It's a mixed bag, and it's almost impossible to tell what someone's actual opinion is when they babble on about "muh dark ages" or "muh not so dark ages." For e

It's a mixed bag, and it's almost impossible to tell what someone's actual opinion is when they babble on about "muh dark ages" or "muh not so dark ages." For example, it apparently become doctrine among some basket of "classicists" that the fall of Rome was actually peaceful multicultural assimilation of the Germans. This is obvious horse shit; ridiculous, preposterous horse shit, but it was commonly enough held someone had to write a book counting the number of coins, pot sherds and roof tiles made during barbarian invasions of Italy (there weren't any) to refute it. You know, rather than reading contemporary accounts of German invaders burning Roman cities and enslaving the inhabitants. There are probably still morons who profess to believe it. I am not a psychologist, but I assume this ridiculous belief comes about due to modern eloi ideas on immigration. At the other end of the spectrum of historical imbecilities is the idea that nothing interesting happened between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, which is horse shit of a different nature. The 1200s, right before the black death were an obvious peak of European civilization. They invented all manner of things, started the Cathedral schools, invented the scientific method, made amazing, great and beautiful art, the population of the continent was never larger (until 1840s/industrialization basically) and there was all manner of trade, literature, territorial expansion (reconquest of Iberia, Christianization of the North) and so on. Noticing this makes many people buttmad, I guess because it's so .... Christian. They like to think it's a straight line from Galileo to smug yutz New York Times columnists I suppose. Most people's views of history is pretty cartoonish; even educated people, and the cartoon they carry around is generally a basket of political ideological nonsense.