Microblog Memes

Because people who try to shut arguments down with this project that they can't imagine a scenario where they would actually read a book. It's the same energy as those that invoke the Bible, i.e. never read it themselves, assume it says what their feelies feel

I love doing that. When someone tells me I'm wrong and I need to do some research and then I come back with peer reviewed research papers confirming my side.

Yes, I'm that level of petty about our tiny disagreement.

"Its in the bible" "Go read a dictionary" "The Quran literally says..." "Yeah but the comics say..." "Yeah but in the manga..."

Youre absolutely correct, these people have no idea what theyre talking about.

My favorite is Chinese history where they go:

"Ling Long incident: no one recalls how it began or what happened,150 million dead, half of china destroyed. Famine for 10 years. People ate each other."

And it's just a minor footnote written down by maybe one court scribe in the margins of a book about some greater series of tragedies.

Black Wall Street (and any of the destruction of predominantly black neighborhoods being torn down/flooded/etc.), Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, internment camps

The list is indeed far longer than we can count, and that’s just domestic :’)

Most other rich and powerful countries have done/are doing all those same things too. It's absolutely right to identify and fight against those abuses, but America is certainly not alone in acting like a psychopath, some could argue that it's not even the worst historically (though they're pretty close to the top of the pile right now)

Pretty much grabbed a list of "shit you shouldn't do to other people" and treated it as a TODO list.

I never looked around, never second-guessed, then I read some Howard Zinn now I'm always depressed.

At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown.

Some did. Some were merely opportunists who didn't want the government getting in their way. Most of the US founding fathers were smugglers and land speculators. They didn't like that the US had ended the French and Indian war by promising that in exchange for peace, their colony would stop expanding westwards. That pissed off the founders who had bought land to the west and wanted a return on their investments.

Other American people were just fine with the arrangement with the crown. They didn't want a brand new government, they thought things were fine as they were. These people were either killed or driven off their land by the rebels who wanted a new government, and were forced to head to England or up into Canada.

Just look at the other places that didn't consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England? Hardly. Within a few decades the British gave their local governments more power. Now they all merely have the king as a figurehead and are fully controlled by the people.

Meanwhile, the rebel colonists in the US went only a couple of decades before descending into a civil war. Plus, there's the war of 1812 which, in large part, was due to these people who famously hated tyrants and oppression ignoring treaties and killing off natives so that they could expand westward.

It seems to me that if you look past all the propaganda that is part of the US school system, the British king being a "tyrant" was more of a convenient excuse rather than the actual legitimate reason for the rebellion.

The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against.

And, unfortunately, a lot of people around the world look at it that way too.

The ones waving the flag the hardest.

The USA is just as bloody as its parent, the UK, and they’re both as bad as other nations with an Imperial past.

Or, you know, damn near every single empire or powerful ruler throughout all of human history. The Greek golden age was only possible thanks to slaves working the fields, Rome was similar in this regard.

Eastern nations weren't any better, read up on ancient Chinese culture and all the fucked up shit they did.

Same goes for India, hell they're still trying to end child marriage but still represent like 20-25% of all child marriages in the world.

People love to dog on America, and I'll be happy to point out all the historical examples, but the truth is this is more a symptom of the human condition and less about a nation. Look at the other countries on earth and you'll find plenty of evidence that evil isn't isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.

It's universally a human thing.

I’ve reached a point where I can’t even list all the bs.

The Wikipedia page for United States involvement in regime change is, if printed, 77 pages long.

As a flag it's not very appealing tbh, too many small details as well.