Napoleon once said, "History is a set of lies agreed upon." Tolstoy said, "History would be a wonderful thing. If it were only true." It has been said that history is written by the victors. To that end, here is a truism for you. "In war, truth is the first casualty." No doubt for the winning side, it remains a casualty. Just about everything you think you know about history is a *******ned LIE!!! George Santayana once said, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." You CAN expect even worse when the history you think you know is a load of crap to begin with.
I guess the words of a tyrant and a fiction writer are the final words then! It's settled, thank you for you magnanimous insight to history. I guess the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Plato, Thucydides, Hippoletus, Claudius, Sima Qian, Florencia Mallon, Elaine Pagels, Jedin, Kagan, etc are fake news. Who woulda thunk it? I mean, you are free to get your own PHD, which will gain you the privilege of reviewing the dusty archives of ancient texts, including that of the Vatican, and review the original documents of history yourself, and write your own damn book.
Yes, it's not exactly true but some history teachers are saying the same things they said 50 years ago because they never read the updates. I have big problems right now because so many people think Russia is still Communist.
There was a study published suggesting that half of Americans can’t read at a 6th grade level. And it’s because of posts like this that make me think it’s true.
Did I misspell something? I recall a teacher struggling with whether 0 was a positive or negative number. There was a media teacher who mixed up the list of Hammer and Universal Frankenstein movies. Old teachers don't know pop culture. Young ones know nothing of the past. My stepson told me his teacher paid no attention to the grammar in written papers.
I was a substitute teacher for 19 days before they arrested me for trying to teach. Among the horrors was a group of boys from Puerto Rico who said they were Spanish. I wasted no time telling them Puerto Rico has been part of the USA since 1898. We beat Spain in a war, took Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. We set Cuba free, thought they could handle themselves. Boy were we wrong! We set the Philippines free in 1946, thought they could handle themselves. Boy were we wrong! We don't trust Puerto Ricans.
History changed in the 1970s. Historians started using every tool they could lay their hands on, from accounting to forensics, to archeological methods and more, a lot more. So our understanding of history changes. For example, they researched the Battle of Trafalgar by using underwater archeological methods. They found that the Spanish cannon were just field artillery dragged onto the ship. But the British had artillery designed to be used on a ship. What that means was once the cannon got hot, the Spanish firing rate went down. So suddenly they had similar firepower, but when the Brits closed, they had an advantage. Anyway, I can suggest a bunch of history books I have liked, that changed peoples minds.
Well, we can try to figure out what the truth really is. I only bother to study revisionist history. Here's an example. Start watching this at the 43:55 time mark and then watch the whole thing if you get interested. DAVID IRVING - THE MANIPULATION OF HISTORY https://www.bitchute.com/video/bNmOZGlGnbCC/ Of course I wasn't there so I'm still not one hundred percent sure that this is all true, but I'd bet it was. I found that video here. https://www.unz.com/announcement/the-remarkable-historiography-of-david-irving/
This reminds me of a comic skit I saw on TV many years ago called "It pays to be ignorant." History can have multiple interpretations, but you ignore history at your peril. If you think that ignorance is bliss, you are dead wrong, sometimes in the literal sense.
What's this "we" reference? People can figure out the truth quite easily. Then you will never figure out a damn thing. If you rely on purveyors of batshit and snake-oil for your "information" and ignore highly skilled, experienced experts you'll end up being in a clueless minority. The kind of minority that believes in things like big-foot, which requires a big-facepalm.
Why is it? What are his credentials? Why should a random internet blogger offer the "truth"? Why should his views on history (more to the point!) be any more relevant, since the only source for his data must be from the same ones used by historians?
In the more political parts of this forum there are people misusing association to 'prove' total garbage. I read a claim that the Wagner group was named after the composer Wagner because he was Hitler's favorite composer. What came to my mind when I read that was Wagner was C. L. Lewis' favorite composer. And why would the Wagner Group, fighting Neo-nazis want to associate with one of the sources of their enemy?
More misuse of history and failure to understand present day politics and failure to be consistent: Vladimir Putin is 5ft 7inches, and Napoleon was almost the same at 5ft 6inches as far was we can tell, so people claim therefore Pres. Putin is French. Or maybe they said he wants to conquer Europe. But there is zero evidence for that. And why not pick someone else who is 5ft 7inches namely Zelensky, and someone else François Hollande who is also 5ft 7inches tall, and both of them actually did play a part in getting the war in Ukraine from a small conflict into the big war we have now. Maybe it's because both of them are 5ft 7.
History is for suckers because many people learn from history and do not repeat the same mistakes or the same actions, so usually it comes out differently.
But there is an exception, it's the US public. Follow this sequence War in Vietnam Congress - 2 votes against in Senate, passed unanimously in the House. Popularity at the time - 'The only people opposed to the war are hippies and communists'. Claims made at the time - it is a police action to protect the people of Vietnam Reality of the war - a greater tonnage of bombs were dropped than in both the European and Pacific theaters of World War 2 Results of the war - about 3 million Vietnamese were killed but Esso got the rights to extract oil in the shallow sea south of Vietnam. Present opinion of the public: It was a mistake. War in Afghanistan Congress - Senate 98-0 House 420-1 At the time the public was strongly in favor despite G W Bush refusing an investigation into 911 Claim made at the time - 'we will bring Afghanistan into the 21st century Etc. Etc. War in Iraq, war in Kosovo, war in Lebanon, war in Syria, war in Libya, I'm looking for a lesson from history.
Afghanistan should only have lasted only as long as it took to kill bin Laden. After that, we should have conducted a speedy but orderly withdrawal. The country can’t be saved from itself, but Americans, whom one of my undergraduate professors called “harmonic liberals,” think they can build nations. Rubbish. The culture of a country is built over a span of centuries. The only successful transformation we ever executed was Japan. The rest have failures or disasters.
Because there are, no doubt, some lies, in the history we are taught, does not make all of it, a lie. This is pretty basic conceptualizing, at which your analysis is so blatantly failing. Further, just because the official line on some historical topics is inaccurate, does not mean that, in most cases, there aren't materials available, which contradict the falsehoods-- for those who look into it. Lastly, the expression about repeating history, for the most part, applies to very basic history, which is, in its general contours, hard if not impossible to turn on its head. That said, I believe that even knowledge of history, often does not prevent people from repeating it-- not due to its inaccuracy but because most tend to see situations in our current world, as different from the past, as something other than just another link history's catenary chain.
There's a theory that one of the real reasons that the US went into Afghanistan was to get control of the lithium deposits that were there. The Spoils of the War on Afghanistan, One Trillion Dollars of Lithium: The Future of Silicon Valley may lie in the Mountains of Afghanistan https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-s...y-lie-in-the-mountains-of-afghanistan/5375266
They did a damn poor job of securing it, if that was their goal. We got nothing but wasted resources and dead and maimed service people.