Today

We all live the same length of time because we all live now.

[pattern-53-enfield]

[night-dawn-day]

Starship Troopers (1997) 

[crazy-shit-from-my-mouth]

“They’re so adorable. If only she were straight.”

— Me bout my lesbian friend and this guy.

[crazy-shit-from-my-mouth]

They got married

[gennyescsecsemo]

[voicesounds-deactivated20180819]

the US government deciding which basic human right it’s gonna make us beg them to keep every month

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

The crazies now think net neutrality is a basic human right

[knowtherealcost]

Hydrogen cyanide is a dangerous chemical. It’s one of the 7,000+ chemicals in cigarette smoke.

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

They also use water to make insecticide.

[theanarchistscookbook]

Worshippers of the state lack the imagination to conceive of any other solution. They’re like a home handyman who thinks a hammer can be used to fix anything, including leaky pipes if hit hard enough in the right spot.

Perry Eidelbus

[juelzsantanabandana]

Y'all only dont like beer because you’ve only had the cheap horse piss in a red cup at a house party or the the cheap horse piss they give you at clubs as a thank you for the $10 door charge

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

Or cause beer is garbage

[etrogim-deactivated20200109]

wait….are any americans aware that the cia overthrew the democratically-elected premier of iran in 1953 because he wouldn’t concede to western oil demands….and how that coup was the reason for the shah’s return to power, the iranian revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorship…..like, america literally dissolved iranian democracy and no one knows about it???

[jheselbraum]

No. No we don’t know about it. 

Americans aren’t told this shit. 

The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.

Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.

The only reason I knew about it is because there’s a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.

[fempunkandkittens]

“All the Shah’s Men” by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.

[rebelcaptain4life]

!!!

[systlin]

I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people it’s insane.

She’s 60. She never heard of this.

As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.

He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods.  Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.

And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”

And she just looked floored.

“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”

“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “

She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.

“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.

And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”

She lived through it.

American schools don’t teach you any of this sort of thing.

[runwithskizzers]

[stephanieruble-deactivated20240]

I thought of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi too. Never underestimate the power of a good book.

[riluu]

Every year in my entire schooling in small town Indiana, we’d start the year studying the revolutionary war. By the end of the year we would reach world war 2. The next year, the cycle would repeat. Every year. Revolutionary war to world war 2. Rinse and repeat.

We never studied the Vietnam War. Korea. No current events. No ancient cultures. No history of other countries. When 9-11 happened I was in high school, and me and my classmates legitimately had no idea who would attack the U.S. or why. We were baffled. Because we were taught our entire lives that America is always the good guy.

History class in America is an utter joke.

[theaudientvoid]

Maybe my shitty suburban high school was secretly amazing or some shit, but literally every time someone on this godforsaken website complains about how “they don’t teach you this in school”, it has always been something that they did teach us in school. Literally every time.  

[thefutureoneandall]

These things honestly baffle me.

The top post here had my head cocked to the side, because what the heck do you mean “are any Americans aware?” We spent a week on various US/British coups and fuckery in the Middle East, ranging from Skyes-Picot to the crisis in Iran and the Iran-Iraq War. Which was still brief, there was a lot of that stuff, but that’s a good chunk of a ~40 week semester! We had to know Pahlavi’s name for a test!

Similarly, we learned about Vietnam, including France’s history there and a detailed breakdown of the legal and historical issues surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I think the bombing of Cambodia got short shrift, but it did come up.

Or… all the posts about how US history classes don’t show the really bad stuff from wars, and water down slavery and the Civil War? I think I was 13 when we saw a bunch of pictures of what flogging truly did to people. We watched videos from Belsen and Dachau, and covered the Holocaust in such detail that my classmates have said Yad Vashem was moving, but entirely unsurprising.

And sure, it’s wasn’t a terrible school. It was quite good for a shitty underfunded public school in the suburbs of a broke city. But that’s a damn low bar.

Which leaves me with three guesses, and I suspect they’re all true.

First, it’s historical. My parents both say their history classes stopped 30+ years short of present, barring some positive stuff like moon landings. My history classes went up to present, and only ducked into pure list-of-facts non-analysis about 10 years back.

Second, it’s regional. Learning Civil War history in Georgia gets weird. Learning Vietnam history anywhere truly rural gets weird. My dad got a horrible history education because his town probably didn’t have 2 PhDs in it total.

Third, it’s academic gaps. I learned this shit in honors and AP classes. There were other classes, not the bottom or even the middle track, where people were desperately struggling to teach who was on which side of the Civil War. Median American courses are bad, and I can’t help but wonder if a lot of the people saying they never learned this went to schools that taught it to some people - just not them.

[objectivistnerd]

Fourth: some of the people who reblog these posts haven’t yet finished their secondary history education, and will learn about all of this in good time.

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

"Western Oil Demands" the Iranians tried to nationalize (read as steal and make socialist) British oil companies. The beginning of this post is aggressively over simplifying things to fit a specific anti American narrative.

[nervouspearl]

[mitzimaus]

@saltrat88

[readmetxt]

[grimspy-deactivated20201130]

tag yourself

[spooky-froll]

@tiffanarchy  @anunreliablesource

[maxofs2d]

When you can’t even run a defamation campaign right

UPDATE: unfortunately, this is a defamation campaign “done right”, as there was no mix-up of people. Regardless, whatever past this man might have, he’s still not the guilty part here.

Original post below.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

After the United Airlines thing (article if you missed it here), you might have seen some press outlets run bullshit articles like these:

You know, the usual racist behaviour in these kind of situations, white people who go on killing sprees get “he was a really nice man, but mentally disturbed?? no idea” while everyone else gets “HE WAS NO ANGEL!!!”

Here’s the thing though.

This is the guy the smear articles are talking about.

This is the guy who was dragged off the plane.

See the difference?

David A. Dao vs. David T. D. Dao.

United Airlines can’t even run a smear campaign properly. Two Asian doctors, registered in different states, and they manage to do this.

Hopefully those sleazy press outlets get hit with libel lawsuits!

EDIT: And of course, it goes without saying that even IF the accusations were true, that it’s completely irrelevant to what happened on the plane.

(thanks to @MarkTranSD for pointing this out) 

[lejacquelope]

UA’s stock is down a BILLION dollars. LOL

[anti-stupidity-capaldi]

Keep sinking.

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

A) TMZ started the "smear campaign" B) The security personnel dragging this guy off this plane aren't united employees. They work for the airport. C) how are we making this about race?

[this-is-cthulhu-privilege]

Life under a totalitarian state

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Yyyeah lmao

[association-of-free-people]

And bootlickers act like Orwell comparisons are cliché.

[ronpaulproblems]

All my teacher friends are mocking this, but no one has said why what she said is wrong. Here’s her quote:

“Just as the traditional taxi system revolted against ride sharing, so too does the education establishment feel threatened by the rise of school choice,” Ms. DeVos said. “In both cases, the entrenched status quo has resisted models that empower individuals.”

[sexemulators]

My sexual preference is often.

Unknown (via quotethatword)

[never-surrender-to-the-world]

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