(Note to the Glibsters: This was originally written with publication in a local newspaper in mind, after I had communicated with the editor of that paper several months ago, with her saying she wanted some different (i.e., not so picayune) editorial material submitted. Well, I messaged her about this finished piece and she never wrote me back, so… her loss is the Glibs’… um… ‘gain.’ Anyway, that’s why it’s written in such a stodgy, formal manner and doesn’t have any cursing or STEVE SMITH references.)
This past Saturday (June 23rd 2018), the U.S. Association for Library Service to Children (or ALSC) decided to rename the award they give now and then to writers and illustrators of outstanding contributions to children’s literature. Previously known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (or Medal), and named after its first winner, the author of the Little House series of books, the honor will now be referred to by the more generic title of Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
This sounds perfectly innocuous, on the face of it. But why rename the award at all, given that Wilder’s books have been widely read and loved by probably millions of readers, most of them children? Well, it turns out that, all this time, the Little House books were racist: they sometimes contained unflattering depictions of Native American and African-American characters.
Certainly, these are not the first or only books written for children which have received widespread success and recognition, but which also aren’t quite acceptable by modern race-acceptance standards. Sam Clemens’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are often cited as containing uncomfortable material, though the latter in particular can be read as particularly anti-slavery. L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, might not have shown much in the way of racism in his fictional work, but wrote several editorials for his local paper, the Aberdeen [South Dakota] Saturday Pioneer, calling for the extermination of Native American tribes. There are others, but these are the most frequently cited examples.
It should be noted that each of these authors was born in the 19th century. Clemens, of course, became famous starting in 1865 when he was about thirty; Baum’s famous first novel of his Oz series was published in 1900 when he was in his forties; and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first book of her defining series, Little House in the Big Woods, appeared in 1932, when the authoress was in her mid-60s.
Each of them, therefore, grew up, and lived their young adult years, in a world completely different from our own: a world without automobiles, television, or even radio, a world where even such mundanities as electricity and indoor plumbing were uncommon, usually reserved for the well-to-do. They lived through the eras of the Western expansion, of the coming of the telegraph and the railroad. They were alive when the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would have been a current news item.
Why, then, do we think it would be a good idea to judge their written work by our modern standards? They lived their lives in a world so different from our own that they might as well have been from another planet. Our era is not only separated from theirs by technology, but also (much more so) by sociological ideas. The idea that, for example, female or gay or black persons ought to receive the same rights and privileges as white men, would have been considered outrageous in the late 1800s. Simply expressing it might get one run out of town on a rail, if not prosecuted on some moral statute.
Much of the world has moved forward on such things, of course, and rightly so. One can hardly expect any society to take a look at its accepted ideals and say, “All right, we’ve come as far as we can; we don’t need to ever change how we feel about anything.” A society’s morals and values are always in flux and changing, moving forward, or at least in one direction or another. To declare that things are now fixed and correct, never to be changed, is ridiculous.
But isn’t that what’s happening now with situations like the award name change? We’re taking an item from a different time, judging it from our current standards, and, finding it unacceptable, tossing it over our shoulder onto the ash heap of history. It’s inevitable that we would view things through a modern lens. But where things become unsettling is when we decide that such items not only fall short of modern sensibilities, but must be purged from our sight altogether – not merely ignored or even seen as a quaint anachronism, but all mention of it wiped out completely.
Certainly, no one is currently calling for the Little House books to be pulled from store and library shelves, or copies burned during some nighttime rally. But this is exactly how such things begin. (Keeping Wilder’s name on the award was apparently considered such a problem that a survey was sent out to members of the ALSC -as well as “ALA ethnic affiliates,” whatever those are- who voted for the change, 305 to 156.)
If this incident were happening in isolation, we could shrug it off as a curious anomaly, chuckle at the stupidity of the ALSC, and almost immediately forget about it. But in the current cultural climate, it isn’t. Everything, it seems, is being dragged through a crucible process of sociological fitness according to currently-favored values (which are subject to change, but not necessarily subject to internal consistency); and very few artistic works of the past, as one can imagine, are coming out unscathed.
This is all well and good, as society’s ideas must, again, keep moving forward. But while it’s perfectly all right to judge things according to modern standards, it’s particularly dangerous to do away with them completely, in the name of whatever banner our cultural betters might be waving currently. Judge them, chuckle at them, dismiss them if you like: these are all perfectly acceptable behaviors. But it is a horrible mistake of hubris to go so far as to start removing them completely – to start dismantling the old to make way for the new. In doing so, one denies others the ability to make that choice for themselves; after all, another person might decide he likes some of the old stuff just fine, thank you very much. And the reason for much of such destruction, it could be argued, might just be to deny others the chance to disagree with the destructor.
There is no scientific barometer for social correctness. The soft “sciences” aren’t like the disciplines which can prove their hypotheses mathematically. In other words, we can never know when we are absolutely right or wrong. That’s why societies change their ideas over time. As things shift, people decide that, well, maybe they’ve been a bit too hard on this or that social group that they’ve been prejudiced against all these years. And maybe the heroes of the previous revolution don’t look quite so virtuous as they used to. People change their attitudes: but it’s far preferable for such attitudes to change gradually, by virtue of logic and experience, rather than by force or shame.
So, judging 19th century authors by modern social standards –standards which, really, haven’t been in place very long– is a bit imbecilic. Could a person of the previous century have been able to see into the future, to our modern day, to see what ideas are in vogue? Of course not. Would she even change her own attitudes, if she could see into our world? The very idea is preposterous. Would she even understand what we’re talking about? More than likely, our society would seem like a mad anarchy to her. After all, she lived in her own world, not ours; so why would we not expect her to generally conform to our values? Again, the entire premise is ridiculous.
But, wait. What if current authors are going to be judged by our future society? What if the cultural critics of, say, 2137 decide that we’re all just a bunch of barbaric rubes? Absent any time-travel technology, shouldn’t we put our finest historians, our most decorated social critics, to the task of figuring out what future persons will think of us, and then change our opinions so as to please them?
No. Because that would be completely stupid.
Stop trying to dismantle the past and rewrite history. Let people make up their own minds. After all, we’re all of us going to be history quite soon enough.
(Note: a pdf outlining the ALSC’s decision-making process can be found here)
Comments
239 responses to “But The People Of 2074 Will Love Me”
Superb piece.
Bless ya.
Seconded – excellent article.
I don’t know about 2074, but in 2078, they’ll be too worried about rads and ghouls to care.
Racist.
Ghouls are just people, it is the damned Super Mutants and Deathclaws we need to worry about
Ghoulification can be quick, but neither of those others will have emerged by 2078.
If I’m racist, it’s in forgetting the raiders – who will have started plundering as soon as there are people who’ve run out of supplies.
Deathclaws were created by the government before the war, but didn’t manage to escape containment until the facilities they were housed in became damaged. No radiation was required for them to exist in fallout cannon, do they’d be a threat almost immediately; assuming you are close to a facility that housed them.
What’s your source on that?
Here you go.
The backstory is expanding in fallout 2, but I’m having trouble finding the actual in game text that goes over it.
All right, I’ll accept that.
Now the question is whether the people of 2078 needed to worry about them, because they were still almost legendary by the time of Fallout 1.
BTW–did you see this? Mod for FO4 seeks to emulate FO76 gameplay by replacing NPCs with random griefers, and players will randomly have nukes dropped nearby.
I have not, but unless there is a 100% offline mode, I’m not going to buy 76.
My pattern of playing the series for the past few titles has been “Play through vanilla — add mods for new playthrough — add more mods — add absurd mods until the game is unrecognizable or it CTDs”
Having to break that cycle for the sake of being harrassed by people I don’t want to interact with is unacceptable.
Like I said, it depends on how close you are to a facility that housed them. It took a free decades for them to spread out across the continent. Since they haven’t covered exactly where they were housed, or if they were in multiple locations, which seems likely, it’s hard to say for certain. They were considered legendary during fallout 1, but there wasn’t much of an information network as trade and movement was limited. They could have been fairly widespread, but left few enough survivors that few people knew about them and the ones that did didn’t interact with others very much. It wasn’t until larger above ground settlements that had trade with far flung regions appeared by the time of fallout 2 that they were accepted as fact.
You know what this immersive, story-driven sandbox RPG needs? Loads of CoD mechanics.
A lot of the series’ baddies were FEV creations, no? Super Mutants, for one.
There has to be some question about the volume of super mutants in the wild before the Master reached Mariposa. As for the Institute’s ‘discarded’ super mutants, we don’t have much of a firm date on when they began getting released.
Reading sources (which I shouldn’t do from work) it appears that Vault 87 actually produced the first Super Mutants to get into the wild, starting almost immediately after the bombs fell. Mariposa came next after the Master fell in the vat, and the Institute came last, restarting their program in 2178.
We need to put warnings on these books just like we do with cigarettes.
“Warning: Exposure to unmutual ideas and non-PC historical facts may lead to unpersoning.”
When I was in ninth grade, I had a little, grey-haired, old lady for a literature teacher. She was quite a hoot. Occasionally, she would read from books or tell stories from memory at the end of class. She was always entertaining.
One day, in late spring, she told the story of Little Black Sambo. Within days, the black kids were picketing the school. She was forced to retire within a week.
This had a lasting impression on me.
I’m old enough to remember Sambo’s restaurants. The ones in my area all became Denny’s at some point around the time I finished high school.
I can’t imagine the outrage if someone tried to open a restaurant named Sambo’s nowadays.
I had forgotten about that. The restaurants existed for decade or so after my teacher was run out of a job.
Little Sambo’s was the token racist next to Coon Chicken Inn.
The Sambo’s in Santa Barbara (last remaining one, I think) had a light skinned, pink-cheeked Sambo on all their menus and collateral.
Fun fact: Sambo was Indian, not African.
Many moons ago I had a black neighbor whose (white) wife was pregnant. I was asking him about names.
Him: My wife wants me to name him Samuel!
Me: That’s a great name.
Him: Too close to Sambo.
Me: Hmm… like Samuel Jackson?
Him: Humm….
And the name ended up being?
Hell I forgot the guy’s name. Was 15 years ago and I’m terrible with names unless I’ve met the person 3-4 times.
“This is the hardest challenge in this lifetime. Meditation, yoga, laughter, being kind to yourself and knowing I survived 100% of my past panic attacks help. I also have a psychiatrist and therapist for support. I have good days and bad days. I appreciate the good ones.”
https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1013925457719201792
I hope she gets better.
So, she really is crazier than a shithouse rat. Explains a lot.
Be kind to someone else, it’s more rewarding.
Maybe she should try getting off twitter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_r3uBkrx2w
The Romans to whom we owe a fair bit of our institutions were enthusiastically pro-slavery, but as not all (or even most) of them were dusky-hued, it’s nothing to get your panties in a twist about.
I’ll immediately dive off topic because this is too funny. Please note that the right side of the chart includes Fedor Emelianenko because “Putin has attended Emilianenko’s fights”.
“Dear Lord, please send a band of lefties to a restaurant to disrupt Fedor Emilianenko’s dinner.”
when Randleman spiked Fedor onto his head and Fedor just rolled out and arm barred him, i thought good god that is the toughest SOB on the planet.
I forgot which episode it was, but Dan Carlin made an interesting point in one of his Hardcore History podcasts about how early civilizations adopting slavery was a good thing.
Before slavery, invaders would simply kill and rape (maybe not in that order) anyone they conquered. But with slavery, those invaders realized that the people they just beat were valuable and would let them live on as slaves.
Slavery is the most common historical condition of man. Very few people in history were ever free. Even today, in America, one of the most free countries on earth, we are all partially enslaved by our government.
Slavery is just the things we force each other to do together.
Before agriculture, what else could you do with them?
Before internal combustion engines and other sources of industrial power, how else could you get large amounts of mechanical power without slaves?
You want roads to hold that empire together, you need a shit ton of cheap labor. No giant road graders and other construction equipment.
Or aliens.
Roman roads were built by the legions as military infrastructure.
mmmm…. depends on when and where.
People with a better knowledge of history please feel free to correct me, but my understanding is that in Norse cultures slaves had some very limited rights, and they could be freed and granted status as a member of the community in full standing if their owner decided to let them. In some cases, Roman slaves were effectively more free than plebes, and certainly wealthier, as was apparently often the case with Greek tutors, who would be “owned” but were more like kept men. We refer to both of these conditions as “slavery”, but in truth there has always been (and continues to be) a spectrum of human freedom.
The educated Greek slaves had it pretty good in Rome, but the “barbarian” field slaves were literally just worked to death.
Just proves how backwards the Romans were – letting the degenerate Greeks teach their children led to the collapse of the Empire.
Slavery in history has run the gambit, from chattel slavery in the US south (where the slaves have no more rights than other chattels like a spoon or a cow) up to basically-total-freedom-except-their-wages-go-to-their-owners like some educated Greeks got in Rome.
While slavery is common in history, chattel slavery is not. Most slave laws just so happen to be a product of supply and the skill level needed by the slaves to be profitable. African slave supply was high, and the skill level was low, so you’d expect the conditions to be harsh. Educated Greeks were rare and the skill needed to tutor young Caligula in oratory and law very high, so you’d expect the conditions to be much more mild.
Add this the fact that a complete lack of social mobility can look like slavery to our modern eyes. There were lots and lots of people who where born and were required by law to practice whatever job their father practices. Is that slavery??? Sort of yes, sort of no…
Jonathan Chait is muscling in on my territory with that graphic.
Nice job! This part stuck out for me:
“And the reason for much of such destruction, it could be argued, might just be to deny others the chance to disagree with the destructor.”
I think a lot of this has to do with the view that people are stupid, suggestible infants who, for example, will become instantly racist if they read just one paragraph on the Internet written by the KKK.
Those stupid racists must be molded into the Soviet footsoldiers of the smarter, more equitable future.
Yes, that is such a succinct, spot-on analysis of the most likely underlying motivator for the current memory-holing frenzy.
That is a large portion of it.
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their lives,” Marx wrote, “but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” – Marx
We’re all just products of our environment with no capacity for agency.
No one needs 23 different kinds of deodorant!
Spend 10 minutes in the presence of Warty Hugeman and you will be singing a different tune
They aren’t trying to influence morals and values, they seek to destroy any that are based in tradition.
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”
Yeah. But they have to have a surface reason to do something.
^This. I wish that was paranoid, but it isn’t. During the Cultural Revolution, you could be punished for things such as “being a capitalist running dog” or “being anti-‘Mao Zedong thought’”. Thought crimes were kept deliberately vague, so that people could no longer rely on external, stable standards or their own moral compasses but had to rely entirely on the mercy and guidance of local political authorities, typically young students. Older people in positions of traditional authority such as teachers or government officials were popular targets for self-criticism and worse because the radicals knew that if they could eliminate traditional sources of authority in Chinese society they would be the only ones left standing to decide what the standards were.
They aren’t trying to influence morals and values, they seek to destroy any that are based in tradition.
For a few leaders, probably. The average social justice cadre, on the other hand is probably only mostly in it for the thrill of being a bully with social approval. They get to “show” bad people! And, even much of the popular culture will only fault them for excessive idealism or getting carried away. Most of them are so wildly deficient as human beings that the thrill of being able to destroy other people or exert their control over others is a means to compensate for their own (deserved) insecurity.
One quibble:
The soft “sciences” aren’t like the disciplines which can prove their hypotheses mathematically.
In real science, we prove (or, more accurately, attempt to disprove) our hypotheses experimentally. In math, one proves a hypothesis (or conjecture) mathematically.
But your basic point remains.
If you can’t run a test to disprove your hypothesis, you’re not doing science. So can we take the label off of social science and political science?
At this point, I would advocate that for any questions that cannot be experimentally falsified.
As a poli sci major, I’m totally ok with calling it Political Arts, or Political Sciencey/Sciencish.
I always thought “Political Studies” would be a more appropriate term.
It kind of irks me to hear “science” being appended to all these disciplines. I think I heard someone on here mention that their trade school has a facilities maintenance program called “Facilities Science”. That’s just ridiculous.
Mathematics also can do things that science cannot, as math is based on logic while science is based on empiricism. Proof by contradiction is a perfectly valid techniquein math, but in science falsifying your premise means you fucked up; assuming you wanted to prove your hypothesis rather than disapprove it, anyway.
How do you determine if the outcomes of your experiments support or disprove the hypotheses without math?
I’ve spent the morning running cox proportional hazard models and logistic regressions to do just this.
I don’t know what that means, but it sounds pretty racist. Did any minorities or women contribute to those techniques?
Only if the Jews count
Good, Democrat-voting Jews, or Zionists?
Both.
Or Neither.
Did any minorities or women contribute to those techniques?
A lot of women have contributed to my Cox techniques. For which both I and my wife have been very grateful.
Oh look at Mr. Braniac.
For example, I currently have a hypothesis that converting a particular functional amine to an imine using a particular ketone will stabilize my reaction product. So I run the experiment, with controls, and see if there’s a difference with and without the ketone. If I’m wrong, there will be no stability increase and my hypothesis is disproved.
There’s math only in the sense that I used basic arithmetic to covert molar ratios to weights.
That sounds way more fun than updating someone else’s shitty test script.
I’m having flashbacks to my sister trying to explain her doctoral thesis to me.
If there ever was a time to be able to post gifs on this site, it would be in response to this comment.
gifs on this site led me to disable image animations in my browser.
HAWT
but what are imines used for?
In my case, to prevent massive field failure of a product.
G-d knows what the particular compound OMWC is working on are to by used for specifically, though.
How do you determine if there’s an increase in stability? It seems like that would involve math.
If solution A remains liquid, and solution B turns to lumpy jelly, I think I can safely say that solution A is more stable.
Is this where I can throw accusations of using a racist and/or bigoted classification system for solutions?
The term “stable” seems especially neurotypical and thus triggering.
The discrimination against the lumpy jelly solution seems like fat shaming.
The lumps are not part of the solution – they’re part of the preciptate.
I note that the successful formation of the imine is indicated by a yellowish tinge in a formerly water-clear solution. So I’m apparently philo-Asian, which certainly puts me in the “racist” basket.
that converting a particular functional amine
What’s this got to do with japanese cartoons?
Math is a tool of science. It lets you transform observable phenomena into logical statements that can be compared to the hypothesis. Its recessionary for science, but not sufficient.
‘The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.’
– RAH
That’s probably where the seed of the idea originated in my fevered brain.
you give fuzzy subjects some significant credit in your own argument
If there’s no reasoning involved, why are more-current ‘sociological ideas’ given any greater weight than ancient ones? why do they matter at all?
His wording, not mine. I wouldn’t say they require NO reasoning. But the soft sciences are much more prone to manipulation (i.e., what ideas are currently acceptable or fashionable) than the hard sciences, surely.
sure, but thats a difference in degree, not kind – iow, doesn’t in fact agree with the RAH claim.
i’m a little unclear on whether the argument you make implies some idea of ‘inevitable sociological progress’ (Telos) or not.
e.g. your ‘the future will see us as equally primitive’ point seems to suggest, yes, its inevitable we will seem morally antiquated
but if there’s no telos, what’s to stop the future from backsliding into fashionable barbarism?
I can’t really tell whether your appeal is to an modernist idea of implied-progress (“we can’t judge the past because they’re not privy to our historically-developed reasoning”) …. or purely relativistic, “we can’t judge the past because there is no such thing as moral-progress anyway”
“Those backwards people actually let rabble decide who ruled them” or “that failed experiment in abolitionism” would be an assessment of primitavism from a potential future society that has rejected current-day standards for such things. A prediction of such does not imply inevitable progress, merely an observation of temporal bias inherent in the study of history. People look more favorably on time periods that they believe more closely imitate their preferred standards.
So, concession to moral relativists then.
Lets see if you can get any of the progressive crowd to answer that question.
If the whole point of their belief system is that there is no one universal way to evaluate anything (but in this context specifically moral claims) then why is it that we should reject past ‘sociological ideas” in favor of new ones?
There is no more reason to believe that whatever is in vogue today is any better than what our fore bearers did than there is to claim our ancestors were always correct
That’s my beef with “critical _____ theory” or any of the relativism currently in vogue. If its all just “privilege” or “power” and there is no ethical or moral underpinning for any values, why should I adopt yours rather than just keep mine? I keep going back to the classic statement of multiculturalism by Sir Charles Napier:
Good article. While I can sympathize with an organization wanting to change the name of an award if they no longer favor the honoree, the impulse to damnatio memoriae should always be met with skepticism as it can quickly get out of hand. As you mention, judging the past by the present carries many risks, not the least of which is hypocrisy, since the future will surely judge the present one way or the other (ours will be an era of bigotry or depravity, depending on the way the winds blow). At the same time, if you believe in universal truths there is cause to judge everyone from all times, but even in this event I do believe a measured judgment is in order.
Perhaps it is unwise to name awards after people, or buildings for that matter or put up statues on public areas. We should have more things like “The Freedom Award” and then give it to deserving folks such as Hillary Clinton.
I certainly agree with this when it comes to public roads, buildings, bridges, etc. I mean, naming them after politicians.
Get rid of public roads and bridges and this problem solved itself…
I disagree. We should be naming public toilets after politicians.
Or venereal diseases.
I’m still shocked Bubba hasn’t been unpersoned yet – a rapist and a Rhodes scholar!
Oh, please, people with “D” after their name don’t so easily get unpersoned.
A contrary argument
Look at the men he admires. Now we have to put Emerson on the non-person list too.
The race to find new targets for their ire is part of the process these days. It’s competitive grievanceship.
The “studies” departments reward the behavior of finding new (or old) oppressors, new complaints and ever-new theories of social power imbalances with scholarly approval. There is an entire generation of college degree wielders who believe that the incessant navel-gazing and complaining is representative of higher knowledge.
“Critical” theory will be a stain on human history.
Hopefully it will come out in the wash.
The bible makes many references to slaves. Therefore it should be banned and the authors unpersoned.
It also makes derogatory remarks about the philistines. That proud and noble culture that should be celebrated.
Well, that’s simple, rebrand Planned Parenthood “clinics” as Temples to Moloch and demand 1st amendment protection under religious grounds.
and the authors unpersoned
They tried, but he kept coming back to life.
That was the subject not the authors and even he only allegedly came back once
Tl; dr = sjw’s ruin evetything.
I’m working on a version acted out by hand puppets, but it might take a while.
I think it would work best as a modern Punch and Judy show.
I wonder if this kerfuffle will actually help introduce another generation to the Little House series?
My sister loved the series, but I thought they were excruciatingly boring. So I never got any of them for my kids. If there were still small, I’m sure I would have ordered some for them because of this.
Little Woke-House in the City?
Too problematic. What about all those people who are homeless?
Woke-House makes it seem like you have to live in a house to be woke. The homeless, Mongolians and their yurts, Indians and their teepees would all feel othered by such a book.
You left out the apartment-dwellers. Only the 1% can afford a house in a City worth living in.
/prog
Little Refrigerator Box in the Alley?
Also, Little Persons have a problem with *your* use of the word ‘little,’ and prefer you say ‘differently-sized’ or some such.
My nine-year-old is reading them and is enjoying them a lot.
Also, she asks me. Why do we have to pay taxes? Who gets that money? *Fist pump* Yes, she’s thinking!
The award being renamed made me so sad. She had a profound effect on my life and thinking.
I imagine that every culture in human history thought it was the pinnacle of civilization and that whatever occurred before their time didn’t deserve much consideration. If anything, prior views got condemned for much the same reasons they’re condemned today. I’ll give you odds that some Sumerians wanted to smash the tablets the Gilgamesh Saga was written on because they thought they were blasphemous.
Part of the problem is what we tend to see things as either black or white. Read an article recently which noted that there’s a difference between the conjunctions “but” and “and” when it comes to judging what people do. Martin Luther sparked a much-needed correction to the corruption in the Catholic Church. He was also a flaming anti-semite. Do we disregard the good that came of the Reformation because he hated Jews? Or do we note this deplorable part of his character as being just that – a part – and try to look at the whole person?
The Epic of Gilgamesh was Sumerian in origin, but didn’t really get written down in full before the Akkadians decided to do so.
I imagine that every culture in human history thought
Well yeah, but surely not the Welsh. Not event he Welsh would be that daft.
Peidiwch byth â diystyru stupidrwydd Cymro.
I’d ask if you needed to buy a vowel to complete that but being welsh I know you are too poor for that
He also had an unhealthy obsession with fecal matter.
He was German, goes without saying.
Uffda. The modern teetotalers appear to be preparing the field for their next offensive: Walking while drunk.
I’ll bet ‘staring at their phone’ deaths far outnumber ‘walking while intoxicated’ ones.
“That’s one ticket for distracted walking”
“I wasn’t walking!”
“I saw you take two steps, now that’s another citation for resisting arrest…”
“I wasn’t resisting arrest, dammit!”
BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM
There is truth to walking drunk, but doing anything drunk is going to be more dangerous.
LaCrosse Drunk Drownings
UFFDA! I can’t believe you drunk Sconni’s have a separate river for the Blacks to go drown themselves in!!!!
Yeah, we have the same thing here too. Every fall, there will be a couple deaths from drunk freshmen falling into a river (Mississippi in the Twin Cities, Red in Moorhead).
Twin Cities Indians have to go all the way to Moorhead to drown? And what kind of bigoted name is Moorhead anyway?!?!?!?!!!?!?!
I don’t see skin color UCS. The Red river is where our commies go to drown.
We actually have an entire city dedicated to it.
Watch out for the damn
Also – half a drowning a year?
So, if walking home drunk is illegal, I guess I’ll just drive and save my self the trouble of walking. Statist never understand incentives.
They jumped 27 percent
From 8 to 11!
Nicely done!
Thanks!
a succinct version of this point was made on twitter recently:
*The idiot in question was someone who argues, “AKSHULLY Classical Athens was completely terrible, because slavery and sexism and xenophobia etc“”
Classical Athens was terrible. Aside from robbing their supposed allies blind and oppressing them into subsidary partners of a supposedly equal alliance, they go and fail to capitalize on any of their sophistry or theorizing.
so, like 20th Century USA, just not as rhetorically-adept, then
in case the comparison isn’t clear:
your ‘case for damning Athens’, is more or less exactly what some argue to be the Single Greatest Accomplishment of the Pax Americana
a sample:
fwiw, i don’t agree w/ her analysis.
but i also don’t think the connivances of Athens is particularly disreputable, either in contrast, or in any absolute sense.
I do despise this kind of chopped up long-form twitter post. Do one post and link to the whole farging article, already.
*shakes cane, adjusts onion on belt*
a world growingly dominated by China, Russia, and anarchy
Ok, China is definitely expanding its reach.
But Russia? Give me a break. They are badly overextended even in their nearest adventures, and their economy teeters on collapse. Their influence peaked either 40 years ago, or maybe 5 years ago, but I just can’t see anyone concluding that Russia is actually on the upswing as far as being a regional, much less global, power.
Yeah, but the Russians learned to do more with far less. Look how they were able to swing our election with just a few thousand $$’s in Facebook ads.
Plus they gave us democracy. I’m still not sold on that.
You and Plato too
Problem is, I’m waiting on a philosopher to show up that I would trust to be a dog-catcher, let alone a ruler.
— CS Lewis
Did he ever lay out what criteria he used for that assessment?
I would guess Romans 3:23.
But at its core it is very similar to Tolkien’s opposition to the death penalty. There are some people deserving of it, but no one worthy to administer it.
Well written. I agree on all points.
This reminds me of the removal of the Justice Taney statue from where it sat on the grounds of the State House in Annapolis. There was a statue removed from Baltimore prior, and there’s this small but vocal minority clamoring for the removal of all things Taney, which are, frankly, a hell of a lot. Taneytown, Maryland, for instance, might be in a bit of a pickle.
He’s a big deal in Maryland history, albeit something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, you’ve got the Dred Scott decision where he basically says black people have no rights, but on the other you’ve got Merryman where he says that the president doesn’t have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. He’s a very significant person, historically, and the fact of his being honored in this state many, many times over the years in the naming of schools, libraries, etc., the building of monuments and so forth is also of historic significance. The effect of the Dred Scott decision was horribly immoral, but not an opinion that was terribly unusual at the time. That we’ve grown past that as a people is no reason to pretend that the past never happened, and we rob future generations of the legacy of their own history when we erase the things we find difficult or unpleasant.
“It would give to persons of the negro race . . . the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, . . . and it would give them the full liberty of speech . . . ; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
Excellent article. Extremely well said.
One thing I’d note, with regard to the Little House series. Much of the series takes place not all that long after the Dakota Wars. A fear and loathing of Native Americans wasn’t just some random bit of bigotry. It was a response to actual recent events. Indians actually had pillaged white settlements and killed the settlers in the relatively recent past when the story took place.
Didn’t moral relativism used to be a thing? Or was that just another form of, “What I think is good, what you think is bad”?
If you’re a white cis male then you can do no right, if you’re not then you can do no wrong.
Or perhaps who’s right and who’s wrong depends on where you fall on the totem of oppression.
I believe this totem is actually a multi-dimensional matrix that now requires quantum computing to accurately portray.
It’s alive and well in the universities (and most everywhere else).
Psst. The only thing you are legally allowed to bring up is that the white eyes hung 38 men from the Dakota tribes. You can’t mention that over 500 settlers were killed by the Dakota.
Fun fact: #7 on the list of deadliest school attacks in the U.S. (& #1 not involving explosions or shootings) is the Enoch Brown school massacre that killed 9 children & 1 adult.
I read “empire of the summer moon” a few years ago. It was about comanches in Texas and was very illuminating as to how the whites and Indians got along. I’d recommend that book to anyone who believes in the myth of the noble savage.
Who wrote it and when?
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416591060/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_xo6qBbFE2TAM2
I’m already arguing with the blurb. Colt did not invent the revolver to fight Indians. The Walker Colt was an upgrade to the existing Colt designs for improved one-hit stopping power.
No, Colt didn’t invent the wheelgun for that purpose. However, when the Texas Rangers started issuing Colt revolvers to their men in the 1840s, with great success, they did much to popularize them as powerful weapons in combat.
It’s the pedant in me arguing with this statement in the blurb:
A fella by the name of S.C. Gwynne, a few years ago. It’s a terrific read, and it does indeed take a full-spectrum view of the conflict between settlers and Indians. It most certainly does not whitewash American atrocities and nefarious dealings, but neither does it pander with the usual noble savage bullshit. The book presents the brutality of the Comanche, both towards other tribes as well as white settlers, in an honest manner.
I agree. That’s why I would recommend it. A very good read and it doesn’t propagandize for either side.
Look at it this way:
The Comanches were so bad, they ran off the Apaches.
The reason there were so many Pawnee willing to help the US Army as guides and scouts is because the Army was going after the Comanches, who had nearly wiped out the Pawnee.
This is something that goes missing in the discussion. One day when I really want to take it to Defcon-1 I’m going to get into a debate about illegal immigration with someone and, at just the right moment, say, “So, if humans have a right to migration across borders regardless of national laws, the Indians kinda had it comin’, right? For violating the human rights of American settlers moving west to find a better life, I mean.”
Dude, they were white people and they probably liked the opposite sex. Total assholes.
That is priceless – I am stealing the shit out of that.
SHIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRDDDDDD
*intersectional brain goop coats the room*
Also fun to bring up the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Good point. I don’t see how you can believe both (a) migration is human right and (b) Europeans are evil colonizers. Seems like you ought to have to pick one, but I’ll bet there’s a lot of people who manage to believe both.
A friend tried to post a pro-immigration comparison related to European settlement of the Americas – along the lines of “The Pilgrims and Columbus didn’t need entry visas.” That didn’t turn out so well for he pre-Columbian inhabitants.
Fredric Jameson (Duke sucks) is a leader in the field of applying modern (read Marxist) politics to historical literature. The only difference between him and the “cultural Marxists” is that they use the lens of skin color and sexual identity/preference instead of the old worker/capitalist dynamic.
http://courses.wcupa.edu/fletcher/special/jameson.htm
My eyeballs can only roll so much before they fall out.
But after they fall out, they can roll for, like, ever.
Yeah, but this is accepted knowledge in universities, especially in English departments.
It goes a long way to explain how the SJW’s work, even if they do not understand the philosophical underpinnings of their behavior and are just useful idiots.
I’m totally okay with renaming the award.
Saying that some details in Wilder’s work are ethically inferior to recent consensus is valid.
That does not diminish the our need to read her or Twain one bit. If anything, this is why we need to read her more…..to see where we were and how far we’ve come.
It is mistaken logic to infer in this case that history is being rewritten…..it is mere being infused with more perspective. Her greatness as a chronicalar is not diminshed; the only ding is to some bizarre notion that her naive perspective was somehow perfectly humane and as pure as the baby Jesus….which is a silly impulse in any regard.
Claims regarding the current ‘Ethical Concensus’ are missing satisfactory evidence of veracity, and are often advanced as part of a separate agenda, often toxic and antithetical to previously accepted standards.
Just because they’re prog assholes doesn’t make them wrong every time.
They might accidentally stumble upon a worthy position now and then, but almost certainly for the wrong reasons.
So, what are they right about this time?
I’m not buying, by the way, the notion that we should judge historical figures solely by modern standards. If they are right that “Wilder was totes bigoted by the standards of American campus intelligentsia of the early 21st century”, that is, at best, half-right, and probably not the important half.
If it were happening during a more… stable? less egregious? time period, I’d kind of agree. But it’s clear that the persons pushing for the award being renamed have a definite agenda in mind, and rewriting history fits into that agenda just fine.
Don, if I can ask, do you consider the Little House series a particularly racist set of books? If so, based on what? I mean, certainly, if we have a more enlightened consensus perspective, we should surely be able to identify where the literature of the past fell short of our heightened sensibilities.
One thing I know about SJW’s is that they do not put moral value on art.
Thanks for all the kind words so far. I may try to get this published elsewhere also.
Put it on medium.com and watch heads explode.
I liked it, thank you
Great piece – thank you!
Seconded! I continue to be impressed by the quality of Glib contributions here.
Looking at the list of ALSC medals, I’m predicting more renaming ahead. No way can the two premier annual awards be left named for white males. And then there’s robber baron Carnegie…
That bastard somehow got a building named after himself on every college campus in the country.
My home town was split by a river in to the “east side” and “west side”. The town had one of the rare dual Carnegie libraries, one on each side of town.
The fact that they have all those awards yet singled out only one for renaming swings me entirely against the renaming, as it is quite clear this was not done out of any principle. I mean, they are keeping an award named after “The Odyssey”, which is chock-full of problematic behavior (murder, rape, deception, xenophobia, animal cruelty – and that’s just the hero!), yet find “Little House on the Prairie” beyond the pale? Something’s screwy.
Maybe, or shot across the bow to see how far they can go.
Somebody should ask the recipients of the award if they plan to return them if the name isn’t changed.
There is no way in hell that John Newbery didn’t have unwoke attitudes..
Not counting statements by Bethesda Employees or the Media, has anyone actually said they were excited about the multiplayer aspect of Fallout 76? All I’ve seen thusfar in terms of excitement has been in the form of “New Fallout!” and the criticism has been directed towards the online aspect of it.
Some people are. Most of the ones that I’ve seen being optimistic about the multiplayer are the players that are less invested in the RPG elements of the franchise. They like the setting, and they like playing with their friends, so they like the idea. Must of the players that want a good RPG are against the move.
Disclaimer: I’m firmly in the second camp, and I avoid forums that have a lot of people from the first camp, so my confirmation bias may be at play.
I am in the camp of people who play video games to get away from people. Which I acknowledge could seriously impact my ability to find alternative viewpoints on this issue.
Why would you want to find people who are wrong?
Because I’m attempting to judge the prevalence of opinion in the market.
If there’s no true singleplayer for 76, I’m hoping it bombs and the correct message Bethesda gets is “The market for Fallout games wants Single-Player RPGs”. (Though this is not the most probable outcome, as it will likely succeed based on brand value, with the MP-only follow-up bombing due to the MP nature and the conclusion being “the market has dried up” rather than “the audience wants the old single-player experience back”)
After pre-ordering the collector’s edition of Fallout 3 and being disappointed by Bethesda’s changes to the world (not to mention the quality of the PipBoy). I’ve held off on buying any of the later games at full price. New Vegas I loved, and bought all the DLC for it (and had it came out before FO3, I would have blind purchased the collector’s edition of the next game). Fallout 4… I’m still waiting for the price to fall down to around $10-$15 for the GOTY version.
Adding to that, Bethesda is not known for releasing bug-free and stable games. I don’t see how adding multiplayer on top of that is going to make the problem better. About the only two things they could add to make me even more leery of Fallout 76 is loot boxes, and a real money auction house.
The Bethesda Bugs that are not CTDs are often very funny and never deterred me from their games.
Some of you may remember me lamenting the loss of my dog a few months back. It was a lousy time, but she was old and had been sick for a while, so I dealt with it and moved on the best I could.
Now, very suddenly, my other dog is gravely ill and might not make it. I am not prepared for this to happen again so soon to a dog three years younger that seemed perfectly healthy just a week ago. And, though it sucks to say this, I can’t believe I’ve racked up over a thousand dollars in vet bills already and probably at least double that over the next day or so and yet might still be told that there’s really nothing they can do.
Life sucks sometimes for everyone, but goddamn this year has been horrid so far.
Very sad news, Chip. I feel for ya.
The Dean Beasts are getting a little gray around the muzzle (as am I), and I dread the day. I remember when they came piling out of the car after Mrs. Dean picked them up as 10 week old puppies, one of the first things that crossed my mind was that they were going to break my heart, because all my dogs do at the end.
I just can’t get over the fact that we left her in a neighbor’s care on Wednesday morning as we went to the beach, and came back Saturday evening to find out that she hadn’t eaten in two days and was so weak she couldn’t even stand up on her own. It’s been so very sudden.
That’s awful. You have my sympathy and your little guy has my prayers.
Thank you Gustave. I appreciate it. Life’s little kindnesses, even from people I don’t really know, are the things that help us along in difficult times.
This absolutely sucks, but it’s also a big part of having a dog.
That meme about dogs looking at us like elves is apropos.
And you’re right about that RC – we had been planning on getting another dog around the end of the summer because it was so strange only having one around the house. Now, though? If she doesn’t make it, I doubt I’m getting another dog any time soon. Much as I love em, I don’t think I could handle it yet. Too painful to be reminded of the dogs that left us so recently.
Sorry man
Sorry, Chipwooder.
That sucks.
And thank you to you as well, Scruffy and Mad and Brett. Your kindness is gratefully received.
As for Baum I will say that he wrote those editorials right after Wounded Knee and since he was living in South Dakota it is easy to see why he would think those thoughts. Did he mellow out afterwards? I honestly don’t know.
And the Wizard of Oz movie has problems of its own thanks to what Shirley Temple said about its Producer Arthur Freed…
Ever notice how people on the left are always telling their opponents that they’ll “be on the wrong side of history”? They obsess about it.
I can’t say I’ve ever given two shits to how history would view me. I choose my actions based on my moral code. Not by whether or not some jackoff academic is going to write bad things about libertarians in 100 years.
People who are motivated by what other people think expect everyone else to have the same motivations. There’s a reason the so-called “party of science” ideologues prefer social signaling to fixing problems. They don’t give a damn about the problem, but they do give a damn about approval.
It must be miserable to go through life constantly needing approval and adulation.
Also, I’ve always felt that if someone is constantly obsessing about being on the “right side of history”, it’s probably because they’re kind of worried that they aren’t going to be there (especially if there side loses and doesn’t get to write history).
Not just life. They need approval and adulation long after they’re gone.
It reminds me of the obvious insecurity of labeling all of your beliefs as “smart”. Smart growth, smart power, smart diplomacy, smart development, etc etc etc.
The only histories that remember the majority of most people to ever live are not the ones written by academics, but those tales told by family. Therefore family is more important than the self important historians.
Also, I don’t think lies can last forever. Truth is real, and there’s just too much information out there to avoid the truth eventually getting out.
For example, more and more in this generation are realizing McCarthy wasn’t some monster. In 100 years, he may even be looked on with sympathy for how he was treated by left-wing journalists and academics.
Sorry no.
McCarthy being right about Communist infiltration of Hollywood and other sectors of the economy is one thing but it doesn’t matter how right he was the ends do not justify the means and the means he employed and attempted to employ were flat out evil
And, because God is apparently a drunk with a mean sense of humor, the ideological descendants of those Commies are now flogging a new McCarthyism looking for Russians under every bed, and taking social and economic ostracism of the impure to whole new heights with the assistance of social media.
Except McCarthy wasn’t involved with HUAC, a. House Committee.
Funny enough, I was reading some non fiction Heinlein travelogue a ways back and he discusses a lot what foreigners think about the US in 1953 or whatever. At one point he goes off on a tangent about why being summoned before the HUAC wasn’t really that bad, relatively. Can’t say that I’m informed enough to know much about it, maybe he was being a little reactionary because he was defending his country’s honor to smug foreigners whose ass we had saved not 10 years prior. Happens to the best of us..
Not by whether or not some jackoff academic is going to write bad things about libertarians in 100 years.
I’ll add to that my assessment that most historians in the last fifty years have been little more than examples of the utter collapse of the humanities. Remember, these guys save their greatest adulation for any power-hungry sociopath who comes down the pike.
Since no one else has gone there…
Laura Ingalls Wilder – totally would