[HN Gopher] 112 Gripes About the French
___________________________________________________________________
112 Gripes About the French
Author : samclemens
Score : 374 points
Date : 2021-07-16 01:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| rgoulter wrote:
| Does anyone know whether this had any impact on relations?
|
| My experience with seeing discussions online doesn't give me much
| confidence in the persuasive ability of "here are logical reasons
| why what you're feeling is wrong".
| afarrell wrote:
| Online discussions are a lot more scatterbrained than sitting
| down to read a book. People are more willing to take a second &
| more logical look before responding when they cannot tweet
| back.
|
| Also, this has a lot of reasons why the reader is right to feel
| a certain way.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I saw a comic from 1898 "Un diner en famille"
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_d%C3%AEner_en_famille which
| I understand the captions to be "Let's not discuss the
| Dreyfus affair" and "they discussed it".
|
| I won't disagree that the internet can exasperate things like
| this.. the comic feels _too_ familiar in the internet-age.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| As a french, it reminds me very much of the FM 3-24
| Counterinsurgency manual: a pragmatic and clear book that tries
| to make approachable what seems an impossible topic to handle.
|
| That's really a side of the american culture I'd like we promote
| more.
|
| Also a proof militaries are not devoid of humanism.
| jhugo wrote:
| In case anyone is interested in a link:
| https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
|
| It's indeed an interesting read.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| _> France sounded like a muslim country back then:
|
| >> Most French girls before the war had far less freedom than our
| girls back home. A great many were not permitted to go out
| without a chaperone. France is dominantly Catholic in religion
| and in morals..._
|
| Can you imagine: from that to disallowing fathers to do a DNA
| test in less than 100 years!
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Bayart wrote:
| What are you on ? It's perfectly legal, there's just a process
| to follow because it's completely illegal to take someone's DNA
| without their consent, unless there's a criminal procedure with
| sufficient proof.
|
| Sneaking a paternity test by taking someone's DNA
| surreptitiously would be not only worthless as a legal
| document, but also put you on the spot for litigation.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Following your logic: 'French girls were fully permitted to
| go out but there was just a process to follow - presence of a
| chaperon.'
|
| Seriously, just open Wikipedia and read about different
| countries e.g.: _In the United States, paternity testing is
| fully legal, and fathers may test their children without the
| consent or knowledge of the mother. Paternity testing take-
| home kits are readily available for purchase, though their
| results are not admissible in court and are for personal
| knowledge only._
| cycomanic wrote:
| Except that taking someone's DNA without their consent (or
| the consent of their guardians) is nothing like making
| girls (and women) be accompanied by a chaperone.
|
| I always find it fascinating that many American people
| believe very strongly in individual freedoms, the same
| people often believe these freedoms do not apply to
| children (or teenagers) and parents should have
| unconditional ownership over their children.
| true_religion wrote:
| But do you really need the consent of all the guardians?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes, generally you do. In many countries you need consent
| of all guardians for all serious interventions, like
| operations, school changes, travel outside the country...
|
| So why should a paternaty test be different?
| dang wrote:
| Please omit personal swipes from your HN comments, regardless
| of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. It just
| makes things worse. Your comment would be fine without that
| first bit.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Only 112? Joking, I like the Frenchies.
| CPLX wrote:
| The actual text: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-
| content/uploads...
| hef19898 wrote:
| That text is as important now as it was then. And it can easily
| be used everyone, with slight adaptions, by replacing France
| and the US with other nations.
| danieldbird wrote:
| Israel and Palestine? That would be a good read.
| lotsofcows wrote:
| Other way around. This text seems very similiar to:
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Instructions-British-Servicemen-
| Fra... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Instructions-American-
| Servicemen-Br...
| FabHK wrote:
| Delightful. Plus ca change:
|
| > 49 "Why do they knock of work for two to three hours every
| day?"
|
| > They keep their stores open two to three hours later than we
| do. (They did when there were things to sell; there's no point in
| keeping a store open if the shelves are bare.)
|
| > The long lunch hour is a custom which is not confined to
| France. It is found in Italy, Spain, the Balkans and many parts
| of Germany. It is a custom we find annoying because it interferes
| with our comfort (as tourists) and because it differs from our
| way of doing things.
|
| > The average Frenchman maintains that a lunch eaten at leisure
| is a lot better than a chicken-salad-on-toast gobbled down at a
| drugstore counter. "We take time to live as well as work," one
| Frenchman said.
|
| ETA: It does take a more sombre turn in the chapters about France
| vs. Germany (Questions 69 etc.), which appears to indicate that
| many soldiers felt that they should have sided with the Germans
| rather than the French.
| j4yav wrote:
| The actual document in pdf format seems to be here:
| http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads...
| danans wrote:
| The questions in the chapter entitled "the French and the
| Germans" paint a picture that despite defeating the Nazis and
| witnessing their atrocities, many American servicemen harbored
| deeper sympathies to German culture than to French, and this
| pamphlet was intended in part to fix that. Examples of questions
| in that section:
|
| "The French aren't our kind of people . The Germans are"
|
| "The French are not as clean as the Germans"
|
| "The Germans are easier to get along with than the French,
| because the Germans are law abiding"
|
| This is reminder that despite the US being at war with the Nazis
| in WWII, the heinous beliefs behind the Nazi agenda had a lot of
| resonance in many other countries, including the United States.
| In fact, in recent years, it's become better understood how
| Nazism was inspired in part by the Jim Crow laws and culture in
| the US.
|
| https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/nazism-and-th...
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-r...
|
| https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-...
| k__ wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I always had the impression, the US citizens and french citizen
| where buddies. Because of the independence war and the statue and
| everything.
| eplanit wrote:
| Allies, not buddies.
| afarrell wrote:
| I had plenty of gripes about my brother when I was growing up.
| Those gripes were trivial but real and talking about them is
| far healthier than not.
|
| I miss him terribly now.
| neximo64 wrote:
| One of the 'gripes' is:
|
| "One Frenchman told me the French practically gave us the
| statue of liberty. How do you like that?"
| k__ wrote:
| :D
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Not sure if you are joking?
|
| > France is the country with the deepest, most sedimented
| reservoir of anti-American arguments. Its long genealogy has
| been well documented over the years, most recently by Philippe
| Roger, who argues that French anti- Americanism is older than
| the United States (Roger 2002).
|
| https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/meunierces...
| sidibe wrote:
| Admittedly I'm not clicking on the link (2002 is peak
| antipathy both ways due to Iraq war build-up), but I've seen
| similar stuff that doesn't account for French people have a
| negative attitude towards everything compared to other
| countries. If you ask French people in a poll whether they
| approve of something they are much more likely to disapprove
| cycomanic wrote:
| And I would add that includes many French things and France
| as well.
| morsch wrote:
| > Surprisingly, polling data reveals that France is not
| drastically more anti-American than other European countries
| - even less so on a variety of dimensions.
|
| ibid
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I'm going to suggest to you that when trying to get the
| most out of a research paper, you might want to read beyond
| the second sentence of the abstract.
|
| It balances and talks about the paradoxes - such as the
| French obsession with McDonalds.
| eplanit wrote:
| The French love insulting Americans nearly as much as the
| Brits enjoy insulting the French (it's like a sport there).
| ekianjo wrote:
| France is well know as being the little Russia and certainly
| a deep reserve of anti American sentiment. Mostly due to
| media and education brainwashing.
| unishark wrote:
| When the USSR broke up, I had a school teacher at the time
| who said Russia will cease to be an enemy and become like
| France, an ally that opposes us a lot and causes headaches
| just out of national pride.
| coldtea wrote:
| Spoken like a true American who only heard about those
| places from TV shows, movies, and mass media "coverage"...
|
| "media and education brainwashing" LOL
| smcl wrote:
| I think you both need to read the book this submission is
| based on and try to apply some of its lessons in this
| thread.
| coldtea wrote:
| Beyond common ground and "we're all human" triteness,
| there are also deep cultural faults...
|
| The book is right in addressing the ones it does.
|
| But not every aspect of a culture is valid.
| smcl wrote:
| I was trying to say: stop doing this US/EU stereotype
| insult exchange stuff. It's boring and it's been done to
| death on basically every platform where people have been
| able to (pseudo)anonymously communicate.
| [deleted]
| retrac wrote:
| France and the United States could not be more alike in
| national spirit (as elusive a concept as that is). Born of a
| similar era in revolution with practically the same slogans.
| Their constitutions paraphrase each other. Both deem themselves
| the birthplace of the modern republic and democracy, perhaps
| modern civilization itself.
|
| With all that in mind, I wouldn't say buddies. More like
| siblings... with a serious rivalry going on.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I've never heard of this. I'm reading the original right now --
| it's amazing.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| This website has serious problems with its voting culture. The
| serial downvoters should be banned from the site, but they
| never will be, because dang doesn't see the problem. You can't
| take disagree, and you can't agree.
|
| Whatever, I'm out. Life's too short.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Can you not see that your down-voted comment contributes
| absolutely nothing? You haven't seen it before and you're
| reading it now... ok... so what? What can anyone do with that
| information? Why did you post it? What was the point?
| _Nat_ wrote:
| On some sites, folks will up-vote things that they agree with
| and down-vote things that they disagree with. Or, sometimes
| up-votes are a mode of expressing emotional-support or
| communal-acceptance. Maybe that's what you're used to?
|
| Here, folks tend to prefer substance. They'll often down-vote
| you even if you express a view that they agree with if your
| comment doesn't contribute something worth reading. And they
| might up-vote your comment, even if they disagree, if it was
| interesting to have read.
|
| This is more of a place to exchange ideas than find
| validation. You're not being rejected on a personal level --
| down-votes aren't personal attacks. And people don't
| necessarily disagree with you, either.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| I've found 'chat'-style comments are downvoted i.e the
| internet equivalent of small talk.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| Except when they're not. For example, when something about
| a specific retro computing feat is posted, people will just
| ramble about something very faintly related that they saw
| or did or purchased or dreamed about recently. E.g. topic
| is about an Amiga accelerator card, and there will be
| someone mentioning how they recently cleaned up the Amiga
| 500 they had in the garage -- like, who cares? Exactly like
| the comment we're discussing now: nobody cares except the
| author of that comment. Yet I never see those downvoted,
| and I know if I responded to them pointing out that this
| isn't their blog, _I_ 'd get downvoted.
|
| I just looked at the front page, this is literally the
| first discussion I clicked on before even getting to search
| for "retro" or "Amiga" as I would have otherwise:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27864139
|
| What is the content here? "For some reason I thought
| something else"... okay? Yet that isn't greyed out, it is
| the _top_ comment. Why? Because of "Karnaugh map"? There
| are no replies because it offers nothing to discuss except
| more such ramblings about what someone might have
| encountered or lazily assumed (or pretends they have
| assumed so they can casually drop that they know a thing).
| pseudalopex wrote:
| People who read the comments first like when someone
| highlights an interesting part of the article. It led
| some people to learn about Karnaugh maps probably. And it
| didn't have lots of competition.
|
| The top comment of this discussion is a link to the
| scanned book.
| overgard wrote:
| What strikes me me as amazing is that straightforward answers are
| viewed as "omg". We live in a society where its viewed as
| shocking that people shared their thoughts.
| richk449 wrote:
| I'm intrigued by the choice to conclude with this:
|
| _" France is a decadent nation"_
|
| How does one measure decadence? The Germans said, "Democracies
| are decadent".
| baby wrote:
| I'm guessing such a book exists in south korea at the moment?
| I've heard that there's a lot of tension between the US army and
| the locals. One soldier even raped some local girl back in 2011.
|
| The problem is that people in the army are not the most educated
| people, and thus they're not the best ambassadors when abroad.
| nickserv wrote:
| Right, because well educated, wealthy men don't rape
| teenagers...
| nradov wrote:
| Military personnel on average have more formal education then
| the general public. High school drop outs aren't even allowed
| to enlist anymore without a special waiver. Almost all
| officers, and many enlisted, have Bachelor's degrees. Senior
| officers usually have Master's degrees.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| >without a special waiver
|
| Oh wow so difficult for a recruiter who is paid per recruit
| to fill out. /s
|
| The military is often the last resort for many people, as a
| result it attracts a different demographic.
|
| >officers, and many enlisted, have Bachelor's degrees.
|
| So? Aren't most deployed people non officers?
| nradov wrote:
| The availability of waivers is strictly limited. Recruiters
| are only NCOs; they lack the authority to grant waivers on
| their own and they aren't paid per recruit (although
| failure to meet quota could result in a negative fitness
| report).
|
| https://www.thebalancecareers.com/us-military-enlistment-
| sta...
| ShinyRice wrote:
| _Officials_ are probably more educated than the general
| populace, since they almost always need a university degree,
| but enlisted personnel might even be high school dropouts, so
| I wouldn 't trust any regular soldier to be humble and
| respectful.
| nradov wrote:
| You're just completely wrong and obviously didn't bother to
| check the facts before commenting. The US military has a
| much lower proportion of high school drop outs than the
| general public. Your lack of trust is irrational, elitist,
| and offensive.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/232726/education-
| levels-...
| baby wrote:
| That doesn't coincide with the amount of kids that are hired
| in the military.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| > (...) tensions began to rise between the French and the U.S.
| military personnel stationed in the country, with the former
| seeing the latter as arrogant and wanting to flaunt their wealth,
| and the latter seeing the former as proud and resentful.
|
| Well. I mean...
|
| Joking aside, the text is amazingly blunt and honest, in a rather
| refreshing way. "The French don't bathe."
| The French don't bathe often enough. They can't. They don't have
| real soap. (...) The Germans took the soap.
| [deleted]
| afr0ck wrote:
| I like the fact that the French didn't like American presence
| on their sole and had offensive feelings towards that, while at
| the same time, they were forcefully present all over Africa
| with totalitarian and oppressive military administrations.
|
| In Algeria, many fought in WW2 as part of the French
| Expeditionary Corps (e.g; my great-grandfather) with the hope
| that in case the allies win, Algerians could possibly negotiate
| some sort of self-governance. on the 8th of May 45, thousands
| of Algerians protested for independence. The civilians faced an
| immediate annihilation by the French military [1], resulting in
| up to 30,000 dead civilians. And who can believe this happened
| in the aftermath of ending NAZI Germany?!!!! I mean that's very
| ironic but well ...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre
| ashtonkem wrote:
| A lot of the allied leaders get a better historical
| reputation because they're naturally compared to their
| opponent, Hitler. Without Hitler there as a foil, most of
| them would be treated far worse by history.
|
| Charles de Gaulle should get more crap over his behavior in
| Algeria than he does. Same for Churchill and his behavior in
| India.
| jollybean wrote:
| Geopolitical ambitions were well beyond the daily awareness
| of French citizens, moreover, we don't know what the average
| French citizens view on those things would be.
|
| Most of them just lived through existential horror.
| SimeVidas wrote:
| Also, page 35:
|
| > The French haven't had paint for a long time.
| eplanit wrote:
| It's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday. My
| stepfather escaped nazi Germany, and moved to the us in the
| 40s. He grudgingly adapted to daily bathing (my mother's
| insistence), but remarked how very American that is. He was
| very 20th century European, for sure.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _It 's true. Europeans of that era did not bathe everyday._
|
| Americans of a very close earlier ear didn't bathe everyday
| either...
| eplanit wrote:
| That's true. It was the 1970s when we were pressuring the
| stepfather.
| jhugo wrote:
| Many Americans of the _exact same era_ probably didn 't
| bathe every day.
| eplanit wrote:
| And true in Europe today. Ever been on a train in Germany
| in the summertime?
| techrat wrote:
| Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working
| air conditioning?
|
| Spoiler: Everybody stinks.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| As a German, I want to add that on German trains, "in the
| summer" implicitly means "without working air
| conditioning" ;).
|
| (Sort-of-jokingly. On ICEs, you're most likely to
| actually freeze body parts off due to the harsh AC. On
| local trains, you'll dehydrate due to excessive sweating.
| There is no middle ground.)
| eplanit wrote:
| Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous.
| Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly
| absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...).
|
| Different folks are indeed different in some ways.
| conceptme wrote:
| Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much
| for some reason.
| yarcob wrote:
| I read that body odor is controlled by the same gene as
| the one for ear wax.
|
| People with wet/creamy ear wax smell. People with
| dry/crumbly earwax don't smell.
|
| I'm not sure if it's true in general, but it's true for
| me and my partner.
|
| One of our kids has creamy ear wax, and the other has
| crumbly ear wax. I'm curious if only one of them will
| need deodorant once they get to puberty...
|
| Genetics is fun.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Well if you want to compare Japan to other countries, you
| should be aware that the fear of being a burden to others
| due to one's body odor is a very Japanese phenomenon [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho
| tinco wrote:
| (European here) my grandparents bathed I think once per week,
| we often joked about this in the family. My uncle who is a
| commercial construction inspector/engineer arranged for a
| full bathroom model a couple years before they died. When we
| went to sell the house he complained the bathroom was unused
| and looked the same as the day he signed off on it.
|
| Despite this, they never smelled bad to me, they certainly
| had a recognizable smell, but it wasn't foul. Contrasting
| with myself, if I don't shower for a day, I'll get remarks
| from my girlfriend the next afternoon, and on the third day I
| smell so foul I can smell it myself. I also get more randomly
| itchy.
|
| I wonder if by showering daily I'm somehow tampering with my
| bodies ability to fend off some foul smelling bacteria or
| something. Besides fearing to smell bad for a couple weeks
| (months?) to find out, I also enjoy showering to start my day
| fresh and I like the way it makes my hair feel.
| viburnum wrote:
| Yes
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/hygien
| e...
| sgerenser wrote:
| A young Steve Jobs famously thought that as long as you ate
| a certain diet, you could skip showering/deodorant and
| still smell ok. His coworkers/manager at Atari did not
| agree and put him on the night shift:
| https://techpp.com/2017/02/24/steve-jobs-facts-you-might-
| not...
| fouc wrote:
| There might be other factors too, like changing into
| pajamas at night (possibly changing underwear or no
| underwear), and then fresh clothes in the morning?
|
| As for hair, there's a whole "no shampoo" movement, takes a
| few weeks for the scalp to adjust.
| 0des wrote:
| To what extent is someone's "smell" a product of their
| local dermal biome and what they've been inoculated with,
| so to speak, via sharing deodorant, clothing, activity
| level, diet, etc?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I think once your body is used to showering daily, it is
| never the same in terms of microbes, or it takes years to
| get back to whatever.
|
| I need to bathe daily. If I don't I get a sore under my
| arm, and I can smell myself.
|
| I had a girlfriend, well kinda, who didn't believe in
| showering, and she did smell. I never had the nerve to tell
| her.
|
| My grandfather didn't bath, and didn't have an odor. He was
| small, and very skinny though.
|
| My best friend didn't bath, and he did smell. I should have
| habituated to his smell since I saw him so much, but no.
| His smell was so bad, I needed to put down a towel before
| he sat on any chair.
|
| I saw my grandfather once a year.
| zorked wrote:
| About 1/3 of Germans still don't bathe every day. 1/6 of the
| French don't bathe every day.
| thih9 wrote:
| Number 48. seems related, both about cleanliness and being
| blunt. I was glancing through the text and I was very surprised
| when I found it.
|
| > "I'd like the French a lot better if they were cleaner."
|
| > That's perfectly understandable.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > the text is amazingly blunt and honest
|
| It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to
| people with a fairly low reading level.
| djrogers wrote:
| Why? The US literacy rate in the 1940s was 97.1%, and the US
| military had special programs to teach the illiterate to
| read. During WW2, 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum
| literacy within two months through the special training units
| developed for that purpose.
|
| I know it's easy for some people to think of a trigger puller
| as a dumb grunt - even more so one who served 80 years ago,
| but it's not accurate or fair.
|
| [0] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp [1]
| https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm
| rsynnott wrote:
| I didn't mean it as a value judgement; it's clearly written
| to be very comprehensible. That's a good thing!
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I think more writers, especially technical writers, should am
| for this type of writing.
|
| I like simple.
| mattkrause wrote:
| The DoD produces documents that are either
|
| a) incredibly clear and straightforward, or
|
| b) completely impenetrable (esp. anything with a diagram)
|
| There is no middle ground. Seriously though, the Army's
| writing manual is top-notch and most high schools would be
| better for spending a month or three teaching from it.
| eplanit wrote:
| People weren't as fragile and sensitive then. It was better
| in that way.
| gambiting wrote:
| Except that it's actual nonsense. Not long after WW2 the
| congress tried to ban comic books for spoiling the
| youth,just couple decades later people were holding public
| protests against the Simpsons, and the first TV show to
| mention the word "period" was met with similar level of
| protests as if that's something dirty and unspeakable.
|
| No, it's the exact opposite - "back then" people were far
| more fragile and sensitive and doing or saying the wrong
| kind of thing could have serious consequences on your life.
| 0des wrote:
| You are both right, in some ways we have become less
| bashful about certain aspects of life, but also society
| today is a bit more particular about some things. It is
| no longer enough to disagree with someone, you must
| destroy their will to continue.
| eplanit wrote:
| Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in
| which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and
| when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess
| the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those
| times too, however, children were taught "sticks and
| stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me".
|
| Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and
| biological realities...but a book critical of
| transgenderism is literally called "violence":
| https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-
| associati....
|
| I guess critics of such topics are today's Juvenile
| Delinquents. /s
| whoaisme wrote:
| Yeah I wish we could go back to the days when people
| weren't so sensitive. Nowadays a black man can't even
| look at a white woman without getting hanged not to
| mention all the pearl grasping about the queers.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| There's also an excerpt from the NYT in there, number 33.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Well yes, but you also use that fact to be blunt and
| dishonest, like saying "Yep, the french don't wash. Guess
| they're just uncultured. They're still our allies, get used
| to it!"
| jamesmontalvo3 wrote:
| Perhaps also to enable the French to read and understand it?
| You wouldn't want them just reading the gripes (which are
| short and simple) and then not reading the responses.
| bonaldi wrote:
| Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting
| Tacitus and such like. There's an important distinction
| between reading level and intelligence, and I think we
| conflate the two in modern writing. Simple language doesn't
| need to be simplistic.
| memling wrote:
| > Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting
| Tacitus and such like.
|
| There's a common trope about "8th-grade" education in the
| US, and a fairly common response to it, e.g., https://www.g
| rc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.h....
|
| There are, of course, reasons for the differences that
| aren't merely reactionary "people are dumb now" or
| "technology FTW!!1!" I suspect some of the quoting of
| Tacitus is due to a more classical emphasis, even in early
| education (see, for example, the McGuffey Readers[1]),
| where Latin and Greek were more widely studied, and their
| authors more integrated into the grade-level curriculum. I
| didn't read Herodotus or Tacitus until college (a classics
| course) and was pleasantly surprised by how readable and
| accessible they were.
|
| [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers
| rdiddly wrote:
| Yeah I kept thinking you'd never get away with talking that way
| now.
| baby wrote:
| This whole thing is amazing. It still reads really well today,
| like there's no tone of racism and nothing seems inappropriate
| (which is a hard thing to achieve with time).
|
| I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the muslim
| world are different, but not so different than us.
|
| > We didn't come to Europe to save the French, either in 1917 or
| in 1944. We didn't come to Europe to do anyone any favors. We
| came to Europe because we in America were threatened by a
| hostile, aggressive and very dangerous power.
|
| > In this war, France fell in June of 1940, We didn't invade
| Europe until June of 1944. We didn't even think of "saving the
| French" through military action until after Peary Harbor -- after
| the Germans declared war on us
|
| I can't stop reading, this is so interesting, this is really a
| lesson on racism and discrimination. I'm curious about who wrote
| this.
|
| > It was inevitable that some Frenchmen would rub some Americans
| the wrong ray=. City people often rub country folk the wrong <<ay
| the same goes for a Pittsburgher in New Orleans or Texan on Fifth
| Avenue. We Americans believe in the value of differences -- if
| basic political beliefs and goals rest on a common foundation.
| "Unless you bear with the faults of a friend you betray your
| own."
|
| another one:
|
| > You don't have to love the French. You don't have to hate them
| either. You might try to understand them, The more important
| point is not to let your feeling blin d you to the fact that they
| were and are our allies. They were in 1917, too. The most
| important question any people can ask itself is this: "Who fights
| with us? Who fights against us ?"
|
| This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe?
|
| > Yes, we quarrel with the French. The members of a family argue
| pretty freely inside the home ; We quarrel with our allies, We
| don't quarrel with our enemies -- we fight them.
|
| I like how this one is phrased so that it sounds like France gave
| more money. I also really thought that France gave the statue to
| the US entirely.
|
| > In France, 180 French cities, forty general councils, and
| thousands of anonymous Frenchmen contributed a quarter of a
| million dollars (not francs) towards the statue, (The United
| States raised $280,000.)
|
| that's how much a cocktail was back then:
|
| > A. G.I., comes out of a night club in the States and says, "A
| buck and half for a Scotch and soda".
|
| that one can apply to the homeless crisis in the US:
|
| > Some of the French are scroungers. Hungry people lose their
| pride. An empty stomach does not worry about losing face.
|
| France sounded like a muslim country back then:
|
| > Most French girls before the war had far less freedom than our
| girls back home. A great many were not permitted to go out
| without a chaperone. France is dominantly Catholic in religion
| and in morals. The immoral Frenchwomen are, of course, the
| easiest women for us to meet. That's why we meet so many of them.
|
| this one is hilarious:
|
| > This always startles Americans - at first . Kissing on both
| cheeks is the traditional French greeting between old friends.
| For their love making, the French prefer privacy, if available,
| just as we do.
|
| It's interesting how the second part goes into "germans are so
| much nicer than french people".
|
| PS: holy shit I can copy/paste from an old picture of a book O_o
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Right off the bat:
|
| "The right to speak involves the duty to listen."
| himinlomax wrote:
| The statue itself was paid by the French, the US funds were for
| the pedestaland earthworks.
| bumby wrote:
| > _I wish we had such a book currently on how arabs and the
| muslim world are different_
|
| I also wish we had such a book currently on how progressive and
| conservatives are different
| mbfg wrote:
| sometimes groups of people are just nasty, bad people worthy
| of mocking and ridicule. You can't always pretend that
| situations are around reasonable differences of opinion with
| each side being honest actors. Each situation is going to be
| different. the english/french situation may be one way and
| the progressive/conservative situation may be different.
| coldtea wrote:
| _sometimes groups of people are just nasty, bad people
| worthy of mocking and ridicule_
|
| Yes, conservatives aren't just people with a different
| belief system than yours. They are bad people, liars, evil,
| rotten to the core, and deserve to die.
|
| /s
| tobltobs wrote:
| How did you decide that he meant conservatives == nasty,
| bad people?
| coldtea wrote:
| It was a statistical observation. The people who phrase
| it the way the parent did, usually tend to be on a
| specific side.
|
| (The other side has its tell-signs as well).
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| If you are liberal you believe conservatives are greedy,
| amoral and probably evil.
|
| If you are conservative you believe liberals are stupid
| and probably brainwashed.
|
| This is America.
| coldtea wrote:
| And if you're neither, you can see through both charades.
| mbfg wrote:
| You need to evaluate verifiable facts and come to
| conclusions. In discussion regarding two sides, A against
| B, you don't just say well each has it's good points,
| each has it's bad, we have to be fair and balanced. No,
| this is especially where newspapers have it wrong. You
| are fair and balanced when you appropriate praise and
| scorn to sides based on the externally verifiable facts,
| and the honestness of their actions. You don't blindly
| give both sides equal footing for fairness.
|
| When a man beats up a wife, _you don't say_, well, look,
| she probably wasn't the easiest to live with, and he had
| it tough dealing with her. He is a good business man, and
| a pillar in the community. so look both sides have
| positives and negatives. (Well to be fair as a society we
| usually do, do this, but clearly we are wrong).
|
| No the facts say otherwise.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't think the point is advocating some sort of moral
| relativism but rather to steel-man both sides in good-
| faith rather than respond to some sort of caricature of
| each.
| mbfg wrote:
| Yes i agree caricaturing is clearly wrong. But i am
| saddened by this group think that all groups of people
| should be given even standing as all having positives and
| negatives. People should be given standings based on
| verifiable evidence with regard to their actions. If your
| group is composed of bad actors, your group is bad. We
| don't have to treat you fair and balanced.
| [deleted]
| bumby wrote:
| I think interrogating those differences can help you either
| find out if they are borne of "nastiness" and ignorance, or
| if there is actually fundamental difference in values that
| should be explored.
|
| E.g., Someone could assume a person is against voter ID
| simply because they want to disenfranchise specific groups
| or they can legitimately be concerned about fraud. If we
| just assume the former, it misses any opportunity to make
| rational arguments about the claims of the latter.
| techrat wrote:
| Yet if you look at all the cases of actual election fraud
| and voter fraud, they (almost?) exclusively fall on the
| side pushing voter ID the hardest.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| I'll use myself as an example:
|
| - Voters should show proof of citizenship when voting.
|
| - The US needs to take a serious look at implementing
| Universal Basic Income, and not just because of the
| automation of jobs.
|
| - Abortion should be legal up to the earliest that a fetus
| has survived out of the womb, roughly 3 months.
|
| - We should celebrate diversity, and, we should be able to
| talk about what makes us different. Without risking censure.
|
| - We should have a clear, straightforward and streamlined
| path to citienship for anyone who wants to become an
| American.
|
| - Mass media has done a masterful job of brainwashing
| Americans for the purpose of polarizing us, which drives
| outrage, clicks and ad revenue.
|
| What label do you apply to me? How about none? People's
| beliefs are on a spectrum, they aren't binary. But we should
| each understand the 'first principles' of why we believe what
| we believe, and dig deeper than a news article. Once you view
| people in this way, you actually have to get to know them
| before you can decide whether their beliefs align with yours.
|
| Labeling people and judging them based on a superficial
| observation is the opposite of inclusion. I was taught that
| in grade school 50 years ago.
| Shingbogle wrote:
| I would obviously apply a more progressive label to you.
| UBI, not anti-abortion, celebrating diversity, citizenship
| approval, MSM being dodgy.
| yardie wrote:
| > - Voters should show proof of citizenship when voting.
|
| You'll get no disagreement on this from any liberal. In
| fact the disagreement lies not in proving citizenship but
| in the methods to do so. If you have to show proof to
| register then why do you need to show proof to vote? In
| fact, if you have ID that proves you are a valid voter then
| registration shouldn't be necessary at all.
|
| Republicans not only want you to show citizenship. They
| want you to show it 2, 3, 4 times in the bottom of a locked
| filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on
| the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".
| bumby wrote:
| > _If you have to show proof to register then why do you
| need to show proof to vote?_
|
| Isn't the argument that you need to prove the person
| voting is the same person who registered? Where I live,
| you only need to give a name and address verbally to vote
| and that can be gathered online fairly easily.
|
| (Just to be clear, I'm not saying voting fraud is rampant
| but can understand the risk)
| throwawaycanal wrote:
| >You'll get no disagreement on this from any liberal.
|
| Maybe in France but in the US you will absolutely get
| disagreement from liberals.
|
| >If you have to show proof to register then why do you
| need to show proof to vote?
|
| If you showed proof to get your driver's license then why
| do you need to show proof to drive?
|
| If you showed proof to purchase/register your vehicle why
| do you need to show proof of registration when you get
| pulled over?
|
| >In fact, if you have ID that proves you are a valid
| voter then registration shouldn't be necessary at all.
|
| In fact, if you have ID that proves you are over 21 then
| registration of your firearm purchase shouldn't be
| necessary at all.
|
| Etc. Etc. Etc.
| bumby wrote:
| > _If you showed proof to get your driver 's license then
| why do you need to show proof to drive?_
|
| The general counter to this is that one is a privilege
| and the other is a right. Usually any hurdle to
| exercising a constitutionally protected is going to
| receive some pushback. The same goes for the firearm
| registration issue.
| throwawaycanal wrote:
| >The general counter to this is that one is a privilege
| and the other is a right.
|
| True. People on both sides of the isle use the "privilege
| not a right" counter on various issues.
|
| >Usually any hurdle to exercising a constitutionally
| protected is going to receive some pushback. The same
| goes for the firearm registration issue.
|
| Exactly. Owning a firearm is a right so this example
| still works here.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > If you have to show proof to register then why do you
| need to show proof to vote? In fact, if you have ID that
| proves you are a valid voter then registration shouldn't
| be necessary at all.
|
| Why don't you ask every other country why they do such a
| thing? Seriously, if the issue was as clear-cut as you
| make it out to be ("Those peoples are just trying to
| suppress the votes of their opponents") then the US would
| not be one of the few places in the world where this is
| controversial.
|
| It's not controversial in some of the largest democracies
| in the world, and yet you want us to believe that you
| really think that it is controversial?
| bumby wrote:
| The short answer is that doesn't always work because the
| U.S. is different in important aspects (and this doesn't
| mean necessarily claiming American exceptionalism).
|
| I think there are some problems when you bring in the
| "Why don't you ask every other country?" argument. For
| one, not every country has the same protections that the
| U.S. carries in the Bill of Rights. This is why you
| can't, for example, use this defense when it comes to
| banning intolerant speech even though it may be done
| elsewhere.
|
| I think the generous interpretation is this law feels
| like a "show me your papers" statute which the United
| States generally has a philosophical angle against. It
| would be comparable in some people's eyes to a "Show me
| your vaccine card" enforced by the State. Pragmatically,
| the ID law may also create de facto racial profiling.
| Although I think the opposite side of this feels the
| issue is more about State vs. Federal immigration
| enforcement than really striking down the "show me your
| papers" provision.
| bumby wrote:
| You're correct. I should have been more clear that
| progressive and conservative labels are more apt for
| individual viewpoints and not as a defining characteristic
| of the person. I think that logic can still be applied,
| though. The point I was trying to make is that with any
| label (whether French/American or conservative/progressive)
| it's more productive to try and find clarity about the
| opposing viewpoint rather than just slapping on a rigid
| label lacking nuance.
|
| While I wouldn't want to label 11thEarlOfMar personally, I
| think it can be helpful to look at each of those views in
| the context of a larger framework because it helps
| understand what value systems you operate with to either
| find inconsistencies or common ground.
|
| Edit: I think the fact that people are so quick to either
| label their personhood or assume someone else is doing the
| same is indicative of the problem. It's also a bit
| troubling that a post simply advocating for contextually
| understanding differences would get downvotes. I don't know
| if that's a problem with my inability to communicate that
| point effectively or something worse.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| To be clear, I agree with your original post that some
| type of mediation between the poles would be helpful.
|
| Reflecting a bit more, it's hard to imagine that a
| government could convince it's people to go to war
| without a large degree of brainwashing to demonize the
| foe. To some degree, we need our soldiers to believe that
| they people they kill are deserving of death, even though
| the they were most likely brainwashed and drafted into
| the conflict on false pretenses. In a symbolic way, this
| happened in the US in 2020, but this time, private
| industry and the government entered symbiosis in
| polarizing citizens into a civil conflict. And people
| were killed.
|
| We owe it to ourselves to peel back a couple of layers of
| the onion, and understand and respect other well
| supported beliefs, even if those beliefs differ from our
| own.
| [deleted]
| danans wrote:
| > It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of
| racism
|
| Since both countries were at the time white majority and
| controlled, there wasn't any need to address race in any way.
| There was no "race" dimension. Therefore, I wouldn't take the
| lack of racism as a virtue, but just that it would be off-topic
| for the purpose of the book.
|
| EDIT: Look through the book - every illustration of French,
| Germans, and Americans depicts white people. The book, as
| typical of the era, just doesn't address race. It only
| addresses culture.
| mlok wrote:
| If I understand well, the Statue of Liberty was a gift from the
| French _people_ (not the French State) but the pedestal was
| american : there was none when the statue arrived, and it
| waited for a year there in its crates.
|
| "The promoters of the statue in France formed an organization,
| the French-American Union, in 1875. The group issued a
| statement calling for donations from the public and presenting
| a general plan specifying that the statue would be paid for by
| France, while the pedestal upon which the statue would stand
| would be paid for by Americans."
|
| Source : https://www.thoughtco.com/who-paid-for-the-statue-of-
| liberty...
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Another thing that's been mostly sweeped under the rug wrt WW2
| is that Russia both did the most damage to the German army and
| paid the highest price.
|
| America only started their offensive after Russia started
| winning and likely only wanted to deny them Europe. And the
| heavy casualties in the war likely caused Russia to fold on the
| cold war as well, there were just not enough able men after the
| war to create families with about 80% of the male population in
| their prime dead. That low birth rate circle continues to date.
|
| The world would've been a very different place with the USSR
| still in power and indoctrinating europes youth for
| generations.
|
| America likely did save the Democratic western Europe at that
| time, just not from Germany.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Marshall Georgy Zhukov: "Today [1963] some say the Allies
| didn't really help us ... But listen, one cannot deny that
| the Americans shipped over to us material without which we
| could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been
| able to continue the war."
|
| Stalin himself is also reported to have said the Soviets
| couldn't have won the war without American aid, among other
| Soviet leaders.
|
| Worth nothing that Russia was the 2nd largest recipient of
| American lend-lease (after the British), which started well
| before the Normandy landings. Yes they were in the unenviable
| position of the being German bullet sponges, but they
| couldn't have even done that without American supplies. So
| it's arguable the US did save Europe from Germany: 100%
| indirectly at first and more directly later.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| No western democracy could have paid the human cost the USSR
| did. Arguably they only paid such a high price due to their
| industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their
| economic and political system.
|
| It's often said that the war was won with British
| intelligence, American steel, and Soviet blood.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Arguably they only paid such a high price due to their
| industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their
| economic and political system._
|
| Very arguably, as it's actually the opposite: the socialism
| forced mass force industrialization, and prepared USSR
| better for WWII than Russia ever had any chance of being.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Well, technically the Tsardom is _also_ a economic and
| political system.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, it just wasn't a very effective one in comparison...
| In fact it was dying for decades before 1905 and finally
| 1917 put it out of its misery...
| smhost wrote:
| > their industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to
| their economic and political system
|
| I'm sorry? They went from a peasant society immediately to
| defending against multiple foreign invasions (including the
| U.S.) to fighting and defeating the fascists, all in three
| decades. That was achievable only due to their economic and
| political system.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > They went from a peasant society immediately to
| defending against multiple foreign invasions (including
| the U.S.) to fighting and defeating the fascists, all in
| three decades. That was achievable only due to their
| economic and political system.
|
| This is old, debunked propaganda trope recited for a
| millionth time.
|
| No, USSR never went to industrial giant overnight, for a
| reason it never been it. USSR relied on single digit of
| large factories for everything during the war.
|
| Even tiny Eastern European countries USSR invaded were
| heads above USSR, to the point the first thing USSR did
| there were stealing all factory equipment, and relocating
| it to new factories in USSR.
| jtrip wrote:
| His intent was not to suggest that the USSR was always
| backwards, but rather that due to it's history the
| development was not undertaken until the war. The Tsars
| didn't do it because they were busy being feudal masters
| and the communists because they were nation building and
| hadn't faced the german onslaught yet. Atleast, that is
| how I understand it. His comment is not an underhanded
| insult.
| afterburner wrote:
| The USSR pay a high price because they suffered a massive,
| brutal invasion for years, against 80% of the German
| forces. None of that happened to the western countries.
| guythedudebro wrote:
| > Arguably they only paid such a high price due to their
| industrial underdevelopment which was partly due to their
| economic and political system.
|
| So arguably it had nothing to do with the largest war of
| all time waged against them explicitly for their
| annihilation?
| [deleted]
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Could you clarify what you mean with "economic and
| political system"? Do you count the Tsar's reign and the
| years of civil war under that heading?
| refurb wrote:
| Russia did pay a massive cost for WW2, but they also paid a
| high cost due to: 1) their attempt to placate the Nazi's with
| their non-aggression pact and attempt to avoid war (which
| they weren't that prepared for), 2) the Great Purge in the
| late 30's where they executed and imprisoned a massive number
| of experience officers, which they had to replace, 3) their
| tactics (no retreat) which resulted in massive encirclements
| and POWs who were starved to death.
|
| Eventually the USSR learned and with support of the UK and US
| in terms of materiel turned into a formidable fighting force.
| But a decent amount of their casualties were somewhat self-
| imposed.
| bennysomething wrote:
| True but the USSR was ally of Germany, two dictator states
| started world war two.
| Intermernet wrote:
| What history have you been reading?
| invincing wrote:
| I think it's a reference to this pact:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_
| Pac...
| bennysomething wrote:
| Ha! Think we posted at same time.
| bennysomething wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentro
| p_P...
|
| Also USSR pretty much annexed eastern Europe after the
| war, in a way they are the only country that won anything
| out of ww2.
| FabHK wrote:
| The USSR and Germany concluded a non-aggression-pact in
| 1939 with a secret amendment to divide Poland and the
| Baltic states between themselves. This late became known as
| the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (or Hitler-Stalin-Pact, or
| Nazi-Soviet-Pact). With the Sowjet occupation of Bukovina
| in 1940 and definitely the German attack on the USSR
| ("Operation Barbarossa") in 1941, the pact was defunct.
|
| In December of 1941, after Pearl Harbour, the US entered
| the war, and then you had the main combatants in place:
|
| The allies with the USSR (Stalin), USA (Roosevelt), British
| Empire (Churchill), France (de Gaulle), Republic of China
| (Chiang Kai-Shek), against
|
| The axis with Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini), and
| Japan (Hirohito).
| JackFr wrote:
| Swept under the rug as well is the Luftwaffe secret training
| facilities in the Soviet Union (in circumvention if the
| Treaty of Versailles) and among other things the Soviet
| invasion of Poland 2 weeks after the Nazis.
|
| The Soviet Union paid a very high price, but their hands were
| not clean.
| heffer wrote:
| > nothing seems inappropriate "The French can't
| drive a car. They can't keep it up. They ruin vehicles."
| The French, on the whole, certainly do not drive as well, keep
| a car up as well, or protect their vehicles as well as we do.
| Neither do women, compared to men. We have had more
| mechanical training, more technical experience. And at the
| present time we have incomparably better maintenance
| facilities.
| themeiguoren wrote:
| It's an anachronism that doesn't fly today, but to be fair
| this seems descriptive rather than prescriptive.
| baby wrote:
| The first line is one of the questions right? So it doesn't
| count.
|
| The rest doesn't seem inappropriate to me, I can believe it
| to be right.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe?
|
| This is absolutely nothing like the situation with China, which
| is definitely NOT an ally of the west.
|
| Shortly after assuming his position as President of the
| People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping disseminated a secret
| internal paper with his most important views and plans,
| including the 7 biggest threats to China in his eyes. In 2013,
| this "document number 9" was leaked. Among the 7 threats were
| democracy, human rights, and independent media.
|
| Seriously, China does not just have a different culture with
| slightly different ideas. They view our most fundamental values
| as their biggest threats.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...
|
| Edit: As pointed out by several commenters, my remarks refer to
| the Chinese Communist Party, not to the Chinese people.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| We have to make a distinction here. The book is about the
| French, the people, and how they are when you live with them
| in their own country.
|
| Almost all news about China are not about the people of
| China, but instead treat China as a single entity defined by
| its government.
|
| I think GP has a point is that we could get a better
| understanding of China by considering the people, their
| culture and how they live on a day-to-day basis rather than
| by focusing on Xi Jinping.
|
| I'd like to see more reports of westerners actually living
| there, rather than government talk.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| == The book is about the French, the people, and how they
| are when you live with them in their own country==
|
| But almost entirely through the lens of "they are our
| longest ally and have fought alongside us multiple times."
| nicbou wrote:
| To reply in the style of the book, China learned lessons from
| its history just like we learn from ours. They cannot easily
| forget the century of humiliation that was brought upon them
| by the West.
| stkdump wrote:
| Isn't the republican party dismantling democracy right at
| this moment? Also, America is a friend of human rights mostly
| as lip service, see Hague Invasion Act. And the calling
| American corporate media independent is a stretch. If these
| are the most fundamental values to Americans, they do a poor
| job defending them.
| analognoise wrote:
| We donate more to humanitarian causes than the next 10
| countries combined. We openly admit we're not perfect and
| work to make things better. We do more good than anyone
| else - by a MASSIVE margin. We openly admit we've made
| mistakes.
|
| Where does this reflexive anti-American bullshit come from?
| cycomanic wrote:
| The what you call "reflexive anti-american bullshit"
| comes because of post like yours, which without evidence
| spout claims such as "we do more good than anyone else -
| by a assive margin".
|
| The US (as in government) like all large powers are doing
| a lot of self interested power politics. They have
| overthrown many democratically elected governments and
| supported (and sometimes even put in place) some of the
| worst dictatorships in the world, because it was in their
| geopolitical interest. They invaded a sovereign country
| and presented lies to justify the invasion. They jave
| introduced a massive worldwide surveillance system, that
| is essentially spying on everyone. Have used that
| aperatus to spy on allies, and used it for to gain every
| economic advantage they could get.
|
| Is pointing this out "anti-american bullshit". Has
| someone who did these things done more good than anyone
| else by a massive margin?
| analognoise wrote:
| Go look up humanitarian giving. These are quantifiable
| numbers. We do more than the next 10 countries rolled up.
|
| We AGREE about the negative bullshit the US has done.
| We're actively trying to work on that shit, none of us
| like it. We've actually done a stellar job looking at our
| history and current practices and saying "That was fucked
| up" and "We should fix this going forward."
|
| But we still do WAY more good than, like I said, the next
| 10 countries combined.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/275597/largers-donor-
| cou...
|
| So it's not all roses, but... Yeah, I wouldn't dismiss us
| as a net benefit.
| nautilius wrote:
| Your source says that, per capita, Germany pays more than
| the US.
| analognoise wrote:
| Did your per Capita calculation roll up the populations
| of the next 9 countries it would take to equal the US?
| nautilius wrote:
| So your point about why the US are great and morally
| 'stellar ' (to use your word) is that it's --- big? Wow,
| that's anticlimactic.
| analognoise wrote:
| Add up all those populations. We're exceedingly generous,
| although less so than the Germans.
| Intermernet wrote:
| You know how you just got all defensive and insulted
| about a generalization made about America? That's how the
| Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Iraqis etc. feel when you
| make generalizations about them.
|
| The recent US leadership hasn't done a very good job of
| representing "American Values". You can expect anti-
| American sentiment from this.
|
| It may not be justified when referring to individuals,
| but neither is the xenophobic response to any of the
| countries listed above.
|
| Fight the governments, not the people.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| There is some inherent human nature to viewing your own
| actions with incredible nuance, while reflexively
| generalizing the actions of others.
|
| If it happens to me it's bad luck, if it happens to you
| it's bad planning.
| analognoise wrote:
| ...the countries that repress their own citizens and
| don't have a free press? You go to China and point out
| abuses. See how it goes. Or Russia - just don't stand by
| any windows.
|
| Those countries have legitimate issues we call out. We
| call ours out too. That's the difference.
| baby wrote:
| Have you heard of Navalny?
| analognoise wrote:
| Yeah he's legit - he was poisoned twice trying to speak
| the truth. That's not something that happens in the US.
| Surely that counts for something?
| overgard wrote:
| If you're looking at the dismantling of human rights I
| think the left and right are equally culpable.
| grey-area wrote:
| It would be more accurate to say that Xi and the CCP view
| democracy, the media, and human rights as the greatest
| threats to their power, and they're right - when running a
| dictatorship these things are a problem.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Isn't China our biggest trading partner. This sounds like
| xenophobia.
| dnhz wrote:
| Each comment GP made corresponds to quote following the
| comment. i.e.:
|
| >This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe?
|
| >> Yes, we quarrel with the French. The members of a family
| argue pretty freely inside the home ; We quarrel with our
| allies, We don't quarrel with our enemies -- we fight them.
|
| With that said, I wouldn't interpret the US relationship with
| China as one of alliance nor as one of enmity (yet).
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Uh, the US military has declated China it's main adversary
| and the US just had a presidency that used "clash of
| civilizations" to describe the relationship with China, why
| do you think "enmity" is not an appropriate word?
| dnhz wrote:
| Because the relationship with China is more complicated
| than that. You can see it in the NIH funding research at
| the Wuhan virology lab or all the made in China goods
| that the US consumes.
|
| It makes sense for the military to recognize the other
| forces that pose the biggest threat. But regarding
| declarations by politicians, it appears to me that
| internal politics in both countries are driving
| politicians to make such statements. As in, both American
| and Chinese leadership see advantage in creating an
| external enemy. Naturally, as China's power rises, the
| relationship changes texture, but how much of our
| attitude change is recognition of the changed situation
| versus a change in attitude induced by the political
| class?
| jl6 wrote:
| And one day, successive iterations of OCR, copy & paste, and
| machine learning will have us remembering the events of Peary
| Harbor.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Peary harbour was the site where the confederate forces of
| Robert Peary, in 1909, fought the communist forces of Franz
| Ferdinand. Ferdinand's forces were armed with revolutionary
| fire-arms, fitted with sights known as "Cross-hairs". This
| was immortalised in the song "Take Me Out" by the band "The
| Beegees", famous for their Delta-Blues sound, in 2067.
| rascul wrote:
| > in 2067
|
| Music from the future? ;)
| cafard wrote:
| Hah. The first encounters between the French and the US in WW
| II were hostile: The US landings in Morocco against French
| resistance.
| rualca wrote:
| > Hah. The first encounters between the French and the US in
| WW II were hostile: The US landings in Morocco against French
| resistance.
|
| I feel this statement grossly misrepresents history. French
| north Africa was controlled by Vichy France, which was Nazi
| Germany's puppet regime and did not represented french
| sentiment or opinion.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Thanks. My initial read of the other comment was that the
| US was fighting the French Resistance, when it was the
| opposite.
| Bayart wrote:
| Vichy did represent French sentiment at the beginning.
| Things changed with time.
| rualca wrote:
| > Vichy did represent French sentiment at the beginning.
|
| No, not really. The Vichy regime was the dictatorship
| puppet regime imposed onto the remaining french territory
| after the third republic was dissolved, and enacted
| policies imposed by Nazi germany such as rounding up Jews
| to hand them over to them. It grossly misrepresents the
| french sentiment of the time to even suggest that France
| suddenly had a change in heart and decided to not only
| accept Nazi Germany as it's political and ideological
| compass but also jump enthusiastically and head-on onto
| the Holocaust to the point of eclipsing even Franco's
| Spain.
| TMWNN wrote:
| As Bayart said, you are mistaken. Although de Gaulle's
| forces claimed that the Vichy regime was illegitimate, it
| it very difficult to justify the claim based on either
| popular support (Vichy and Petain almost certainly had
| the support of the majority of French at the surrender of
| the Third Republic, and for years afterward) or
| diplomatic recognition (Vichy had recognition from dozens
| of countries, including the US and Canada). Conversely,
| de Gaulle himself had difficulty in justifying his claim
| that he was legally acting on behalf of the Third
| Republic.
| Bayart wrote:
| You're mixing up things, misconstruing what I said and
| ignoring the timeline.
|
| The national sentiment in June 1940 when Petain formed
| the last government of the 3rd Republic was _very_ pro-
| Petain and the country as a whole was pro-armistice. The
| Vichy regime was formed on the basis of popular support
| to lead a policy that, if it didn't gather the
| unconditional support of everyone, didn't alarm many. You
| have to keep in mind the Parliamentarian 3rd Republic was
| seen as having failed miserably. All the while 1.8 French
| men were held as PoWs in Germany and the government was
| expected to gain them back.
|
| Until mid-1941 pro-Vichy sentiment remained high and the
| Resistance movement was at best paltry, with people like
| de Gaulle seen as trouble makers.
|
| Germany invaded the USSR on the on June 22, prompting the
| Communists in France to enter the Resistance. At the same
| time the systemic plunder of the French economy, with the
| help of Vichy, was coming into fruition and starting to
| be felt. Real antisemitic and repression policies started
| being implemented in the second half of 1941.
|
| The Vel d'Hiv Roundup happened in mid-1942. In June 22
| 1942 French workers were incentivised to leave France to
| work in Germany. Two months later, on August 22 work
| _conscription_ was instituted and accelerated in late 42
| / early 43 while the Germans invaded Southern France, up
| 'til now nominally in the hands of the French government.
|
| From _that_ moment national sentiment truly turned, Vichy
| lost all the good will it still had, the French lost all
| illusions that Petain was anything more than a mop and
| large amounts of youths trying to dodge slave work in
| Germany entered the Resistance.
|
| I think you << grossly misrepresent >> French sentiment
| much more than I do.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| > This one could apply to our relationship with China maybe?
|
| When the relationship was different from today's, during WW2,
| the US Army published a Pocket Guide to China:
|
| https://archive.org/details/PocketGuideToChina1943-nsia/mode...
| fortran77 wrote:
| > It still reads really well today, like there's no tone of
| racism and nothing seems inappropriate (which is a hard thing
| to achieve with time).
|
| How about this: Some Frenchmen have certainly
| gypped some Americans . We remember the times we were
| gypped . We forget the number of times we were not. How
| many times were you treated fairly, honestydeg' ?
| Were you never "gypped" back home -in towns near army
| camps ? (See question 4 83),
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the term " _gypped_ " may've been
| racist? Presumably because its etymology may be a reference
| to a stereotypical behavior attributed to gypsies, which some
| might regard as a racial-slur for [Romani
| people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people)?
|
| That passage doesn't give me that vibe -- it seems to be
| trying to suggest that the relevant behavior, " _gypping_ ",
| _isn 't_ culturally unique, but rather could be found back in
| the United States, too.
|
| Concerns about terminology etymologically-based on cultural
| stereotypes aside, it doesn't read like the author was
| expressing a racist perspective, but rather trying to speak
| to such preexisting-perspectives as to dispel them.
|
| Would probably want to do some checking on this first, though
| I'd suspect that " _gypsy_ " wasn't widely regarded as
| offensive back then, either, much like " _Negro_ " literally
| just meant " _Black_ ". Seems like sometimes terms are retro-
| historically recast as racial-slurs, apparently in an attempt
| to create a gap between historical-texts which use such terms
| and later-texts which don't. Kinda like depreciating an API
| in favor of a clone as a mode of depreciating the
| corresponding ecosystem.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Gypped isn't offensive just because they prefer to be
| called Romani. It equates Romani with swindlers. Saying
| some French and some Americans swindle too isn't the same.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| It's better to understand what people are trying to say
| than to misattribute false interpretations.
|
| For example, in this case the speaker clearly wasn't
| trying to equate Romani to swindlers. Any logic arriving
| at such a faulty conclusion would seem fallacious,
| presumably due to over-simplification.
| [deleted]
| nicbou wrote:
| The answers to each gripe are simple, straightforward and
| convincing. I love how it's written.
| roland35 wrote:
| I wish that people would listen to responses to common
| misconceptions on Facebook and Twitter these days.
|
| The answers are all great, but I could also understand why an
| American soldier would have those gripes in the first place!
| hollander wrote:
| It's prejudice vs logic and wisdom.
| fffdkkkj wrote:
| Its simple propaganda from the war department..
| eplanit wrote:
| To me it is logic and wisdom, with some (appropriate) bias
| towards its audience.
| jollybean wrote:
| Same thing in the UK during the years long wait for D-Day.
|
| Americans were very well paid relative to their UK peers and of
| course didn't have the existential angst of broken nation facing
| uncomfortable odds. American GI's would be jovial and upbeat
| while having definitely enough money to spend at the pub, which
| caused problems.
| drglitch wrote:
| The original is a delight to read. Sadly, I can't help but wonder
| how many would be "triggered" by the answers today.
|
| How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-criticism
| again?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-
| criticism again?
|
| A good starting point would be to stop using the word "trigger"
| when someone reacts in a way you don't like to something you
| say.
|
| Personally I interpret it as a way to diminish the other side
| position by suggesting they don't have control over their
| emotions regarding some subjects. Not a good start.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| ? but trigger was started and used by that side themselves.
| afarrell wrote:
| I'd advise reading the book "112 Gripes about the French"
| and then applying that same empathy to the people you
| dislike in our modern era.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Where did you get I disliked anybody? Parent used "sides"
| before I did, and it's seems absurd to say the right
| started trigger to mock the left
| afarrell wrote:
| > Parent used "sides" before I did
|
| My philosophy is that I don't care who started it. I care
| how I respond to try to improve things.
|
| (Though I myself have a lot to learn as well.)
| gnzg wrote:
| my understanding is that the word trigger is used in
| psychology to describe a wide range of traumatic responses.
| e.g whenever a war veteran suffering from ptsd hears
| firework it may trigger a strong traumatic response.
| //victims of abuse can get "triggered" by the presence or
| even mention of their abuser etc
|
| it applies to a wide range of traumas and responses some of
| which might be more or less extreme, so it does include
| some small things: if you ever get a minor burn, the idea
| of touching a potentially hot surface might make you
| somewhat uncomfortable - you could call that a triggering
| experience even though it's not nearly as intense as the
| other examples.
|
| Triggering experiences are generally considered to
| reinforce trauma and generate unncessary distress and
| should therefore be avoided
|
| And so we use trigger warning before movies etc to warn
| users of potentially upsetting/triggering content such as
| war, torture, sexual violence and various forms of abuse,
| it's really not that big of a deal
| khawkins wrote:
| This was the original idea, that some people with genuine
| traumatic experiences and were currently suffering from
| mental illness could choose to opt-out before proceeding
| on to read/watch something. But the concept got wildly
| out of hand as activists, especially younger adults,
| began obsessively applying it to nearly any piece of
| written word and anything they could frame as traumatic.
|
| For example, if you're about to present a movie to a
| captive audience that involves depictions of rape, it
| would be good that someone who has experienced rape,
| especially recently, knows that it will ahead of time and
| has the ability to opt-out because it might trigger a
| traumatic episode. The circumstances where you have a
| captive audience and it's not clear from the context what
| will be depicted are actually quite rare, so its usage
| should be rare.
|
| But young people, trying to signal their virtuous
| compassion and understanding to like-minded individuals,
| would put "trigger warnings" at the top of blog posts
| about things like "racism" or "homophobia", and all that
| would be discussed would be that they overheard a slur at
| the store.
|
| At some point, the dominant use of trigger warnings was
| by people with thin skins, ready to get offended on
| behalf of "victims" who had suffered, at worst, nothing
| more than people being rude or mean to them. Pretending
| like these kinds of negative encounters are anything
| close to the mind-breaking trauma of getting raped or
| watching your fellow soldiers explode in front of you is
| disgusting, and eventually everyone caught on that the
| activists were trying to equivocate real trauma with
| "hurt feelings". Worse, they were effectively teaching
| young people to internalize and exaggerate negative
| experiences so that they could identify as someone with
| PTSD. That doing this made them unique and gave them
| extra attention from others who wanted to actively show
| compassion to victimized people. For lonely young people
| who want a cause, it was extremely attractive because it
| gave them identity, purpose, and community. But in
| reality, it was largely a perverted roleplay which
| coddled everyone involved and made them emotionally
| fragile.
|
| The original concept of trigger warnings is solid, but
| should be practiced only where necessary and never
| attached to the phrase "trigger warning", as that
| nomenclature has been ceded to the activists.
| drglitch wrote:
| Is there a more appropriate word to describe this? Honest
| question as a non-native English speaker.
|
| Seems like this is a commonly used term/usage: https://www.go
| ogle.com/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/us/amp...
| adamjb wrote:
| "Offended" would be my suggestion. "Triggered" is only
| really used in this sense as part of bad faith culture war
| discourse, mocking the idea of trigger warnings.
| Shorel wrote:
| I don't think they mock the idea of triggers.
|
| They leverage and weaponize the concept, which is
| arguably worse.
| bkirkby wrote:
| I've heard advocates of trigger warnings share their
| lived experience by talking about what "triggered" them,
| using that word specifically.
| wffurr wrote:
| There's a big difference between describing one's own
| experience and labeling others.
| dogorman wrote:
| The word is used in the context of PTSD. e.g. _" hearing
| fireworks triggered flashbacks from the war"_
|
| More generally, a "trigger warning" is a "content
| advisory warning" by another name.
| watwut wrote:
| I have never seen triggered in relation to self-criticism.
| varajelle wrote:
| Do you have any example of answer that is "triggering" today?
| pell wrote:
| > How do we, as a society, start accepting rational self-
| criticism again?
|
| You might want to start with taking critique from the people
| you deem to be "triggered" seriously. That would be a first
| step in rational self-criticism. Otherwise you're selling a gut
| reaction as rationality to yourself. This is a common mistake
| people make. You might end up disagreeing with their critique -
| that may well be - but even then in most cases you'll likely
| take something from it, might be able to understand the topic
| at hand with some further nuance or get a deeper understanding
| of your position and its merits.
| kxter wrote:
| Amazing read, to get a glimpse of 'gripes' of Americans back in
| the day. Reminds me of the whole "Freedom Fries' fiasco. Times
| may change. Some gripes stay.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| As Steve Martin once said, "Those French have a different word
| for everything!"
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Fantastic read!
|
| Via the French Wikipedia page about this booklet [0], I learned
| that the probable author is Leo Rosten, author of "The Joys of
| Yiddish" [1]..!
|
| That makes sense as "Joys" is an incredibly funny and witty read
| on the interplays between Yiddish and English in the US. Much
| recommended
|
| From Rosten's Wikipedia page [2]:
|
| --
|
| In his book, The Joys of Yiddish, he defines the word chutzpah as
| "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother
| and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he
| is an orphan."
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nos_amis_les_Francais
|
| (Funnily, the booklet's title was translated to "Our friends the
| French")
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joys_of_Yiddish
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Rosten
| vanous wrote:
| Omg. Kaplan. H _Y_ M _A_ N K _A_ P _L_ A*N. :) Thank you.
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| Wonderful. I found that book in my mother's library--love it!
| ryanianian wrote:
| Thank you for adding this. It's faded/hard to read. Anyone got an
| OCRed or retyped version?
| ronjouch wrote:
| I couldn't find one and am considering working on a
| restoration. See thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865583
|
| EDIT see also https://www.e-rcps.com/gripes/
| jtlienwis wrote:
| Left out my favorite from Steve Martin. "The French have their
| own word for practically everything!"
|
| But seriously, left out from the list of great of Frenchmen
| Laplace, Lagrange, Galois, DeLambert etc. But I guess the list of
| mathematicians would have made the book too thick.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| Question 78: A 73% casualty rate for the French in WWI seemed
| bonkers to me at first glance, but it probably makes sense for
| the kind of war it was
|
| Ref: https://www.facinghistory.org/weimar-republic-fragility-
| demo...
| julienfr112 wrote:
| I kind of wonder why it's always acceptable to have general
| critics about the Frenchs, but take exactly the same discours and
| replace it replace it with Jews or Blacks, and sundenly, it
| becomes completely racist and unacceptable.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Have you watched any stand-up comedy. Lots of comedians are
| making fun of the idiosyncrasies of different ethnicities,
| nationalities, religions. The problem is generally, who is
| doing it and how you do it.
| afarrell wrote:
| As a mixed race person married to a Jew, I think it would be
| tremendously healthy for a well-informed person to write one of
| each --- but within a specific national and time-bounded
| context.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You can't compare a nationality to an ethnicity/religion and a
| race, respectively.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Why?
| danans wrote:
| Race operates on an individual regardless of their
| behavior. It is a construct that is based on physical
| appearance only. Race is something that an individual has
| no control over.
|
| Culture and ethnicity are constructs derived from
| behaviors, including language, manner of dress, interests,
| etc.
|
| Culture/ethnicity is something that depending on the
| individual, they can have far more (though not total)
| control over, via changing manner of dress, language, etc.
|
| Discrimination can be based on either one, but the
| immutability of the former distinguishes it from the
| latter.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Yeah, maybe French people could just unfrench their
| frenchiness...
| danans wrote:
| The whole point of the pamphlet is they shouldn't have to
| in order to be accepted by the American troops, but a
| white French person with sufficient linguistic and
| cultural flexibility could pass for a white American, and
| largely would in contexts where they did not have to
| speak.
|
| And black person could never do the same.
| seszett wrote:
| A black person could pass for a white person in contexts
| where did not have to show their skin colour, it's not
| that different or even rare.
| epivosism wrote:
| Which is more important, culture or race? Same-culture bonds
| of language, ideals, values, traditions look stronger to me.
| I connect to people from my hometown, of my culture,
| regardless of race, way more than to people who just randomly
| have my race but don't know any of my memes or have similar
| values.
|
| Another example: bonds within military units are cultural,
| not racial; if race were more powerful you'd expect soldiers
| from mixed-race countries to change sides due to stronger
| racial pulls - which I don't think happens, and which would
| be super problematic, wouldn't it? A Japanese-American
| soldier is American first, right? Suggesting that race is
| incomparably larger of a gap than culture has some really
| serious implications.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| > For the right to speak involves the duty to listen. The right
| to criticize involves the responsibility of giving "the other
| side" a fair chance to make its point.
|
| I wish this could be chiseled in rock somewhere prominent
| Jkol wrote:
| Can't be that hard or expensive, let's make it happen
| wrycoder wrote:
| Well, go for it!
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I love the idea of this, but it also plays poorly with
|
| > Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry
| principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty
| of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading
| information: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is
| an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."
|
| But I guess, to be fair, giving the other sides a fair chance
| to make it's point doesn't mean you need to provably debunk it
| if it's wrong.
| shijie wrote:
| This just seems like a rather clever permutation of ad
| hominem.
|
| "The reason I won't refute your argument is that it is so
| incorrect that it would take me forever to explain why."
| [deleted]
| RHSeeger wrote:
| You're looking at it wrong. It's that there is so much bull
| out there that it would be impossible to refute it all.
| robgibbons wrote:
| Not really. Ad hominem is directing the subject of your
| argument at the person instead of their ideas.
|
| Brandolini's law is more like the adage, "a lie can travel
| halfway around the world, while the truth is lacing up its
| boots." It's very easy to spout correct-sounding lies in
| such a volume that countering them becomes an academic
| challenge.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Or as Pauli said, "Not even wrong."
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| It would be spray painted then the legislature would vote to
| remove it.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Question 74 is kind of astonishing in a modern context. I mean, I
| suppose maybe the average soldier in the 40s didn't understand
| what the Nazis _were_ in the way they would now, but I'm
| surprised it needed to be addressed.
| holografix wrote:
| I find this an embarrassingly entertaining read! I particularly
| like this bit:
|
| "The French are not up-to-date. They're not modern. They're
| living in the past."
|
| "... The World Almanac for 1945 concludes that as far as social
| legislation is concerned, "France is in the vanguard" .. The
| French were certainly up-to-date in establishing old age
| pensions, compulsory insurance against illness, disability and
| death, maternity insurance, and so on. It was France that
| introduced the forty-hour work week."
|
| Clearly the author views theses social policies positively. I
| wander if that was what the average American thought back in 45.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The US established basic social insurance in the 30s, and
| generally ~all industrialised nations were going in this
| direction in the era fairly uncontroversially; at the time I
| don't think it was particularly contentious.
|
| The idea that social welfare is a partisan issue, with one side
| considering it to be, essentially, a bad thing, is really a
| fairly modern invention in the US; Reagan era.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Nobody worked 40 hours weeks after the war in France, except
| maybe civil servants.
| fcantournet wrote:
| That's not the point. It never was the point, it's never been
| the point of ANY law about ANY duration of the work week. It
| defines the LEGAL duration of a week's work because that's
| going to be used for calculating the PAY.
|
| Wehn we went from 39h -> 35h for instance with the same pay,
| we're just compensating for the massive increases in
| productivity that occured while salaries stayed flat for 30
| years.
|
| And civil servants basically work the same hours per year as
| workers in the private sector, in France. Always have since
| 1945. In 2019 it was 1640h vs 1703h effective hours per
| years, a 3.8% difference.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Clearly the author views theses social policies positively. I
| wander if that was what the average American thought back in
| 45.
|
| Probably most of those who voted for Roosevelt in 1944 and some
| others who voted for Dewey for other reasons. The results of
| Roosevelt's New Deal led to a comparatively wide support of
| social policies in the US for decades.
| Jkol wrote:
| The opening paragraphs are lovely and absolutely not what I'd
| expected based on the name. This is the America we want to live
| in.
|
| "We insist upon the right to express our own opinions. But we
| also believe in the right of others to express their opinions.
| For the right to speak involves the duty to listen...We know that
| the truth can only be found through open and honest discussion,
| and that the common good is served through common attempts to
| reach common understanding".
| echelon wrote:
| We need to be reminded of this.
|
| The left and right are so divided that they're intolerable of
| one another. Neither side believes the other is worth listening
| to.
|
| It's a shame.
|
| We're all animals traversing a complicated landscape. There's
| daily pain and suffering, and then we die. We should remind
| ourselves how similar everyone actually is, and that the
| diversity of our views are humanity living and breathing
| through our mortal, aging bodies.
| nobleach wrote:
| What's worse, that division is extremely profitable to some.
| So they spend their resources stoking that division. This
| only serves to drive the wedge deeper. Meanwhile, it's like
| the classic game of Three Card Monte. We are so busy hating
| the people we're told are "our enemy", that we ignore
| potential real enemies.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| One side wants trans people to be able to use the same
| bathroom and universal healthcare the other side talks about
| shooting democrats and Myanmar style coups.
|
| It is impossible to be tolerant of the Fourth Reich or those
| who if they don't condone it will at best tolerate it for tax
| cuts.
|
| Our unresolvable division is because 10% is evil and 30% is
| nuts and the remainder can't have anything they want if they
| don't embrace the crazy.
|
| These people will sacrifice our actual values for pale
| shadows of same.
| techrat wrote:
| In Portland.
|
| One side of the crowd holds signs like "Down with the Fash"
| and "Trans Rights are Human Rights."
|
| The other side of the crowd literally wearing "RWDS"
| Patches (Right Wing Death Squad) and "Pinochet Did Nothing
| Wrong" shirts.
|
| Some of the people in this thread: "Huh! I don't see any
| difference between the two. Both sides! Hurr durr."
| echelon wrote:
| You're painting the entire right as Nazis though. That's
| not at all accurate. Some people just don't want to be
| taxed, want their guns, and are afraid of the theory of
| evolution.
|
| You're failing to see the huge distribution of people on
| both sides.
|
| There are Nazis on both sides, but there aren't many. The
| majority are closer to the middle, and the media uses the
| extreme examples to enrage and divide for dollars.
| techrat wrote:
| Right there with the 'both sides are the same' false
| equivalence... In case you're wondering why.
| elefanten wrote:
| What a knee-jerk, unserious reply. You performed the
| perfect example of the point gp was trying to make.
| [deleted]
| mvid wrote:
| I literally watched him say it, live
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Oh look, video evidence
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
| overgard wrote:
| I think if you are willing to ignore 50% of the population,
| well, I don't know what to tell you other than that history
| does not look kindly on partisans.
| rayiner wrote:
| Not just 50% of the population. Folks on the left will
| sniffily tell you that stuff where the vast majority of
| the rest of humanity agrees with the right isn't even up
| for discussion.
| snypher wrote:
| We shouldn't have the hubris to think the "vast majority
| of the rest of humanity" agrees with us at all.
| esrauch wrote:
| Your sentence is really the same divisive "other side is
| crazy" crap that everyone else is complaining about.
| Folks on both the left _and right_ (under US definitions)
| will sniffily do that same thing and act like their
| positions are obviously correct and the other side
| obviously unreasonable.
| rayiner wrote:
| When was that? 30 years ago? Try having a conversation
| today with a progressive about virtually any issue where
| American conservatives may agree with people in Asia or
| Africa (or even a big chunk of moderate Democrats).
|
| I noticed this particularly acutely in how progressives
| have rallied around Muslims but you can't actually talk
| about a bunch of stuff my Bangladeshi mom and aunts
| believe. Same sex marriage is one example, but also
| abortion, gender roles, child rearing, civil order,
| religion in schools, etc.
|
| Ironically, as a result, you can't have public
| conversations about a bunch of stuff many Democrats
| (particularly non-white Democrats) believe. When Obama
| have a speech about dads raising their kids, he was
| shouted down by white liberals. Can't talk about Latino
| views on abortion, or Muslim views on gender roles and
| procreative marriage.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The left controls all corporations and big tech (see
| Google's new policy for misinformation). So one side has
| an unreasonable amount of power.
| techrat wrote:
| >well, I don't know what to tell you other than that
| history does not look kindly on partisans.
|
| "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than
| that good men should look on and do nothing."
|
| If the only way to stop an act of violence is with an act
| of violence, allowing it to happen in the first place, as
| you would condemn the response of violence, ends up being
| the greater evil.
|
| Also look up 'The Paradox of Tolerance.'
|
| Saying it is to be 'partisan' to call out injustice is
| the ultimate in hypocrisy.
|
| History has already condemned those who stepped back and
| did nothing.
| spiderice wrote:
| How, exactly? I don't see any claims to equivalence in GP's
| comment at all.
| [deleted]
| dheera wrote:
| xkcd doesn't agree with the "duty to listen".
|
| https://xkcd.com/1357/
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Randall makes a typical mistake: the constitution bans one
| specific form of censorship, therefore all other forms of
| censorship are acceptable.
|
| They are not, they just aren't so unequivocally bad that you
| can ban them in the constitution with a single sentence.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the constitution bans one specific form of censorship,
| therefore all other forms of censorship are acceptable_
|
| The First Amendment is perhaps the most powerful
| manifestation of the philosophy of free speech in our world
| today. As a result, we have a habit of conflating the two.
| But a culture of free speech can wither while the First
| Amendment remains strong (and vice versa).
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| The exercise of editorial discretion in a privately owned
| publication or forum and censorship are two very different
| things.
|
| What steams my clams is that the people who complain about
| private forums exercising editorial discretion tend to be
| the same people who insist that private property rights are
| sacrosanct, and so, for example, private property owners
| should be able to ban union organizers from their property
| [1]. This strikes me as brazenly hypocritical. Either free
| speech trumps private property, or private property trumps
| free speech. You can't have it both ways.
|
| [1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-
| holds-uni...
| remram wrote:
| I don't see those things as incompatible at all.
|
| "giving the other side a fair chance to make its point" (from
| very next sentence) doesn't mean they can't blow that chance
| by being obnoxious, unfair, offensive, or plain wrong. I
| don't think the OP argues that this "duty to listen" extends
| forever, that you have to keep listening after you have
| determined that "the other side" is being an asshole.
| Stupulous wrote:
| I think a tit-for-tat approach is fair. If the other party
| is demonstrably not listening to you, you can drop the duty
| to listen (and you should probably just disengage). If
| someone is participating in good faith, but wrong or an
| asshole/obnoxious/offensive, I don't think that justifies
| censorship.
|
| In any argument at least one and frequently both positions
| are plain wrong. Both parties think that is true of the
| other. If that were a reason to drop free speech norms,
| they would always be dropped.
|
| Civility is an aspirational value, but communities that
| enforce it invariably will do so in a biased way. Rude
| behavior is easy to spot in the outgroup and easy to
| overlook in the ingroup. Offensiveness is nebulously
| defined- someone might be offended by the word 'asshole',
| someone else by the banning of vulgarity. How a community
| defines civility privileges people from backgrounds that
| define it similarly. Those closest to the issue will have a
| harder time keeping their emotions in check- eg. a white
| person might have an easier time arguing dispassionately
| about racism than a minority.
|
| If you can get around those issues, I think you should.
| Civil discourse optimizes for a lot of the factors that
| justify free speech in the first place. Not so with being
| wrong; a major benefit of free speech is that those who are
| wrong and participating can be righted, to the benefit of
| all parties.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| xkcd isn't exactly an arbiter of truth
| sowbug wrote:
| That xkcd actually reinforces the duty to listen, but
| clarifies that nobody has a right to a _specific response_
| from listeners.
| everyone wrote:
| It is a great read. Thanks for the link!
| tasogare wrote:
| Did the book address the topic of rapes by US soldiers? This was
| a big issue after liberation, and still is a major issue near US
| bases nowadays (in particular Okinawa).
| fvdessen wrote:
| No. 75 years later this topic is still taboo
| orwin wrote:
| It's honestly not taboo anymore. Multiple history books have
| breached the subject, and we can now say that while they were
| rape from US soldiers, the sentiments were inflated because
| the liberation let a lot of locals distraught, angry an
| hungry. Also US military had a bad reputation for multiple
| other reasons (some racism maybe, but also the bombing and
| the fact that they sort of replaced the germans as an
| occupation forces (it was temporary however). When looking
| for stories about US rapes, historian saw that the sotries
| were extremely localized (None came from brittany, although
| this was one of the first liberated area and also a poor
| one).
|
| Also, US soldier were rude, assertive and agressive towards
| women, and this was caused by racism and too much ego (French
| woman image from back home and stories from WW1, and their
| own self-inflated image)
| eplanit wrote:
| "US soldier were rude, assertive and agressive towards
| women, and this was caused by racism and too much ego"
|
| Do you regard French and Americans as different races?
| Jasper_ wrote:
| What's considered "a different race" has changed over the
| years and the classifications we have today is mostly
| along social and political boundaries. Before WWII,
| Polish natives were often seen as of a different race,
| today we would consider them Caucasian.
|
| Note how the remaining big race classifications
| recognized by the US Census are divided up mostly based
| around areas with which we still have some political
| tension or heavy political history: Asian, Middle-Eastern
| European, Latin American and African, and Native American
| and Native Alaskan, and Hawaiian.
| eplanit wrote:
| I think you're conflating race with ethnicity and
| nationality, which makes all three concepts meaningless.
| rvense wrote:
| The connotations of the term race has changed. It was
| definitely common in the fairly recent past (WWI) for
| English people to speak of Germans as a different race,
| indeed using the term more like we would use ethnicity
| today. See also the English division of India into
| martial and non-martial "races".
|
| You are implying a use of the term which is more
| influenced by biology and some vague, folksy notion of
| genetic/darwinian relation, often focused on skin color
| etc. I understand your distinction. but it is, almost by
| definition, more modern.
| cycomanic wrote:
| As a German (who also lived in Sweden, Australia, NZ) I
| always cringe when I hear how Americans (from both sides
| of the political spectrum) use the the term race as
| something that actually has some sort of
| biological/genetic basis.
|
| There is absolutely no scientific basis for the racial
| categories used today.
|
| Apart from the fact that the genetic differences between
| all humans are tiny compared to different races in
| animals (which is I guess where the term comes from),
| there is also the fact that many ethnicities which are
| lumped under a common race differ more from each other
| than from many other "categories", e.g. Africa has more
| genetic diversity than all other continents combined.
| Therefore one "black" person might differ significantly
| more from another "black" than from a Caucasian or Asian
| person.
|
| I mean the irony that there is the "racial" category of
| "African-American".
|
| I think this is also not just semantics. The use of the
| term race associates much larger differences than there
| actually are, which makes it easier to justify
| discrimination/hate.
| eplanit wrote:
| The definitions I've known have remained stable until
| very recently. I'll stick with Race: genetics; Ethnicity:
| the group/tribe one "grows up" or is most shaped by;
| Nationality: the country you're in/from.
|
| They can all align to (mostly) one group, like in India
| and China, or can be mostly aligned like in northern
| Europe, or a melting pot like the US.
|
| It's the "connotations" (i.e. conflations) that are the
| reason that almost everything is labeled "racist".
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Please try and define "genetics" in a way that isn't, in
| some way, sociopolitical. To give one example out of many
| thousands across history, still somewhat alive today: do
| you consider South Koreans and Japanese people to be the
| same race? Do you know if those groups consider
| themselves to be of the same race?
|
| The concept of race very much predates our understanding
| of genetics, which is a relatively modern science.
| eplanit wrote:
| I didn't define race in any sociopolitical way --
| precisely the opposite, in fact. The socio-political
| aspect comes from the Nationality+Ethnicity parts.
|
| My wife is Chinese, and feels a racial kinship to Asian
| people from many countries: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, ...
| Refers to all as Asian.
| rvense wrote:
| > The definitions I've known have remained stable until
| very recently
|
| As stated, they were not. Race and ethnicity (and also
| words like breed and stock) were much more synonymous 100
| years ago. If you aren't keenly aware of semantic shifts
| like this, you will misunderstand older texts.
|
| I'm also not sure if you're actually suggesting that
| China and India are (by any definition) racially and
| ethnically homogenous. If you are, I must encourage you
| to study those countries more.
| fridif wrote:
| The only thing meaningless here is your attempt to be
| poetic.
| unishark wrote:
| Question 81 mentions problems caused by US soldiers.
|
| Crimes by foreigners generally cause a lot of outrage,
| regardless how common they are. I saw stats a few years ago
| that had the crime rates of US troops in Japan lower than the
| native population. While the crime rates of immigrants was
| higher than natives. But one of these topics is politically
| correct and the other is not.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not sure you want to call rape (or crime in general) by the
| local population "politically correct".
| [deleted]
| lukebuehler wrote:
| Yep just came across it as well:
|
| > If you were a French soldier, whose land had been invaded,
| whose wife or sister or mother had been taken into a German
| concentration camp and raped or killed, you might have found
| it difficult to control Your emotions.
|
| > Lastly, a good many French women have been in terror of
| American troops, especially in Paris. Our SIP records testify
| to a deplorable amount of drunkenness, molesting of women and
| street fights -- by americans.
| watwut wrote:
| You cant compare general crime rates of soldiers today, when
| it is big political problem and army does a lot to cut it
| down. Up to disallowing soldiers to even leave the base.
|
| With rape specifically after war, years ago in completely
| different situation.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Impressive honesty in the first pages
| cerved wrote:
| I like the French translation, Our Friends the French
| ronjouch wrote:
| What's the copyright situation of this book?
|
| Say I want to restore it, clean it up, and publish a nice epub
| (using as source the PDF already linked in a comment here). Is it
| copyright infringement, or is its copyright expired now?
|
| "112 gripes" was published in 1945, thus sites like
| https://www.biblio.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-determine-if-a-bo...
| suggest it's expired . But also, it was republished in the US in
| 2004 (ISBN 1-4191-6512-7). Does this make it "freshly-re-
| copyrighted until 2004 + 70 years?", or is the year that counts
| for copyright the _original_ publishing date?
|
| --
|
| (More general question: how can I check if a book is still
| copyrighted? Webpages like the one I linked above aren't very
| precise and leave room for interpretation; is there something
| easier / more canonical to use?)
| nmcfarl wrote:
| Most US government publications are are public domain:
| https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-laws-in-u-s-governme...
|
| But determining the copyright status of anything old is really
| much harder than it should be.
| ronjouch wrote:
| Thanks and thanks for the link; didn't know about this sub-
| case.
|
| Repeating a point of my original question, in case you have
| something to say about it: "112 gripes" was published in
| 1945, thus sites like
| https://www.biblio.com/blog/2010/07/how-to-determine-if-a-
| bo... suggest it's expired . But also, it was republished in
| the US in 2004 (ISBN 1-4191-6512-7). Does this make it
| "freshly-re-copyrighted until 2004 + 70 years?", or is the
| year that counts for copyright the _original_ publishing
| date?
|
| EDIT okay forget about the re-publish question, another HNer
| commented about it.
| bencoder wrote:
| > Does this make it "freshly-re-copyrighted until 2004 + 70
| years?", or is the year that counts for copyright the original
| publishing date?
|
| Any changes (spelling, typos, the typesetting) in the new
| publication would be under a new copyright term. In practice,
| if you make your copy from the earlier out of copyright edition
| then you're fine. (Assuming you are correct that the earlier
| edition is truly out of copyright)
| acabal wrote:
| This is incorrect. In the US new copyright is only awarded
| for acts of authorship. Minor spelling or punctuation
| changes, or typo fixes, are not authorship. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
| ronjouch wrote:
| _> Assuming you are correct that the earlier edition is truly
| out of copyright_
|
| Given that it is:
|
| - A US Gov document (see other comment about it)
|
| - From 1945 (so, from 1923-1963) and without an explicit
| Copyright symbol on the document
|
| , I tend to believe so. Maybe I can find not-for-profit
| lawyer advice to confirm it.
| Gucio wrote:
| I would be interested in a cleaned up version of this text. If
| you plan on rewriting the content from the PDF, I can lend a
| hand !
| ronjouch wrote:
| Sure, thanks! Ping me at ronan foo jouchet bar fr . Will get
| in touch if I follow-up on making this happen.
| wyck wrote:
| As an outsider who speaks both french and english, and has been
| to both countries, it always stuck me how similar Americans and
| French people are. Both sides would rather die than admit they
| are so similar in terms of spirit an attitude, and this brotherly
| hate is the main reason they are so similar. It's pretty funny.
| dudul wrote:
| Can you expand on that? I have dual citizenship, have spent
| each half of my life in both countries and I find French and
| Americans very different. How do you see them as similar?
| [deleted]
| supergarfield wrote:
| Not the OP---I agree they're very different, but there's a
| striking resemblance in how both countries think their
| political and intellectual culture is civilization's crowning
| achievement and the entire world should adopt it. (Of course,
| the US has been more able to do export theirs than France in
| recent decades.) IMO this shapes both countries'
| relationships to the rest of the world.
|
| I have less first hand experience, but I also think the level
| of distrust in the government (esp. central / federal) among
| rural populations is particularly high in both countries by
| developed nation standards.
| dudul wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. International policies are
| completely different in the US and in France. The US are
| extremely interventionist and some may say "aggressive",
| this is not at all the French doctrine. It was very clearly
| apparent during the 2nd war in Iraq. France ignored NATO
| for decades until recently.
|
| As for a more philosophical point of view, again, disagree.
| Universalism is indeed a concept of the French Republic
| while the US vision is exceptionalism. These are complete
| opposite.
|
| Finally, I guess there is a certain amount of distrust of
| the government in rural areas (is it specific to France and
| the US?) but where in the US the expectation is that the
| government should be doing as little as possible, in France
| the expectation is that it should do much more to
| help/support people. The relationships of Americans and
| French to their respective government are complete opposite
| again. In France, people expect a lot from the government
| who is supposed to be the great equalizer.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| _> I have less first hand experience, but I also think the
| level of distrust in the government (esp. central /
| federal) among rural populations is particularly high in
| both countries by developed nation standards._
|
| I don't think they're really comparable.
|
| The most obvious example is policing. In the US, local law
| enforcement has a lot of independence and discretion, to
| the point "sheriff has to grudgingly cooperate with out-of-
| touch FBI guy" is a literary cliche. In France, in rural
| areas the default expectation is that gendarmerie
| (basically centralized military police) will handle most
| serious problems.
|
| In France the central state is pervasive in a lot of areas
| that are either local or privatized in the US.
| [deleted]
| kimchidude wrote:
| "Our friends the French" (the book's title in France) is a much
| softer title.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| American soldiers griping about the French wouldn't have wanted
| to read Our Friends the French. And French people tired of
| American soldiers griping wouldn't have wanted to read 112
| Gripes About the French.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The France of 75 years ago sounds like a paradise compared to the
| France today, which I don't feel particularly safe in--at least
| in Paris.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_21st-
| century_F...
|
| and the fact that murder is not prosecuted:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/world/europe/sarah-halimi...
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