Zinn & his disciples

[Charles F Abel]

So there is no "big lie"? How about our historical narratives constructing a particular sort of truth, a kind of dream image which is in fat the dream we have and know it is a dream but do it anyway? .

C. F. Abel
Department of Government
Stephen F. Austin State University
Editor-in-Chief, Administrative Theory and Praxis

“The harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language-game.”
--Witttgenstein

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of alice malice
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 5:13 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Zinn & his disciples

That's not an easy trick to pull off. I doubt I'd give it more than a few minutes before I would chuck this book to the curb. If this is the kind of thing Zinn inspires, that's too bad.

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>  In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein goes into detail about the connections between the Brazilian coup/ military dictatorship and the Milton Friedman economic school in Chicago whose proteges were part of the reign of torture. The CIA were big players in this one too.
> On Dec 11, 2014, at 7:32 AM, alice malice wrote:
>
>> 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-br
>> azilian-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
>
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