Putting the American Politics script on hold
Added 2023-09-29 11:56:09 +0000 UTCAs advised by the Americans here, I am putting the American politics script away and will read some of the books you recommended for me.
I have to confess something here to you, I just don't know much about American history. It is a massive gap in my education, and it is admittedly a deliberate one. When I was a student I had a choice between the Latin-American history course, and the American history course. I picked the Latin American history course, arrogantly believing I could later buy, read, and study all the books on U.S history and political development... which... I have not done yet.
It is the main reason why I mainly try to talk about European issues, and sometimes talk about South America. There is a big gap in my knowledge of American history. I know more about the Mexican revolution than the American civil war, I know more about Slavery in Brazil than about Slavery in the U.S, and before I make more videos about the U.S, I clearly have to do a lot more learning.
Comments
Media and US history seems much more intertwined than many others and, as a result, the losers can also shape history as much as the winners can… and that… that seems to complicate things…
Dan Ahn
2023-10-02 20:35:04 +0000 UTCI concur with @btcrevo on black rednecks and white liberals... Listen to Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B002V1OJ80?source_code=ASSORAP0511160007 I would also add his book. Ethnic America... It goes through I believe eight or nine different waves of groups that came from Europe and Asia and South America and Africa... And it's just an amazing primer on just how different Americans can be from one another.. just how different someone from Boston is from Louisiana... How difficult it would be for someone from Nebraska to immediately fit in in LA or New York or Seattle... There are just huge cultural imprints that these waves of migration starting in the Early 1800s with the Volga Germans.. almost all the Germans never stayed in cities for very long... They got the fuck out of cities as quickly as possible and tried to get land where they could form a community. Have it be German speaking? Have their own German newspapers have their own German schools.. the 1820 to 1830 wave settled in the Hill country in Texas... And instrumental in making it independent and subsequently joining the US... And it's so critical for the understanding how the US was even able to be conceived and birthed... So I would recommend this great courses lecture series. It is just absolutely fantastic ... Listen to Before 1776: Life in the American Colonies by Robert J. Allison, The Great Courses on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B00DAGL2NA?source_code=ASSOR150021921000V covers all of colonial America... It's absolutely riveting... The South Carolina lecture blew my mind.. it obliterated so many narratives that get passed off as gospel in what passes for US education nowadays which is more like taking a fucking sip from a pig trough and being forced to say it's caviar... And lastly I would recommend... If there's anytime left... Listen to Decision in Philadelphia by James Collier, Christopher Collier on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B008UYH4BG?source_code=ASSOR150021921000V It puts you in the room while they're making the decisions of... Number one whether the articles of confederation the original governing document can be rescued... That was immediate no... They scrapped it and with zero communication or leaks to anyone outside of those founders in the room... They started hammering out deals... They started stitching together separation of powers from Montesquieu... Adams wanted a monarch a really strong king type executive... Jefferson and Madison completely on the opposite side... These debates and conversations were like going to the moon... none of these ideas had ever been tried before... never been cobbled together, in any form... Bill of Rights... Is so fundamentally different from any other Constitution ever implemented.. because it doesn't say the government gives rights,... The government does not give Americans their rights. It does not allow them these rights... They are there already.. they are there when a person becomes into an existence as an American citizen... No one gives Americans their right to freedom of speech... The right to bear arms... The right to a swift trial no judged by a jury oftheir peers... Is the government sacred duty to and protect those rights... It is a obligation of the government to make sure that those rights are not infringed upon... Documents are the aspirational framework for what America desires and plans and strives to be at its best... They are impossible standards for a nation to keep over any stretch of time... but They keep us aiming up... They are the fuel for every time America has renewed itself ... Course corrected .. Remembering where we want to end up... The goals that the founders put in the original Constitution where hammered and and adjusted and compromised. And a molded over the next 160 years... Making good on the promise of true equality under the law... individual value and self worth.. We would never have gotten there. Had those sentiments and values not been set forth in the declaration and the constitution. In prototype form. Really helps you understand why certain things were in the Constitution originally... these constraints... I'm Just absolutely amazed that they were able to do anything like what they ended up accomplishing... Let alone implementing and sustaining over 200 years... Such impossible odds... the math Was so against this group of people.. these groups of people I should say... Because no one called themselves American really until after the civil war.. your individual allegiance was to your state first... in Democracy in America , de toaquwville really. Does a superb job observing an identifying the deep cultural differences between New England and upstate New York from the south and the south from the Mid-Atlantic. All populated by very different people with very different beliefs, very different emphasis of what they thought was being most important thing... America should have had half a dozen Rwanda genocides by now... The fact that it hasn't is one of the longest winning streaks I think any nation has ever had....
Archduke Abino
2023-09-30 07:38:25 +0000 UTC
