Zinn & his disciples

alice malice alicewmalice at gmail.com
Fri Dec 12 05:08:46 CST 2014


> Many times you have argued that nothing has changed in human history, that human societies and ideas just recycle. If you don't remember writing such things,  think Henry Adams.

He's so confused and confusing, that Adams.



>
>> 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.
>
> It is not Zinn who is full of hyperbolic generalities loaded with subjective judgements. That is you, either too lazy to use substantive examples  and elaborated criticism, or riding on your laurels as an imaginary published historian and critic.

That's some choice you give me. I am lazy.  I'm Sloth incarnate.  But
I like the idea of imagining myself riding on laurels better so I'll
go with that one.


>
>> The shining light on the hill is capitalism.
> apparently you forgot what you wrote yesterday.

Damn that irony! She got me again.


>
> Your argument that nobody can change or challenge the forces of history or Capital is rather contradicted by your Beatles quote.
>  And your argument that Zinn had no effect on his time is contradicted by his substantive and transformative role as an educator, civil rights activist, and anti-war activist. Could this be jealousy?

It could be, but that would be a kind of flattery, and as we all know
that doesn't get very far, though it makes a nice companion for lazy.

>
> On Dec 11, 2014, at 6:42 AM, alice malice 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
>
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