Yeah, this.
Recovering Alcohipster | CUNY-CCNY employee | @psc-cuny.org delegate | History (MA) | Militant Cyclist Public History Blog: https://halfbakedhistory.substack.com/
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Yeah, this.
Honestly, tired of my “all nation states are fake and we should burn this system down” take getting high fives from most historians, but making anyone outside the discipline think I should be locked in a padded room.
If you post a bad history take we all get notifications to come in and go “Actually no, it’s much more complicated. You see, when…”
You see what happens when you don’t let the creepy sex classifieds have their own section Congress! No one not looking for whatever this crusty old goon is advertising wants to see this, and we used to not have to.
I’ve written quite a few for myself. Things I hope to share at Nuremberg 2.0 when this is over. Here’s one anecdote of these goons though:
Hillary Clinton being “meh” in policy, presentation and practice held her back more than Sanders, Trump, or anyone. What’s frustrating is that going forward the Democratic Party has just doubled down on “meh.”
When I canvassed for Mamdani in May and June, even in neighborhoods with a lot of Jewish people, this was pretty obvious from their responses. But, it’s not obvious when you only surround yourself with a small sliver of NYC’s most elite residents from a small handful of Manhattan neighborhoods.
IMO it looked more like this: “We already all have fancy gold hats and cool scepters! Now, what can we actually SPEND these tithes on?” “I have just the idea.”
People don’t realize in America that “race” on the census all derives from “pseudoscience.” Bad science is engraved in this country’s DNA.
As a Patriots fan it is very odd that the stadium still being named after a mediocre shaving company actually makes it quite unique while everything else is just named after a bank or real estate investment firm.
The Nazis also did a horrendous job controlling the territories they occupied. Resistance was constant because you can’t actually occupy anywhere with just fear. Even the Mongols forged ties with local liaisons before moving onto the next city.
Invading the USSR while it had a totalitarian dictator of its own who would never capitulate until he had to was a blunder on its own long before the megalomaniac meddling became a factor.
Even when they use eugenic pseudo-science, and repeat it as a basis for their ideological beliefs, fascism will always be the dragon on the right from this meme because you can’t be serious to believe that bad fairy tales are real.
Analogy I like to use: Democracy: Everyone votes for the person they think will deliver a better world. Communism: Trust the government will build a better world for everyone. Fascism: Based on a fairy tale we picked, if we get rid of everyone else, the world will BE that fairy tale!
As a New Yorker, witnessing Bogotá’s Ciclovia in person filled me with immense happiness, but also so much envy. Hoping we build that commitment to such a beautiful thing. * I also mentioned this when I complained about New York’s intractable shortcomings re: cycling infrastructure.
American slave owners purposely bred their strongest slaves with one another. Maybe that’s the early modern era, but in America at least eugenics are as old as apple pie.
History lesson: If you want someone to quickly invent a radical new way to do things, just ban the current medium for distributing porn. Works like a charm every time!
You’re idolizing an era that was, at the most, 9 years long and was exclusively available to already well-off white, veteran, males. That “utopia” (which never really existed) was never as widely available as pop culture makes it seem.
Reading about Nazi doublespeak was revealing. To the church: “we are for responsible, conservative, monogamy.” To young German men: “tricksy Jewish guys are stealing the beautiful German girls you’re totally hot and strong enough to be with, if we kill them, women will be all over us! I swear!”
There are already so many things that can set you back before you’ve even had a chance to try and succeed. Wealth, race, gender, where you’re born, that this is a CHOICE to make your kids life harder is gross.
My dad’s younger sisters were both raised this way by my extremely Jehovah’s Witness grandmother. They both ended up overcoming this, with one of my aunts putting herself through college, she is really inspirational for me. But it’s absolute BS that either of them had to put up with any of it.
It was weird to learn as early as 10 years old that “patriotism” is actually very bad. Wish more people heeded that lesson though.
Always think of the people who have to be miserable enough to join Catholicism without the family guilt to do so. Truly, incomprehensibly mad people.
As a New Yorker, Chicago kicks ass. I love it there. Miserable people just hate dynamic cities where they can’t pretend they’re the most important person ever to walk the earth.
The Satmar voting bloc, in Brooklyn and in Kiryas Joel upstate, is frustratingly powerful.
So yeah, when you put it that way it sounds a lot like today! Except instead of saying “based on runes I can’t translate, we’re actually the cool special people from India,” we’re not even that creative.
They’re literally the guy who joins your D&D game with so much ham-fisted fan fiction about his “super awesome and totally unique” character who you just want to punch in the face. And yet somehow a lot of normal German people watched them re-write reality and just went “this is fine.”
I’m trying to think of the last time I visited another country and started chanting pro-American slogans… oh wait I would never do that because I’m not an entitled moron. Even though he says they didn’t. He also says they were “beaten” with no injuries 🤷
Well, Oblivion is proof that a strong, diverse empire is a happier place, provided you haven’t gone to Kvatch yet and gates to hell aren’t spawning everywhere.
Agree 100%. It’s also why continuing to honor memorials to the Confederacy is a sign that slavery is ok. As a historian, I’ll always share and try to teach about the dark past that actually happened. But what we choose to memorialize serves other purposes, and requires thoughtfulness.
Democracy: Everyone votes for the person they think will deliver a better world. Communism: Trust the government will build a better world for everyone. Fascism: Based on a fairy tale we like, if we kill everyone else, the world will BE that fairy tale! Fascism, like Trump & RFK, is stupid.
It's a problem, that to me, always stems from trying to equate Democracy vs. Communism vs. Fascism as a battle between 3 equal challengers, when it's really just this meme:
Unfortunately, people still fully buy that the Nazis were smart and evil. In reality, most of them were a bunch of dumb nerds cosplaying alt-history fantasies to prove they were “totally big strong men and should be treated as such” and that people just… let them. It’s actually quite similar! 🗃️
I think about Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Draft” from Bird by Bird every time I write something new.
People really fully buy that the Nazis were smart and evil. Instead of a bunch of dumb nerds cosplaying alt-history fantasies to prove they were “totally big strong men and should be treated as such” and that people let them. It’s actually quite similar people!
And of course, accusing the guy whose mom was a mildly successful indie film producer of being a bigger product of nepotism than your being the son of the 3rd most powerful person in the state when you graduated high school is rich.
Even if Andrew Cuomo DID put himself through college (he didn’t, his dad was already secretary of state for New York when he graduated high school), college in the 70s cost like $200 a year. So his old corrupt ass can get bent with this “working class” nonsense.
So unsurprising that a woman was the one telling everyone to pay attention to what the rest of the world was doing…
Well anyone saying “traditional medicine” even way back when is a quack. I’m sure there were people in China suggesting that some tea was more effective than scab inoculation.
This is fascinating! I had no idea!
I included the first Middle Ages example that came to my head. But no cutoff for the "Dark Ages" ever makes sense to begin with. Why does a Norman taking backwater England in 1066 make all of Europe suddenly more enlightened? It didn't.
Western civilization is full of people going "how dumb!" over and over throughout history, while they insist on retaining the dumbest practices imaginable because they tell themselves they're so enlightened.
So true. In the 1700s, British envoys to the Ottoman Empire wrote about how people would be inoculated with Smallpox by using the scabs of the inflicted. Of course, they called this dumb and weird. The Ottomans probably learned it from the Chinese who had been doing this for 1,000s of years. 🗃️
To be fair, he was very grateful to his cruel, racist, gun-toting, "Mamaw."
"Remember the thing that almost singlehandedly raised life expectancy from 40 to the late 70s across every country in the world?" "Yeah" "Let's get rid of that and tell people they should drink raw milk."
It is actually wild to see in person. As someone who worked and volunteered on a lot of campaigns over the years, the energy I've seen coalesce around him, especially on the ground in New York, makes this jaded, weathered millennial tear up a little.
I canvassed a lot for Zohran and the feedback I got from...you know... actual people living in New York was so inspirational. I can't wait to have a mayor who serves as a giant middle finger to these assholes. And who is also a genuinely good person and wants to make the city/world a better place.
Me when "tomorrow" comes:
I want them to pay me to write an article about how when I used to have to go work in the Hamptons, I had to deal with all these people and they are the most insufferable P'sOS who have ever lived.
I guess we’ll have to wait another day for the Times to report out a piece on how a serial sexual harasser would be able to work with women Today, it’s a long piece written by a Styles reporter on how rich people in the Hamptons are crashing out over Zohran Mamdani and prefer Cuomo/Adams
Personally I think we should do a variation of genghis khan where we dump him in an unknown spot and then kill the ICE agents that were given the “honor” of taking him there.
I was once an assistant to an old New York executive who acted so gay I don’t think Nathan Lane could actively portray him in a biopic, and yet somehow he still had more straight-guy interests than Trump.
I know it’s illegal to desecrate a grave marker. But, I don’t think it’s THAT illegal for millions of people to **** right next to it. Just saying.
It’ll never stop being funny to me that the racist “manly-man’s” president is a whiny New Yorker who mostly likes songs from old Broadway musicals.
That’s impossible. I’d throw myself out the window!
I saved this post by him from the beginning of the year thinking “holy shit this looks old and dumb but surely he’ll improve a LITTLE.” And somehow he’s gotten worse…
Holy shit. I know a couple of these goons' names because they're dumb enough to say stuff like "Hey Jake" out loud to one another when I'm observing at the Federal courts in Manhattan, but I would love to call them all by their first names to tarnish their outrageous sense of security.
Wait? How far can we take this? Continental drift meant t-rexes are only found in the western hemisphere… “Science Reveals that Lack of T-Rex’s may have helped spark the French Revolution.” Check the scientific data man! It’s true!
“It’s all the stuff that admin and advising should have told you about 5 years ago.”
One of my favorite syllabuses a professor still uses is like 20 pages long, but the last 14 pages are just info and brief descriptions for all the resources students can use at the school to do well. And kids are always like “what are all these” and that prof. goes “this is an MA seminar…”
A friend who covers insurance news tells me often that at their conventions, these people are still totally gobsmacked that no one understands “we’re just the middle men trying to provide a service!” And nah, you guys are actual ghouls.
Is Meta’s goal to create more Chris Chan’s, wtf?
“FIVE camera holes on the back” 😮
Every summer, because I’m staff and no students are there I think “I could still pass as a college kid.” Then the first day of class comes along… lol no way. I look like a professor.
They’re doing this in New Yorks courthouses so egregiously too because they know they’ll be run off the streets when they try to get people that way. They’re just as lazy as they are cruel. Once the courts don’t work they’ll be at our apartment doors more, or wherever else they think is easy.
Having been there, and seeing this exact scenario occur in front of me over a dozen times (the guy who rips the child away is a supervisor fyi), I try to keep emphasizing that this is REALLY happening, and that there are NO rules anymore for them, even the unfair ones from 6 months ago.
I’m 34. Eat shit old man it’s OUR time. (I also work on a college campus and I feel ancient 5 days a week)
And I’m someone who was trained in that discipline to be challenged. So if it’s hard for me to perceive these things that are so different from my own reality, it’s even harder for someone who hasn’t been taught that their reality isn’t necessarily the window into all historical knowledge.
A quick example with Africa, is the concept of “female-husbands.” That’s the best way to translate it into English, but even after I’ve read several books about it, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around, because it’s so different than what I’m used to.
And a lot of things run counter to the classical model that most people take for granted. Which is almost made worse because a lot of pop culture runs parallel with history, but most often poorly.
No I think you’re on the right track! One of the issues with how people opine about history though is that they don’t really like to recognize that new developments in history happen. For instance, so many things have been revealed about African history, and are finally translated into English.
Not even satire anymore… goddamn
God I fucking wish it was so easy. *cries in trying to make sense of limited archival sources in a nearly dead language*
That’s fair! And the person who put it together is a self-described “Science and Health Journalist.” That byline alone should set off alarms!
I can’t wait to make big sweeping virology charges with only “the evolution of mutual linguistic trends in 15th century Spain” as my evidence.
That’s true. And it’s pretty clear in how they feel they reached some level of understanding by reading A book. If my guy had even done a minimal scope of the field literature review on the French Revolution first maybe I’d be willing to give an inch.
I mean, I guess I do understand it. Any historian would challenge their confirmation bias. And then they wouldn’t feel so self important. You would think a “scientist” could put two and two together though and recognize that’s what they’re doing. Alas…
It’s so wild! Why they have to intervene and say “I know better” without ever even asking to collaborate with a current historian who actually… studies that thing… I’ll never understand.
Man, I miss when “Dead Internet” was just a theory.
People on bikes fear that without protected bike lanes, people in cars will “completely kill” them.
Had a girl bring me and a friend to his “tea bar” that used to exist in the village. And I’m sorry, I like tea too, but I don’t care how artistic you are, there is nothing “cool” happening in a tea bar.
Right, and if people actually wanted a cleaner, “safer” city, the parks department would be funded to the hilt. But alas…
At the last game I saw Tom Brady play in, while he was a Buccaneer at MetLife, (I’m from New England sorry not sorry) my wife pointed to a guy far off in the field taking his shirt off and making a scene and said “who tf is that?” And then I had to explain who Antonio Brown was…
At the last game I saw Tom Brady play in, while he was a Buccaneer at MetLife, (I’m from New England sorry not sorry) my wife pointed to a guy far off in the field taking his shirt off and making a scene and said “who tf is that?” And then I had to explain who Antonio Brown was…
It never ceases to drive me crazy that a billionaire will get constantly lauded for building a vanity project like Little Island, but that so many parks in our neighborhoods that need them have no basketball nets, and are also locked up most of the time.
❤️ #Punks are always pro-progress, and governments across the world HATE that. Shameless self-plug:
I’m glad he’s addressing this. But, I truly wish we would all throw out the passive voice “should concern” framing. We’re wellllll past anything being just “concerning.”
It should do a hell of a lot more than “concern” people. But, I guess I’m glad you’re addressing it…
I always tried to imagine, as a historian, how these things actually looked in the places I studied. Even though I’m aware of the “banality of evil,” seeing it in action, from the judges down to the ICE agents has shaken me.
Several of the judges deciding in these cases physically and verbally show their disdain for having to be there. You know, at their job. These people’s lives mean nothing to them. Which is crazy, since they’re not even the worst people in the building and that is how they act.
Having seen some of these judges in action while courtwatching, it is actually hard to imagine judges that are even worse than 95% of them.
Constantly teasing out that diversity of experiences across time and places is what makes history so cool. The Cathars existed in the “Dark Ages,” and the Cathars are kind of fucking rad. Where did those beliefs come from? How did they spread? Just 1 example but a lot was going on then!
One of the most frustrating things about people who still push this, is they can’t imagine history as anything deeper than a map sized view of the world. There were a lot of remarkable things going on all over, all the time. Similarly, a lot of living in the Roman Empire sucked even before it fell…
And of course, I’ve never even met a historian that calls themselves an “expert.” We’re all too damn humble.
I’ll never understand why other disciplines can’t stay in their goddamn lane. If I ever need data from an epidemiologist…I’ll ask! Nicely too! I will however, never write about epidemiology and tell them they did it wrong. History is cool, so everyone wants to be an “expert.” It’s a real catch-22.
It’s wild. I’ve read a lot of books about history in medieval times. A LOT. But it was not my area of expertise. I would never think to correct y’all. It’s so telling that their argument is always “well actually…” and they don’t even cite another historian’s work to back up their point.
Are you saying you don’t believe that this guy’s got the juice?
It's so wild. I would never think to go on a doctor's social media page and be like, "Actually, brain surgery looks like this. sir!" But these people do it all the time because they can't imagine someone who is an expert on a specific part of history knows more about that topic than they ever will.
This was a cool read! I'm 100% on team Brett, though. Historians can say "it looks a lot like this, but it's not a perfect analogy" without being guilty of "chameleonism" or whatever he calls it.
"Eh." I voted for her in the general election and told everyone I knew to do the same, but I don't really want to look back on Hillary Clinton, of all people, and say that's the best we can be.