Shunning Howard Zinn's History

[Michael Tee]

http://www.truthout.org/shunning-howard-zinns-history56741

plane, in the thread on Tea Parties, you said the American media was "top loaded with liberals" - -

here's an article that isn't exhaustive, but it shows how "alternative histories" of America are sidelined and marginalized by the MSM and their (mostly fictional) "top loaded liberals."

Your concept is bullshit.  The MSM basically operates in a way that ensures the American people get a bullshit view of their own history.  The kind of crap that Rich and others like him think is "history" and is all the "history" that they'll ever know.

The role of the "liberals" in the MSM isn't to promote alternative views of history but to suppress them.  It was interesting how they treated Zinn, by oversimplifying and ridiculing his work - - his victims'-eye view of American history "presupposed that the native Indians were all virtuous and saintly" and the Africa from which the slaves were kidnapped was an oasis of peace and harmony.  Of course, Zinn said no such thing.  But this was an almost universal false picture of his work that the MSM presented and so there was almost universal disdain for his work.

This is not a "liberal controlled" press and anyone who thinks it is is deluding himself.  The press is a tool of the establishment.  It's minor criticisms go mostly to personalities but the essential foundations of the whole rotten structure are NEVER examined closely.

[sirs]

It's amazing how this tool of the "establishment" is so lopsided in their liberal bent bias

[Plane]

http://www.truthout.org/shunning-howard-zinns-history56741

plane, in the thread on Tea Parties, you said the American media was "top loaded with liberals" - -

So do you think the cold war was unimportant?

[Michael Tee]

The Cold War unimportant?  It was the post-war triumph of fascism in a different form.  There was no reason for a Cold War except for the ruling classes of the Western Allies to protect their ill-gotten assets from what could have been a wave of socialist internationalism and peace.  It's a tragedy that FDR died when he did.  It's another tragedy that the ruling class and their captive media destroyed Henry Wallace's bid for the Presidency.  No I don't think it was unimportant - - basically, it made big contributions to the erosion of real democracy into the form of sham democracy that the U.S. "enjoys" today, complete with its toy "elections."

[BT]

There was no reason for a Cold War except for the ruling classes of the Western Allies to protect their ill-gotten assets from what could have been a wave of socialist internationalism and peace.

And this is different than your desire to be armed against that 3AM intruder, how?

[Michael Tee]

It's different in that, while I object to intruders in my kitchen at 3:00 AM, I have no objection to Poland and Hitler's former allies being occupied by the Red Army for the next thousand years.  They're all fascists and anti-Semites and the Red Army was able to liquidate a sizeable portion of that element during the time that it remained there.  Its absence has seen a resurgence of racism, anti-semitism and extreme nationalism, particularly in the form of racist skinhead gangs and the far-right "nationalist" politicians who feed off them, elements that would have been liquidated under continuing communist rule.

[sirs]

Looking forward to folks demonstrating the difference between the evils of Nazism where Government centralizes & controls everything under an oppressive leadership vs the evils of Communism where Government simply owns everything under an oppressive leadership.  I don't see a whole hell of a lot of difference.  Both justifying their mass murders and control of media in the name of "the party and its people"

[BT]

It's different in that, while I object to intruders in my kitchen at 3:00 AM, I have no objection to Poland and Hitler's former allies being occupied by the Red Army for the next thousand years.  They're all fascists and anti-Semites and the Red Army was able to liquidate a sizeable portion of that element during the time that it remained there.  Its absence has seen a resurgence of racism, anti-semitism and extreme nationalism, particularly in the form of racist skinhead gangs and the far-right "nationalist" politicians who feed off them, elements that would have been liquidated under continuing communist rule.

So you talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

[Michael Tee]

<<So you talk the talk but don't walk the walk. >>

What specifically are you referring to?

[Universe Prince]

Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people.

So they're a bunch of whiners? The problem with that article is the hubris of it. It assumes progressives and particularly Zinn are unquestionably right and should therefore be left unquestioned and unchallenged, and apparently in charge. From what I have read about his writings, Zinn was actually not a very good historian and was far more concerned with promoting "progressive" ideas, which is to say, socialist ideas, than he was in the facts. Apparently there are even other socialists and "progressives" who recognized this. The truthout (what a joke that name is) article complains that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., dismissed Zinn a polemicist, but Schlesinger was as "progressive" as they come. He supported Adlai Stevenson's presidential run, and then John Kennedy's, and later Robert Kennedy's, and still later Teddy Kennedy's run in 1980. The largely socialist magazine Dissent has an article that pretty well trashes Zinn's A People's History as "cynical myopia". So this notion that the criticism of Zinn and his work was somehow all an effort to keep a great scholar from getting the truth into the mainstream is a load of adult male bovine excrement.

[BT]

What specifically are you referring to?

You have no problem defending your interests, but have a problem with nations doing the same.

[Michael Tee]

<<You have no problem defending your interests, but have a problem with nations doing the same. >>

What a load of crap.  My interests have absolutely nothing to do with invading, occupying, massacring and exploiting the whole fucking Third World.

[BT]

But you wouldn't hesitate arming and pulling the trigger if you felt threatened.

The Cold War was about protecting a way of life.

[BSB]

The MSM is not where one goes to get an education. If you want an education you have to work for it. You have to go to school, college, you have to read, you have to be selective, etc. The MSM is there to give you the weather forecast, the sports news, car adds, and make money. It's that way everywhere. I highly doubt the MSM in Canada is there so that all you snowblowers can walk around with the equivalent of a PHD.

[Michael Tee]

<<So they're a bunch of whiners? The problem with that article is the hubris of it. It assumes progressives and particularly Zinn are unquestionably right and should therefore be left unquestioned and unchallenged, and apparently in charge.>>

That's absurd.  It assumes nothing more than that Zinn has made some valid points, none of which are given their due emphasis in the Arthur Schlesinger School of Cheerleading Historians.

<<From what I have read about his writings . . . >>

God damn right, "from what you have read about his writings."  That was the whole point of the truthout article.  What you read about his writings in the mainstream press means that you're gonna hear the guy's writings trashed 24/7 from every possible angle.  And for reasons which have nothing to do with their value as history.

<<Zinn was actually not a very good historian and was far more concerned with promoting "progressive" ideas, which is to say, socialist ideas, than he was in the facts. >>

I'm sure you can find plenty of examples from his books to back that up. Not.

<<Apparently there are even other socialists and "progressives" who recognized this. The truthout (what a joke that name is) article complains that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., dismissed Zinn a polemicist, but Schlesinger was as "progressive" as they come. He supported Adlai Stevenson's presidential run, and then John Kennedy's, and later Robert Kennedy's, and still later Teddy Kennedy's run in 1980.>>

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!  That's progressive?  That's barely dipping one's toe in "progressive."  Henry fucking Wallace was "progressive."  Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the "progressive" adviser to JFK, the invader of Cuba, the founder of the Green Berets, the "Ich bin ein Berliner" is "progressive?"  Come on!  The closest Schlesinger ever came to progressive was the left wing of the Democratic Party, the  ADA.

<<The largely socialist magazine Dissent has an article that pretty well trashes Zinn's A People's History as "cynical myopia".>>

Dissent is a more problematic case than Schlesinger.  It's a home for a lot of Sixties radicals who want to come in from the cold.  It's got good social criticism, but a lot of their writers don't want to burn their bridges to the left wing of the Democratic Party.  There are plenty of Afghan and Iraq war supporters on its editorial board and in its pages, and to use a phrase of plane's, the whole thing is "top-loaded" with liberal Zionists, which is bound to put a tight leash on ANY kind of truly radical thought, specifically any thoughts Zinn might have had on the way Congress is bought and sold by monied interests, which could strike directly at the interests of the ZioNazi lobby in America.  You might as well say that Zinn was trashed by the ADA, Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson.  As a demonstration of "anti-establishment" criticism, it's not very impressive.

<<So this notion that the criticism of Zinn and his work was somehow all an effort to keep a great scholar from getting the truth into the mainstream is a load of adult male bovine excrement.>>

What is REAL bullshit is your ludicrous attempt to portray the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Zinn's other critics in Dissent magazine as somehow "progressive" and anti-establishment figures.  They're probably all still supporting Obama's war efforts and keeping all their bridges open.