Zinn & his disciples

[alice malice]

I'm old and my eyes are bad so I have only so many years of reading
left. Should I really put Klein on my reading list? That's up to me. I
can't, anymore than you can, judge a book by its blurbs and reviews,
but I do it anyway. I have been reading for a very long time, and my
reading is more selective now. I'm sure that a book like Klein's won't
teach me anything, won't excite or entertain or impress me. It might
irritate me. I know more about America than Kelin, or you, Joseph. I
don't need Zinn anymore. Been there long ago and back again.  So,
excuse me if I reject a book I know I won't like. I's not an approach
to history.


On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> The old" I won't read it because I know it's no good" approach to history. So far you have not challenged directly any inaccuracies by Naomi Klein or Howard Zinn.  In fact I could have used Wikipedia for a source on my comment below, but Klein provides thorough documentation.
>
> On Dec 12, 2014, at 6:13 AM, alice malice wrote:
>
>> 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-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
>>>> -
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>>>
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>
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