I apologize for any misspellings and so forth, its quite late and I don't spell check my posts especially when they are titanically large(as is my way.)
Korten12 said:
One example I heard in another thread was that even before we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, apparently Japan was already gearing up to sign a surrender and then after we dropped the bombs they were almost ready to fully retaliate.
If this is off of my post in the "Nuclear strikes and why I have a hard time being friends with some people." Thread, then I wasn't saying they were ready to retaliate. Their leaders were still continuing the war because that's what leaders do in wars. They try to motivate their people as much as possible(hence the we will fight you to the last man rhetoric Japan was putting out.) So it wasn't necessarily that it made them want to retaliate as much as it was they just doing exactly what they were doing before and after. Both with respect to fighting the war and with respect to Japan pushing for peace.
Another interesting fact with regards to leaders continuing the fighting comes from actions of the US government itself. They continued WW2 after a peace settlement had been agreed to; letting thousands if not tens of thousands more die, just so that they could end the war at the end of September 1st and the dawn of a new day. So that the war would be exactly 6 years long. Yes that's right, our government killed people so that a war would end on a nice round even number.
Korten12 said:
Now I just don't know which is the truth, I would like to believe what I was taught, at least if I am remembering my class correctly (it was a bit ago...), is correct but I can't be sure.
That is almost certainly what you were taught. Even really good AP level highschool teachers often gave woefully inaccurate information. As a matter of fact a lot of college professors can give some bad information depending on the school and the teacher. I got into a bit of a shouting match with a history of revolutions and revolts professor because he kept trying to say that Mensheviks and the SRs were the same party. Which is patently untrue. I shoved source documentation in his face that was directly contradicting him and he just kept saying "you're wrong." I finally just sat down and basically zoned out the rest of the semester. I talked with a sovietologist later who I trusted and who confirmed my point, I had to ask because I wasn't sure if I was going insane, or if the professor was really that bad.
Korten12 said:
So can anyone kind of give me some examples of events that are alerted in US history to make certain events in the history book look more pro-US than what happened?
Most common history taught to most US citizens who don't major in history is replete with lies that are directly contradicted by source documentation. And you should really examine history through a more broad spectrum than just US history. For example MLK held back the peace movement and even subverted it with the Kennedies; CORE and the SNCC could have done a lot better without MLK's interference. And Bayard Rustin was far more important to the movement but no one is taught about him because he was homosexual and a socialist.
But as for some examples of US history proper making the US look better than it is:
You were almost certainly taught about the Nat Turner slave rebellion. It was a tiny rebellion 70-100 people, and all they did was massacre any white people they could get their hands on before being shut down. That's the stereotypical slave revolt for US history. They were disorganized. They were few in number. They were madmen slaughtering anyone they could get their hands on. That is the heritage taught to every student about how slaves acted when they were rebelling. You will almost certainly not hear about the New Orleans slave revolt. You won't hear about it because it was politically sophisticated as they slaves intended to form a democratic republic. You won't hear about it because it had easily more than 500 slaves. You won't hear about it because it was a multicultural revolution, not limited to blacks. You won't hear about it because they wore uniforms, because they engaged in a line battle like an organized fighting force. And you certainly won't hear about it because in the aftermath, the survivors were treated brutally. They dismembered limbs, burned people alive, beheaded a ton of them and stuck their heads on spikes around New Orleans. It didn't fit into the narrative of US history of blacks as evil and stupid, who's only redemption could come at the hands of righteous white men freeing them and educating them.
Then there's the collapse of the USSR. Where you're told by history teachers who spent no time studying the USSR itself, that the USSR collapsed because we outspent them in the military and they struggled to keep up with our economy and because they couldn't, they eventually collapsed under their own weight. They had free labor and say what you will about 'communism'(In quotes because the USSR was never communist nor did they say they were, that's just a label the US put on them) they could produce a heck of a lot of a few things including wheat. They didn't collapse because their economy just "couldn't take it" and the US outproduced them so hard so they hung up their hats in shame. Nor did it collapse because Regan was so great they couldn't resist him. It collapsed because they were trying to rule over a large number of disparate groups who didn't want to be part of a collective union. It collapsed from the inside out, because the Georgians and the Ukranians and the Czechs wanted out, and even the Russians themselves(Boris Yeltsin shelled the freaking Duma with artillery.) Everything the US did had pretty much no effect on the USSRs ability to hold itself together whatsoever. Nationality and ethnicity tore it apart from the inside out.
And speaking of the USSR, the Cuban missile crisis is also a joke. Again we are presented with this great example of how the US won, and how JFK was the great president we are all assured he is, and how it was stopped with a blockade. But here's the thing, there were already missiles in Cuba when the blockade started. So how did we get those missiles out? Well we lost to Russia, that's how. At the outset of the Cuban crisis the US had missiles in turkey, right in Russia's back yard. So how did we solve that crisis? Was it by JFK not backing down and by showing those rooskies what's what? No he removed all the missiles in Turkey to appease Khrushchev. Start of the crisis USSR: no missiles in cuba US: missiles in turkey. End of the crisis USSR: no missiles in cuba US: no missiles in turkey. We gave ground.
Also while we are still on the subject of the USSR. Another fact you probably didn't know because it doesn't fit into the US narrative of communist being everywhere and we were all alone trying to stop them, is that the USSR and china fought a series of border skirmishes during the height of the Cold War. This of course long after the USSR had pretty much severed ties with China because Mao didn't listen to them during the great leap forward and he got a bunch of people killed. Then he demanded they give him nukes so he could nuke Taiwan and the Soviets went: "are you freaking crazy?"
So lets talk more about communists or rather people who weren't communists but who we killed anyways and called communists because France asked us to, and then we would have looked like idiots if we left just because France stopped caring. Ho Chi Minh(which is not his real name btw) came to Versailles at the end of World War one where he petitioned Woodrow Wilson among others for an independent Vietnam. They all ignored him, so he chilled out and learned from various people for years until WW2 when he joined with the US to fight against the Japanese occupying Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was a big fan of US history as well, he loved the US revolution and he really liked the Declaration of Independence, so much so that he actually used a lot of the same language in a letter to Roosevelt asking him to help support an independent Vietnam which Roosevelt and Truman agreed to. However come the end of the war he immediately retracted his support and instead supported Frances rebid to retake Vietnam. His ideals for a Vietnam that was like the US were spurned so he had to turn to the USSR for support.
Also a couple asides on Vietnam as well as another shitty thing the US did that you are unlikely to have been told in your HS US history class:
China hated Vietnam as well, in fact only a few years after the fall of Saigon, the Chinese launched an invasion in which they had their asses handed to them by the Vietnamese.
Also the Vietnamese had way better pilots than the US did, despite being outnumbered heavily Vietnam ended up with way more aces at the end of the war and way more plane kills. In fact the Top Gun school was created to counter the Vietnamese pilots.
And when the Cambodian's under Pol Pot were committing genocide, who did they get support from? The US government. Who tried to stop the genocide? Vietnam.
And lets bring this back around to US histories beginning. George Washington was a mostly incompetent vain glorious asshole who screwed over Benedict Arnold in every way possible. Arnold was a way superior general who was capable of actually winning fights. The battle of Valcour Island saved the independence movement and delayed the British advance. Apart from the Battle of Trenton, Washington was mainly either excessively lucky, or just hid in the woods and refused to fight. Really the best thing Washington ever did was resign from the presidency.
Also while we are on the subject of asshole presidents: Lincoln blackmailed senators, threatened senators with outright force going so far as to show up on a senators lawn with a company of soldiers and in a word tell him to shut his fucking mouth, he jailed peaceful war protestors, and he suspended Habeus Corpus(overturned by the Supreme Court.)
