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Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

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Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#551

Post by dragonwriter »

marcusverus wrote: post #548
greedo wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A democracy? Not for Blacks in the South...

Black folks couldn't vote in the North in 1860, either. In fact, when Lincoln started the war by calling up 50,000 volunteers to "put down the rebellion", there were more slave states still in the Union (DC, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) than there were in the Confederacy! Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded only after they realized th…

> Black folks couldn't vote in the North in 1860, either.

That’s overgeneralized. They couldn’t vote everywhere in the North, and in some of the states where they (and sometimes other nonwhite citizens) could they had different terms than whites (e.g., New York imposed a property requirement on non-Whites for voting that wasn’t imposed on Whites.)

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#552

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

hermitcrab wrote: post #501

I went to Vietnam a few years ago. The locals I spoke to had a very dim of view of their government, saying that it was deeply corrupt. It is a shame that the extraordinary sacrifices made fighting the French and then the US resulted in such poor outcome for the Vietnamese people.

> I went to Vietnam a few years ago. The locals I spoke to had a very dim of view of their government, saying that it was deeply corrupt.

I feel like if you asked random Americans on the street how they felt about their government the sentiment would be at least as bad.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#553

Post by pmoriarty »

dionidium wrote: post #542
cies wrote: post #398

The US is repeatedly on the wrong side of history. And they cannot even face that. Red scare. Supporting neo-liberal-to-fascist govts. Yelling democracy but then killing democratically chosen representatives when they do not "suit de US likings". Bitching about some "meddling" in their election when the history is full of US meddling in democratic process of other nations. Giving "foreign aid" to apartheid regimes. U…

> And they cannot even face that. Except for maybe the Germans, Americans have a credible claim to more "facing" of their sins than any other country on Earth. Have you consumed any U.S. news over the last 20 years? Wrestling with our past is practically the national pastime.

"Wrestling with our past is practically the national pastime."

Most Americans don't care about politics, don't care about history, and certainly don't engage in any past wrestling.

It's a relatively small, well educated elite who has that interest. The rest of the population would rather watch cat videos.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#554

Post by dragonwriter »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #515
cies wrote: post #398

The US is repeatedly on the wrong side of history. And they cannot even face that. Red scare. Supporting neo-liberal-to-fascist govts. Yelling democracy but then killing democratically chosen representatives when they do not "suit de US likings". Bitching about some "meddling" in their election when the history is full of US meddling in democratic process of other nations. Giving "foreign aid" to apartheid regimes. U…

While it is true that the US has done morally questionable and practically useless world-policing, it's not as cut and dry as you state. In both world wars, the US was undeniably a force for good, against the extremely evil Nazis, the extremely cruel Imperial Japanese, and helping more monetarily and supply wise in WW1. Furthermore, the US fought itself to free millions of slaves in it's own Civil War. While it's tru…

> Furthermore, the US fought itself to free millions of slaves in it's own Civil War.

Neither side of the Civil War fought to free slaves. One side fought to separate itself to prevent the distant future threat of that happening, the other side fought to preserve the Union (those on that aide interested in abolition had previously decided to defer it to preserve the Union.)

Secession and the rebellion ended up backfiring and also enabling abolition sooner than it otherwise would have happened, but that wasn’t what the war was fought for in the same way as WWII wasn’t fought to establish the UN.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#555

Post by JPKab »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #516
JPKab wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Iran and Guatemala were operations undertaken by the CIA with absolutely no knowledge by the American public. You do understand this right? At no point were the American public consulted by the intelligence agencies when they did these operations. It's rather childish to retcon history by implying that declassified operations that were deeply unethical were endorsed by the American public at the time. These oper…

>"You do understand this right? At no point were the American public consulted by the intelligence agencies when they did these operations." German public was not informed of the gas chambers, and Soviet public didnt endorse the gulag. So thet don't count then?

The German public were responsible for what they knew of and had control of, just like the Soviet public. These were authoritarian regimes.

Nobody is responsible for what they don't know about and are unable to learn about. In what world should they be?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#556

Post by davidwritesbugs »

trhway wrote: post #245
mulmen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. I wonder what the psychology is there. I saw a Plymouth Superbird a couple years ago that had “original damage”. It looked like it had been stolen and taken on a joyride. No straight body panels, scratches everywhere. The story went that some kid got drafted and figured he was never coming home so he spent his life savings on the fastest car he could and tried to have as much fun as possible. I assume it…

pro-Russian rebels of the Donbass war trying out bulletproof vest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ysQqHKYV1o

Arghhh! Where was Darwin when this video was made?

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#557

Post by dragonwriter »

pmoriarty wrote: post #550
marcusverus wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, the US fought itself to free millions of slaves in it's own Civil War. This is simply not true. The North prosecuted the war to preserve the Union. It was only afterward that it was re-imagined as a war of liberation. This reimagination makes perfect sense from a propaganda perspective. After all, the Confederacy was a democracy. Its people voted to leave the Union. The Yanks, for the stated purpose of…

"The North prosecuted the war to preserve the Union." This is known as the Lost Cause myth, and it's investigated in an Atlantic article titled "Why Does the Myth of the Confederate Lost Cause Persist?" From the article: It was then, in the late 1800s, that the myth of the Lost Cause began to take hold. The myth was an attempt to recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family and heritage rather than what i…

> This is known as the Lost Cause myth

No, the Lost Cause myth is not that the North was fighting for the Union, it was that the South was defending against Northern aggressionn rather than to prevent the perceived threat of future abolition.

The aims of opposing sides in a war are often not simple inverses of each other. The South fought for slavery, but the North (especially the slave states in the Union) did not fight against it.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#558

Post by dionidium »

pmoriarty wrote: post #553
dionidium wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they cannot even face that. Except for maybe the Germans, Americans have a credible claim to more "facing" of their sins than any other country on Earth. Have you consumed any U.S. news over the last 20 years? Wrestling with our past is practically the national pastime.

"Wrestling with our past is practically the national pastime." Most Americans don't care about politics, don't care about history, and certainly don't engage in any past wrestling. It's a relatively small, well educated elite who has that interest. The rest of the population would rather watch cat videos.

Sure, but that's true of all people in any country at any point in history. When we say something like, "they cannot even face that," we're either talking about the portion of the population that pays attention to and discusses national issues or we're not talking about anybody at all, pretty much by definition.

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#559

Post by alienthrowaway »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #497
cies wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> goodwill the US had from ending WWII is sadly running out. Sadly? It's about time. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, most of Latin America, many places in Africa. They all have a US hangover. > US felt invincible after it and tried to do the right thing. Serious? What propaganda outlet do you read? They try to help their big biz make max profits. That's all. That's not "the right thing". Yeah sure they sell…

Yet the US is still the premier nation that everyone tries to immigrate to, because as a nation it actually works. The same can’t be said of many of the nations you mentioned, and that was before U.S involvement. The cool narrative of today is to point a finger at the west, but most people I think who espouse this view haven’t had the misery of living under the absolutely nuts regimes that exist in this world.

> Yet the US is still the premier nation that everyone tries to immigrate to, because as a nation it actually works.

Not really - the US looks really attractive from the outside - Hollywood propaganda probably does the heavy lifting. The reality is disappointing. Before I immigrated, I told an American expat friend my plans and he asked me a bewildered "Why?!" and that surprised me a little because "The greatest country on earth" and all that. After my first month in the US, I was legitimately depressed, and I finally understood why he had asked. The reality of living in the US is not close to being as good as it appears from the outside (or as a visitor). Fortunately, I got better at coping but I'm still very much aware of how abnormal and batshit crazy some things are in the US that most Americans are inured to.

The (gross) salary and tech scene are good, but almost everything else is worse compared to other developed nations. I probably would have been better off moving to Canada, Germany or the Netherlands (I might do that yet - the 2020 elections were pivotal in my decision to stay put for now)

Re: Vietnam War images from the North Vietnamese side

#560

Post by pmoriarty »

dionidium wrote: post #558
pmoriarty wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wrestling with our past is practically the national pastime." Most Americans don't care about politics, don't care about history, and certainly don't engage in any past wrestling. It's a relatively small, well educated elite who has that interest. The rest of the population would rather watch cat videos.

Sure, but that's true of all people in any country at any point in history. When we say something like, "they cannot even face that," we're either talking about the portion of the population that pays attention to and discusses national issues or we're not talking about anybody at all, pretty much by definition.

Still, you can't call something done only by a small minority of the population a national pastime.

Watching sports is a national American pastime. So is drinking beer.

Wrestling with the past is not.

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