How would the world be different today if the US had stayed out of the Vietnam War?
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When the book came in the mail I took it out of the box and was stunned by how small it was in my hands. This was my middle school "US History" book. But I had smaller hands when I studied it. I thought I was so sophisticated putting post-it notes and little pencil underlining on the key sections.
I knew I was having trouble in history and really wanted to be a better student.
I remembered the book as something substantial and imposing. So heavy I hated when I had to carry it in my bag. Intimidating because it was the "Honors" history book and it had words like "hegemony" in it that I had to look up.
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How would the world be different today if the US had stayed out of the Vietnam War?
I know very little about this war and wouldn't mind maybe reading a book about it. But I don't know where to start. I'd love something that added context without pushing a political agenda. So I don't want an anti-communist book, or really even an explicitly ani-capitalist one. I'd like to think I could understand the power vectors and their impact on ordinary people. This is hard to do!
How about David Halberstam's 1972 book about the origins of the war, "The Best and the Brightest"?
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"Don't worry about the recent history that has shaped the world you live in, nothing important has happened in the last 50 years."
I didn't buy that line either. Come on man.
@futurebird yeah! Then why does even talking about it make my uncles and grandpa make faces and start pontificating? Clearly something’s up and I’d rather know what it is then stumble into an argument!
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I won't call the book "trash" ... most of what was in it was true. However, it just didn't contain very much.
This was a "progressive" US history from the 80s. I went to a very liberal school. We even read a few chapters from Howard Zinn once. But even so there were many things obscured and omitted.
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@futurebird yeah! Then why does even talking about it make my uncles and grandpa make faces and start pontificating? Clearly something’s up and I’d rather know what it is then stumble into an argument!
If we ever get out of this ugly little era we can't pretend that it didn't happen. There is a lesson here.
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When the book came in the mail I took it out of the box and was stunned by how small it was in my hands. This was my middle school "US History" book. But I had smaller hands when I studied it. I thought I was so sophisticated putting post-it notes and little pencil underlining on the key sections.
I knew I was having trouble in history and really wanted to be a better student.
World History
Year 0: Jesus is born.
Year 1492: America is "discovered", to the great surprise of the people living there.
Year 1776: Jesus signs the Declaration of Independence, which also declares all people to be free (people meaning white men who are not Irish).
Year 1941: The USA starts killing Nazis. One of the first occassions where other nations agree that the USA killing people is a good idea.
Year 1993: The average american has Internet now (average american meaning upper middle class white men).
...
To be fair, most history is "we kill people because we are better"...
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I was so annoyed by this and shocked that I found my HS history book (bought a copy on ebay) and looked it up. Because, I thought, there is no way that it wasn't mentioned at least... you know maybe they played it down, right?
NOPE.
There were only two paragraphs on the Cuban Missile crisis and they omitted the initial US aggression entirely.
This makes it impossible to understand the event. Turns the story into nonsense.
@futurebird @vikxin @roknrol about how I remember being taught the about the Enlightenment. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door?! [They maybe mentioned that this was very typical and all sorts of people nailed stuff to the church door because it did double duty as the community bulletin board]. It wasn’t until I read Golub’s History of Art (outside of any class context, I was used to Art History being a “joke major”) that I had enough information to see the feather that broke the camel’s back for Luther (the selling of indulgences, shortening the sentences of people allegedly in Purgatory [there appears to be no Biblical text about Purgatory, so it seems to be a Catholic-specific idea]) was a business decision by the Catholic Church, being rich in land but a little cash-strapped by the construction of St Paul’s Bascilica (maybe that one, it was the Renaissance and they were paying for buttresses and frescos and all kinds of acclaimed artists whose work still impresses).
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@futurebird my history classes usually stopped right after WWII. We were out of time somehow. Never got taught even Korean War, certainly not Vietnam. I always wondered why, figured it was less settled and living people still had big feelings and opinions, but felt even as a teen that we were missing out.
@3janeTA @futurebird "big feelings and opinions" I think this is very true, because The Deerhunter is 1978 and Apocalypse Now is 79 and Platoon is 86, so there's an almost decade where Vietnam was basically out of American media conciousness and growing up in that period I feel like it was very deliberate. Like, we lost, then reflected a bit on the loss, decided we didn't like it, and stopped talking about it until it aged a little and was less painful.
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If we ever get out of this ugly little era we can't pretend that it didn't happen. There is a lesson here.
@3janeTA@beige.party @futurebird@sauropods.win
Are we collectively yelling at Fukuyama?
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World History
Year 0: Jesus is born.
Year 1492: America is "discovered", to the great surprise of the people living there.
Year 1776: Jesus signs the Declaration of Independence, which also declares all people to be free (people meaning white men who are not Irish).
Year 1941: The USA starts killing Nazis. One of the first occassions where other nations agree that the USA killing people is a good idea.
Year 1993: The average american has Internet now (average american meaning upper middle class white men).
...
To be fair, most history is "we kill people because we are better"...
@wakame @futurebird @vikxin @roknrol 1776 (further notes): the Italians and other Mediterraneans were also suspect, we’d fold them into whiteness later
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@3janeTA@beige.party @futurebird@sauropods.win
Are we collectively yelling at Fukuyama?
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How would the world be different today if the US had stayed out of the Vietnam War?
I know very little about this war and wouldn't mind maybe reading a book about it. But I don't know where to start. I'd love something that added context without pushing a political agenda. So I don't want an anti-communist book, or really even an explicitly ani-capitalist one. I'd like to think I could understand the power vectors and their impact on ordinary people. This is hard to do!
@futurebird quite honestly, if you're coming in that cold, Ken Burns' documentary is a decent jumping off point.
And no, it's not perfect by any measure, but it does an extremely good job of demonstrating the pressures and mindset which led to five presidents, from both parties, making the place a charnel house.
And in a very short answer: Truman had signed security guarantees to the French to get them to join NATO; France called those in in 1950
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@futurebird Propaganda? Are we talking about the same show? The main character spends an awful lot of time directly stating that they're getting kids killed for nothing. Unless I guess you mean like a reverse kneejerk counter-reaction to just him saying it too much or something?
Yes. Normalizing propaganda specifically. War is in inevitable and unquestionable condition. War and conflict are like the weather, a natural disaster rather than a man made one.
And we must cope, we must survive but never question the entire premise?
Does that make sense?
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Yes. Normalizing propaganda specifically. War is in inevitable and unquestionable condition. War and conflict are like the weather, a natural disaster rather than a man made one.
And we must cope, we must survive but never question the entire premise?
Does that make sense?
@futurebird Alright, I think I see what you're saying. I honestly feel like that's not what they were trying to do (bear in mind the time frame in which it came out) but I'll be the first to admit I'm not really in a position to know for sure.
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@futurebird Alright, I think I see what you're saying. I honestly feel like that's not what they were trying to do (bear in mind the time frame in which it came out) but I'll be the first to admit I'm not really in a position to know for sure.
It's a good show with good writing and the writers did some good work.
But why was it allowed to exist? What role did it play in shaping the story we tell to ourselves?
It's like "Law and Order" and other cop shows in that way. (I love Law and Order, but it's also propaganda) ... this is the effective kind of propaganda, admitting many truths.
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@futurebird Alright, I think I see what you're saying. I honestly feel like that's not what they were trying to do (bear in mind the time frame in which it came out) but I'll be the first to admit I'm not really in a position to know for sure.
I don't use "propaganda" as a synonym for "bad" or "evil" ...
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It's a good show with good writing and the writers did some good work.
But why was it allowed to exist? What role did it play in shaping the story we tell to ourselves?
It's like "Law and Order" and other cop shows in that way. (I love Law and Order, but it's also propaganda) ... this is the effective kind of propaganda, admitting many truths.
@futurebird I'm really not sure. I know there was a lot of anti-war sentiment going around at that time. I honestly feel like it would be enough so that Hollywood would be more willing to cross that boundary. Especially under the guise of "oh it's just a comedy, it's all in good fun!" to get away with stuff they otherwise might not be able to. It definitely managed to get in some points like the general that was racking in massive losses just to keep taking a hill no one needed. And the whole fake appendicitis thing.
But I get that you're talking about normalization, not, say Dragnet. It's really hard to say one way or the other looking at it this way. There is some just accepting it, but I really feel like there is an awful lot of raging against the machine.
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What does a typical US high school education teach about this war?
"The US went to Vietnam to save people from Communism, but it got messy and maybe it wasn't worth it."
That's about it. This must be... not even close to the whole story.
A lot of people including a significant chunk of American soldiers died in this war. When it started the US public supported it. By the time it ended most people didn't, though feelings are "complex."
@futurebird Our history books mostly can't even acknowledge unequivocally that the Civil War was about slavery.
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@futurebird @roknrol Curricula love to leave out the part where the US had nuclear missiles in Turkey
@vikxin @futurebird @roknrol ...OH. Wow. Gosh. That's like how English schools used to teach the Irish famine.
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"But, Mr. Block why would the the USSR put nuclear missiles in Cuba? They had to know the US would be frightened and angry about that?"
"Well they just wanted the whole world to be communist. They really thought communism would work. We don't have time to dwell on this there are six more units we need to complete before the AP* exam."
*AP stands for "Advanced Placement" I was in a 'advanced' history course and I earned an A! My head is empty nonetheless.
@futurebird I remember how amazed I was to learn (not in high school) that the colonial occupation of Vietnam began waaaay back in the 1800s by the French, and it was that occupation that fomented the eventually successful communist state movement led by Ho Chi Minh.
Of course, now, I know I should not have been so surprised about such a colonial arc, as they were and are so common to the story of so many countries and peoples — not least of all our own.
