Historical Misconceptions That We Hate

Post Reply New Topic

Yes Bill, they had a raw deal too. My BF lent me his book Bury my Heart At Wounded Knee a long time back but it's such heavy reading that I've never been able to finish the whole book. Although he's South African like me, we both have an affinity with the Native Americans and their culture.

And TW1ZTY reminded me of how the Cherokees were deprived of their land in Georgia too. The evils of forced removals happened in South Africa too, so we can identify with that. It's never right when someone enforces their will on another group of people just because they have the power.

To: TW1ZTY

Its not that you're right, or wrong, its that you're going off half cocked in both this, and in the other thread.

Both northerners you encounter, and your southern neighbors, spout simplistic truisms that are messing with your head.

If you're gonna have any opinion you need to be more educated in the contexts.

Its hard to respond without going into a dissertation.

Don't wanna do that, but I will touch on a couple points.

One:You imply that ONLY the Northern US, ever mistreated the American Indians, and that South didn't. You know full well that that is totally ludicrous and laughable. You know full well that that southern hometown of yours was built on soil stolen from the indigenous people, just like every other town in the USA. Andrew Jackson was a southern slave owning planter, and when he was POTUS he defied the yankees in the supreme court when he ordered the eviction of the Cherokees. Not that the south was worse either. Just saying that you know full well that there would have been no north OR south if White America had not steamrolled across the continent pushing the Indians aside in both regions.

Two:About civil war POWs: both sides would be charged with war crimes today. Thirty thousand Union men, and 26 thousand rebels died as POWs. About ten percent of the total 600 thousand plus who died in the war. Similar large number POWs died held on both sides. The south held about an eighth of a million prisoners, the north held about a quarter of million. So more died in southern camps relative to the population of the camps. But the north had more resources, so it had less "excuse". Part of the problem was that the northerners at the time assumed that the suffering of their guys in southern camps was on purpose so they felt justified in mistreating southern pows.

But more important is this: neither side was very good at taking care of the men its own armies. Men who were not POWs and were marching with their own armies would die like flies of diseases. In every war before the twentieth century around the world more soldiers died BETWEEN battles of diseases than actually died in Battle. And our Civil War was no exception.

140 thousand yankees died in battle, but 220 thousand died of infectious diseases. The south didn't have as good records but the ratio was probably about the same. About three guys died of disease for every two who died in battle.



The first world war was the first American war in which the ratio was about even (about 50-60 thousand guys died of disease and the same number died in battle).

In the second world war 290 thousand Americans died in combat, and about 110 thousand died of diseases. Korea had a similar ratio. In Vietnam only two thousand died of things like malaria, 44 thousand died from enemy action (fire fights, booby traps etc), but another ten thousand died in "vehicle accidents". So by the time of Vietnam things had progressed to the point that almost no one was killed by microbes. Everyone lived long enough to...get killed in combat by other humans! Except that now men were dying from trucks flipping over when the enemy wasn't around. But I digress.

My point is that its not one side or the other being evil. It was just the situation of the times.

I'm well aware of the fact that the south mistreated the native americans too, but whatever I need to get some sleep as I'm too tired to argue about this at 1:11 am in the morning.

And I'm sick and damn tired of America's excuse for every atrocious thing they do being "It's all OK because it's WAR! Nobody has to do the right thing in WAR!"

^I know right?

Reality is NOT like the movie Mad Max: Fury Road!

Just because where in a war, and everything becomes lawless and desolate does NOT mean we have the right to turn ourselves into careless, bloodthirsty ruffians.

I mean, if there was no law, there'd be no society, and no society means we would've been still cavepeople.

And I hate seeing dinosaurs and cavemen together on TV.

^Um, okay, look. What was mentioned in the very first stories in the Genesis were mainly for people who don't know how to count to ten. In other words, people were so simple-minded back then to the point where they're literal-minded and not very bright. Explaining scientific methods to those people were an equivalent of trying to teach algebra to a preschooler.

What really sickens me though, I keep hearing people STILL taking things literally today, that they're trying to push others into becoming Christians, otherwise they'll all burn in Hell, and saying that there is no evolution! Seriously, what the heck?!