Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

[georgie_leech]

I could see how it could be bad if majority and minority identity don't both collapse. Then it's just a pointless 'meet the new boss same as the old boss' lateral shift.

Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing either "minorities influence culture more" or "under new management" as a collapse.

[2D8HP]

How much continuity is there between those pre-Renaissance cultures, countries, and empires and what we have today? Think of it in terms of the continuity experienced by the United States, for example, from 1776 to date.

Um... folkways can be pretty dang old Donnadogsoth:
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer


Now keep in mind that I reject your premises, both that we have sadly lost our cultural heritage, and that it was superior, and I reject that new archetypes are needed.

We still have "hero-gods" (Herakles, Achilles, Luke Skywalker), [lame]

We still have "crafty tricksters" (Odysseus, Danny Ocean) [better]

Rebel Outlaws (Robin Hood, Tom Joad) [still better]

Just plain lucky-ones (Grimms Tales, sit-coms) [meh]

But we have new "tropes" that extol common people team effort that I like better.

You must have seen World War 2 films featuring a Band of Brothers, often anachronistically integrated, in a squad, which I feel are a good fit for the virtues I commend for modern life.

---

In the name of God almighty, let it die!

But that would be rejectimg our cultural heritage, and the wisdom of the past which will make us doomed, DOOMED I tell you!

[Donnadogsoth]

Um... folkways can be pretty dang old Donnadogsoth:

Well, I know that, it's called the Bible, man. And that book you reference looks most interesting. But, you surely see that the countries and empires from 600 years ago have been washed away, nearly as much as the ancient Middle Eastern countries and empires have been washed away.

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer


Now keep in mind that I reject your premises, both that we have sadly lost our cultural heritage, and that it was superior, and I reject that new archetypes are needed.

We still have "hero-gods" (Herakles, Achilles, Luke Skywalker), [lame]

We still have "crafty tricksters" (Odysseus, Danny Ocean) [better]

Rebel Outlaws (Robin Hood, Tom Joad) [still better]

Just plain lucky-ones (Grimms Tales, sit-coms) [meh]

But we have new "tropes" that extol common people team effort that I like better.

You must have seen World War 2 films featuring a Band of Brothers, often anachronistically integrated, in a squad, which I feel are a good fit for the virtues I commend for modern life.

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

[Slayn82]

I think it's wealthier, in both ways the word can be understood. There are many more works, and those works are somewhat locked by copyright to provide profits to the owners, while before the markets for those works weren't very big.

[georgie_leech]

Dagg, you're ascribing a preposterous amount of mysticism to patterns. When multiple cultures throughout history discovered such patterns as counting or squares and they work the same everywhere, it's because they're useful ideas in their own right. It is not because they somehow bubbled up from some deeper layer of thought that supposedly underlies all of reality. Likewise, archetypes aren't symbolic of some mental universe, they're just good story elements and stick around, while "Everyone I know is awesome and we have cool adventures and all the people I don't like have bad things happen to them" fades from memory. Unless your name is Dante.

[Bohandas]

Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing ... "under new management" as a collapse.

Not a collapse, just a different and largely interchangable brand of the same stupid. Like when the tsardom was replaced by the USSR, or when the ussr collapsed. Even the one that ostensibly was a collapse wasn;t a collapse, but it wasn't a meaningful change either, just a pointless change.

[Bohandas]

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

I agree with you that big content has definitely got to go.

[Lethologica]

Do you detect any other differences between contemporary "folk stories" and historical ones? Is there more trash, or more high quality stuff, or both? Is our body of tales fragmented more, more murky, or refined and fulgent, in terms of conveying principle, mythic truths?

At least one of these is easy to answer: our body of "folk stories" or popular culture or whatever you want to call it is way, way, way less fragmented than it was several centuries ago, thanks to instant and effectively free global communication. The only reasons to say otherwise are that we're exposed to much more of the world's culture by the same mechanism, and that we often only think about a vanishingly small segment of historical popular culture/s--indeed, precisely the segment whose principles we consider to have enduring relevance in our own culture. Talk about sampling bias!

[SaintRidley]

Whatever pray tell does "majority identity" mean and why would it be collapsing (which suggests that the diminishing of whatever-is-meant by "majority identity" is a bad thing)?

Based on prior statements, the meaning of this decline of "majority identity" business is a way of trying to get past the mods and say how terrible it is that white people are on track to no longer be the majority, but simply the plurality in the U.S. in three years, and that white people should be united to prevent this from happening but race traitors are destroying whiteness. It's all part of the usual poorly-coded white supremacist garbage that comes from donnadogsoth but is just unclear enough to evade a straight ban.

[2D8HP]

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you....

Protocol keeps you from explaining your jargon?

I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge of the old stories to conform to {Rules} made by {Rules}. Hint: Miss Piggy is going to die.

?????

Here, I'll do it for. Google says it's contrasted with Minority Identity. That is, the cultural identity of groups that donot make up most of the population of where they live. So a collapse of Majority Identity is at it's most benign just a change in cultural practices. At it's worst... well, suffice to say that it usually involves the sort of rhetoric that is most definitely disallowed on this board....

Thanks georgie leech!

From that explanation as a Californian who works in and for The City and County of San Francisco I find the fear of a "collapse of Majority identity" absurd.

Suffice to say I have a hard time viewing either "minorities influence culture more" or "under new management" as a collapse.

Agreed.

....But, you surely see that the countries and empires from 600 years ago have been washed away, nearly as much as the ancient Middle Eastern countries and empires have been washed away.

Only 600 years?

Empires come and go but the land and peoples are still there.

I'm of mostly Irish descent, Ireland existed 600 years ago (granted most Irish only speak Irish at school, and usually speak English), but among my co-workers are immigrants from the Philippines, Russia, England, China, and Iran (Persia).

Tagalog is spoken in the Philippines by the descendents of the people who lived and spoke a similar language more than 600 years ago.
The Rus dynasty started from Rorik (an ethnic Swede) in 862, but Russians speak a Slavic, not a Norse language just like the people who were there when the Rus arrived.
The English language in England is from the Germanic invaders in the 5th century, but genetic testing reveals that most "English" are descended from Britons who were already there (genetically the English are virtually identical to the Welsh, the Scots on the other hand have more Scandinavian ancestors, but evenmore Irish and Picts).
China?
Persia?
Those cultures are millennia old.
I think there's for more continuity than you credit.

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

Yes.

Now they're some characters I like from before modernity, Hector, Odysseus, and Robin Hood come to mind, but the 20th century has given us Eowyn and Sam from LotR, Victor Laszlo, Ilsa, and Rick from Casablanca, and Jim Casey, and Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, I like those characters and it's hard for me to imagine pre-modern civilisation coming up with them.

A bit of a request to you Donnadogsoth, please wait until you're my age before you further commit to pining for "Ye Auld days".

I'm also baffled by you criticizing modernity for not advancing Space Travel technology further?

---

Posted after I wrote the rest of my post:

Based on prior statements, the meaning of this decline of "majority identity" business is a way of ..

If what SaintRidley posts is true (and I have no reason to doubt her) Donnadogsoth, than that means you're against my sons existence.

I most definitely have opinions about that.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Is Donnadogsoth defending white supremacy again? Really? Rigth in front of my salad?

[AMFV]

Yes, the Archetypes bubble up no matter what we do. Do you think the anarchic corporate-mammonic state of cultural affairs we have is healthier or sicker than what existed prior to modern times?

I think that in the past people had many of the same problems they do today. They had the same moral issues they do today. "should I lie, steal, or cheat to get what I want" is hardly a new question nor one absent from what I suspect you are referring to when you reference morality culture. In fact one only has to take a look at the development of the UK, even through fairly modern times, to see that "Western" culture is not absent murderous backstabbers or genocide or religious extremism. Those are products of all cultures. Which ironically suits well to answer your question, there is evil in all cultures, and people will have sometimes have it win stories, sometimes to make a moral point, sometimes because they are hopeless, sometimes because they're bucking to get a deal to write a sequel.


Edit: Also of note, cultures always have intermixed and shared stories. There's a cinderella story in Egypt and one in China, do you think it's likely those developed independently, hardly. I don't think that we have much to worry about in terms of losing our culture. And if you're worried about then then tell the stories of our culture, share our culture, that's how culture remains, not through some ridiculous attempt at extinguishing other cultures.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I think overal the point is.

No one think life sucks now more, only you do and that makes me think... Why do you do? What makes life now so aborent and repulsive to be compared to a time of plagues, blood and burning people alive?

What is bothering you so much? Plz share.

[2D8HP]

Sorry folks in a previous post I misspelled a characters name:

Jim Casey, and Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, .

It should have been been "Jim Casy" not "Jim Casey"

---

2D8, I am also somewhat unclear as to what Donna is looking for, specifically. But I don't think your tone of jeering condescension is remotely helpful.

After finally start to understand some of the "dog whistling", I believe your correct Lacuna Caster, my jovial teasing of some opaque language was not appropriate, other responses were due.

Godwin's law is in effect!

Some of my family history;
My children are "only" half white, and the "white" half is Jewish on my mothers side, wheras on my fathers side my grandmother remembered how in the 1920's the Klan protested her existence because she was a Catholic immigrant.

I already posted that none of my great-grandmothers kin who stayed in Europe (that's all of them except for my grandmother and mother who were born in the USA) survived the 1940's.

My grandfather just barely escaped being sent to bomb Japan, and mostly spent 1941 to 1945 as a test pilot for the US Army Air Corps (he had been a pilot and airplane mechanic in the 1930's), but both my grandfathers little brothers went to Europe to fight, and one didn't survive.

"

"you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

I sense a disturbance in the myth cycles: we are going to experience a Great Purge"...

"majority identity"?, "Great Purge"?, indeed some unclear language is now becoming clear to me.

"

Enjoy hugging those "heritage statues" Donnadogsoth, and please leave my family in peace, I promise likewise.

[Legato Endless]

Enjoy hugging those "heritage statues" Donnadogsoth, and please leave my family in peace, I promise likewise.

A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments

[Vinyadan]

Honestly, I often have the impression that Donnadogsoth would like to discuss things that aren't allowed here, and it leads him to a lot of contorsionism and implied and cryptic stuff.

[Eldan]

Godwin's sake, people. Really?

Just generally. Everything in the last two pages. Really?

[pendell]

A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments

I graduated from JEB Stuart High School, class of '89. There has been a great deal of uproar about the school's name in the past year or so, and they've decided to rename it "JEB" high school, at which i scoff.

I want them to rename it John D. Read high school , after a local person who was an abolitionist, fought with the union, and was killed out of hand by southern soldiers when captured.

Haven't made any headway, regrettably. But why not? He's local, he's also military, and he fought in a much better cause.

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg, and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

I graduated from JEB Stuart High School, class of '89. There has been a great deal of uproar about the school's name in the past year or so, and they've decided to rename it "JEB" high school, at which i scoff.

I want them to rename it John D. Read high school , after a local person who was an abolitionist, fought with the union, and was killed out of hand by southern soldiers when captured.

Haven't made any headway, regrettably. But why not? He's local, he's also military, and he fought in a much better cause.

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg, and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well because he's a part of our history. There are people who owe their lives to the actions of Mr. Stuart. You can't just take a part of your history and remove it just because a person was involved with something unpleasant. When you start doing that you run out of people to honor very quickly. Jeb Stuart was loyal to his state, as were many at that time, and that's something to be celebrated, after a fashion.

I don't think that honoring a man with a clear history of valor is necessarily bad, just because he had one negative trait. After all Mr. Washington supported slavery, and we honor his contributions to our military. Patton had his problems as well, Andrew Jackson certainly did. Most of the people we honor as military heroes had darker sides, but most of the people we honor had darker sides in-general, you can't argue against honoring somebody because they did something you dislike, particularly if their reasons for doing so were duty and honor.

Also, as a side-note, I worked with a descendant of Gen. Stuart, who was very proud of the achievements of his ancestor. And that's something worth noting. Where we come from is important, especially to that group of people. To me it is for example, even though my (many greats) grandfather was wounded in a battle where Jeb Stuart was the principal Confederate general, I wouldn't want his statue removed and he directly was responsible for injury to my family, because remembering the honor and valor of a soldier on the other side in no way diminishes the honor and valor of a soldier on our side.

A Modest proposal for Southern Monuments

As a historical note, there is some pretty strong evidence that the man in the statue in question did not later take on the role that people often believe he did and was slandered in that respect. Another reason that we should not rush to take down monuments is because modern historians are often wrong, particularly when they seek to point fingers because they are not lawyers nor are they experts in actually guaranteeing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they're more masters of conjecture, and that should not be used to sully a name.

[Heliomance]

Edit: Also of note, cultures always have intermixed and shared stories. There's a cinderella story in Egypt and one in China, do you think it's likely those developed independently, hardly. I don't think that we have much to worry about in terms of losing our culture. And if you're worried about then then tell the stories of our culture, share our culture, that's how culture remains, not through some ridiculous attempt at extinguishing other cultures.

My favourite example of this is the Gaelic Argonauts, dating from no later than the 9th century. It's an Irish myth wherein a group of Irish heroes roam around Europe and the Middle East, beating up kings and taking their stuff. Among the treasures that they loot are explicitly three of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. That means that an Irish storyteller must have heard of the Greek myth of the Hesperides, and decided it was cool enough to weave into their own tale. I don't know about the other treasures they steal, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they all existed in the mythologies of the places the treasures were stolen from.

[Bohandas]

Besides, everyone knows that Stuart is often blamed for losing the battle of Gettysburg, and thus the war. Why do we want to name a school after him?

I think you just answered your own question.

[pendell]

Well because he's a part of our history. There are people who owe their lives to the actions of Mr. Stuart. You can't just take a part of your history and remove it just because a person was involved with something unpleasant. When you start doing that you run out of people to honor very quickly. Jeb Stuart was loyal to his state, as were many at that time, and that's something to be celebrated, after a fashion.

All of those things were also true of Mr. Reed, except that he -- along with William Mahone, BGEN (CSA) -- were erased from Confederate history from the period between the end of reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, because they didn't fit the Gone with the Wind/Birth of a Nation view of the south that white southerners of the time looked back to as the "good old days". Union sympathizers -- even when they were regimental strength, fighting for the union against the south -- were inconvenient , and disappeared down the memory hole.

Every society has its events that it remembers very loudly at holidays and with statues. And every society also has a memory hole in which they drop all those things of which they are ashamed and wish to forget. No one will ever build a statue to William Hull , for example.

That actually brings up a point of which the War of 1812 is a good example. The best known thing about that war is the exploits of the US frigates and the battle of new orleans, about which there is a song .

No one sings about our invasion of Canada. Or about, during the civil war, our invasion of Texas .

So , if the US really did keep objective history, I would agree with you, but it doesn't. The South's historical memory is a whitewash of men who fought in a terrible cause , and if we decide it's their turn in the historical memory hole along with Horst Wessel, I should say it's high time. There are other men -- and women -- who fought in that war and who made great sacrifices, who were themselves forgotten and erased. It's their turn in the sun, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

My favourite example of this is the Gaelic Argonauts, dating from no later than the 9th century. It's an Irish myth wherein a group of Irish heroes roam around Europe and the Middle East, beating up kings and taking their stuff. Among the treasures that they loot are explicitly three of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. That means that an Irish storyteller must have heard of the Greek myth of the Hesperides, and decided it was cool enough to weave into their own tale. I don't know about the other treasures they steal, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they all existed in the mythologies of the places the treasures were stolen from.

I would not be surprised by that fact either. It's certainly worth noting that this doesn't make the Gaelic Argonauts a story not worth telling.

All of those things were also true of Mr. Reed, except that he -- along with William Mahone, BGEN (CSA) -- were erased from Confederate history from the period between the end of reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, because they didn't fit the Gone with the Wind/Birth of a Nation view of the south that white southerners of the time looked back to as the "good old days". Union sympathizers -- even when they were regimental strength, fighting for the union against the south -- were inconvenient , and disappeared down the memory hole.

There is a monument dedicated to General William Mahone, a quick Google search finds multiple such statues, perhaps you should consider the level of agenda that your sources have and the amount of work that they are likely to do to perform to dispute their own biases.

http://stonesentinels.com/petersburg...hone-monument/

Interesting that that this took me only 6 seconds to find. Turns out that your biases about what people want to remember are WRONG. And I know that's probably harsher than it should be, but you're tarring and feathering and entire group as racists based on an argument that is flat-out wrong, that is unconscionable and ridiculous, and I am ashamed to be a part of it.

Edit: Also if you're trying to honor somebody you should never demote them.

Edit 2: Also the article destroys it's own premise by actually being aware that there's a monument to Major General Mahone. Meaning that literally the entire article is completely bull****. And it admits that... I mean as far as post-war careers go, we don't focus on those. I mean do we talk about Lee's work as a President of a university, not especially. Pretty much the only post-war we talk about it is Grant.

Every society has its events that it remembers very loudly at holidays and with statues. And every society also has a memory hole in which they drop all those things of which they are ashamed and wish to forget. No one will ever build a statue to William Hull , for example.

Because Hull was an incompetent, that pretty much dampens your memory, he had no successes, and was so bad and so incompetent that he was court-martialed for it. Do you realize how bad as a general you have to be to be Court-Martialed for surrendering your post? Pretty bad. He was historically bad, you can't be remembered for acts of valor if you didn't have any. Stuart did.

That actually bringvs up a point of which the War of 1812 is a good example. The best known thing about that war is the exploits of the US frigates and the battle of new orleans, about which there is a song .

Well the war of 1812 was shorter, less bloody conflict. We also don't talk about the Spanish American War as much, because it was smaller and less bloodied. I'm familiar with the things that you're discussing though.

No one sings about our invasion of Canada. Or about, during the civil war, our invasion of Texas .

Well there's a reason that people want to forget the Western Campaigns on the part of the Union, and that's that they were absolutely brutal to civilians as well as to the soldiers involved. We choose not to remember things that paint our soldiers in a bad light. Which is unsurprising.

So , if the US really did keep objective history, I would agree with you, but it doesn't. The South's historical memory is a whitewash of men who fought in a terrible cause , and if we decide it's their turn in the historical memory hole along with Horst Wessel, I should say it's high time. There are other men -- and women -- who fought in that war and who made great sacrifices, who were themselves forgotten and erased. It's their turn in the sun, I think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

So build them statues! Add to the memory, that's absolutely something I'm for. There's not a limited amount of room in the sun, there's plenty of room, we should remember them as well.

[Lacuna Caster]

Unemployment's actually been way down since early 2016

If you don't know what the majority identity is I'm not going to try to climb past this place's monkey bars of protocol to try to enlighten you.

Is Donnadogsoth defending white supremacy again? Really? Right in front of my salad?

I consider it a fairly neutral statement of fact that middle-to-working-class whites constitute a large fraction of the US population, and that while it's a complex topic, the real unemployment rate is somewhat masked by dropping rates of workforce participation. It's also reasonable to point out that improvements in industrial automation and the general rising bar for technical skills, among other factors, have devastated a lot of rustbelt communities over the past thirty years, and that while the... particular expressions of their discontent are far from constructive, the underlying economic factors behind the phenomenon are not going away and need to be addressed regardless. (In part because those expressions are so politically problematic.)

I would point out, however, that many, e.g, urban black communities have been afflicted by exactly the same social problems, probably for similar economic reasons, and it hit them much sooner and harder given their position a little further down the bell curve of educational attainment. Conversely, many non-whites both within and outside the US have benefitted enormously from precisely the same widening job markets and comparative advantage that gutted the anglo-american working class. So sure- some citizens of the west are in a pickle right now, and I don't think one should be entirely without compassion for their situation, but they're unlikely to actually starve, and humanity as a whole has seen massive reductions in poverty over the past few decades.

In any case I don't see that any of this has much to do with the "decline of western culture"- or to whatever extent you can say it "declined", it's largely a side-effect and not the cause. You can debate the importance of marriage or work ethic or whatever, but none of that is going to boot up average IQs by the 30 points needed to compete with the coming generation of industrial robots. (And even if it did, you'd just get smarter robot designers.) I think this is a technical and economic problem that needs technical and economic solutions.

[Bohandas]

What I think they should do with the confederate monuments is take them out of public squares and put them into art museums alongside other distasteful exhibits like the jar of urine full of religious icons and the machine that makes synthetic poop.

EDIT:
Like literally adjacent to whatever the other most offensive thing in that particular museum is

[AMFV]

-snip-

In any case I don't see that any of this has much to do with the "decline of western culture"- or to whatever extent you can say it "declined", it's largely a side-effect and not the cause. You can debate the importance of marriage or work ethic or whatever, but none of that is going to boot up average IQs by the 30 points needed to compete with the coming generation of industrial robots. (And even if it did, you'd just get smarter robot designers.) I think this is a technical and economic problem that needs technical and economic solutions.

The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.

Also, I've met a lot of really smart carpenters and factory workers, I think that unless you are a part of the culture, you should probably not degrade their intellect. And I doubt that you are a part of that culture.

What I think they should do is take them out of public squares and put them into art museums alongside other distasteful exhibits like the jar of urine full of religious icons and the machine that makes synthetic poop

No.

Because they have a lot more merit. Also why should the works of our ancestors not be on public display, both for bad and good?

[pendell]

There is a monument dedicated to General William Mahone, a quick Google search finds multiple such statues, perhaps you should consider the level of agenda that your sources have and the amount of work that they are likely to do to perform to dispute their own biases.

http://stonesentinels.com/petersburg...hone-monument/

Interesting that that this took me only 6 seconds to find. Turns out that your biases about what people want to remember are WRONG. And I know that's probably harsher than it should be, but you're tarring and feathering and entire group as racists based on an argument that is flat-out wrong, that is unconscionable and ridiculous, and I am ashamed to be a part of it.

Edit: Also if you're trying to honor somebody you should never demote them.

So noted; I don't enjoy the correction, but I thank you for it all the same.

ETA: Nonetheless, while he is somewhat remembered I think my larger point -- that union sympathizers were disappeared down the memory hole because they were inconvenient to the Birth of a Nation narrative -- still holds. He may have a statue or two, but nowhere near on the scale those who fought for the Lost Cause were. When I lived in Northern Virginia it seemed like every other street was named for Washington, Lee, Jackson, and there were statues and monuments everywhere. I had to go to Gettysberg before I could see a monument to a northern soldier that really stuck in my memory.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[AMFV]

So noted; I don't enjoy the correction, but I thank you for it all the same.

ETA: Nonetheless, while he is somewhat remembered I think my larger point -- that union sympathizers were disappeared down the memory hole because they were inconvenient to the Birth of a Nation narrative -- still holds. He may have a statue or two, but nowhere near on the scale those who fought for the Lost Cause were. When I lived in Northern Virginia it seemed like every other street was named for Washington, Lee, Jackson, and there were statues and monuments everywhere. I had to go to Gettysberg before I could see a monument to a northern soldier that really stuck in my memory.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Well, culture is different in the North than it is in the South as far as remembering Generals and Soldiers goes. You find a lot more monuments to World War 2 generals in the South as well. And you find more Douglas MacArthur High Schools in the south than you do in the North (two in Texas at a minimum from a cursory search). So that has more to do with cultural differences in how people in the South view their heritage and history than how people in the North do (although as a counter there are two Eisenhower schools north of the Mason-Dixon).

I know from my experience in the military that Southerners were much more likely to have visited civil war battlefields, particularly those where their ancestors fought, than people from the North. This is my own experience, but it's been fairly confirmed by what I've seen. So the South has a greater degree of focus on that sort of History, even after the Civil War. And before it as well.

And I think again, you'll find that it's the military exploits that are remembered not their post-war careers. Again we don't talk about Lee's career after the war, nor Sherman's, nor anybody else's. So I think that arguing that not talking about Mahone's post-war career is some sort of memory hell is disingenuous at best.

Edit: Also the reason why there are more monuments to Lee than there are to Mahone is because Lee was a General, Mahone was for most of the war a Brigadier, ergo he had less memorable stuff. And he also had less memorable actions during the war, so that's why we see less monuments. If he had as many memorable actions as JEB, or Lee we'd see some difference in monuments honoring him.

[Lacuna Caster]

The only people who I've met who were afraid of robot takeover have never worked with robots. I have worked with factory robots, they suck, they need constant human supervision. They need to repaired, sometimes every single shift if you're running them a lot. They need to be installed, they typically need an operator there to hit the button the instant something goes wrong.

Also, I've met a lot of really smart carpenters and factory workers, I think that unless you are a part of the culture, you should probably not degrade their intellect. And I doubt that you are a part of that culture.

I think you're missing the point. It's not that you need to be especially stupid to be threatened by automation, it's that you'll need to be unusually smart and creative to complete with the latest upcoming robot designs. Low-end lawyers are disappearing, cab and truck drivers are against the wall, the days of fast food vendors and supermarket tellers are numbered, lab technicians, accountants, call centre operatives- the list goes on.

Those factory robots do not suck. They were installed because paying a small number of supervisors and maintenance staff to keep them running is cheaper and more effective than hiring dozens or hundreds of industrial workers to perform repetitive tasks to uniform standards of quality. People love to trot out their John Henry anecdotes about humans doing a better job in specific applications, but the overall trend is inexorable. Robots get a little smarter every year, and humans don't. It does us no good to pretend otherwise.

[thorgrim29]

No one sings about our invasion of Canada.

Sure they do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsfz3f18NxU

Also we have a chain of chocolate stores named after a woman who warned the british forces of an american ambush.

Doubtful historical accuracy (the burning of Washington was done by the british Navy not canadian irregulars for starters, though it was in retaliation for war crimes in present-day Ontario) and hyperbole aside, that's probably down to defeat not being really compatible with the American manifest destiny mythos. In a hilarious example of our cultural differences in 2012 our government tried to make national pride for the war of 1812 a thing... it didn't work out well.

Anyway, unfortunately it seems uncontroversial figures don't tend to make the history books, so the statue thing isn't likely to go away anytime soon., and it's not going to stop with confederate generals, for good or ill. For instance there is an embryo of a movement here in Canada to take down statues of our first prime minister and guy almost singlehandedly responsible for our country existing because he was fairly horribly racist towards First Nations.

I don't have a strong opinion on this other than that Good and Bad are too simplistic to apply to most regular people, let alone the kind of people who end up represented in a statue, and that historical context is important. Not being worse than your contemporaries should matter IMO. Whether confederate general number 22 (seriously how many generals do you need to wage a war? seems like there were too many in the american civil war) or John A Macdonald were or not is not something I feel qualified to answer.