[W:21:647]Teens in MAGA Hats Harassed a Native American Vietnam Veteran

[TU Curmudgeon]

Re: [W:21]Teens in MAGA Hats Harassed a Native American Vietnam Veteran

Numbered for convenience:

(1) Specific motives may provide context in individual cases of "group-judgment," and different people may feel that the context mitigates the judgment. However, the question of whether or not it's being done "in abysmal ignorance" begs the question as to what constitutes knowledge to the speaker.

Which, indeed, is why there is no "Yes. / No." answer to your original question.

(2) I'm not seeing why you think my verdict on this matter is some sort of "gotcha." It really is not, for the reasons stated.

Possibly I have misconstrued what your answer actually was.

(3) Yeah, I saw your contrast with the second example, but if the first doesn't represent what I'm talking about, then the contrast seems moot.

You asked a GENERAL question referencing ALL potential situations. That's the question I answered.

If you had wanted to ask a SPECIFIC question referencing a SPECIFIC situation, then I missed your intent.

(4) The only way in which your first example might include "increasing innocence" would be if a member of the group of ten were forced to participate, or suborned in some other way.

If we were to number the scale from 0 (my first example) to 100 (my last example) then what you are saying is that "If 0 wasn't 0 then it wouldn't be, but 0 is going to be 0 regardless of what 1, 2, 3, ... 97, 98, 99, or 100 are.".

I don't have any problems with that.

(5) All of these examples are predicated on the notion that there is some "societal mythology" that can be easily rejected in favor of superior "knowledge." My gut response is, tell it to Madame Guilloutine.

If the children are taught, for example, that "Indians wantonly killed peaceful settlers." and the fact is that "The US government routinely violated its legal treaty obligations and took land that it had agreed should belong to Native Americans in perpetuity so that it could hand it out to 'Americans'.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

If the children are taught, for example, that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America came to them in order to set up governments where everyone would be free to practice their own religion and where everyone would be free." and the fact is that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America were seeking to make a profit and the people who came to them were more interested in NOT being discriminated against because of their religion than they were in NOT discriminating against others on the basis of their religions. In fact, the majority of the colonies had "official religions" and those who didn't belong to the "official religion" often had fewer rights than those who did. The only people who had substantial 'franchise rights' in most of the colonies were free, white, 'established', 'propertied', males.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

I do hope that you don't think that, by recognizing the difference between what the children are taught and what the reality is means that I do not think that, in this case, the "myth" is superior to the "reality" - because I don't. What children are taught "America stands for" is an excellent concept, however (like Christianity and Communism) there are days when I think that it's just too bad that no one has actually tried it.

 

[dirtpoorchris]

Re: [W:21]Teens in MAGA Hats Harassed a Native American Vietnam Veteran

Which, indeed, is why there is no "Yes. / No." answer to your original question.



Possibly I have misconstrued what your answer actually was.



You asked a GENERAL question referencing ALL potential situations. That's the question I answered.

If you had wanted to ask a SPECIFIC question referencing a SPECIFIC situation, then I missed your intent.



If we were to number the scale from 0 (my first example) to 100 (my last example) then what you are saying is that "If 0 wasn't 0 then it wouldn't be, but 0 is going to be 0 regardless of what 1, 2, 3, ... 97, 98, 99, or 100 are.".

I don't have any problems with that.



If the children are taught, for example, that "Indians wantonly killed peaceful settlers." and the fact is that "The US government routinely violated its legal treaty obligations and took land that it had agreed should belong to Native Americans in perpetuity so that it could hand it out to 'Americans'.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

If the children are taught, for example, that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America came to them in order to set up governments where everyone would be free to practice their own religion and where everyone would be free." and the fact is that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America were seeking to make a profit and the people who came to them were more interested in NOT being discriminated against because of their religion than they were in NOT discriminating against others on the basis of their religions. In fact, the majority of the colonies had "official religions" and those who didn't belong to the "official religion" often had fewer rights than those who did. The only people who had substantial 'franchise rights' in most of the colonies were free, white, 'established', 'propertied', males.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

I do hope that you don't think that, by recognizing the difference between what the children are taught and what the reality is means that I do not think that, in this case, the "myth" is superior to the "reality" - because I don't. What children are taught "America stands for" is an excellent concept, however (like Christianity and Communism) there are days when I think that it's just too bad that no one has actually tried it.

Well there was Pro-whiteman tribes and anti-whiteman war tribes and everything in between. If you were starving and fighting for survival and the right tribe found you they would actually help a white man to help defeat the war tribes. Until the whole Trail of Tears thing when paranoia won over.

I dont think Natives would appreciate us teaching that there were skull hunting scalpers ambushing caravans with women and children in them because that would be one sided. If anything you should be against the narrative of all the Natives magically getting sick and dying and disappearing. (obvious lie and was more like systemic genocide)

 

[Ouroboros]

Re: [W:21]Teens in MAGA Hats Harassed a Native American Vietnam Veteran

If the children are taught, for example, that "Indians wantonly killed peaceful settlers." and the fact is that "The US government routinely violated its legal treaty obligations and took land that it had agreed should belong to Native Americans in perpetuity so that it could hand it out to 'Americans'.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

If the children are taught, for example, that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America came to them in order to set up governments where everyone would be free to practice their own religion and where everyone would be free." and the fact is that "The people who established the colonies that eventually became the United States of America were seeking to make a profit and the people who came to them were more interested in NOT being discriminated against because of their religion than they were in NOT discriminating against others on the basis of their religions. In fact, the majority of the colonies had "official religions" and those who didn't belong to the "official religion" often had fewer rights than those who did. The only people who had substantial 'franchise rights' in most of the colonies were free, white, 'established', 'propertied', males.", exactly what sort of "superior 'knowledge'" is required - other than an acknowledgement of reality, I mean?

I do hope that you don't think that, by recognizing the difference between what the children are taught and what the reality is means that I do not think that, in this case, the "myth" is superior to the "reality" - because I don't. What children are taught "America stands for" is an excellent concept, however (like Christianity and Communism) there are days when I think that it's just too bad that no one has actually tried it.

I'm guessing we've taken the "joint guilt of group members" thing about as far as it can go. I did, however, give some thought as to how much this "false myth/real fact" dichotomy informs the whole Covington incident.

For instance, I'm not sure that I would deem your example of "wantonly murderous Indians killing settlers" to be mythic in nature. To the best of my knowledge, early settlers, say from the time of Cotton Mather, weren't conscious of rendering the Indians into a mythic presence, even if that's what happened over time. I would guess that Cotton Mather didn't understand anything about Indian aggressions if and when aggressive acts transpired without provocation. To Mather, the savagery of the Indians would be a matter of fact that he lived with, even though it would be a "false fact" given that Mather had no in-depth information on the subject under discussion. It's easy for us, with the benefit of history, to imagine Mather's people breaking some taboo that got the Indians angry. However, sometimes the attacks may have come about just for the usual reasons of human cantakerousness: the settlers had, say, food and the tribesmen wanted it. In the latter case, any time the Indians really did attack settlers for pecuniary motives, it wouldn't be entirely a "false fact" to say that they had done so for reasons of savagery. It would only be "false" if the savagery was associated with their race, given that a Cotton Mather would've known the long history of whites attacking other whites just for reasons of gain.

I don't find it hard to believe that some generations of Americans grew up with some belief along the lines of, say, "the Indians weren't using the land, so we had the right to take it from them." That's an interpretation rather than a fact as such, but it's based upon a very limited sphere of facts, a paradigm which pits the technological advancements of Europe against the tribal society of Native Americans. Now, is that myth? Well, more so than just the imputations of savagery coming from a people that the speaker doesn't understand. Of course, over time there have been many defenses of Native American culture, with the result that we have a "counter-myth" that emphasizes the positive aspects of NA culture and anathematizes-- usually correctly-- the unscrupulous solutions the U.S. government used to solve "the Indian problem."

That's one reason I'm reluctant to accept the "myth/reality" dichotomy, as per my remark about the French Revolution. Often you don't get reality that disperses the old myth, you get a new myth. And as of this writing, the media's biased coverage of the Covington teens-- which is clearly something a large number of citizens wanted to believe-- smacks of a new myth that says, "in any dispute between white people and People of Color, the white people, being recipients of white privilege, must always be wrong."

So I'm not sure that we've gotten that far from the days of Cotton Mather, or if we've just switched targets.

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

Re: [W:21]Teens in MAGA Hats Harassed a Native American Vietnam Veteran

Well there was Pro-whiteman tribes and anti-whiteman war tribes and everything in between. If you were starving and fighting for survival and the right tribe found you they would actually help a white man to help defeat the war tribes. Until the whole Trail of Tears thing when paranoia won over.

Indeed there were. Not only that, but there were "Pro-White" tribes that thought nothing about killing a "White" if that person treated them dishonourably and there were "Anti-White" tribes that thought nothing about helping a "White" if that person treated them honourably.

However, if you weigh the literature and video material aimed at children you will find that the preponderance is more toward the "Indians wantonly killed peaceful settlers." with the "The US government routinely violated its legal treaty obligations and took land that it had agreed should belong to Native Americans in perpetuity so that it could hand it out to 'Americans'." bit not really coming into the equation until well after the first part has been well socialized in. (You could toss in "The Pilgrims invited the Indians to share their thanksgiving feast with them." myth into the mix, but I'm not sure how to work the fact that it was the Native Americans who supplied the majority of the food and not the Pilgrims. and, about those sombre "black and white" clothes

The Pilgrims are often depicted in popular culture as wearing only black and white clothing, with large golden buckles on their shoes and hats and long white collars. This stereotypical Pilgrim, however, is not historically accurate. The Pilgrims, in fact, wore a wide variety of colors. This is known because when a person died, an inventory was made of their estate for the purpose of probate: and often the color of various clothing items were mentioned. For example, long-time church member, Mary Ring, died in Plymouth in 1633, and her estate included a "mingled-color" waistcoat, two violet waistcoats, three blue aprons, a red petticoat, a violet petticoat, blue stockings, and white stockings. In addition, she owned gray cloth, blue cloth and red cloth, ready to make additional clothing. Plymouth's Church Elder William Brewster, who died in 1644, owned green pants, a red cap, a violet coat, and a blue suit. And Governor William Bradford, when he died in 1657, owned a green gown, violet cloak, and a red waistcoat.
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I dont think Natives would appreciate us teaching that there were skull hunting scalpers ambushing caravans with women and children in them because that would be one sided.

Well, if one were a TRUE conservative, that is what you would have to teach because "that is what was always taught:

If anything you should be against the narrative of all the Natives magically getting sick and dying and disappearing. (obvious lie and was more like systemic genocide)

Wouldn't that really depend on whether you were foolish enough to believe all that "left-wing, liberal, socialist, pinko, revisionist history"?