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Adulation of the Spartans is less about historical exactitude and more about creating a model that everyone can look to in order to build esprit de corps. Human
by OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Adulation of the Spartans is less about historical exactitude and more about creating a model that everyone can look to in order to build esprit de corps. Human societies have very often done this, and not just in the USA.
Americans often did this before by making heroic-warrior myths out of American Indian tribes that were on the losing side of historical conflicts just like the Spartans. Just think of all the American Indian imagery in the Boy Scouts from its early years, high-school sports teams named after such tribes, etc. Of course now, use of Native American motifs is seen as cultural appropriation, but the Spartans are far removed enough in time – and viewed as the same race as modern privileged classes – that use of Spartan motifs is safe from such accusations.
- oneTbrain23 3y agoBasically pentagon is setting American military power to be defeated into 2nd class power from which nevet to recover. You can already see Russians obliterate anything sent over Ukraine battlefields by NATO, especially US. We will see in our lifetime our American Leutra where just half a century ago Americans defeated Nazi. It is such a bad idea to use Sparta as though Americans never read history...ops the recent Jada Black Cleopatra confirmed that.
- qsort 3y ago> Adulation of the Spartans is less about historical exactitude and more about creating a model that everyone can look to in order to build esprit de corps. Very good, but why does it have to be a brutal -- for the standards of the time -- slave state that wasn't even particularly good at war? The current situation in Ukraine should be proof enough that the myth of manly men doing manly things does not produce armies that are actually effective. Almost everything Sparta fanfiction does is actively counterproductive.
- johngalt_ 3y agoCould you expand more on your view about the current situation in Ukraine?
- antupis 3y agoI think stuff like how Russian VDV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Airborne_Forces https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Airborne_Forces was portrayed before war and what they actually have accomplished example of this.
- fmajid 3y agoSparta was a totalitarian state well beyond the wildest dreams of Hitler or Stalin. Bertrand Russell does an excellent job The History of Western Philosophy of showing how depraved they were (as does Devereaux), how they influenced Plato (himself a disgruntled Athenian aristocrat who resented his social class' loss of power when Athens became a democracy, then collaborated with the Spartan occupation of Athens after the latter lost the Peloponnesian War).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Sparta was a totalitarian state well beyond the wildest dreams of Hitler or Stalin It was also a polis with rudimentary constitutional checks on its dyadic monarchy and a public ekklesia that notionally approved legislation. > a disgruntled Athenian aristocrat who resented his social class' loss of power when Athens became a democracy This is true. He also had prescient complaints about direct democracy as Athens practiced it. Of course, at that time we didn't know direct democracy doesn't work--it careens towards partisan overdrive and ricocheting majoritarianism.
- backtoyoujim 3y agoAccording to the histories levied by the Athenians. The Spartans left no written record and hardly any archeology.
- Waterluvian 3y agoAfter all those trampoline axe throwing videos, I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that Spetznaz were wiped out at an airport on day one.
- FormerBandmate 3y agoMaybe through the lens of culture war nonsense the Ukraine war proves that. Ukraine's army isn't more effeminate lol, they're just less associated with Fox News
- hwillis 3y agoYeah pretty sure they're referring to Russia's army being so pathetic
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoUsing the imagery of a people who were a historical loser does not necessarily imply that you, too, will lose battles. After all, things like Apache helicopters are named after historical losers, but one can still win battles with them.