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How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

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Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#21

Post by jacquesm »

pvg wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #9

[flagged]

Which makes American[*] hatred and belittling Come on, you know can't asterisk your way out of that kind of bombastic, flamewar-inducing generalization.

I recall very clearly a congress that decided to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries' out of spite not all that long ago, with broad support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that is fairly unique to the United States, I haven't seen that sort of sentiment anywhere else.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#22

Post by jacquesm »

techie128 wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #9

[flagged]

The Americans entered the war too late. Ironically it was the USSR that did more to end WW II than the US. The US entered the war when they saw a real possibility of the Soviets defeating Germany and acquiring their technology.

> The US entered the war when they saw a real possibility of the Soviets defeating Germany and acquiring their technology.

Pearl Harbor.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#23

Post by pvg »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
pvg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes American[*] hatred and belittling Come on, you know can't asterisk your way out of that kind of bombastic, flamewar-inducing generalization.

I recall very clearly a congress that decided to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries' out of spite not all that long ago, with broad support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that i…

I recall very clearly a congress

That's completely orthogonal to a comment being pure flamebait.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#24

Post by jacquesm »

pvg wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall very clearly a congress that decided to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries' out of spite not all that long ago, with broad support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that i…

I recall very clearly a congress That's completely orthogonal to a comment being pure flamebait. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

What wording would satisfy your criteria of not being flame bait while still being allowed to discuss the subject?

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#26

Post by ericmay »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16
InTheArena wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who studied American history, this point of view always irks me a little bit. The reality of it is that all of the assumptions that America would have lost without French support is trying to prove a counterfactual. There are a lot of reasons to think that it would not have been so. Every southern campaign that the British had tried to pull off was a disaster. The cost to the British crown of maintaining a…

If I may, I feel a bit irked that we often see these outcomes as binary. Wouldn’t the absence of French involvement be likely to have caused a considerable change in social, political, and economic landscape, regardless of who ultimately “won”? I’ve been thinking about how different paces to the Ukraine war’s culmination (eg. we increase support by 10x tomorrow) could have significant impacts on future attitudes and…

I’m not sure lack of French support would have made a difference with how we understand America today assuming the Americans had still won, but had the British won, frankly, I think the US would have been better off in many respects.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#27

Post by tptacek »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
pvg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes American[*] hatred and belittling Come on, you know can't asterisk your way out of that kind of bombastic, flamewar-inducing generalization.

I recall very clearly a congress that decided to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries' out of spite not all that long ago, with broad support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that i…

I'm sorry, "broad support"? It was a national joke at the time, and remains one of the great national jokes of the past 20 years. It was polled at the time (God help us) and a supermajority reported the idea was "silly". No restaurant chain in the country participated; so far as I know, it was only at the House cafeteria. Come on. I call shenanigans. You can't play the "freedom fries" card. Find another one!

(The implications of "freedom fries" is a much more interesting and curious conversation than the correct words to use to generalize across disfavored cohorts of Americans.)

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#28

Post by pvg »

jacquesm wrote: post #24
pvg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall very clearly a congress That's completely orthogonal to a comment being pure flamebait. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

What wording would satisfy your criteria of not being flame bait while still being allowed to discuss the subject?

They're the site's criteria? You know them just as well as I do, I honestly don't get what you're asking.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#29

Post by jacquesm »

tptacek wrote: post #27
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall very clearly a congress that decided to rename 'French Fries' to 'Freedom Fries' out of spite not all that long ago, with broad support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries That sort of thing is a superficial indication of a lack of appreciation for history and signals that a surprisingly large fraction of the people has no idea of their past. You can try to diminish that but this is something that i…

I'm sorry, "broad support"? It was a national joke at the time, and remains one of the great national jokes of the past 20 years. It was polled at the time (God help us) and a supermajority reported the idea was "silly". No restaurant chain in the country participated; so far as I know, it was only at the House cafeteria. Come on. I call shenanigans. You can't play the "freedom fries" card. Find another one! (The imp…

I guarantee you that on this side of the pond it wasn't received as a joke.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CheeseEatingSurr...

You can downplay it all you want, the fact is that this sort of thing happens and it can't just be shrugged off by 'oh, we were just joking' because of the context in which those things happened. Symbolism is a thing and by having your official governing bodies involved you lose the 'it's just a joke' defense.

Re: How France Changed the Tides of the American Revolution (2018)

#30

Post by unity1001 »

jti107 wrote: post #3

fascinating read…I never realized the French were so involved. without their help it seems we’d have lost to the British

France and Spanish warships were patrolling off the coast of North America and preventing the English from bringing in reinforcements. Various naval battles happened.

But ever more important was the invasion of British Isles that the French and Spanish were preparing. That literally locked down the British army and navy to Britain and made it impossible for them to supply the colonial armies.

So when the French volunteers, Prussian trainers arrived in North America on top of that, the tide of war has changed.

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