Zinn & his disciples

[alice malice]

I like Dilma's response. Sometimes, as Van Morrison says, we cry. Not
like Johnnie Ray...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/world/americas/torture-report-on-brazilian-dictatorship-is-released.html?_r=0

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 7:28 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of my favorites. A woman with only half her ass, that almost as
> funny as Saci, the one-legged cartoon lad.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saci_%28Brazilian_folklore%29
>
> will that redeem us Uncle Remus?
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 6:55 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Read Candide.
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 10:42 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I love Zinn for writing about the people who built America, but I
>>> dislike his simple minded approach to debunking the orthodox history
>>> that, he and his disciples, and so many others ... stuff into the
>>> strawman. The problem, Zinn argues,  is not history but who tells it
>>> and how. Of course, Zinn has an excellent  point: how we tell stories
>>> and who tells them to whom is an excellent point to focus on, as any
>>> high school history student knows.
>>>
>>> They also know that you can't do anything about history. It's history.
>>>
>>> But you can teach people history, and, though I don't think history
>>> ever repeats itself, it does, sometimes, as someone said, echo, and
>>> so, by teaching it we might make things a bit better in the future,
>>> and we might even solve some big problems.
>>>
>>>  I like to think the Beatles had it right when they said things are
>>> getting better all the time. And they are. Zinn's history is too often
>>> focused on how things are getting worse because of who has been
>>> telling us a pack of lies.
>>>
>>> The truth is, this kind of conspiracy theory approach to history, not
>>> muckraking or truth finding, but radical debunking all the lies our
>>> history teaches told us, assumes that we've been lied to all our lives
>>> and, stupid people that we are, we believed the lies.
>>>
>>> First off, this is not 1955. This is not because Zinn awakened us,
>>> but, as Zinn shows us in his history of people, because countless
>>> others made and wrote and spoke history that countered the American
>>> propaganda books and broadcasts, and because  we are not stupid people
>>> who suck in the slime from the TV set and salute the flag. Though we
>>> have our moments of hysteria and jingoism, and even decades of
>>> retrograde (Nixon to Reagan revolution plus Bush Clinton and the black
>>> president ...etc.), we won't be fooled again. So Zinn is history. And
>>> knocking Fox news or these other idiots in the "press" is a waste of
>>> time. Unless of course, you really believe that we are still a nation
>>> of slime sucking idiots.
>>>
>>> The shining light on the hill is capitalism. America is the Empire.
>>> You live in it. I don't love capital anymore than the next poor
>>> person, but you can't fight the Fed, or a coordination of central
>>> banks or the maniacs who run nation states. That's over.
>>>
>>> Buy oil stocks. They are cheap now. Growth will never increase enough
>>> to improve your welfare. You must own assets. Hate it, but don't be a
>>> fool. Hell, you've read Zinn. So even if you were a fool in 1955, you
>>> been educated now.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l