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Could we get a version without the neologisms ("Amerika", "Afrika", "theirstory")? I was willing to spend five or ten minutes looking into something that I knew

by schoen 2mo ago

Could we get a version without the neologisms ("Amerika", "Afrika", "theirstory")? I was willing to spend five or ten minutes looking into something that I knew I had tremendous disagreements with, and then it ... started intentionally misspelling everything on the first page. I mean, I'm sure there are many different senses in which I'm not the target audience for this work, but it immediately feels like it's actively leaning into "this book isn't for you" or "this book is meant to upset you". On the other hand, I just realized that this is probably exactly what reading Richard Stallman feels like if you don't already agree with him. Like "I'm going to use lots of neologisms that I don't even explain, because I want to remind you of all my attitudes toward everything from the very first moment that you encounter my ideas."

slowin 2mo ago
Well, the author was an interned Japanese, so I'll forgive him for having a POV. Afrika is actually the correct spelling: https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692 https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692 The key takeaways from the book are that the white underclasses were the foot soldiers in the genocide of indigenous people and while they had hard, labor filled lives, they were still the driving force behind manifest destiny. A couple of areas it shed light for me that I didn't know much about: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_of_1871 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_o... I would argue that the cheap real estate that existed in the US up until the early 2000s was the tail end of the land theft and manifest destiny. The increased prices we're seeing may actually be closer to the true value of the land that was artificially depressed by being handed out for free to white settlers. The boomers were basically the last generation of settlers to enjoy this. FWIW I mostly agree with Stallman and definitely agree with Sakai (the author of Settlers). The bible however, I find to be triggering in the way you describe.

by schoen 2mo ago

slowin 2mo ago

Well, the author was an interned Japanese, so I'll forgive him for having a POV. Afrika is actually the correct spelling: https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692 https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692 The key takeaways from the book are that the white underclasses were the foot soldiers in the genocide of indigenous people and while they had hard, labor filled lives, they were still the driving force behind manifest destiny. A couple of areas it shed light for me that I didn't know much about: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_of_1871 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_o... I would argue that the cheap real estate that existed in the US up until the early 2000s was the tail end of the land theft and manifest destiny. The increased prices we're seeing may actually be closer to the true value of the land that was artificially depressed by being handed out for free to white settlers. The boomers were basically the last generation of settlers to enjoy this. FWIW I mostly agree with Stallman and definitely agree with Sakai (the author of Settlers). The bible however, I find to be triggering in the way you describe.