing for a history job at a public institution in Texas and asked me how to respond to a potential question about whether they teach “critical race theory.” Here is what I said, in case it might be useful to others.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    This student’s first comment to me was “especially when discussing slavery, how can you not?” Of course, I replied, but I definitely wouldn’t say that. Here’s what I would say instead.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    I think the key is to (gently!) take issue with the premise of the question and avoid answering directly unless they can clarify what they mean by CRT. Start by saying that you’re not entirely sure what they have in mind when they bring up CRT.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    That the unfortunately politicized discussion in the legislature (I’m following the story in Texas, but I have no doubt it’s similar elsewhere) has been focused on a straw man and mis-applied to the teaching of certain subjects in history.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021


    Say that CRT as you understand it is a theory that originated in the field of legal scholarship in the early 1980s with scholars such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Williams and others (they will have heard of none of those people, which is the point).

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    That you're not a lawyer and you don't focus on legal history so you don't really know how it would apply to what you teach. But that you do teach about the history of slavery, about the history of segregation, about the history of racism, about the lives of African Americans.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    That you also teach about women, about Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, etc. That you believe it's important to tell everyone's stories.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    Say that you believe that historians have an obligation to tell the truth about history. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Or something like that. And that you don't need any theory to tell you that you should be honest in teaching US history.

    — Justin Hart (@foredoma74) June 11, 2021

    Actually, this suggests to me that he's a great history teacher as well as a great grad student advisor.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 6:19pm

    Pundits, opinion havers, influencers, others often try to make a name, get on TV, write books and make money by coming up with a new 'bumper sticker' length slogan on some culture war issue,  or a complex issue from any field.

    CRT is a theory, for the pundits to endlessly argue about.

    Robert St. John once said a war correspondent was to "tell people what happened, not what to think about it."

    Our job as citizens and history, is to do the same, know what happened.  Base your thoughts and opinions on facts.


    by NCD on Sat, 06/12/2021 - 7:50pm


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/13/2021 - 7:10pm

     There are similarities between the Palestinian exodus and the Jewish exodus from Arab countries, but there are also differences. I myself wouldn't count the Algerian Jews among those expelled/driven out, although they left because they knew they were going to have hard times.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 06/14/2021 - 6:46am

    10 mins googling Algerian News highlights the complexity everywhere - Arab-Jewish conflict in 30s and 59s bracketed by Arab support during Jewish repression under Vichy France, an increasing internationalizing of Arab-Jewish relations in Algeria due to the Palestinian question and Nasser's nationalizing the Suez canal, the arrogance of French Jews towards/against Algerian Jews, how a murder of a Jewish father & daughter in Oran pre-independence turned into a well-organized massive bloody retaliation by Jewish units against Muslims over 2-3 days, how Algerian Jews came to be (partially self-?) identified as "French" despite centuries in Maghreb, how independence events & lack of accommodation for Jews in neighboring more-developed/westernized Tunisia shaped Jewish expectations in Algeria, and of course the feeling of betrayal in loss of citizenship in 1962 - I'm not sure how staying w/o citizenship would have been a smart & safe move considering French citizenship *was* granted - i guess they might have done both, continue in Algeria as French citizens on visa, but seems risky after recent violence that left 1 million dead.

    But Jewish abandonment of Venezuela seemed much less based on facts on the ground, and more on the simple availability of new refuge in Miami (or for some Tel Aviv), a right-leaning hysteria against Chavez (later more realistically deserved with Maduro), and just a media whipped paranoia and hysteria. 

    And about 5 years ago it seemed huge amounts of hysteria to trump up some attacks in France as reason for all Jews to abandon to Israel, as if attacks and problems are fewer there  there's an industry encouraging Aliyah/return to Israel that can't be denied (though where possible shouldn't be exaggerated either)


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/14/2021 - 7:53am


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/13/2021 - 7:14pm


    by artappraiser on Mon, 06/14/2021 - 7:52am


    by artappraiser on Wed, 06/16/2021 - 3:02pm

    I didn't know there was an old season, going to check it out:

    Also too, he recommends:


    by artappraiser on Wed, 06/16/2021 - 3:06pm

    sometimes trying to fit other people's cultural history into the contemporary woke box, just looks like twisting oneself in knots to end up looking dumb:

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/18/2021 - 3:00am

    now this picture just screams white privilege descended in the colonies of an empire, don't it?cheeky

    (actually what I see: everyone but the upper class still has to pull on their pants one leg at a time and life is not a bowl of cherries but maybe you can find one or two of them once in a while) 


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/18/2021 - 7:42pm

    I was wondering if the mass of Irish-American immigrants, starved out of Ireland by the British mid-1800s, were the racists we were looking for. Similarly later waves of Poles, Italians, Russians, Jews, Armenians... by stepping foot on the continent, they inherit guilt for America's prior behavior?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 06/19/2021 - 5:02am

    Related to this, "Excavation completed at mass shooting site from Stalin’s Great Terror", https://t.co/kdgr8VHhCe https://t.co/Kea5ljgwPz

    — Steve Light (@guitarnboots) June 18, 2021

    beware, of course, that WSWS has it's own axe to grind in the report here.

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/18/2021 - 7:50pm

    French missionaries tested the colony’s commitment to tolerance. In 1742, a Protestant minister in New Jersey, Rev. Colin Campbell, complained that Quakerism in Pennsylvania harbored a threat worse than a brood of vipers: “a nursery of Jesuits.”

    Along the banks of the Conestoga River, German Seventh Day Baptists, colorfully known as Dunkards, settled and established family farms. Among the Dunkards was Johann Conrad Beissel, the founder of the co-ed, celibate, vegetarian Ephrata Cloister community. German Mennonite and Anabaptist settlers crafted the Conestoga wagon, ingeniously upturned at each end to prevent goods from shifting during travel. Conestoga wagon drivers smoked long, thin cigars, which gave rise to the slang term “stogie” in American English. The horse teams that pulled the wagons were rigged with bells, from which we retain the expression: “I’ll be there with bells on.” In 1777, a fast-acting Pennsylvania farmer and applejack distiller on his Conestoga wagon saved the Liberty Bell from the British army in Philadelphia and stowed it away in an Allentown church until after the war. 

    excerpts from a fabulous piece -

    For those who stop to listen, the Conestoga River still whispers secrets on her bars, and in her locks echoes the songs once sung in Eden. https://t.co/IhP30dYe2S

    — The New Criterion (@newcriterion) June 18, 2021

    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/19/2021 - 5:44pm

    by Ilya Somin

    "Abolition of slavery was the greatest achievement of the universal principles underlying the American Revolution, and a rebuke to ethnic nationalism... achieved thanks to a multiracial movement that emphasized the universality of the right to liberty..." https://t.co/BaLQrlH4uG

    — Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) June 19, 2021

    edit to add a comment from Friedersdorf that is related:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 12:25am

    But the overthrow of Reconstruction was the nation's single greatest failure.


    by Aaron Carine on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 1:48pm

    Good point for debate but at the same time I can see an opponent arguing that's apples and oranges. As slavery is still outlawed. People are finally actually free to leave and go to a different state, which many eventually did. (And then decades later,come back when things change.) Federalism is hard (see the recent E.U. experiment for more examples on that) and I believe they realized that when they wrote the Constitution. wink


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 3:17pm

    When they freed the serfs, how many decades did it take for them to find a foothold? It wasn't till Bolivar (300 years after Columbus) that slavery was ended for natives and imported Africans in Gran Colombia - how long before they were equal citizens? Brazil freed their slaves 23 years after the Civil Warm - was it with full suffrage, power sharing? Did estate owners go willingly? We've just been through 4 years of what it means for laws to be twisted to other ends - why would we expect different from arguably more primitive people 150 years earlier?


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 4:25pm

    Yes, everyone is capable of bad behavior. And ,maybe , good

    .Occasionally reading the last few pages of the Brothers' Karamazov can be  a change of pace..

    Hurrah for Alexei!


    by Flavius on Wed, 06/23/2021 - 4:14pm

     During the Jim Crow era there was a means of escape(the Great Migration), but it was still a disgrace to the nation that after the South's African-Americans got the vote and a number of other civic rights they were stripped of them. The nation had been making progress and then it was reversed(granted, not reversed outside of the Deep South).

    Someone at the 1619 Project said that preserving slavery was a motive for the American Revolution. I don't think that's true. King George wasn't trying to abolish slavery, and neither was Parliament.

    [the latter has been discussed greatly here - overall not a driving force, but an interesting motivator for slaves hedging their bets]


    by Aaron Carine on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 5:03pm

    Since 1996, the Fordham Institute is  an education-reform organization with one foot planted in Washington and the other in the Buckeye State. Here is their June 17 post talking about their 25th anniversary and what they have been doing over 25 years time.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 4:02pm

    Arkansas history lesson

    "The future is yours"


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 06/20/2021 - 7:58pm


    by artappraiser on Wed, 06/23/2021 - 4:30pm

    just a good thread to explore for the quips, like this one:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/26/2021 - 2:08am

    Thomas Frank skewers historian John Meachem (I'd label him a pop historian, i.e., his stuff is certainly the type of thing Warhol chose for a lot of subject matter!)

    his article here

    Podcast with text summary here:

    The Man Who Loved Presidents - Thomas Frank on The Soul of America

    Host , Guest  on July 9, 2021


    by artappraiser on Wed, 07/21/2021 - 10:44pm


    by artappraiser on Tue, 07/27/2021 - 6:50am


    by artappraiser on Tue, 07/27/2021 - 7:06am


    by artappraiser on Sat, 08/21/2021 - 10:13am


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/05/2021 - 4:42pm


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/05/2021 - 4:45pm

    dupe deleted


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/05/2021 - 5:06pm

    Robert also has pointed to this

    "Thank goodness there is a group of intellectuals prepared to stand up and argue back against the baying woke mob who are trying to rewrite the history not just of the UK but all western democracies."@ArleneFosterUK on @History_Reclaim & the Guy statue.https://t.co/nIRiaEvNyx

    — Save Our Statues -Robert Poll (@_SaveOurStatues) September 5, 2021

    which reports

    Tearing down statues is only one manifestation of this attitude but one of the bright spots of this week has been the announcement that a group of history scholars have decided that enough is enough and they have formed themselves into the group History Reclaimed.

    Thank goodness there is a group of intellectuals prepared to stand up and argue back against the baying woke mob who are trying to rewrite the history not just of the UK but all western democracies.

    Ever since Black Lives Matter decided to target history and try to blank it out from our collective consciousness, many of our national institutions have spent hours ruminating over the issue [....]

    [....] Then came the news this week that after a public consultation the charity which runs Guy's hospital in London, has recommended that the statue of their founder Thomas Guy should be removed from the courtyard of the hospital.

    This is despite the fact that 75 percent of those who responded voted to keep the listed monument in place. Thomas Guy has come to attention because back in the 18th century he made the decision to invest in shares in the South Sea company which transported slaves from Africa across the Atlantic to America.

    He wasn’t a slave trader himself but he benefitted from that trade. Now in the 21st century despite the fact that he used his financial wherewithal to found one of best known and respected hospitals in the world, and contrary to the consultation results, it has been decided that he should be consigned to the back room of history.

    What was the point of the consultation you may ask and indeed will his statue be actually removed even now, as planning permission will have to be given to remove the statue and it is unlikely such permission will be given.

    The charity has put itself in the worst of all worlds – recommending removal against the wishes of the public knowing they are unlikely to be successful in their wish.

    Or do they just want to pass the buck to someone else to make the decision on actual removal?

    and goes on to opine

    The assault on our collective history is so brutish, politically inspired and cack-handed. If activists and charities want to have a debate on the historical context of this country let's have it in a reasoned and open way, looking at the good as well as the bad. Trying to deny and erase history as if it didn’t happen is so wrong.

    We have evolved as a country and society since the 18th and 19th century, thanks to wonderful Britons like William Wilberforce leading the way against slavery.

    The slavery he campaigned against thankfully belongs in the past and we should always reflect on its brutality and inhumanity. Instead of wishing the past was different however we should turn our focus to a much more present issue - modern day slavery.

    What do our institutions have to say about modern day slavery? How can we tackle the fact that people smuggling, drug selling and forced prostitution are here in the UK today controlled by crime gangs with a vice-like grip over many vulnerable and powerless people?

    If people want a cause to rally to surely that is one, they can rush to – harm to people rather than inanimate statues?? [....]


    by artappraiser on Sun, 09/05/2021 - 4:57pm