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Are re-education camps too far off?

America hasn't been mythologized enough, we haven't afforded ourselves enough self-affirmations, enough ribbons. We need to recommit to the myths. Moar ribbons. Maybe soon our football games can all be introduced by a hologram of the president, plus flyovers, maybe a tank or two, some gun saluting.

And taco bowls, because multicultural.
 
Not an endorsement of Trump but as a conservative, I feel we are due for a course correction on education of American exceptionalism. Kids today spend more time learning about what is wrong with America than what is right. And there is a hell of a lot of right.

America is responsible for around a quarter of global GDP. That did not happen by accident.

America is able to produce enough food to feed the entire globe (if only we had better means of transporting and distributing it). That did not happen by accident. Many other countries cannot even feed themselves.

America has been and still is the global Technological research, invention, and innovation hub of the world. That did not happen by accident.

We are a nation of immigrants but those immigrants chose America to invent, work, take risks, and raise new families here. That did not happen by accident.

We won two world wars and put a man on the friggin’ moon for cry in’ out loud!

As it is Constitution Day, it is a great time to remind kids that our God given inalienable rights can only be granted by a higher power and shall be entrusted to the people. It was our Constitution that created the framework for early Americans to venture out, take risks, build, and reap rewards to spawn even more growth and innovation. What they made was theirs for the taking and not anyone else’s.

Yes there is bad and yes it is good to learn about that too, but the system is out of whack right now and due for a course correction.
You make some good points but you’re way over Trump’s head. He’s a demagogue aiming at the Toby Keith-loving, flag-hugging, USA!!! USA!!! chanting mouthbreather MAGA crowd. The uneducated “love it or leave it” types.
 
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Indoctrination by executive order. Fûckin-A. America.
No shit! White men are losing their shit! Well, not really... but, kinda. The wealthy ones are set, but there's nothing wrong with a contingency plan.

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The truth - refugees seeking religious freedom and missions and settlements engaging in religious oppression are both part of the history.

The pilgrims as “refugees seeking religious freedom” thing is how I learned about them. Then we traced our hands and made turkeys and made pilgrim hats or Indian headgear out of construction paper.

But the Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland. They wanted a theocracy, which is what they established in America. They accused those not deemed to be pious enough of being witches and set them on fire. They were like Christianity’s Isis in that respect. That sounds like the polar opposite of religious freedom, doesn’t it?

Also they came for financial reasons. Farming and trapping were profitable for those that came before them. Smallpox had wiped out most of the Indians living around the Massachusetts Bay colonies, so there wasn’t a lot of competition.

Further, the original thanksgiving dates to years earlier when the pilgrims massacred a group of Indians and “gave thanks.” After several very successful harvests, the pilgrims did indeed dine with the local Indians who farmed the same land, but it absolutely wasn’t a case of the Indians bailing the starving pilgrims out.

So our story of the first thanksgiving is completely historically inaccurate. It’s a fairy tale. It would be every bit as true if Santa Clause showed up and gave the pilgrims and Indians presents. Why do we need this bizarre story? Why can’t we just have a national day to be thankful and watch football? We can divorce the fairytale from the day completely and lose absolutely nothing.

So is this liberal indoctrination? “Marxism?“ Or is teaching fairytales in history class actually the thing that’s detrimental to our children’s educations?
 
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And people like @haw-key are all worried about socialism, think we're about to become Venezuela. Lol. People wonder why Hitler is referenced so much. To reference Hitler isn't to draw equivalence to the entire story of Hitler and Nazi Germany and Holocaust. It's to reference the employment of propaganda, of fear-based appeals, of various authoritarian and/or fascist behaviors for which parallels are drawable.

RIP in peace, America.
 
The pilgrims as “refugees seeking religious freedom” thing is how I learned about them. Then we traced our hands and made turkeys and made pilgrim hats or Indian headgear out of construction paper.

But the Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland. They wanted a theocracy, which is what they established in America. They accused those not deemed to be pious enough of being witches and set them on fire. They were like the Christianity’s Isis in that respect. That sounds like the polar opposite of religious freedom, doesn’t it?

Also they came for financial reasons. Farming and trapping were profitable for those that came before them. Smallpox had wiped out most of the Indians living around the Massachusetts Bay colonies, so there wasn’t a lot of competition.

Further, the original thanksgiving dates to years earlier when the pilgrims massacred a group of Indians and “gave thanks.” After several very successful harvests, the pilgrims did indeed dine with the local Indians who farmed the same land, but it absolutely wasn’t a case of the Indians bailing the starving pilgrims out.

So our story of the first thanksgiving is completely historically inaccurate. It’s a fairy tale. It would be every bit as true if Santa Clause showed up and gave the pilgrims and Indians presents. Why do we need this bizarre story? Why can’t we just have a national day to be thankful and watch football? We can divorce the fairytale from the day completely and lose absolutely nothing.

So is this liberal indoctrination? “Marxism?“ Or is teaching fairytales in history class actually the thing that’s detrimental to our children’s educations?
I personally don't like being told when to express gratitude. I can't always time these things so I'm feeling appropriately for the date. Oh BTW we'd have a lot more to be grateful for if we didn't have to watch the Lions every goddamned year.
 
The pilgrims as “refugees seeking religious freedom” thing is how I learned about them. Then we traced our hands and made turkeys and made pilgrim hats or Indian headgear out of construction paper.

But the Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland. They wanted a theocracy, which is what they established in America. They accused those not deemed to be pious enough of being witches and set them on fire. They were like Christianity’s Isis in that respect. That sounds like the polar opposite of religious freedom, doesn’t it?

Also they came for financial reasons. Farming and trapping were profitable for those that came before them. Smallpox had wiped out most of the Indians living around the Massachusetts Bay colonies, so there wasn’t a lot of competition.

Further, the original thanksgiving dates to years earlier when the pilgrims massacred a group of Indians and “gave thanks.” After several very successful harvests, the pilgrims did indeed dine with the local Indians who farmed the same land, but it absolutely wasn’t a case of the Indians bailing the starving pilgrims out.

So our story of the first thanksgiving is completely historically inaccurate. It’s a fairy tale. It would be every bit as true if Santa Clause showed up and gave the pilgrims and Indians presents. Why do we need this bizarre story? Why can’t we just have a national day to be thankful and watch football? We can divorce the fairytale from the day completely and lose absolutely nothing.

So is this liberal indoctrination? “Marxism?“ Or is teaching fairytales in history class actually the thing that’s detrimental to our children’s educations?
I agree with you - mostly. The Mayflower group came to establish their version of a theocracy. The Quakers settled in PA for similar reasons, as did the Catholics in Maryland.
But Thanksgiving? Can we just keep the food? Please? :(
 
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The pilgrims as “refugees seeking religious freedom” thing is how I learned about them. Then we traced our hands and made turkeys and made pilgrim hats or Indian headgear out of construction paper.

But the Pilgrims had religious freedom in Holland. They wanted a theocracy, which is what they established in America. They accused those not deemed to be pious enough of being witches and set them on fire. They were like Christianity’s Isis in that respect. That sounds like the polar opposite of religious freedom, doesn’t it?

Also they came for financial reasons. Farming and trapping were profitable for those that came before them. Smallpox had wiped out most of the Indians living around the Massachusetts Bay colonies, so there wasn’t a lot of competition.

Further, the original thanksgiving dates to years earlier when the pilgrims massacred a group of Indians and “gave thanks.” After several very successful harvests, the pilgrims did indeed dine with the local Indians who farmed the same land, but it absolutely wasn’t a case of the Indians bailing the starving pilgrims out.

So our story of the first thanksgiving is completely historically inaccurate. It’s a fairy tale. It would be every bit as true if Santa Clause showed up and gave the pilgrims and Indians presents. Why do we need this bizarre story? Why can’t we just have a national day to be thankful and watch football? We can divorce the fairytale from the day completely and lose absolutely nothing.

So is this liberal indoctrination? “Marxism?“ Or is teaching fairytales in history class actually the thing that’s detrimental to our children’s educations?
I often relate the lies we tell ourselves as a country (to avoid harsher and unflattering truths) to how we understand personal relationships. Any personal relationship built on lies and dishonesty is doomed to fail, unless, of course, the lies are addressed, discontinued, and resolved.

It is truly confounding that people don't understand that our mythologized history does us no good, not in the grand scheme of things.
 
I agree with you - mostly. The Mayflower group came to establish their version of a theocracy. The Quakers settled in PA for similar reasons, as did the Catholics in Maryland.
But Thanksgiving? Can we just keep the food? Please? :(

We’re in agreement. I’ll even do you one better and say that I’d love as a country to have a day where we’re more mindful and thankful for what we have. Maybe people wouldn’t trample eachother at Walmart at 4:30 the next morning. And then we can eat and watch football!

Notice how none of that involves a fable about friendly religious fanatics sharing pies for which they had neither butter nor flour with people they later exterminated? It’s so unnecessary! There’s still that issue of what to do with all that construction paper, I suppose...
 
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I often relate the lies we tell ourselves as a country (to avoid harsher and unflattering truths) to how we understand personal relationships. Any personal relationship built on lies and dishonesty is doomed to fail, unless, of course, the lies are addressed, discontinued, and resolved.

It is truly confounding that people don't understand that our mythologized history does us no good, not in the grand scheme of things.

Trigger warning for conservative snowflakes, this is from Michael Moore. He does a great job of illustrating what you’re talking about in the clips below. The Germans don’t whitewash their history. Neither should we.



This one picks up where the first left off at 1:53.
 
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Here's the thing I learned about discussing history in the US: if you're liberal you want to talk about all the bad stuff, if you're conservative you want to talk about all the good stuff.
 
I've learned that when discussing our future conservatives want to make the country worse and libs want to make it better

That wasn't a knock on liberals. (or conservatives for that matter) I've realized over time, though, the antithesis to the fvck-yeah-merica crowd is the America-is-an-evil-capitalist-colonist-empire people.

Distinct lack of perspective from both. Not that both perspectives won't hold some truth. The imbalance gets me.
 
Trigger warning for conservative snowflakes, this is from Michael Moore. He does a great job of illustrating what you’re talking about in the clips below. The Germans don’t whitewash their history. Neither should we.



This one picks up where the first left off at 1:53.
Yep. I’ve seen this. My parents, well my mother, really, became good friends with a German couple as a result of my mother’s studies in Europe. I spent time in Germany about 10 years ago now and met them on the trip. The woman was a middle school teacher (math). How we teach our history to ourselves has been an interest of mine since I got in trouble in 5th grade for challenging the Columbus narrative. Anyways when this retired German middle school teacher asked me what i thought about how Americans teach history, especially in middle and high school, well it was a great and then rambunctious conversation (lots of wine) to say the least.
 
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That wasn't a knock on liberals. (or conservatives for that matter) I've realized over time, though, the antithesis to the fvck-yeah-merica crowd is the America-is-an-evil-capitalist-colonist-empire people.

Distinct lack of perspective from both. Not that both perspectives won't hold some truth. The imbalance gets me.
Lol.
 
It is truly confounding that people don't understand that our mythologized history does us no good, not in the grand scheme of things.

And neither does the never ending drum beat of our exaggerated short comings,.. Pendulums swing both ways..
 
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Trump should do a little reading about the Sedition Act of 1798. I have a feeling, many here would be OK with bringing that back...until a Dem wins the WH, that is.
 
It's not that. It's teaching a child that they will go suffer eternally if they don't believe something which many find innately impossible to believe. Some people have no problem with it. Other people are compelled to live a lie for years and years and years and that's not helpful.

If you don't believe in it, you have nothing to fear from it. If you believe in it than you are ok.

I'm not sure what the issue is.
 
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If you don't believe in it, you have nothing to fear from it. If you believe in it than you are ok.

I'm not sure what the issue is.

At lot easier to process as an adult than as a young child. It is why the Confirmation sacrament exists but there is a lot of pressure on children to conform in different parts of the country.
 
At lot easier to process as an adult than as a young child. It is why the Confirmation sacrament exists but there is a lot of pressure on children to conform in different parts of the country.

Yes at a child you are to some extent expected to conform with whatever lifestyle your parents choose for you. If your parents are vegan for example you probably arn't getting any bacon and eggs for breakfast.

As an adult you get to decide on your own.

Not sure why religion should be singled out as particularly evil.
 
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Yes at a child you are to some extent expected to conform with whatever lifestyle your parents choose for you. If your parents are vegan for example you probably arn't getting any bacon and eggs for breakfast.

As an adult you get to decide on your own.

Not sure why religion should be singled out as particularly evil.

Vegans aren't congratulated as virtuous people for their beliefs and almost no other reason in most communities like Christians. I'm sure it's rough for a carnivore in veganland.
 
Vegans aren't congratulated as virtuous people for their beliefs and almost no other reason in most communities like Christians. I'm sure it's rough for a carnivore in veganland.

I don't think I've ever been congradulated for my virtue simply for being a Christian. If I did, I would find it kind of dumb.

There is virtue in behaving according to Christian standards of charity, chastity, love, humility and forgiveness.

But simply being a Christian is not a virtue and I've never met anyone who treated it as one.
 
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President Trump signs an executive order to establish a 'national commission to promote patriotic education'

Looks like he signed the EO on indoctrination...

 
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I've learned that when discussing our future conservatives want to make the country worse and libs want to make it better
I find that viewpoint almost silly. And intellectually weak and dishonest.
I'm sure you're not surprised. But that's okay.
 
Christianity is an integral part of history over the last 2,000 years.

If you are referring to the type of Christianity Trump's buffoons practice, then perhaps, assuming religious perversion and self-promotion constitute child abuse.

He specifically differentiated between teaching its place in history versus promoting it. Schools should not be promoting any religion.
 
I'm not for conflating the two. But how do we treat early explorers who came here with a primary mission to convert "the savages"? LaSalle, Marquette? Father Serra in California? (His legacy has undergone a justifiable edit, by the way)
The priests who accompanied the Conquistadors in the Southwest (DeSoto)?
I'm not defending these people. But they did figure in to our earliest story...what do we say about why the pilgrims came here?

They believe the native americans were living in utopia
 
And people like @haw-key are all worried about socialism, think we're about to become Venezuela. Lol. People wonder why Hitler is referenced so much. To reference Hitler isn't to draw equivalence to the entire story of Hitler and Nazi Germany and Holocaust. It's to reference the employment of propaganda, of fear-based appeals, of various authoritarian and/or fascist behaviors for which parallels are drawable.

RIP in peace, America.
What they are too stupid to realize is that Venezuela became Venezuela because of tyrannical leadership. Socialism happened because of tyranny. Thanks to trump like leaders, Venezuela is a 3rd world dump and not a leader of the western world with it's vast advantages.
 
I find that viewpoint almost silly. And intellectually weak and dishonest.
I'm sure you're not surprised. But that's okay.
I guess it depends on how one defines "better" and "worse". For example, the Christian community would put stopping gay marriage in the "better" category. For me, it would definitely be "worse".
 
The indoctrination has been going on for years,.. Trump just wants to adjust the curriculum...
 
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