I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
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I truly cannot comprehend how any US-American GenXer or older Millennial (or any US citizen currently over the age of...15? 18 at the most?) can be wholly unfamiliar with the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I had to tell him they were in Japan.
"But they're our allies."
I shook my head. "They weren't in WWII."
Our species has got to get curious and dig deeper. This futzing about on the meager surface is juvenile.
Furthermore, GER YOUR EDUCATION THE FUCK TOGETHER, OKLAHOMA.
3/5
@courtcan how does a GenXer or millennial get to 2026 without even knowing the US fought Japan in WWII? Like, Pearl Harbor metaphors were a thing about 9/11!
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@courtcan This dude is too old for anyone to blame Ryan Walters, alas.
@20002ist True, but Walters was just the latest person in charge of education whose priorities were out of whack. He was a symptom of the underlying rot.
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@courtcan I grew up in butt-fuck nowhere, Ontario, Canada, I'm the same age as that guy, and I was totally aware of the basic strokes of WWII and especially Hiroshima and Nagasaki from childhood. There's little excuse for that guy's ignorance. I can't even get my head around it.
And not knowing that Japan was America's enemy in WWII? I cannot for the life of me imagine any American who hasn't heard of frickin' Pearl Harbour, even if you do spell it without the U!
@ZenHeathen I'm sorry we spell it wrong. I'm trying to get them to change to the metric system first.
I grew up in Germany, where our teachers did not necessarily *want* to engage in the uncomfortable process of teaching us about WWII, but they did it anyway. I don't remember *not* knowing all of those broad strokes.
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@ZenHeathen I'm sorry we spell it wrong. I'm trying to get them to change to the metric system first.
I grew up in Germany, where our teachers did not necessarily *want* to engage in the uncomfortable process of teaching us about WWII, but they did it anyway. I don't remember *not* knowing all of those broad strokes.
@courtcan Oh, the United States is officially on the metric system. It's just that you don't *use* it or talk about it.
I grew up in Canada, but with German parents. Of no surprise to you, we didn't talk about it at all. But it's background radiation to everything in my generation. Chornobyl, the Cold War, why "nukes" are even a thing, etc on backward. I didn't think it was possible not to know about that stuff. I mean, half of the Movies of the Week were about that stuff.
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
@courtcan As a bonus he might even get to learn about the world's unluckiest man (or possibly luckiest, depending on how you look at it), Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was in Hiroshima on business on the 6th of August 1945. He survived the bomb at 3km from ground zero, with ruptured eardrums and burns, and went home the next day. To Nagasaki. He was there when the bomb went off and survived that one too, also around 3km from ground zero. He died of cancer, though. In 2010.
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
@courtcan And the argument that "Iran must not have a nuclear weapon" fails to account for the fact that the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella from Asia and from Europe will inspire many other countries, including Japan, South Korea, and probably Ukraine, to develop their own. If wars of conquest become the norm again, everyone will think they need a nuke. "Iran must not have a nuke" is just a slogan that ignores the collapse of the world order that this regime has set in motion and the consequences thereof.
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
@courtcan <sharp intake of breath>
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GET IT TOGETHER, HUMANS. Especially, at this moment, humans of the Oklahoman variety!
5/5
#ignorance
#education
#history
#WWII
#PearlHarbor
#Hiroshima
#Nagasaki
#OklahomaEducation
#EDUCATE
#RESIST@courtcan Do not get me started on George Armstrong Custer
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
So maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to require that any American who visits Japan has to go to the Hiroshima or Nagasaki Memorial Peace Parks.
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I truly cannot comprehend how any US-American GenXer or older Millennial (or any US citizen currently over the age of...15? 18 at the most?) can be wholly unfamiliar with the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I had to tell him they were in Japan.
"But they're our allies."
I shook my head. "They weren't in WWII."
Our species has got to get curious and dig deeper. This futzing about on the meager surface is juvenile.
Furthermore, GER YOUR EDUCATION THE FUCK TOGETHER, OKLAHOMA.
3/5
you’re in Oklahoma?
if you see them or this happens again, ask them:
1. are their family evangelical?
2. were they homeschooled or sent to a charter school?
3. were they raised in a rural-ish area?i often half joke NYC isn't part of USA because this country is basically, at their best, a series of self-segregated silos stringed together by the land. but “self-segregation” is sociology-speak for a cult.
way too many americans are raised in cults without them even knowing.
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I truly cannot comprehend how any US-American GenXer or older Millennial (or any US citizen currently over the age of...15? 18 at the most?) can be wholly unfamiliar with the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I had to tell him they were in Japan.
"But they're our allies."
I shook my head. "They weren't in WWII."
Our species has got to get curious and dig deeper. This futzing about on the meager surface is juvenile.
Furthermore, GER YOUR EDUCATION THE FUCK TOGETHER, OKLAHOMA.
3/5
@courtcan I regret to inform you of how bad the situation is:
Kim Possible :kimoji_fire: (@kimlockhartga@beige.party)
@purplepadma J says that none of the new attorneys she works with knew what was significant about Pearl Harbor. None.
beige.party (beige.party)
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@courtcan I regret to inform you of how bad the situation is:
Kim Possible :kimoji_fire: (@kimlockhartga@beige.party)
@purplepadma J says that none of the new attorneys she works with knew what was significant about Pearl Harbor. None.
beige.party (beige.party)
@kimlockhartga Cripes. Now I really want to quiz my kid, but I'm kind of afraid to. @courtcan
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
@courtcan Very similar to any conversation I have at work that involves current events.
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@courtcan As a bonus he might even get to learn about the world's unluckiest man (or possibly luckiest, depending on how you look at it), Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was in Hiroshima on business on the 6th of August 1945. He survived the bomb at 3km from ground zero, with ruptured eardrums and burns, and went home the next day. To Nagasaki. He was there when the bomb went off and survived that one too, also around 3km from ground zero. He died of cancer, though. In 2010.
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@kimlockhartga Cripes. Now I really want to quiz my kid, but I'm kind of afraid to. @courtcan
@ZenHeathen @courtcan I mean, I know it was decades ago, getting close to a century, but it is such important history.
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I just finished talking to a man I don't know.
He's a Goodwill volunteer.
He thinks the Iran war is justified because "if they get nuclear weapons, they're just crazy enough to fire one."
I said, "Well, our nation is the only one that's been crazy enough to do that so far."
He looked at me blankly.
Further conversation revealed that this man, who is in his late 40s or early 50s, did not know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I was too floored to do more than suggest researching the history.
1
@courtcan Omg
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Up to a point, a person's ignorance is not their fault. We all (with some glaring exceptions) know that there are things we don't know. When it comes to things we do know, sometimes we don't realize there's a gap in our knowledge. We can't know what we don't know.
But in this, the Year of Our AOC 2026, when the global conversation concerns a specific topic and plenty of information lies literally at our fingertips, there's not much excuse for *not* having done the assignment.
2/
@courtcan I once had a conversation with a MAGA family member in which I took the position that if I don’t feel I know enough about a topic to form an opinion about it, I can wait until I learn more before I express a position. They maintained that one *must* have an opinion about every topic, no matter how uninformed.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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This is a perfect example of what happens when your leaders are concerned with putting a Bible in every classroom and stripping school library shelves of books about penguins with two daddies -- instead of being concerned with actually *EDUCATING*.
Last I checked, Oklahoma is still dead last in quality of education nation-wide. And our leaders, despite their words to the contrary, like it that way.
Ignorant people are damned easy to hook by the nose and lead to the slaughter.
4/5
Yes, "Ignorant people are damned easy to hook by the nose and lead to the slaughter."
For sixty years, they've been applying this goal to education in America, wherever the cultists have been able to take power. So now we have three generations of helplessly ignorant people deciding who will hook them by the nose.
Thanks for the bold statements of truth.
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@ZenHeathen @courtcan I mean, I know it was decades ago, getting close to a century, but it is such important history.
@kimlockhartga I think if you asked... well, GenX, for example... the top ten historical events of the 20th century, it would be on basically everyone's list. Yes, kids today aren't Xers, but the importance of the event which (largely) ended World War II and began the Cold War didn't just go away. Like, these kids are aware of the Apollo program, right? The Great Depression? Challenger? Hitler? @courtcan
