Thursday, August 30, 2018

How history is taught is stupid


Do tell.  For what it's worth, I can't find a reference to when she said this, and so it might just be another made up Internet meme.


13 comments:

  1. Calling b.s on the T.S. "quote".
    Someone's just having fun at her expense, and that of the truth.
    Mau-mauing is still a thing, and this is a two-fer.

    The quote is the sort of thing that wants to be in a balloon over at Stilton's Place, in a balloon over Lefty Lucy's head.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't argue on the authenticity of the quote. But the statement in the quote is absolutely true:

    WWII total American dead: 405,399
    Vietnam total American dead: 58,209
    Total: 463,608

    Civil War total dead: 655,000 (combatants only)

    (source)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yup--It's accurate. Even if you limit the US casualties Europe and Civil war to Federal troops.

    US casualties in Europe 300,000
    Vietnam 58,000
    Total 358,000

    Union casualties Civil War 360,000

    ReplyDelete
  4. It would have been A. Lincoln's argument that the Confederates were citizens too, just citizens in rebellion. So the southern losses would have to count as well. Including civilian casualties due to collateral damage, starvation, disease, and Sherman.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ms. Swift must have forgotten about, oh, let's say SIX MILLION people old Adolf shoveled into the crematoria.....

    ReplyDelete
  6. Drjim - They weren't Americans, so who cares. And what about the six million other people also dropped into pits? Do they not count any more? Why not count all the Soviet dead, while you're at it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Just counting American casualties, Dr. Jim. Didn't even normalize them for population, which would have made Mr. Lincoln look much worse.

    ReplyDelete
  8. As you yourself can surmise, T.S. was obviously chosen now for the same reason in earlier eras, "quotes" never uttered were inserted into the mouths of George Carlin, Andy Rooney, Will Rogers, Mark Twain, and Ben Franklin: to give them the patina of cultural hipness. It doesn't work, because the average millennial hipster now couldn't locate Gettysburg or Appomattox on a blank map to within 500 miles, nor explain the historical significance of either place, and has proven unable to place the Civil War in the correct century in 80% of cases, whether tests, surveys, or man-on-the-street interviews.
    It's like asking them about the surface of Neptune, or the Cretaceous Era: no one posted the comic version on Facebook, and it's not in the lyrics of any of their favorite rappers, so it never happened.

    As to the casualty count, it's irrelevant.
    Civil War casualties are a testimony to the stupidity of idiot generals using outmoded Napoleonic tactics against new rifled muskets, and marching to trade volleys at rock-throwing range, making the war 10X bloodier than it needed to be.

    And because that lesson was one of militarily backwards provincial Americans, the Great Powers ignored it, and had to re-learn the same lessons by marching people into machine guns in the Great War, in which the Kaiser and his cronies were responsible for the deaths of some 2M Germans, another 1.5M Austro-Hungarians, and ultimately responsible for 15-19M dead people on all sides in total, dwarfing pikers like Lincoln by some 5700%.

    Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
    And "Fake, but accurate" was tried as a slogan by the media some years back. Dan Rather was still forced to retire, because no one was buying it then either.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Aesop, the Great Powers were fools - which explains all you need to know to understand the Great War. But Mr. Lincoln must shoulder the blame for the butcher's bill here on these shores. More of my thoughts on him here. Needless to say, I'm not a fan.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey, back off!

    She mentioned Hitler, so I tossed my two cents in.

    I'm pretty well aware of the total casualties from WWII.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I would say it was the guy who pulled the lanyard on that first shot at Ft. Sumter.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'd say it was the President who ordered the resupply of Fort Sumter even when he knew damn well how the Confederacy would respond. Ya know we can probably keep this up all night.

    ReplyDelete

Remember your manners when you post. Anonymous comments are not allowed because of the plague of spam comments.