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DiscussionFree for All Friday!, 22 April 2016 (self.badhistory)

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[–]chocolatepotBadHistory After Dark 8ポイント9ポイント  (4子コメント)

Okay, now I can tell you my story from yesterday.

So my museum has a lecture on the third Thursday of every month, except for the summer. We started scheduling the speakers for the 2015-2016 season in the early summer last year, when I'd only been working and living here for a few months; I went through rejected ideas from previous years because I didn't have anywhere else to start, and when I got someone booked in I didn't care what their topic was, I was just happy to have them there. One man agreed to talk about the home front of the Civil War, and that seemed awesome.

Seemed.

In the blurb he'd sent me, he said a bunch of credible things about how devastating the war was, &c. And also that Victoria started the trend for white wedding dresses. I know this is wrong, but it's a minor thing and not worth telling him, so I figure I'll just smile to myself when he gets to that point and explain to anyone who knows me as The Dress Lady and talks to me about it later. But as it turned out, wedding dresses were the least of his problems.

He almost immediately brought up Lincoln going from the Whig Party to the Republican Party and used that to say that it's wrong to judge a political candidate for switching affiliations. I went, "Okay, so he doesn't realize what went down with the Whigs, that's strange … is he supporting Trump or Sanders?" It soon became apparent that the answer was Trump.

Something else I learned: they banned abortion in the mid-19th century, and that was awesome, we shouldn't have gone back on it.

Yeah, yeah, Andersonville … but ELMIRA. There's a legit point there, so I thought he might just be a bit sympathetic to them but not a total Lost Causer, but then he went on.

Do you know what the real cause of the Civil War was? Yes, STATES' RIGHTS. By this point, I was hideously embarrassed because we're endorsing this by having him here and not cutting him off, but I'm not the cutting-off type and so we're just watching like :O Anyway, Lincoln was a hypocrite because he didn't care about freeing the slaves, yadda yadda yadda, it was so awful for the Irish (I thought we were going to take a turn into Irish slaves territory but thank goodness, we didn't, it was just about paying to get out of the draft). Grant owned slaves! Sherman owned slaves! Lee was blameless!

They put women on a pedestal then, and that's what we need today, for reasons. There were also lots of prostitutes following the army in hordes. By this point I think I was doodling around on my phone, reading job listings so I could fantasize about being somewhere else, and only came back to the lecture when …

Hitler! Yeah, Hitler. He killed some Jews, but you know who he really hated? Christians! He hated Christians because they went to church and could talk there without Big Brother listening. What does this have to do with the Civil War? None of us know.

Fortunately this was a small crowd. (They left so fast. I've never seen them leave so fast.) He hung around talking to one guy for two hours about their shared conservative worldview, right outside of my office. When I walked by he started talking to me, and decided we should talk about prosecution of rape in the 1860s, which necessitated standing far too close, putting his finger up to my head, and pointing out that at that time it wouldn't have been considered rape if he'd held a gun to my head, made me take my clothes off, and have sex with him unless I'd fought the whole time. Unfortunately, I'm not as badass IRL as I am in my head and so I just gave him my bitchface and walked away rather than telling him to get out of my personal space. But I'm at least a little proud of myself for not laughing it off nervously.

[–]georgeguy007"Wigs lead to world domination" - Jared Diamon 6ポイント7ポイント  (2子コメント)

Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god

[–]chocolatepotBadHistory After Dark 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Yeah, he probably thought I agreed with him because I was grinning so much in the back, trying not to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it all was.

Our archivist wants us to vet people by asking them to send references or the actual presentation they want to give, but it's hard to ask that of people when we're soliciting them to come in and speak. Next year I'm going to lean heavily on the local historians rather than random people.

[–]georgeguy007"Wigs lead to world domination" - Jared Diamon 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Good call. What a weirdo

[–]Gog3451 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Unfortunately the States rights brigade is quite common IRL, I even met someone from Manhattan who adhered to it. His words were the usual stuff, civil war was about states rights and tariffs and that northern puppet leftist justices made Texas V White.

[–]M35MakoMaurice Hankey caused WW2 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

I got accepted (unconditional offer) on the Masters course I wanted! Yay me!

[–]Wandrille 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Just finished reading "Faut-il vraiment découper l'Histoire en tranche?" by J. Le Goff (translated in english: Must We Divide History into Periods?, translated by M.B. DeBevoise Columbia University Press, 160 pp., 2015) and I globally liked it. Granted I am not an historian, so I might have missed some biases and incoherences.

[–]lestrigone 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Le Goff was from the Annales, so it's legitimate to like what he wrote (I think). I seem to recall themes of the Annales being put in discussion (mainly the definition of feudalism and its usefulness as a historical concept) but it's still widely respected.

[–]Felinomancy 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

As a general, is Hannibal really as charismatic as this manga portrayed him to be? Because oh crap that sentence really sounds provocative (and inspiring) to me.

[–]DirishThe Quouar Lord did Nothing Wrong 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Given that a good chunk of their army was mercenary, speeches about Carthaginian honour wouldn't have impressed them much. But his bust makes him look good and by all accounts it does take a good bit of charisma to keep the war in Italy going as long as he did.

Besides, he's a handsome enough fellow to be on TV I'd say. ;)

[–]BreaksFullUnrepentant Carlinboo 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

What manga is this? I might suddenly need it.

[–]Felinomancy 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ad Astra - Scipio to Hannibal. I hope someone do a badhistory thread, surely there are inaccuracies in it...

[–]catsherdingcatsCato called Caesar a homo to his face 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I made the decision not to go into my planned PhD program but to get a decent job outside of academia, and I'm scared. It's the right decision, but I'm afraid that I will, much like Daniel at the end of Honest Hearts, awake in the night to find I had been dreaming of Zion.

[–]UltachRed Hugh O'Donnell was a Native American 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Good things about researching an incredibly small field

All the writers' names are easy to keep track of

Small bibliography

Bad things about researching an incredibly small field

They all have the same opinion and the only people who disagree with them are crackpots raving about aliens and Jews

[–]l--p 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

What is this tiny field, if I may ask?

[–]TurnshroudThe Cyrus Cylinder? More like Cyrus' fleshlight. 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's like Foundations all over again (Is that the title? I forget)

[–]georgeguy007"Wigs lead to world domination" - Jared Diamon 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

If this is accurate I will be scared

[–]Aifendragon 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Been staying up late and mainlining caffeine and power metal to get through the last stages of my undergrad dissertation. Tutor reckons it's good, though, and thinks that I could rework it after submission and submit it for publication as a journal article. Needless to say, I'm a bit excited at the prospect.

[–]AshkenazeeYankeePoland colonized Mexico 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Happy Passover everyone, and Chag Sameach! I'm going to be off the grid this weekend on account of the holiday.

Also, the amount of "Jews built the pyramids" nonsense seems to be lower this year than last year.

[–]BreaksFullUnrepentant Carlinboo 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm trapped in a never-ending reddit argument with some anarchist who insists that hierarchy=slavery and that we're all not that far removed from carribean sugar plantation slaves in the big scheme of things. I want to abandon it, but I can't bear to let that smug Molyneux cultist have the last word.

[–]dandan_noodles1453 WAS AN INSIDE JOB OTTOMAN CANNON CAN'T BREAK ROMAN WALLS 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Was gratified to see 'The Scapegoat Arm' is getting some penetration into the less-professional history scene, and gave me a chance to recommend 'The Chief', sort of dovetailing the topics of Haig+WWI cavalry.

[–]visforv"Shut up, Gallipolli Winner." 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Guys, just remember that the whole 'slave owning' thing isn't black and white (lol). And that the majority of slave owners were wonderful people who provided clothes and food to their slaves and wonderful housing, and only some of the slave owners were 'bad apples'. Thank you, random redditor, for telling me how Southern plantation slavery wasn't actually that bad, and also how black people owned slaves too so checkmate!!!

Volcano, I'm still angry over that.

[–]DirishThe Quouar Lord did Nothing Wrong 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So we mods have a bot telling us every time someone mentions our sub elsewhere on reddit. The thing bombards us with about 10-20 mails a day and can be highly annoying from time to time, but it's so interesting to see what's coming in, that it's worth it.

This week's special mention goes out to the /r/news post about Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson. The number of mentions we got there nearly broke my phone's Reddit app as it spammed me with 15 odd notifications every minute. If you need a bad history bingo thread, that's you're one to use. That is if there's no AskReddit one about "common historical misconceptions" around, but that's almost cheating.

But it made me grateful that the EU decided to put bridges and portals on the notes (and then allow each country to do whatever they wanted with the back of the coins). Imagine the shitstorm that would have kicked off. The Brits would have wanted the Queen on all of them, even though they never had any intention of actually using them. The French would rather choke on a Big Mac before they'd let that happen and would have counter-proposed putting revolutionary heroes on the notes, which would in turn have the Brits spit our their tea indignantly.

Each other royal house owning country would have wanted in on the game as well, causing all sorts of huffs and puffs in the Republics about supporting antiquated forms of government. We would have probably ended up with a similar solution to the coins where each country gets their own bank notes with one side customised to pick their heroes. Then there's the risk that the hero of country A is the mortal enemy of country B. Fun times.

And of course somewhere on Reddit there would be someone suggesting we put Hitler on one of them because he did great things. Terrible, yes, but great.

[–]Turin_The_MormegilDAGOTH-UR-WAS-A-VOLCANO 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So, I have one semester left in my MLIS program, and I've begun applying to jobs in earnest. Mostly public libraries, since the applications take all of two seconds, but I have applied to several academic librarian positions- including a subject specialist position in my city. Which, holy shit, if I got the position it would be my dream position, and beyond my expectations right out of school with two years of library work experience.

What's fun is trying to use my years of work as a merit badge counselor to demonstrate that I have enough instructional and diversity experience to work in these positions. I always come across as rather paramilitary. "Taught rifles, shotguns, knives, axes, fire, wilderness survival, leave no trace..."

[–]turtleeatingaldermanKrakatoa Rules Everything Around Me 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hope everybody made the most of yesterday, the anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the Throne. I celebrated, of course, by getting into some serious beef with the Pope.