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There is a [Conspiracy Thread] here, and I will seek it out!

134689103

Posts

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Prohass wrote: »
    It makes sense, I mean if all it took to dissuade people of their beliefs, either in prophecy or anything else, was cold reality and the failings of a prophecy to come to pass, most religions wouldn’t survive, let alone cults

    On top of that, a "failed" prophecy to "true believers" means they clearly just didn't believe hard enough and thus have to double-down on believing in order to get the really serious for-real truth right. On top of that, you've got the people who just can't accept the idea they've wasted their time, so they've also got to double down on believing so they can also get the truth that proves they've not been total suckers.

    There's an interesting book called "A Brief History of the End of the World" all about various groups who anticipated the apocalypse (the covered groups are mostly, but not entirely, Christian in origin).

    Of particular interest is the Christian cult that decided when the rest of humanity had not perished as they'd anticipated that God must have intended for them them to wipe out all the rest of humankind themselves.

    They obviously did not succeed.

    That made me think of the Qarmatians.

    The Qarmatians were a somewhat obscure millennialist offshoot sect of Shia Islam that managed to start a thessalocracy that basically consisted of a ring of cities around the Persian gulf. The Qarmatians believed that a the Mahdi, a messianic figure, would lead humanity to a new utopian era. Like many Christian millenial cults, they had an almost socialist/communist utopian way of internal living. They unfortunately supported this through slave trading and piracy though.

    Anyway, after a few years of just being a normal slave trading and bandit kingdom with a few interestingly off-beat beliefs even by the standards of the time, a king named Abu Tahir al-Jannabi took over. Early in his reign he conducted a raid into Iraq, sacked the outskirts of Kufa, and freed a religious prisoner who he believed to be the Mahdi. Abu Tahir took this guy back to their capital in Bahrain, and apparently the dude was really convincing because Abu Tahir abdicated and turned the entire kingdom over to him.

    This did not work out very well, because it turned out the Mahdi was in fact a secret Zoroastrian, who immediately began instituting fire-worshipping services, burned all the Islamic holy texts, and murdering Islamic clerics and noblemen. Within a couple of weeks Abu Tahir had had enough and got some loyalists together and killed the guy.

    As bad as that was, what happened next was really crazy. Some believe Abu Tahir went mad. Some believe he wanted a big show of force against the Abassids to shore up his power. Some say he was trying to bring about the age of the Mahdi by threatening the very existence of Islam, or had lost his religion in disappointment and become a militant atheist(this is highly unlikely, but he was considered something of a mascot by some Renaissance era European atheists).

    Anyway, what happened was Abu Tahir took a bunch of his men and pretended to be pilgrims, and they infiltrated Mecca, slaughtered 30,000 pilgrims, desecratred the Well of Zamzam by filling it with corpses, and stole the holiest relic of Islam, Black Stone of the Kaaba. The Qarmatians held the stone for over 20 years, and legend has it that Abu Tahir urinated on it every day for the rest of his life, until 14 years later he died after he was spontaneously eaten by worms. This may be somewhat questionable, as the Qarmatians did build a mosque to hold the stone and encouraged pilgrims to make pilgrimages to see it (not surprisingly there were very few takers).

    Regardless, 14 years later Abu Tahir died at the ripe old age of 38, and a few years later his successors returned the stone back to the Abbasids in exchange for some cash and a promise of non-retribution, probably figuring that you can only get away with shit for so long. By this point several of the original millennialist prophecies of the Qarmatians had failed to come to pass and the sect itself had been largely discredited and the Qarmatian state petered along for a few more decades before getting overthrown by other local powers, thus ending the saga of that time some crazy doomsday cultists stole the holiest relic of one of the largest faiths in the world.

    Jealous Deva on
  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.
    The Cherokee Slave Revolt was one of the few "almost successful" slave revolts. It did result in a more equitable society for the Cherokee tho. Previously the slaveholding familes had all the money, but after the revolt the richer families would hire the non-slaveowners as trackers and slave catchers. Which redistributed the wealth somewhat.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_Slave_Revolt_in_the_Cherokee_Nation

  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    In NZ we've got an election coming up and that means the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork.

    The New Zealand Public Party has been scooping up support from conspiracy theorists. A new "party" started this year by Billy Te Kahika Jr. A motivational conspiracy theorist who has been touring the country. I say "party" because he failed to register his party in time for the election. But instead he's teamed up with a disgraced whistle-blower who was kicked out of the National Party after said whistle-blowing, bullying and mental breakdown.

    So what conspiracy theories do they follow? Pretty much all of them.

    The big ones are the "plandemic", 5G (both regular and covid related), anti-1080, UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, vaccines, fluoridation and the list goes on.

    1080 is a poison used in NZ for pest control. It get dropped into our native bush. Because NZ has very few native mammals it's considered safe to use, as a resultimate i think we use something like 90% of the world's supply. It's very toxic but quickly disolves in water so it only lasts a couple of days. It's our most effective method of pest control, traps and hunting just don't compare at all. But to the anti-1080 activists it's the worst thing ever. According to them it kills not only mammalian pests but birds too, as well as deer and pets. I can sympathise with them, as it is literally dropping poison into our native bush and it doesn't sound great at first glance. However, it is the most effective method we have.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.
    The Cherokee Slave Revolt was one of the few "almost successful" slave revolts. It did result in a more equitable society for the Cherokee tho. Previously the slaveholding familes had all the money, but after the revolt the richer families would hire the non-slaveowners as trackers and slave catchers. Which redistributed the wealth somewhat.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_Slave_Revolt_in_the_Cherokee_Nation

    Oh, wait, Native Americans owned slaves?

    I was unaware of this. That whole time I was reading about Thomas and the Cherokee I had just kinda assumed there wasn't any slavery going on in the background in Cherokee territory and was wondering why they sided with the Confederacy.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    In NZ we've got an election coming up and that means the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork.

    The New Zealand Public Party has been scooping up support from conspiracy theorists. A new "party" started this year by Billy Te Kahika Jr. A motivational conspiracy theorist who has been touring the country. I say "party" because he failed to register his party in time for the election. But instead he's teamed up with a disgraced whistle-blower who was kicked out of the National Party after said whistle-blowing, bullying and mental breakdown.

    So what conspiracy theories do they follow? Pretty much all of them.

    The big ones are the "plandemic", 5G (both regular and covid related), anti-1080, UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, vaccines, fluoridation and the list goes on.

    1080 is a poison used in NZ for pest control. It get dropped into our native bush. Because NZ has very few native mammals it's considered safe to use, as a resultimate i think we use something like 90% of the world's supply. It's very toxic but quickly disolves in water so it only lasts a couple of days. It's our most effective method of pest control, traps and hunting just don't compare at all. But to the anti-1080 activists it's the worst thing ever. According to them it kills not only mammalian pests but birds too, as well as deer and pets. I can sympathise with them, as it is literally dropping poison into our native bush and it doesn't sound great at first glance. However, it is the most effective method we have.

    From what I hear the poison is killing endangered parrots, in particular.

    Incenjucar on
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.
    The Cherokee Slave Revolt was one of the few "almost successful" slave revolts. It did result in a more equitable society for the Cherokee tho. Previously the slaveholding familes had all the money, but after the revolt the richer families would hire the non-slaveowners as trackers and slave catchers. Which redistributed the wealth somewhat.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_Slave_Revolt_in_the_Cherokee_Nation

    Oh, wait, Native Americans owned slaves?

    I was unaware of this. That whole time I was reading about Thomas and the Cherokee I had just kinda assumed there wasn't any slavery going on in the background and was wondering why they sided with the Confederacy.

    I knew about it as a child as it was part of the questionable thing in art of a blonde white women in garb
    As I asked about it and then looked into it at the library

  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Everyone owned slaves (not literally everyone, but it was a disease that had infected all parts of America, North, South, you name it). Some tribes did not support it, some did, and it can be easy to confuse them.

    Just heard the NZPP leader on the radio. Apparently they are "the fastest growing political party in NZ history".
    fastest_growing.png

    Gvzbgul on
  • daveNYCdaveNYC Why universe hate Waspinator? Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.

    Considering the location of the Qualla Boundary, I can certainly get behind the Cherokee not joining the Union cause. That seems like a solid way to get their ass kicked, especially early in the war when the Army of the Potomac was hard pressed to defeat a bowl of soup. It would be interesting to know what exactly led to Thomas joining up with the Confederacy instead of staying neutral.

    Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    daveNYC wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.

    Considering the location of the Qualla Boundary, I can certainly get behind the Cherokee not joining the Union cause. That seems like a solid way to get their ass kicked, especially early in the war when the Army of the Potomac was hard pressed to defeat a bowl of soup. It would be interesting to know what exactly led to Thomas joining up with the Confederacy instead of staying neutral.

    Neither side in the war recognized neutrality. The position of the union was that either you paid taxes and provided conscripts or you were de facto succeeded and subject to martial law/military action, and the position of the confederacy was that if you paid taxes and provided troops to the union you were a union state and a valid military target.

    The only states actually able to pull off any kind of neutral status were ones far enough away out In the west that no one cared to enforce anything.

  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    Also, it was not safe to be a unionist deep in Confederate territory. West Virginia partly got away with it by being on the border. The counter-rebellion in eastern Tennessee was put down by thousands of Confederate troops who force-conscripted any able-bodied men they came across into the Confederate army when they weren't just hanging people. Tens of thousands of residents fled the region (forming entire Union regiments later).

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Are there any good books to read on this sort of stuff? My knowledge of the Civil War is honestly kinda spotty beyond the obvious details, and I'm wary of accidentally being exposed to pro-CSA apologia.

    A friend of mine who is a really big history buff (as in I was once a third wheel while he and another history buff friend went on for hours about stuff I had no knowledge of) once shared a YouTube channel that was primarily concerned with the Civil War, and I'm pretty sure my friend isn't pro-Confederacy because's he's a Chinese immigrant, but I was still too wary to actually watch any of the videos he linked. I can't recall what the channel was called.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    daveNYC wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.

    Considering the location of the Qualla Boundary, I can certainly get behind the Cherokee not joining the Union cause. That seems like a solid way to get their ass kicked, especially early in the war when the Army of the Potomac was hard pressed to defeat a bowl of soup. It would be interesting to know what exactly led to Thomas joining up with the Confederacy instead of staying neutral.
    Maybe his owning slaves had something to with it? I dunno, the Civil War was fought for lots of reasons.

    Gvzbgul on
  • daveNYCdaveNYC Why universe hate Waspinator? Registered User regular
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    daveNYC wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »
    The Union was absolute shit at best to Native Americans. The Confederacy promised them land and autonomy. They were probably lying but at least they were different and various tribes had allied (and would continue to ally) with anyone wanting to fight the USA on the hopes that at least they could go into this set of lies with their eyes open and without generations of bad blood clouding everyone's judgement.

    Thomas's motivations might be more suspect, but I suspect the Cherokee themselves could probably give a fuck if white men enslaved black men or not.

    Considering the location of the Qualla Boundary, I can certainly get behind the Cherokee not joining the Union cause. That seems like a solid way to get their ass kicked, especially early in the war when the Army of the Potomac was hard pressed to defeat a bowl of soup. It would be interesting to know what exactly led to Thomas joining up with the Confederacy instead of staying neutral.
    Maybe his owning slaves had something to with it? I dunno, the Civil War was fought for lots of reasons.

    The wiki entry doesn't mention anything about whether or not he owned slaves.

    Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
  • Kane Red RobeKane Red Robe Master of Magic ArcanusRegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Are there any good books to read on this sort of stuff? My knowledge of the Civil War is honestly kinda spotty beyond the obvious details, and I'm wary of accidentally being exposed to pro-CSA apologia.

    A friend of mine who is a really big history buff (as in I was once a third wheel while he and another history buff friend went on for hours about stuff I had no knowledge of) once shared a YouTube channel that was primarily concerned with the Civil War, and I'm pretty sure my friend isn't pro-Confederacy because's he's a Chinese immigrant, but I was still too wary to actually watch any of the videos he linked. I can't recall what the channel was called.

    Bruce Catton is my go to US Civil War historian. He won a Pulitzer for the third book in his series about the Army of the Potomac, A Stillness at Appomattox, but I actually found that series somewhat dull and overwrought.

    My recommendation is if you want a single book overview to read This Hallowed Ground, and if you want a more in depth overview read his centennial series; The Coming Fury, Terrible Swift Sword and Never Call Retreat.

    I can check for other authors if you'd like, my Grandfather was a big civil war history buff and I inherited most of his library.

    Edit: I should note that my Grandpa's interest started from looking into our ancestors who fought in Iowa's German Brigades, so we're pretty good about spotting Confederate apologia and tossing it in the garbage where it belongs.

    Kane Red Robe on
  • Centipede DamascusCentipede Damascus Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Are there any good books to read on this sort of stuff? My knowledge of the Civil War is honestly kinda spotty beyond the obvious details, and I'm wary of accidentally being exposed to pro-CSA apologia.

    A friend of mine who is a really big history buff (as in I was once a third wheel while he and another history buff friend went on for hours about stuff I had no knowledge of) once shared a YouTube channel that was primarily concerned with the Civil War, and I'm pretty sure my friend isn't pro-Confederacy because's he's a Chinese immigrant, but I was still too wary to actually watch any of the videos he linked. I can't recall what the channel was called.

    This channel has a lot of Civil War history stuff, and is aggressively anti-Confederate: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0_CTubjGeDth7X0bxUTBTA

    Centipede Damascus on
  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    UFOS ARE FUCKING

    Stopped reading there, but how?

    Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Drez wrote: »
    UFOS ARE FUCKING

    Stopped reading there, but how?

    Tab A into slot B
    A connection is made

  • Metzger MeisterMetzger Meister It Gets Worse before it gets any better.Registered User regular
    You ever seen Farscape?

  • WiseManTobesWiseManTobes Registered User regular
    Unidentified Fucking Objects

    Steam! Battlenet:Wisemantobes#1508
  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    Drez wrote: »
    UFOS ARE FUCKING

    Stopped reading there, but how?

    Darmok and Jalad at Tanagr.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Are there any good books to read on this sort of stuff? My knowledge of the Civil War is honestly kinda spotty beyond the obvious details, and I'm wary of accidentally being exposed to pro-CSA apologia.

    A friend of mine who is a really big history buff (as in I was once a third wheel while he and another history buff friend went on for hours about stuff I had no knowledge of) once shared a YouTube channel that was primarily concerned with the Civil War, and I'm pretty sure my friend isn't pro-Confederacy because's he's a Chinese immigrant, but I was still too wary to actually watch any of the videos he linked. I can't recall what the channel was called.

    This channel has a lot of Civil War history stuff, and is aggressively anti-Confederate: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0_CTubjGeDth7X0bxUTBTA

    Oh, that's the channel my friend shared before.

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    I mean, the whole thing doesn't get past the premise of the machines making cheap goods and "collapsing" the world economy. If they make a fuckload of cheap goods to point of all manufacturers collapsing, then all that has happened is... all the rich assholes aren't rich anymore, and everybody that's poor now can get a bunch of food and fancy shit because the machines are making it all for cheap. At this point, the machines now have an economic stranglehold on the world, but why the fuck would humans in general care? They're getting cheap/free everything, which is pretty awesome on the part of the machines. The only people who would be mad are the incredibly tiny sliver of ex-rich humanity, and they're sure as fuck not going to charge into the machine city demanding to be rich again without a way to coerce a bunch of poor people to go die for them.
    The premise fails one step earlier, in that the moneyed interests sat on their hands as this happened.

    This version of events works well as the history taught to the citizens of the Zion Vault, when in reality, the war began as a conflict between human factions, and raged on until the planet was ruined and all that remained of humanity were the genetically engineered clones on one side and the autonomous killbots on the other.

    No, wait, that's the plot of Total Annihilation.

    Still, 'The Black Skies Initiative' is a good fit for a popular conspiracy theory that helped survivors rationalize the entirely avoidable nuclear winter as 'intentional, and smart, actually.'

  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    Flight completely fucks our senses. We just don't have the brain or eyes for it. Our concepts of range, relative size, movement, and speed all depend on the physical frame of reference the ground draws around us and the things we look at. Take that frame away and our brains can't figure out shit, so all the weird processes and filters that happen automatically on our sight just stop happening

    Reminds me of the Moon Illusion. The precise mechanism that causes the moon to appear to change size has apparently been debated for millenia (300 BC), but I would wager it is probably related to evolving to view the world from no more than 1-2 meters AGL.


  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    I don't want to derail the thread too much, but since many of you seem very knowledgeable of history I'd appreciate it if someone could critique my current conceptions of the Civil War and point out any misconceptions I have.

    - Slavery as an institution was practiced throughout the colonies and their successors, the states. Many Native American nations also practiced slavery even before the arrival of the Europeans.
    - Abolitionists existed throughout the states, but their cause did not gain widespread acceptance until after the North began to industrialize, which largely rendered slavery obsolete.
    - The industrializing North began to make demands that the South free its slaves. The Whites of the less industrialized South, particularly the wealthy elite, balked at this.
    - The Civil War began, with neutrality in the conflict not an option. Many Native American groups joined the side of the Confederacy as the Union had already long since proven to be untrustworthy in term of their own interests.
    - The Confederacy was defeated. Reconstruction began, but the execution was poor and has been labeled by some historians as a failure. This failure has had countless major ramifications to this day.

    I'm afraid my present conception might be too sympathetic towards the South and cynical towards the North, which is why I'm eager to have the record set straight for me if I'm mistaken in any of those bullet points. I'm also afraid of the implication that the Native Americans might have fared better had the Union lost.

    I would start a GST about it, but something tells me that's not a good idea.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    I don't want to derail the thread too much, but since many of you seem very knowledgeable of history I'd appreciate it if someone could critique my current conceptions of the Civil War and point out any misconceptions I have.

    - Slavery as an institution was practiced throughout the colonies and their successors, the states. Many Native American nations also practiced slavery even before the arrival of the Europeans.
    - Abolitionists existed throughout the states, but their cause did not gain widespread acceptance until after the North began to industrialize, which largely rendered slavery obsolete.
    - The industrializing North began to make demands that the South free its slaves, too. The people of the less industrialized South, particularly the wealthy elite, balked at this.
    - The Civil War began. Many Native American groups joined the side of the Confederacy as the Union had already long since proven to be untrustworthy in term of their own interests.
    - The Confederacy was defeated. Reconstruction began, but the execution was poor and has been labeled by some historians as a failure. This failure has had major ramifications to this day.

    I'm afraid my conception might be too sympathetic to the people of the South at the time, which is why I'm eager to have the record set straight for me if I'm mistaken in any of those bullet points.

    I would start a GST about it, but something tells me that's not a good idea.

    You're point 3 has a lot underneath it. There was a strong abolitionist movement by that point, and the looming political question of the years before was whether, as we expanded westward and admitted new states, the new ones would allow slavery. This came to a head in Kansas in the late 1850s and turned very violent as people in the territory engaged in mass voter fraud, beatings, lynching, bloody skirmishes, campaigns of terrorism, and eventually outright guerilla warfare.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited July 2020
    - The Confederacy was defeated. Reconstruction began, but the execution was poor and has been labeled by some historians as a failure. This failure has had major ramifications to this day.

    Reconstruction is too complicated to be boiled down into a single bullet point. There were many problems on both sides that led to the total collapse of working economies that persist in the poverty of many of the southern states today. Some of these include:
    • State-government rigging - In southern states, northern politicians were established as governors, often through popular vote, to work at integrating the southern stated into the northern economy. In turn, most of the southern states changed their state charters and constitutions to remove the power of the governors and give those powers to new, often unelected positions and to the state legistlatures which had signifigant restrictions on who could vote and what votes were counted, while doubling down on Jim Crow. The south, in this way, perpetuated a wealth at the top only model which leads to many of the persisting major economic interests in southern states being consolidated in the hands of very few people (Sugar, Cotton, Pork, Logging, and Mining barons and, later, Oil barons). They almost all are direct links to plantation families. In many ways, these changes were the primary cause of reconstruction's failure.
    • Carpetbaggers Hate - the derogatory view of any northerner or former slave as an outside persisted culturally, making it very difficult for any sort of reconciliation to occur. Newspapers and phamplets of the era in the south, all owed by former southern wealthy interests, pushed these views as vengeance over healing, leading to social divisions that persist today in how the south looks at the rest of the country. This social distrust caused actual potential economic inequality to retard or cease entirely across both whites and blacks.
    • Northern Racism - while the north is largely not at fault for what the southern states typically accuse it of re: reconstruction, racial inequality persisting is entirely on the hands of the US Congress which stopped Sherman's land redistribution acts from going into place. General Sherman had a plan to break up the plantations of those who were open supporters of the Confederacy as a punishment for their rebellion and, in turn, partition their lands into owned blocks for every slave AND white shareholder family on their grounds, removing the political quazi-nobility that had been formed in the south and putting the money in the hands of the actual worker families, both white and black. It would have, most likely, created a huge economic boom across the south and would have led to substantial perceived and actual racial equality on a degree we wouldn't see in the US until the 1960s. However, President Grant and congress at the time reversed his orders, and publicly reprimanded everyone involved. Instead they preserved the inequality of the time and led to the two former bullet points occurring.

    And that's just a few of the reconstruction problems. Most of the political issues of today in the south are directly connected to reconstruction and the failings of the aristocratic plantation owners in keeping their money and power at the cost of literally everyone else.

    Enc on
  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    Thanks for the informative responses!

  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53597975
    Donald Trump suggests delay to 2020 US presidential election



    So I guess that's not a conspiracy theory anymore

    autono-wally, erotibot300 on
    kFJhXwE.jpgkFJhXwE.jpg
  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    I recently found out that I work with two Flat Earthers. They also managed to get them to sit next to each other. They’re also both anti vaxxers, and both have kids. One of them is also a Covid hoaxer and also thinks sunscreen doesn’t protect against skin cancer (very worrying considering Australia’s skin cancer rate).

    I work pretty frequently with one of them and I joke fairly often about conspiracy theories. Now I need to choose jokes carefully near her.

    -Loki- on
  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    UFOS ARE FUCKING REAL SUCK IT BUTTHOLES I GODDAMN KNEW IT YOU ALL SAID I WAS CRAZY BUT WHO'S CRAZY NOW HUH HUH

    Alright maybe not but still, any removal of obfuscation from government UFO files is good. Transparency is good! And the personal accounts of some of these serious science types are pretty compelling and a lot of this stuff matches up with rumors and scuttlebutt I heard on shows like Coast To Coast AM years ago, so hey. Is it misinformation? Is it legitimate disclosure? Is it much less terrifying than anything else going on? Yes to all of them I'm stoked to have conspiracies to focus on that aren't fucking nightmarish.

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  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    I recently found out that I work with two Flat Earthers. They also managed to get them to sit next to each other. They’re also both anti vaxxers, and both have kids, which is sadder. Even sadder is one of them is also a Covid hoaxer and also thinks sunscreen doesn’t protect against skin cancer (very worrying considering Australia’s skin cancer rate).

    I work pretty frequently with one of them and I joke fairly often about conspiracy theories. Now I need to choose jokes carefully near her.

    Given your username, I assume this means 'take care not to squander this golden opportunity to spread the word of the Hollow Electric Galaxy Cube.'

  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    I recently found out that I work with two Flat Earthers. They also managed to get them to sit next to each other. They’re also both anti vaxxers, and both have kids. One of them is also a Covid hoaxer and also thinks sunscreen doesn’t protect against skin cancer (very worrying considering Australia’s skin cancer rate).

    I work pretty frequently with one of them and I joke fairly often about conspiracy theories. Now I need to choose jokes carefully near her.

    bring a turtle to work and gauge their reaction
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  • CouscousCouscous Registered User regular
    Angela Stanton-King is an American author, television personality and motivational speaker[1] based in Atlanta, Georgia. She spent two years in prison for conspiracy and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump. She is the Republican candidate for Georgia's 5th congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections.
    I think she is suggesting Dems murdered him?

  • GyralGyral Registered User regular
    Couscous wrote: »
    Angela Stanton-King is an American author, television personality and motivational speaker[1] based in Atlanta, Georgia. She spent two years in prison for conspiracy and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump. She is the Republican candidate for Georgia's 5th congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections.
    I think she is suggesting Dems murdered him?
    Based on her tweets, I don't think she cares about stupid shit like facts.

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  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor changed Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Gyral wrote: »
    Couscous wrote: »
    Angela Stanton-King is an American author, television personality and motivational speaker[1] based in Atlanta, Georgia. She spent two years in prison for conspiracy and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump. She is the Republican candidate for Georgia's 5th congressional district in the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections.
    I think she is suggesting Dems murdered him?
    Based on her tweets, I don't think she cares about stupid shit like facts.
    Imagine using your podcast and Twitter account to advocate for victims of sexual abuse for two years, getting locked out of that account for six years, then using it to blame children left at the border for their own abuse in detention centers just to get a pardon so you can run against John Lewis.

    https://twitter.com/search?q=from:theangiestanton since:2013-2-12 until:2019-11-5 molesting

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  • Gnome-InterruptusGnome-Interruptus Registered User regular
    I mean, the whole thing doesn't get past the premise of the machines making cheap goods and "collapsing" the world economy. If they make a fuckload of cheap goods to point of all manufacturers collapsing, then all that has happened is... all the rich assholes aren't rich anymore, and everybody that's poor now can get a bunch of food and fancy shit because the machines are making it all for cheap. At this point, the machines now have an economic stranglehold on the world, but why the fuck would humans in general care? They're getting cheap/free everything, which is pretty awesome on the part of the machines. The only people who would be mad are the incredibly tiny sliver of ex-rich humanity, and they're sure as fuck not going to charge into the machine city demanding to be rich again without a way to coerce a bunch of poor people to go die for them.
    The premise fails one step earlier, in that the moneyed interests sat on their hands as this happened.

    This version of events works well as the history taught to the citizens of the Zion Vault, when in reality, the war began as a conflict between human factions, and raged on until the planet was ruined and all that remained of humanity were the genetically engineered clones on one side and the autonomous killbots on the other.

    No, wait, that's the plot of Total Annihilation.

    Still, 'The Black Skies Initiative' is a good fit for a popular conspiracy theory that helped survivors rationalize the entirely avoidable nuclear winter as 'intentional, and smart, actually.'

    Some of the economic assumptions you are making rely on a frictionless surface of an economy.

    If all the manufacturing and research and development are all areas that are dominated by the machines, what exactly can the humans offer to them in trade?

    What can the humans who are put out of work by outsourcing to 01 do to support themselves? It doesnt matter how cheap goods are if you are broke and cant afford anything because you have no income.

    There will be a transitional period between the market based world economy and the post scarcity economy which will have a lot of people that are left behind and if they are not taken care of they will lash out at the source of the change in the status quo, see current immigration and world trade resistance.

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    MWO: Adamski
  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I am very nostalgic for days when Buzz Aldrin could punch a moon landing denier in the face and receive widespread praise for it.

  • ZavianZavian universal peace sounds better than forever war Registered User regular
  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    Buzz Aldrin will always be great in my book, even more so after that historic face punch

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