The Untold History of America...
...by Oliver Stone on Netflix is pretty damn revealing. It at least provides a more indepth commentary on American Imperialism since the 50s and lays out the path to the hyper-polarized society and politics that we have now. Despite Stone's biases which can pretty clearly be spotted it's a lot better than the hogwash jingoism we get in our lip service history texts in school and general credits in college. Side note (& for those interested): Of course for a pedantic exploration of western history in the last 300 years I do recommend the most comprehensive treatment outside of a grad program: Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley. The book. Anyone watch the documentary series on Netflix? Your response...
The presidents have had too much power. It is weird that they can’t increase school funding unilaterally but can declare war or use of a nuclear weapon.
That's actually understandable - school funding has bigger impact than some wars: educated people are a threat to the regìme. It is harder to sell crap to such people, fool them and get away with that.
Haha, this ^^. The presidents know they get to stay in power by appeasing the military industrial complex. JFK prolly the only one who began to piss them off.
I’d love to see a serious non-mythologized take on US history and US imperialism.... but I’m also verrry skeptical about how Oliver Stone would tell it. I don’t know about his current views, but just remember pretty dodgy arguments when his JFK movie came out where he argued that Kennedy was planning to end involvement in Vietnam. From what I’ve read, that seems unlikely and LBJ was dove-ish in comparison to the rest of jfk’s admin... and we all know how he eventually continued and escalated the war.
I don't know if JFK was having a change of heart like Stone claims. But that McNamara approved a phased out withdrawal should be a matter of historical record, and offer some evidence.
Can someone recommend books related to US history? Very intrigued after watching Revenant and Django unchained
What subject or time-period? History or historical-fiction/novelization?
Would love to read the history related to Native Americans, Slavery etc... basically keen to learn how USA came into existence, hence the reference to Django Unchained. Thanks!
There’s a lot of cool history on the American Indians during this period especially around the civil war and what to do with their own slaves as they were forced westward.
Any book recommendations?
Good thread OP, we need more topics like this to break the monotony of endless TC threads.
Yea it’s ugly, but unfortunately no one in the US really cares.