DeSantis is a Fascist

Eh, I’d call it a classic Trump move.

Shout something objectively dumb, false, tyrannical, racist, evil.

Make sure it offends the liberals enough that Republicans don’t think about it much.

Get on Fox. Get on Vox.

Win win win.

I think many peoples’ values were already eroded. Some politicians have capitalized on it and made them their base. That’s all.

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Did Trump actually single out and hurt businesses though (other than media companies)?

IFYP

Too much shit to dig through to answer that.

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The thing with Trump about yelling things on Twitter is that he produced so much of it that it was sort of quickly forgotten. I feel different about individuals he attacked since they could receive death threats.

Thanks for for the link and fair enough to SV.

They were given permission to embrace the worst demons of their nature.

The brain chemical rush from hate is glorious. You feel alive. You feel powerful. Hating others you get to shed all your woes onto that goat, that other, that demon, that monster. It gives your life purpose and the more hopeless, the more unsure you are – the easier it is to embrace that hate.

Like a lover that gives them that first mind altering orgasm, they are enthralled. Herion addicts chasing that first high.

yes

Dude, you always cover so well. Thank you.

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Turns out it’s not so shocking that DeSantis would support teaching that slaves learned skills that benefited them (which is totally different than saying slaves benefited from slavery. Totally).

From November:

Another former student, who asked not be named for fear of retribution at his job, said Mr DeSantis’s views on the Civil War were so well known that a parody video was made for the school’s video yearbook.

The Times reviewed the video, which includes a snippet of a student imitating Mr DeSantis saying “The Civil War was not about slavery! It was about two competing economic systems One was in the North…” before the video cuts to a student dozing off in class.

Linking to the Independent b/c NYT is paywalled

From this week:

Vice President Kamala Harris torched the new curriculum in two speeches on consecutive days, but the leaders of the group who wrote the guidelines issued a statement defending them and listing 16 examples they say support their work.

But TBT staff writer Jeffrey Solochek published an article exposing many of the examples as faulty because the subjects either were not slaves or did not learn their skills while enslaved,

I can’t find the right Twitter thread, but it was something like of 16 examples, roughly half were never slaves, and of the ones who were slaves, only 2 ended up in a profession related to what they did as slaves.

From what I remember there are anecdotes of some skilled slaves being permitted to retain some earnings and eventually purchase their freedom. My impression is that this was extremely rare, though. Are the anecdotes completely fictional, or is it just that those who oppose the standards claim they are misleading due to rarity?

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Finding a few rare exceptions out of almost 4 million seems disingenuous to claim, “Slavery wasn’t all that bad.”

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Proof that an Ivy League education isn’t all that great.

It probably depends on how the story is framed.

If it’s “these people worked hard and overcame despite their circumstances”, that would probably be okay.

“Look, slavery gave these people skills” is a crappy framing.

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I seem to recall that it was “more common” in the colonial era than it was in the mid 19th century (didn’t some states actually have laws that discouraged manumission?), but I don’t how common it ever was.

I’d assume that any change in frequency was at least subconsciously connected to the ending of the practice of indentured servitude in what is now the US, and the increased availability of skilled labor that might fill roles that led to slaves being able to purchase their freedom (I remember reading about a number of slaves in New York City who were employed in skilled trades who eventually bought their freedom and were able to work in their trades as freedmen)…but that’s speculation on my part.

This is how I remember the context in which it was presented, but that was a long time ago, so my memory isn’t something I’d claim is 100% accurate. I didn’t got the impression from school that slavery was anything but brutal oppression. I do remember that my HS history teacher said the emphasis was quite different in her day (late 50’s early 60’s?) in rural SC than what she was teaching in the mid 80’s in Augusta, GA. As taught to her, Sherman’s March to the Sea was a big recitation of x civilians killed/raped/farms burned to the ground county by county.

I’d like to learn more about american chattel slavery compared to other kinds.

for example, indentured servitude was itself a kind of slavery.

by this time, the enlightenment had established a bright line between objects and persons. black slaves were objects, while indentured servants were persons.

this bright line didn’t exist for roman slaves, say, and my impression is that this left a lot more nuance.

i suppose that a few slaves learned useful skills. i know some of them fell i love with free whites, who left with them to free states where they could both live together. this doesn’t change the fundamental nature of american chattel slavery in the least.

My mother’s mother was part of a large group in Canada, the Barnardo children, that could be considered “indentured servitude”.

She was abandoned at a young age by her parents in East London around 1905 and placed in the care of the Barnardo Foundation. Barnardo’s then sent these small children to farms throughout the British Empire to work as unpaid labourers until they got their freedom in adulthood. They lived with the farm family receiving lodging and food for their labour. Sometimes the conditions were brutal: in others they were treated like family members.

No US counterpart to the Barnardo children but lots of books about them for anyone interested.

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