Things that are so obvious and ingrained that no one even thinks about them.
Here’s a few:
All US americans can go to Mexico EASILY. You’re supposed to have a passport but you don’t even need one (for car/foot crossing). Versus, it’s really hard for Mexicans, who aren’t wealthy, to secure a VISA to enter the US. I’m sure there are corollaries in other geo-regions.
Another one is wealthy countries having access to vaccines far ahead of “poor” countries.
In US, we might pay lip service to equal child-hood education but most of the funding pulls from local taxes so some kids might receive ~$10000 in spending while another receives $2000. I’m not looking it up at the moment, but I’m SURE there are strong racial stratas.
since you’re confused let’s trace the entire context of the conversation from the thread title down to here.
Since the hegemonic perspective of the founding fathers in the US is that they’re democracy-loving freedom fighters, it doesn’t really matter what the British thought. We’re discussing the normalized racism and chauvinism of worshiping a bunch of slave owning proto-bourgeois settler-colonialists. It’s not just a matter of perspective. The shit they did to people had real material consequences. Hence my question to you which you didn’t answer: if I hold you in chains and whip you for not picking cotton fast enough for me, would that just be a “matter of perspective” you smug liberal? That is. If you were actually treated by me the way the founding fathers treated people, would it still be this vague “matter of perspective” or would you be justified in despising me?
If I were a slave, I would probably be less concerned about who exactly is holding the whip, and more so the fact that I was getting whipped. Whether the colonists were considered terrorists or some kind of freedom fighters would be largely irrelevant to me in that case, despite that perspective mattering a great deal to the rest of the world at the time and even still to this day.
John Brown, Nat Turner, and The Haitian revolutionaries would tell you that those two concerns are identical since the latter concern provides you with your target in regards to how to bring about a real material change in the former concern. If you are a slave, and you want to stop being whipped, you run away. But if you want everyone else to stop getting whipped as well, you fight the slave owners. That is how slavery ended in the United States after all. War with the slave power.
So do you think that slavery would have ended sooner if the American revolution never happened? Do you think there was any net benefit to humanity as a result of the American revolution? Is it possible for good men to do bad things or does bad things make them bad people?
Considering the British Crown ended slavery in its colonies in 1833, a full 3 decades before an independent America ended slavery with a civil war? Yes! But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not arguing nor have I argued against the American “revolution,” though I will say it was a bourgeois nationalist independence struggle waged by the colonial ruling class against the ruling class in the mother country because the ruling class in the mother country taxed the commercial profits of the ruling class in the colony too much and wouldn’t let them expand west against indigenous people as quickly as they wanted to. That’s not really a “revolution.” War of Independence is a lot more accurate. What happened in Haiti in the 1790s and 1800s was a revolution, and it involved the oppressed class, the slaves, rising up against the ruling class, their masters. Interestingly the American “revolutionaries” for all their talk of “freedom” and “liberty” and “revolution” and “refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants” (Jefferson quote) never supported that revolution. In fact they were highly in favor of crushing it (along with Daniel Shay’s rebellion), because they were slave owners. And they were in favor of forcing that enslaved people to pay reparations, amounting to most of their annual national GDP, to their former masters, for the better part of 2 centuries. A tax far more tyrannical and impoverishing than anything the British leveled against the likes of the American tobacco planters. And now they are blamed for being poor and underdeveloped despite those absymal economic conditions that was enforced by America and France jointly. Two “democracies” shaking hands as they make sure a state of liberated slaves is in permanent debt… very interesting how these things are framed.
Ask an indigenous American that question. No. In general I don’t think it was a “net benefit” to humanity. And I’m an American. I live here. I am part indigenous but being indigenous is more about culture than blood quantum. I wasn’t raised in that culture, which was decimated long before I was born.
Yes it’s possible for good men to do bad things and vice versa. But I don’t think they were good men in the first place. I think they were bourgeois slave owners who liked to wax poetic about “Freedom” and “Liberty” as though they were the ones who invented these concepts. That’s a big part of the American civil religion. The idea that these men somehow invented the representative republican form of government. Like it was some kind of innovation they brought to the table. Their “net benefit to humanity” as you said earlier. But they didn’t invent that. They were a bunch of Rome revivalists attempting to resurrect ideas from classical antiquity, which is why America loves the fasces and the marble statues and the ionic columns and the latin phrase mongering. And even if they had somehow invented these concepts, they were still realizing these concepts in a completely hypocritical and incomplete way that was obvious to every abolitionist even back then.
While there is certainly some truth to what you are saying, I feel that your interpretation of events and motivations is way too cynical. But regardless, it’s pretty tough to argue that the US has not provided a net gain to humanity, given the advancements in technology, medicine, arts, and so on that could not have occurred in a different society.
I certainly don’t have any good reason to feel optimistic about the past, present, or future of this imperialist, settler-colonial, capitalist nation which would rather start WW3 than give up a shred of its post WW2 hegemony.
What supernatural qualities does the United States have such that, were it removed from history, a bunch of “technology, medicine, arts and so on” would have never been invented? Take the nuclear bomb for example. An American invention. Had America never existed, it still would have been invented, eventually, just somewhere else. Splitting the atom would have occurred to some physicist eventually. Using it as a weapon would have occurred eventually. I’m a staunch materialist about these things. America is just a geopolitical construct. Everything invented in America, by Americans, could have been invented somewhere else, by someone else, under similar circumstances. Technology comes about because a need/desire for it arises, and the materials to create it are available. Not because of the supernatural qualities of the nation.
Oh yes, and there’d be a whole lot less ignorance like this because a whole lot more settler bastards would’ve been turned into mulch about a hundred-fifty years sooner, with less destruction of the Black and Indigenous. There was no net benefit to humanity; only to the coinpurses of British nobility who were sick of being taxed by their crown.
real shit JAQoffs like this only make me think that neither John Brown nor General Sherman went NEARLY far enough.
Removed by mod
whewwwwwww chile do you smell that caucazoid apologia? who let this settler (try to) cook???
Removed by mod
I don’t discuss geopolitics or world history with people who talk like settlers; move along, thank you. You don’t want my answer to that JAQoff second question, either. 🤓 ass
If the guy whipping me was deified and seen as a paragon of a man I’d be fucking livid
Sometimes it’s more about what that person symbolizes. Take George Floyd for instance. By almost any metric he was not a good person, but he didn’t deserve to die, and the way that he died became a symbol, a representation of an entire people who have seen injustice at the hands of the police. George Floyd is practically a saint in the eyes of many, despite all his flaws as a person. So why not the founding fathers?
The founding fathers owned people. Bought and sold them. Denied them basic comforts and dignities. Bred them and then tore apart their families. Raped them and brutalized them.
They engaged in the genocide of native americans. Killing as many as they could and displacing the rest. All so that they could move lines on a map.
To compare these monsters to the progeny of their atrocities is racist. It is unquestionably cruel and unfeeling. Know that I have no respect for you. Know that if I learned we shared any opinion it would cause me to question it.
You want me to ignore all this for America? The country that orchestrated the genocide of native americans? The country that built its bones with the flesh of black people? The primary inspiration for Nazi Germany? The warmongers behind the korean and vietnam war? The country that supported and enabled genocides in bangladesh and indonesia? The country that invaded iraq for oil money? The country that is currently engaged in genocides in both palestine and the congo?
Removed by mod
The only people I dehumanized in that post were slavers. Are you really offended over slavers? Is that worth it to you? George Washington wore dentures made out of the teeth of his slaves, Jefferson was a serial rapist who sold his children into slavery.
You accuse me of tribalism for deriding those who used their race to exploit others. What of their tribalism? Of race and class? Gender? They thought that nobody besides landowning white men should have rights, and you think me hating them for it makes me tribal.
Removed by mod
Yeah, I don’t respect you. You compared a descendant of slaves to a slaver. But I haven’t dehumanized you. I don’t think you understand what dehumanizing is. I don’t have any desire to deny you healthcare, basic needs, safety. I don’t want to hurt you physically. I haven’t compared you to an animal, or objectified you. My disrespect is based entirely your dehumanization of George Floyd. Something you can control. Something entirely based in your consciousness, something human. Opinions can change.
Please justify the things you say. Nothing you say is supported by any logic or reasoning. Telling me I have “blind” hatred for the founding fathers despite listing the reasons why I do, without addressing those points, is just a waste of time.
How are my political beliefs more tribal than that of the racist and sexist founding fathers?
Are you my enemy? All I did was say I disrespect you for dehumanizing george floyd and excusing slavers. We’re just talking. My enemies are defined by material reality, not anger. You could just be another worker. Exploited for the same reasons I am. We could be comrades if you let go of the racism.
Lastly hexbear shows pronouns right next to the username, don’t use “guy” when addressing me.
their criticism of the US founding fathers isn’t “blind” but is based on the stuff they did, and how it completely contradicted their professed values of freedom and liberty.
That was never the point of the protests surrounding his death. The point was to call out police brutality. This was true of all the other anti-police brutality protests before George Floyd as well, regardless of whether the victim had a perfect past or not in each case. The press, both local and national, humanizes some victims of state or corporate violence, while demonizing others. Seemingly without noticing, people too often create tiered systems of moral worth by trying to find “the perfect victim.”
This ill advised search for the perfect Christlike victim, and its corollary desire to smear those with less than perfect pasts, makes humanity conditional, further entrenching negative stereotypes and destructive narratives about entire communities. The difference between a victim of systemic injustice who made mistakes in their life and a person who gets deified despite their mistakes is incalculable. The demonization of George Floyd in the wake of his death was IMMEDIATE. The media did not even wait for his blood to be cold before they started digging up his arrest record, etc. The lionization of the founding fathers on the other hand was overwhelming and immediate, in spite of their slave ownership, and an entire American civil mythology was constructed around that image that for many is still considered unquestionable. That’s the difference. You’re assuming a total symmetry of context between the contemporary victims of systemic violence and the actual ruling class founders of American society.
I don’t assume total symmetry, it’s just an analogy that mostly fits. They are all imperfect men who are elevated because of what they symbolize to some people.
George Floyd wasn’t “elevated.” He was killed, and then people protested police brutality after his death because it was just one highly publicized example among countless similar deaths. To the extent that people drew murals of him etc in the wake of those protests has less to do with him being seen as the best dude who ever lived and more to do with combating the demonization that immediately happened in the wake of his death. Since this sort demonization frequently happens. When Botham Jean was shot in his own apartment by an off duty cop who wandered into the wrong apartment and assumed it was her own, the first thing the news did was point out that he had marijuana in his apartment. This kind of demonization is used to minimize the death and imply that they deserved it. So any “elevation” you perceive is in response to that kind of shit. A man like george washington who owns slaves but yaps about Freedom dying comfortably in his bed and being used as a nationalist symbol for 2 centuries is not the same as a man being killed by a cop and then people protesting his death for a few months. You don’t “assume” total symmetry? Good. Stop comparing the two things as though they were alike in a way that is relevant to the conversation. And no. It’s not an analogy that fits very well at all. You’re comparing the civil mythology of a settler colonial nation to a protest movement against police brutality because they both supposedly “elevated imperfect people.”