this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Honestly very much not my experience unfortunately. It's amazing how many "dudes into hisstory" are swept in by most stories generals and dictators told people about themselves.
Like yeah was the Slaver general really a "good Christian man", no he was an asshole, who nearly died shitting in the woods like the rest of the world.
So many people romantisize the Roman empire but in reality that was after it really went to shit for most people. ( Which is really hyped by "great man history" problem in which people latch onto specific names and figures instead of actually considering that in reality it was the choices of millions and the circumstances they found themselves in that mattered WAY more then what one dude said to his friends, senator/etc or not)
No the Americas wasn't a "virgin" new land ripe for the takening. Totally undeveloped or unexplored. The forests weren't just bustling full of game and food suspiciously safe for people to eat for no reason.
John Brown reaction to slavery is actually pretty fucking reasonable. Both because it should make you sick to your stomach to see it but also the assholes who did it shot and killed some of his familey.
Etc, etc.
I prefer historical stories about regular people who have done heroic things. There are many stories like that, especially in WWII. The Zookeepers Wife was a good one, but there are the Yugoslav Partisans, who built and protected a secret allied airfield behind Nazi lines, so they could fly out hundreds of Nazi enemies, right under their noses. Or the only high level Nazi informant we had, except FDR was afraid to use his Intel because he didn't trust him, making the spy angrier and angrier that he was endangering his life for excellent Intel that they ignored. Those are the real heros, the ones who didn't have weapons, and risked their lives anyway, simply because they wanted to do the right thing.
It's the same for Sparta. 95% of its people were slaves and 5% were buff warrior dudes. People then idolize the 5% buff warrior dudes because of that movie "300", and completely ignore that Sparta was a hellhole for most of the people that lived there.
Highly recommend David Graeber's analysis on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years
Grossly oversimplifying here but ssentially massive empires like Rome were based on gold currencies, their prominence was during what Graeber calls the "Axial Age". They coincided with massive suffering, but when they collapsed people went back to local debt-based systems of exchange. This was relatively much more humane. Then with the rise of colonialism we went back to gold, empires, and massive suffering again.