Best united states history books according to redditors

Incidentally, during the '50s and '60s Western governments were against the secular, nationalist, and socialist movements that were laughing off religious ideas and trying to modernize their countries, and sided with the Islamic monarchies.

Arguably the primary reason why monarchies like Saudi Arabia didn't get overthrown by the various labor movements, progressive technocrats, and nationalist military officers that emerged against them during the '50s and '60s was because of the massive amounts of military and economic support given to these backwards, totalitarian monarchies by Western governments (mainly the US and the UK).

-edit-

Here are some good books on the very interesting and complex subject of the Middle East, Islamic fundamenetalism, and US foreign policy

• America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006)
  
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
  
• Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011)
  
• Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011)
  
• The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (2003)

https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Gathering and analyzing intelligence on other countries is its primary, original role. Most directly for keeping specifically the President informed of just what the heck is developing around the world. It was started after WW2 in order to prevent another Pearl Harbor surprise. And they were not allowed to gather intelligence on US soil, but that has not been strictly observed.

This work involves gathering tasks as mundane as always reading the news in a target country, as political context matters as much as tapped phone conversations when putting together an analysis. But the movie-caliber stuff is important too. They tap phones, recruit sources in governments and industry, build a whole network of resources.

To collect this information, the CIA uses two kinds of employees. “Official cover” officers pose as diplomats in US embassies worldwide. All embassy staff will be under surveillance from the target country’s counter-intelligence organizations — their FBI equivalents — so meeting sources is risky and they might stick to less blatant parts of the job. But on the upside, they have diplomatic immunity and just get sent home if caught spying. Non-official cover officers get jobs in multinational companies or assume some invented identity that gives them a reason to be in country. They can more freely recruit local sources but must rot in prison or die if caught, unacknowledged.

Info goes back to legions of analysis teams working in offices in the US who prepare it into reports.

The CIA also engages in covert and clandestine activities meant to influence other countries. This latter role has grown, diminished, and changed in nature throughout its history depending on political climate. Some bad press from some really ugly leaks in the 70’s (I think) about the extent of these activities put a big damper on them for a while, requiring Presidential sign-offs on killings, iirc. Post 9/11, the CIA is back on the hard stuff but keeps a legion of lawyers to make sure it’s teccchhnically legal.

These cold war activities include funding and organizing Afghan resistance against communist rule, for example. A whole covert war. Also tons of election rigging, assassination, etc. Post cold war they have been involved in anti-terror activities like running the war against the Taliban and assassinating militants and their neighbors with drone missiles.

Fun fact: “covert” operations are meant to hide who is behind an operation, “clandestine” are meant to conceal the entire operation from anyone but us. Compare an assassination to a phone tap.

Edit: in one episode (2 or 3 i think) of Netflix docu series Inside the Mossad explains how Israel’s foreign intelligence uses elaborate sting operations to recruit sources. By the time they realize they’re working for Mossad, they’re in too deep to not go along with it. Intelligence orgs do this a lot when they know the people they need probably hate the org’s country. This is basically all the time for Israel spying on other middle east states. Case officers often use really impressively manipulative strategies for recruiting and controlling their local agents. “The Americans” illustrates some great examples of this, if a little more dramatic.

Edit 2A: There are a bunch of other specialized US foreign intelligence agencies, like the NSA that traditionally intercepts signals and cracks their codes.

Edit 2B: In the UK, MI6 of James Bond fame does foreign intelligence and MI5 does counter-intelligence. These existed during WW2 but back then the lines got blurred, with both organizations running their own double agents against Nazi Germany’s own two competing foreign intelligence orgs. In fact, 0% of any spies Germany sent to Britain were able to work for enough time before being caught to send anything useful over. By 1944, when the UK was more confident that they were controlling all the sources sending info to Germany (the ones that wouldn’t work for the UK as double agents radioing harmless intel back home were either dead or imprisoned), they fed Germany massive misinformation about the location (and timing?) of the D-Day Normandy invasion. Read the excellent book Operation Double Cross to learn about this incredible operation.

BOOK EDIT:

Books on the CIA I found rewarding.

“The Master of Disguise” by Tony Mendez. Ben Affleck played him in Argo. Memoir of this artist’s time in the CIA inventing disguises and forging travel documents, often to exfiltrate an exposed source. Watch or read Argo too if you haven’t, the film at least is incredibly cool because its evacuation of American diplomats from Iran as Canadian filmmakers is largely real.
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Disguise-Secret-Life-CIA/dp/0060957913/

“Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.” Recent declassifications are exposing just how terribly the CIA bungled things in the early cold war, which is what this is about. From massive nuclear arms race miscalculations that threatened the world, to unfounded communism paranoia that led to totally unnecessary coups, they used classification to hide their greatest errors.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389006/

“Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to Al-Qaeda.” Beyond just the tech, you get insight into the lives of tech team members who would bug homes for their career. Interesting stuff. I think I read a different edition but this is probably fine.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452295475/

“Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”
Tom Clancy name, but actually an extremely detailed history of the CIA’s 1980’s support for Afghan mujahideen against the USSR and continued involvement in the 90’s. Down to highlighting cultural generational differences within the multiple cohorts of CIA officers in charge of the long-running operation. Also highlights Pakistan’s demand to hand out all the money, both to act as kingmaker for the dominant factions and to skim hella bux off the top. Descriptions of the conflict and how the Afghans relentlessly persevered and how factions had independent deals and truces with USSR. Then much of the civil war aftermath of USSR pullout when the US stopped caring. Taliban become popular for not tolerating warlords raping local boys, an issue that remains to this day among US supported administration (a coalition of “former” warlords who you will recognize if you read the book). Great read, incredible breadth.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143034669/

Bones breaking isn't necessarily what kills you in rapid deceleration situations. Often times it's your heart detaching from your aorta. Every once in a while someone survives a jump off the golden gate bridge or something, and it's usually because when they hit the water their heart happened to be not full of blood for that split second, and wasn't as heavy, thus staying attached.

edit: this comment got a little more attention than I thought it would. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I would highly recommend Mary Roach's book Stiff.

Didn't want to spam the queue, but if anyone else wants to post parts 2 and 3 of this amazing, comprehensive piece of journalism, here are the other two parts to this story:

Part 2: Internal Divisions President Trump’s election made the Murdoch family more powerful than ever. But the bitter struggle between James and Lachlan threatened to tear the company apart.

Part 3: The New Fox Weapon The Disney deal left the Murdochs with a media empire stripped to its essence: a hardcore right-wing news machine — with Lachlan in charge.

It's a very long read, but worth it.

I also recommend Jane Mayer's seminal book from 2017 entitled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right to get a full picture of how the oligarchy has slimed in and committed violence against our democracy for over a generation.

Just to highlight some key info:

> As they dig into the viralizing of such stories, congressional investigations are probing not just Russia's role but whether Moscow had help from the Trump campaign. Sources familiar with the investigations say they are probing two Trump-linked organizations: Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics company hired by the campaign that is partly owned by deep-pocketed Trump backer Robert Mercer; and Breitbart News, the right-wing website formerly run by Trump's top political adviser Stephen Bannon.

Wanna learn more about Mercer's connections? Check out Dark Money by Jane Mayer, an investigative journalist with The New Yorker.

I know that feel bro.

I argued with my 3rd grade teacher that tomatoes were fruits, or at the very least classifiable as both. She insisted I was wrong because they were... in salads. My distrust of institutionalized education began that day, you stupid fucking cunt Mrs. Stevenson.

Relevant: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong [Paperback]

>What the actual fuck is wrong with politicians.

You're slowly becoming aware of how corrupt and fucked up the world really is... You're not seeing what's going on behind the scenes... they fear the net and hence want to lock everything down.

The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTIZBCQ79g

Snowden on terrorism/spying.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/sep/25/edward-snowden-treaty-glenn-greenwald-mass-surveillance-terrorism-video

Democracy Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

Intereference in other states when the corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]
General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Mercers and The Kochs. Read or listen to Dark Money. It's scary.

Sure, and how about the overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh in Iran in 1952? Or how about the countless meddling in Central and South America? Speaking domestically, why is it that they always infiltrate peaceful groups of citizens and then play the role of provocateur?

The U.S. federal government should basically never be trusted and yet it seems each generation falls prey to their lies and propaganda - especially with regard to foreign policy. WMD's anyone? The American citizenry should always view everything the government says with an inherent distrust. That should be the default position of the citizenry. They have lost the privilege of being trusted. They don't work for or serve the interests of average Americans in the least. When the corporate/MIC/establishment elite want to meddle in another countries affairs or start a war, they will do whatever lying or black bag operations they need to in order to achieve their objective. They've done it plenty before and they will continue doing it until we refuse to allow it any more.

The U.S. government has put down so many populist movements and meddled/overthrown so many governments in the name of "making the world safe for capitalism" it's crazy. No other country even comes close. Yes, that's right, not democracy - that is the biggest lie of them all. The U.S. couldn't give two shits about democracy. Not even here at home. They just want to keep us believing that we live in a democracy and keep us participating in their rigged system so that we won't revolt.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/ref=tmm_pap_title_0/191-0374213-3312233

http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321374076&sr=1-1

Fun fact, the US government (lead by Nixon and Kissinger) actively resupplied the Pakistani military during their genocidal campaign in Bangladesh in 1971, even though they knew what was happening. They also did the same thing during the Indonesian genocides of the mid-50s, coordinated with Islamist paramilitaries. And during the 1980s, both the US and Saudi Arabia poured billions of dollars into General Zia's dictatorship (whose social base was the same political party that perpetrated the mass killings in Bangladesh), helping him purge leftists and secularists and build thousands of Wahhabi madrassas--which got plenty of recruits from the refugees fleeing the US coalition's insurgency in Afghanistan.

I'd say that much of the rise of paramilitary Islamist politics in the last few decades in South Asia comes down to the legacy of US-Saudi imperialism in the area, and their use of the Pakistani military as an pillar of their regional power. The effects of the 1980s war in Afghanistan can't be underestimated, it totally mutated the socio-political fabric of Pakistan and the wider region. I really like this quote from Steve Coll's Ghost Wars:

>In 1971 there had been only nine hundred madrassas in all of Pakistan. By the summer of 1988 there were about eight thousand official religious schools and an estimated twenty-five thousand unregistered ones, many of them clustered along the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier and funded by wealthy patrons from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States...Almost a decade earlier, [ISI] was a small and demoralized unit within the Pakistani military…Now ISI was an army within the army, boasting multiple deep-pocketed patrons, including the supremely deep-pocketed Prince Turki and his Saudi GID. ISI enjoyed an ongoing operational partnership with the CIA as well, with periodic access to the world’s most sophisticated technology and intelligence collection systems….Outside the Pakistan army itself, less than ten years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, ISI had been transformed by CIA and Saudi subsidies into Pakistan’s most powerful institution (Coll 2004: 180).

And of course, the ISI--and their Saudi backers--went on to fund Islamist paramilitary networks across the region, both in Kashmir and Bangladesh.

Here are some excellent books I'd recommend:

• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
  
• Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (2013)
  
• Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011)
  
• America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (2006)
  
• Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011)
  
• The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (2003)

There was infighting between proponents of nuclear safety and proponents of nuclear readiness in SAC and Los Alamos. Some people wanted to have multiple independent safety devices to prevent accidental nuclear detonations or launches, others wanted nothing but a big red button to launch the missiles.

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser does a very good job of telling this story, as well as the story of a nuclear accident in Damascus Arkansas.

Read Dark Money

If you're still struggling to understand the link between the Taliban and 9/11 then you really need to get some research done.

​

I highly recommend Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. It's an excellent readable-but-academic look at the recent history of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion through to 9/11.

I think you are pointing out the stupidity of the American voter. Various people have commented on this. I think the book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" talks a lot about how the right twisted people into voting against their own best interests by exploiting wedge social issues and creating a false image as the heroes of the "little guy". For a long time I was on the bandwagon of blaming institutions like Fox News for deliberately misleading people and manipulating public opinion, but at this point there has been 10+ years of direct, incontrovertible evidence of the sheer corruption and incompetence of the right. If people can't see that at this point they are either being willfully ignorant, or they are just ignorant.

I started reading Dark Money, where they outlined how a whole bunch of think tanks were created to push a libertarian philosophy while espousing non-partisanship, while being funded by hardcore libertarians and billionaires like the Koch brothers, Scaife etc. So bear in mind that some these "non-partisan" think tanks might just be that.

This is a great question that I have thought about a million times. I have actually spent a lot of time trying to find a book on it, but I have not come across one that is specifically about Sociology or Psychology.

I first started to think about this when I was getting my masters degree (in Sociology). Often times I was super excited to share the things I would learn with my family and friends, and how the things I was (and still am) learning are often in contradiction to the things I was told/learned growing up. For context, I'm a white girl who grew up in an upper-middle class politically conservative suburb in a large city with successful parents, and I was always given everything I wanted/needed. I considered myself a Christian and I told people that I was a republican (although I knew nothing about politics and was just identifying with my parents).

Then I started studying Soci and my entire perspective on the world changed. It opened my eyes and forced me to look beyond my tunnel vision of society. It was really hard at times to come to terms with things that I thought I already understood, especially social issues that I had never thought about before or issues that had always been presented to me in a one-sided, biased manner.

A good example of this is the trope of the Welfare Queen. I was told that poor people, esp. poor black people, were moochers and only wanted handouts because they were lazy and didn't want to get a job. Of course, I learned that the Welfare Queen (and welfare "fraud") is a myth that was promulgated by Ronald Regan in order to stigmatize people in poverty so that he could convince Americans that rolling back the social safety net was justified because it was only being used by poor black (read: undeserving) citizens. The truth is that most people on welfare do have jobs (i.e. the 'working poor'). Also, the welfare reforms of 1996 created a 5-year maximum lifetime cap on benefits so that welfare "cheaters" (which did not exist anywhere near the level that we're often told) were literally unable to collect benefits for life (also, contrary to popular opinion, women do not have more babies to get more benefits. In fact, if a woman has a child while receiving benefits, she and her family will be removed from the rolls). Welfare is probably one of the least understood/mischaracterized social issue in American society.

Science in general is often met with the sting of anti-intellectualism, which is part of the answer to your question. However, I think social science in particular gets it worse than the 'natural' sciences like Biology and Chemistry. I used to say that it was because people were generally more suspect of social sciences, but I think it's more than that. People like to dismiss facts about social issues that they don't agree with or have a different view on because it's much easier to disagree that we live in a post-racial society (we don't) than it is to disagree on the functions of bodily organs. People also tend to conflate their individual life experiences with overall reality (i.e. "well, i've never experienced [blank] so it must not be true or its exaggerated" or "well, I know someone who is [blank] but [blank] doesn't happen to them"). You get what I am saying here? Most people don't question or critically think about social norms or commonsense 'truths' because these 'truths' are so embedded in our milieu that its hard to imagine otherwise. So instead of thinking critically, people dismiss sociological knowledge as either "elitist" or "not real science" so that they can remain undisturbed in their own little worlds.

Once I saw a question on r/askreddit that asked what the slogan of your college major or job would be. I would say, "Sociology: reminding people of uncomfortable truths since 1838" or "Sociology: everything you were taught about society was a big lie" lol.

I'm sorry I can't find any literature for you, but I can recommend these instead:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

I like how this author puts it. He wasn't the first to discover the America's. He was the last. He was the most historically important because of the impact he had on the America's. Also in the book they talk about the many African boats that sailed the ocean and landed on the southern end of the continent. I believe he wasn't even the first European but he did make it profitable and that's what really mattered.

A good resource in the first half of the narration--Mossadegh's rise to power, nationalization of oil resources, and overthrow--is All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer. Just be aware that the author is writing partly to make a political point about regime change.

The film is very accurate, although, as you said, a bit simplified in its description. The early 20th century rulers of Iran signed a treaty with Britain allowing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation (later BP) essentially unfettered access to the country's oil resources. Muhammed Mossadegh successful rose to power as a nationalist and populist prime minister. In 1951, he nationalized Anglo-Iranian.

This led to severe diplomatic tensions between Iran and the UK, in which the UK considered using military force, but ultimately decided to overthrow Mossadegh through a coup. Iran then cut diplomatic relations with the UK, expelling most of their spies in the process. The UK was able to convince US President Dwight Eisenhower through his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the CIA director, his brother Allen Dulles, to carry out the coup on behalf of the UK. The Americans were concerned that Mossadegh's nationalization of industries was a step on a road to communism, and they were concerned they might lose Iran's oil resources to the Soviet sphere of influence as a result.

Kermit Roosevelt Jr, a CIA officer in Iran, executed Operation Ajax in 1953, which overthrew Mossadegh's government and reinstalled Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as king ("shah") of Iran under the guise of a popular uprising.

This is, of course, still a simplification, but hopefully provides a little more detail. Maybe somebody else can provide some input on the 1979 revolution?

Edit: Corrected as per willpredun.

I heard in "Goodwill Hunting" about the book from Howard Zinn that would knock you on your ass, A People's History of the United States. I did, and it did.

And you are correct, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Most excellent book too!

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Most of what you're talking about is Hollywood, not reality. Eric Schlosser wrote an excellent book about the history of nuclear weapon controls, and most of the time most of what you mentioned wasn't in place.

That search is what made me atheist. The truth is that there is no true history of the bible. It's long lost, a mystery. For instance, we have no idea who wrote the gospels.. .totally anonymous. We don't know who wrote the OT... At best we know Paul's letters and a few other books, and we know when certain things were added or changed (for instance the famous John 3:16 was added by a monk later on).

If you want some insight into the history of Christianity, here are some links. It's a messy world filled with 2000 years of apologetics muddying the waters.

http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/atheistgems#HistoryandLiteraryAnalysis (specifically this one: Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvleOBYTrDE )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenical_council#List_of_ecumenical_councils

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne (responsible for converting most of Europe... by the sword. Dealth penalty for having any pagan items, sacked whole villages, etc). more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I_and_Christianity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology

Now, if you want some good books... I recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Any other questions?

Fakta om IQ, eller g (generell intelligensfaktor)

• Hög ärftlighet (r = 0.5-0.8)
  
• Korrelerar med hjärn- och skallstorlek (r = 0.2-0.4 beroende på mätmetod)
  
• Har prediktiv validitet (skolbetyg, lön, utbildning, arbetseffektivitet, succesivt bättre förmåga att lösa kognitiva problem för varje percentil etc.)
  
• Hög reliabilitet (r > 0.9) för återtest av samma individ senare i livet
  
• Validitet och reliabilitet är densamma för samtliga folkslag.
  
• Svarta i USA erhåller i genomsnitt en standardavvikelse (1 σ) lägre resultat än vita européer som i sin tur erhåller ungefär en halv standardavikelse lägre resultat än östasiater.
  
  Detta är konsensus i forskningen. Även forskare som exempelvis Richard Nisbett eller James Flynn, som tror att gruppskillnaderna är helt och hållet miljömässiga instämmer i det som skrivs ovan. Ingen insatt i forskningen tror på det typiska "IQ mäter ingenting", "IQ gynnar västerlänningar", "IQ mäter en minimal del av intelligens". Sådana påståenden visar att man ej läst litteraturen, exempelvis Nisbett, Murray och Herrnstein eller Mackintosh.
  
  Huruvida intelligensskillnaderna mellan grupperna (svarta-vita-asiater) beror på arv, miljö eller en kombination är mer spekulativt och här får man bilda sig en egen uppfattning genom att tillgodogöra sig argumenten från båda sidor. Här (kort och lättläst) är en bra sammanfattning av argument för och emot en ärftlig komponent till gruppskillnaderna skriven av Rushton & Jensen som tror på en 50-50-modell (observera att ingen tror på en 100% ärftlig modell, striden står mellan de som tror på 100% miljö mot de som tror på ungefär 50% miljö/50% arv).
  
  Data att fundera över (diagram):
  
  
• Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study
  
  
• Koreanska och icke-koreanska adoptivbarn mot infödd befolkning i Sverige
  
  
• Amerikanska högskoleprovet SAT, efter inkomst och ras
  
  
• Piffer (2015):
  
  > Published Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), reporting the presence of alleles exhibiting significant and replicable associations with IQ, are reviewed. The average between-population frequency (polygenic score) of nine alleles positively and significantly associated with intelligence is strongly correlated to country-level IQ (r = .91). Factor analysis of allele frequencies furthermore identified a metagene with a similar correlation to country IQ (r = .86). The majority of the alleles (seven out of nine) loaded positively on this metagene. Allele frequencies varied by continent in a way that corresponds with observed population differences in average phenotypic intelligence. Average allele frequencies for intelligence GWAS hits exhibited higher inter-population variability than random SNPs matched to the GWAS hits or GWAS hits for height. This indicates stronger directional polygenic selection for intelligence relative to height. Random sets of SNPs and Fst distances were employed to deal with the issue of autocorrelation due to population structure. GWAS hits were much stronger predictors of IQ than random SNPs. Regressing IQ on Fst distances did not significantly alter the results nonetheless it demonstrated that, whilst population structure due to genetic drift and migrations is indeed related to IQ differences between populations, the GWAS hit frequencies are independent predictors of aggregate IQ differences.

Great read for those interested in a more historical look at the subject. Very well argued and interesting book, very eye opening in terms of the many different aspects of American society and how they developed over the last few hundred years.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

Since no one else has linked it...

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers about all the stuff donated bodies are used for

A great read on this subject is Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser. At some points during the cold war Strategic Air Command had nuclear equipped bombers circling around the perimeter of US and NATO airspace non-stop. As with anything we decide to do 24/7, there were some accidents. If you think a B-52 bursting into flames on a runway sounds kinda stressful, imagine how much worse it gets when you know it has shaped explosives ready to jam together some fissile materials inside it. A situation like that occurred once, and lucky, the shaped explosives melted in the heat before they could go off. In another incident a B-52 had something fail and ripped apart in mid-air. This occurred over US airspace, and in some kinda crazy failure of oversight, the bomb on that plane had its physical safety enabled, meaning if the pilot had happened to also have his bomb key turned to the right we would have ejected a live nuke onto Virginia.

To answer your question though: minor taps are unlikely to set off the shaped explosives which start the reaction. Think of the nuke as a football shaped thing with two bits of material in them that, when slammed together with a lot of force, set off a nuclear reaction. If only half the "lens" explodes, that might not be enough force even, so even if you shot the exposed bomb it might only set off some of the shaped explosives, possibly resulting in a 'dirty bomb' or possibly just a loud bang. The detonation charge has to be perfectly timed to all parts of the football in order to make sure the two halves slam together with maximum surface area.

By the way, I can't recommend that book enough, it made me much more aware of how many crazy accidents and near accidents our nuclear weapons program has had, and it really makes you think twice about why the fuck we need thousands of these weapons sitting around, and the huge amount of effort which went into them, both on the design level and on the practical every-day level.

If you want to hear more about this I recommend "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right". Unfortunately - seminars like this are only the tip of the ice-berg. There are huge ideological enterprises set up with goal of establishing "beach-heads" at prestigious universities by setting up private organizations that are attached to the university but paid to publish certain results. Their role is usually to promote free markets and encourage the inclusion of economic costs in law (not just public good). The Mercatus Institute is another example of one of these privately-funded-but-publicly-housed organizations. They're the guys who made news a few months ago when they published a study on Bernie Sander's medicare-for-all plan that showed that even though it was expensive - it was still cheaper than what we're spending now.

This was detailed on an episode of Human Planet on Discovery. You can watch it here!

I was secretly bummed they never showed the actual process. I feel most bad for the man who has to do the burial itself. If I remember correctly, he had to drink a considerable amount of whiskey in order to stomach what he was about to do.

(Also, if you're still curious about the ways corpses can and have been used throughout the centuries, have I got the book for you.)

A book written on just that subject

That and even though our govenor is a complete shitbag, he managed to get reelected just by having an R by his name.

Sorry but if you think the GOP was transparent and honest in 1994, and that America had been the historical good guys up until recently, all that says is how naive and uninformed you were up until recently.

I'm not about to type out the recent history of GOP practices and motivations here, but rest assured that the GOP has been serving the same masters for many, many years, and the "freaking cool" contract was just more of that.

As for the "USA is the world's good guy!" narrative, that's just patriotic propaganda. Yes there is much good, but there is also much bad in our history. Our pioneering use of slavery, genocidal treatment of native americans, exploitation of natural resources, and manipulation of smaller nations' governments for commercial gain, have been with us since the founding days of our nation. Torture, genocide, and untold unnecessary suffering have been the regular result of these national actions. Many of our problems today result directly from obliviousness to the realities of our own history. We can't avoid repeating it if we willfully forget it.

US History textbook authors are one of the biggest promoters of this narrative, so it's understandable that it pervades the national consciousness, but also sad.

Read Lies My Teacher Told Me for a good discussion of this.

This might. Private funding, funneled through philantropic foundations to charitable and social causes. Aimed and organized specifically to swing close elections, influence their idea of a conservative ideology and culture and hand-pick candidates in their service. Billions of dollars from very very rich donors. Candidates either toe their line or find themselves either without funding, or run out of primaries. Paul Ryan and many others are featured.

Lots of names, lots of details. One of the best books I've read on american politics in a long time.

Jonah Golberg strkes again! This idea that fascism is left-wing is perpetuated by Goldberg's book, Liberal Facism.

>Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

What do RWers consider fascist? Universal healthcare, public education, Social Security, organic food, separation of church and state, gun control, a woman's right to choose, public awareness on the dangers of smoking, etc.

When you argument rests upon equating Nazism with universal healthcare, public education, and Social Security, you really don't have an argument. You simply have BS talking points that make you look like an idiot.

You're not going to get a serious answer from the reddit echo chamber. So far you seem to have gotten:

"Her vagina"
"Nothing"
"the mainstream media is in the tank for Clinton"
"There are no Clinton supporters on the internet."

So here's what I consider the best arguments in her favor, mostly they're culled from my democratic pol/strategist friends, most of whom are serious Clinton supporters by virtue of where I live:

1. Whoever gets elected is going to have to deal with a republican congress at least until 2020, if not further. So incremental change is a given. Exactly how much of Bernie's agenda is going to get adopted by a republican congress? How is he going to get it taken up? So what's going to get passed? How is sanders going to deal with a congress that says "lol no" and sends him a budget increasing military funding and cutting welfare? At the end of the day this boils down to the "experience" argument, but there's a twist. Sanders definitely also has a history of legislative accomplishments, but more than a few presidents, Obama included, have shown us that legislative experience doesn't translate to effective leadership from the White House. I'll be frank, it's pretty damn obvious that the Clintons inspired Frank and Clair Underwood from the house of cards. That is, however you care to look at it, a reality. Personal relationships and a willingness to twist arms is what gets legislation through. Inability to work congress has been Obama's greatest failing as president I think. (I'm not saying congress doesn't share the blame, but politics is the art of the possible, more could possibly been done had the situation been better managed).
   
   
2. Clinton had a point when she said she's been the focus of partisan attacks for 10+ years. There's a SHITLOAD of dirt out there, but for the most part it's already been dug up. Think about the shit that Republicans dug up on John Kerry with the swiftboat nonsense, or on OBama with reviewing every single thing Jeremiah wright said, how exactly did it become a controversy that Obama's pastor said "god damn America?". You already largely know what Republicans are going to bring up with Clinton. Where's Bernie Sanders dirt? His personal life is largely unknown, and he's skated by on a northeastern tolerance for social indiscretions and refusing to discuss it. I guarantee you it's not because dirt doesn't exist, and not because it hasn't been dug up, but because it's being held in reserve for the general. Republicans forever tied to tar Obama with the idea that he was Saul Alinksy's protege, some kind of 60's radical reborn. Sanders actually is that 60's radical, and actually calls himself a socialist to boot. There's quite a bit out there of him associating with genuine revolutionary socialists and communists. There's going to be an army of people looking for every photo of everyone Sanders ever associated with and everything bad they said about America. His personal life wont' be off limits either. Did you know Sanders has an adult son that was born out of wedlock? Sure, millenials won't give a damn, but it will be the basis for tens of millions of negative advertising.
   
   
3. Electability. It's popular here to point to head to head polls suggesting Sanders is better able to beat Trump. But those same polls also showed Clinton beating everyone but Kasich. In a hypothetical match up against Trump, Sanders comes out +13 and Clinton comes out +6. But the presidential campaign map matters a lot as well. Sanders did particularly poor among Latinos and African Americans, and does exceedingly well amongst poor white people in largely white (and largely red) states. Sanders tied Oklahoma, and won Wisconsin, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Vermont. Clinton, Among others has won California, New York, Illinois and Florida. Even taking election shenanigans into account, the former aren't going to matter so much in the general election and the latter will.
   
   
   They are what they are, but the real question is what are you going to do about them? because when you step outside of the echo chamber, it's pretty obvious that Clinton's going to end up the Nominee. Sanders is fighting the good fight and will carry a liberal platform to the convention, which I think is a very good thing for the party in geneal and the Sanders/Warren wing of the party in particular, but his chance of ending up the nominee at this point is virtually nil unless something radical changes like Clinton actually succumbing to a major scandal or getting criminal charges filed. Then question is then, are you going to succumb to the drawback of a two party system and vote for the lesser of two evils or do something that might result in Trump becoming president? It's easy to say now, how do you think Nader supporters felt in 2001 when Bush took office?
   
   I would add to this, your question makes the exact same mistake democrats have made for years as it relates to Republican voters. going back to Thomas Frank's Book what's the matter with Kansas and why Obama's comments about clinging to guns and religion caused such a fury on the right even though they're pretty true.
   
   At its heart, the way people choose political candidate is not 100% logical. People are not robots. The reason political disagreements exists is because people have different priorities. Priorities are not driven solely by logical connections. People choose a candidate based on how they feel about them. Obama won an election (both primary and general) by creating a feeling that he would be different. Trump's winning the republican primary by creating a feeling among disenchanted voters that he's going to come in and make it right, no matter what his background or prior policy preferences were.
   
   Clinton has done a decent job creating an emotional connection with certain demographics.Women over 40, African Americans, Hispanics. She fails at it markedly among millennials and to some extent among men.
   
   Not speaking truth to power, but rather telling the truth to the mob, or at least answering a question deliberately asked about what the defenses of clinton are.

> single mother

> caring for disabled parents

> Trump voter

Can we update What's the Matter with Kansas for the new level of cognitive BS these people put themselves through?

For anyone looking at a deep dive into the subject of command and control, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser is well worth the read.

>“As part of that administrative process, Butler decided to look at every single target in the SIOP, and for weeks he carefully scrutinized the thousands of desired ground zeros. He found bridges and railways and roads in the middle of nowhere targeted with multiple warheads, to assure their destruction. Hundreds of nuclear warheads would hit Moscow—dozens of them aimed at a single radar installation outside the city. During his previous job working for the Joint Chiefs, Butler had dealt with targeting issues and the damage criteria for nuclear weapons."

>"He was hardly naive. But the days and weeks spent going through the SIOP, page by page, deeply affected him. For more than forty years, efforts to tame the SIOP, to limit it, reduce it, make it appear logical and reasonable, had failed. “With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life,” General Butler later recalled.

>“I came to fully appreciate the truth . . . we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”

To say that our current PEOTUS does not know what he is doing is an understatement. Given the history of nuclear power, storage, fallout, errors and use and given the chilling interview KAC gave last night on the Rachel Maddow Show clearly showing no formal knowledge on nuclear controlling powers across the globe, we should all recognize we are in for a long and hazardous ride which might not end well.

The history of nuclear power is ripe with peril and human error. Having someone at the trigger without an understanding of the issues and the technology behind that power should rightfully scare the hell out of everyone on the planet.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

I highly recommend "Stiff" by Mary Roach. It's...um...enlightening.

You want some REAL information? Then you need to take the time and read.

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Start there. Its written by the 2 most prominent political theorists of our generation. Waltz and Mearsh have added more to political theory together than all of the other political theorists combined IMO.

These two are not 'conspiracy theorists' - they are acclaimed professors of political theory. Renowned in every respect. They wrote about the "Israeli Lobby" and its impact on US foreign relations. Its an unprecedented amount of support. I know it sounds weird to say "Zionism owns America" but to someone who is IGNORant (not a jab at you, its just the reality) it sounds strange. When you start reading about Zionism/Israel/Jews and their political impact on American foreign relations, every action you see witnessed on your TV or articles you read make contextual sense.

If you actually want knowledge, and not just facts you can peddle but not backup, then by all means go Google away. If you want a grounded understanding of how Israel buttfucks Americans so openly, start with the book.

Holy Christ, the top comment there triggered me so hard I'm gonna have to reply to it.

/u/elpresidente1776

>> https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

This book is god awful, it is absolutely riddled with bullshit - if you want to see just how bad it is, here's an actual expert dismantling this guy:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231

>> Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”).

No, they were not. This is blatant bullshit, as Richard J. Evans in the third Reich trilogy writes:


>> Perhaps to emphasize this anti-capitalist focus, and to align itself with similar groups in Austria and Czechoslovakia, the party changed its name in February 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party; hostile commentators soon abbreviated this to the word ‘Nazi’, just as the enemies of the Social Democrats had abbreviated the name of that party earlier on to ‘Sozi’. Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism. True, as some have pointed out, its rhetoric was frequently egalitarian, it stressed the need to put common needs above the needs of the individual, and it often declared itself opposed to big business and international finance capital. Famously, too, antisemitism was once declared to be ‘the socialism of fools’. But from the very beginning, Hitler declared himself implacably opposed to Social Democracy and, initially to a much smaller extent, Communism: after all, the ‘November traitors’ who had signed the Armistice and later the Treaty of Versailles were not Communists at all, but the Social Democrats and their allies.

>> The ‘National Socialists’ wanted to unite the two political camps of left and right into which, they argued, the Jews had manipulated the German nation. The basis for this was to be the idea of race. This was light years removed from the class-based ideology of socialism. Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism, borrowing much of its rhetoric in the process, from its self-image as a movement rather than a party, to its much-vaunted contempt for bourgeois convention and conservative timidity. The idea of a ‘party’ suggested allegiance to parliamentary democracy, working steadily within a settled democratic polity. In speeches and propaganda, however, Hitler and his followers preferred on the whole to talk of the ‘National Socialist movement’, just as the Social Democrats had talked of the ‘workers’ movement’ or, come to that, the feminists of the ‘women’s movement’ and the apostles of prewar teenage rebellion of the ‘youth movement’. The term not only suggested dynamism and unceasing forward motion, it also more than hinted at an ultimate goal, an absolute object to work towards that was grander and more final than the endless compromises of conventional politics. By presenting itself as a ‘movement’, National Socialism, like the labour movement, advertised its opposition to conventional politics and its intention to subvert and ultimately overthrow the system within which it was initially forced to work.

>> By replacing class with race, and the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the leader, Nazism reversed the usual terms of socialist ideology. The synthesis of right and left was neatly symbolized in the Party’s official flag, personally chosen by Hitler in mid-1920: the field was bright red, the colour of socialism, with the swastika, the emblem of racist nationalism, outlined in black in the middle of a white circle at the centre of the flag, so that the whole ensemble made a combination of black, white and red, the colours of the official flag of the Bismarckian Empire. In the wake of the 1918 Revolution these came to symbolize rejection of the Weimar Republic and all it stood for; but by changing the design and adding the swastika, a symbol already used by a variety of far-right racist movements and Free Corps units in the postwar period, the Nazis also announced that what they wanted to replace it with was a new, Pan-German, racial state, not the old Wilhelmine status quo.

>> By the end of 1920, Hitler’s early emphasis on attacking Jewish capitalism had been modified to bring in ‘Marxism’, or in other words Social Democracy, and Bolshevism as well. The cruelties of the civil war and ‘red terror’ in Lenin’s Russia were making an impact, and Hitler could use them to lend emphasis to common far-right views of the supposedly Jewish inspiration behind the revolutionary upheavals of 1918-19 in Munich. Nazism would also have been possible, however, without the Communist threat; Hitler’s anti-Bolshevism was the product of his antisemitism and not the other way round.

Or even more:

>> A more alarmist note was sounded by the French ambassador, André François-Poncet. The perceptive diplomat noted that the conservatives were right to expect Hitler to agree to their programme of ‘the crushing of the left, the purging of the bureaucracy, the assimilation of Prussia and the Reich, the reorganization of the army, the re-establishment of military service’. They had put Hitler into the Chancellery in order to discredit him, he observed; ‘they have believed themselves to be very ingenious, ridding themselves of the wolf by introducing him into the sheepfold.’


Or we can can cite:

>> “As with other fascist ideologies and movements it subscribed to an ideology of national renewal, rebirth, and rejuvenation manifesting itself in extreme populist radical nationalism, militarism, and – in contradistinction to many other forms of fascism, extreme biological racism…the movement understood itself to be, and indeed was, a new form of political movement…the anti-Socialist, anti-liberal, and radical nationalist tenets of Nazi ideology applied particularly to the sentiments of a middle class disorientated by the domestic and international upheavals in the inter-war period.” (Neil Gregor, Nazism, Oxford, 2000 p 4-5.)

And again, from the trilogy:

>> The substantial overlap between the Nazis’ ideology and that of the conservatives, even, to a considerable extent, that of German liberals, was a third major factor in bringing Hitler into the Reich Chancellery on 30 January 1933. The ideas that were current among almost all German political parties right of the Social Democrats in the early 1930s had a great deal in common with those of the Nazis. These ideas certainly bore enough resemblance to the Nazis’ for the bulk of the liberal and conservative parties’ supporters in the Protestant electorate to desert them, at least temporarily, for what looked like a more effective alternative.

>> The Nazis declared that they would scrape away foreign and alien encrustations on the German body politic, ridding the country of Communism, Marxism, ‘Jewish’ liberalism, cultural Bolshevism, feminism, sexual libertinism, cosmopolitanism, the economic and power-political burdens imposed by Britain and France in 1919, ‘Western’ democracy and much else. They would lay bare the true Germany.

You have literally no idea what you're talking about, nazism, indeed, was an extremist form of anti-liberalism/socialism, and their allies in government were not the socialists, or the liberals - but the right wing nationalists and the conservatives.

Their primary enemy was in fact the socialists, and socialists were some of the first people to be thrown in camps.


You are easily one of the least informed people I have ever encountered on the Donald - in the future, avoid discussing topics you have not even a basic understanding of.

Or at the very least avoid reading garbage books written by historically illiterate hacks.

All of that shit you tried to cite, the smoking, the healthcare, the jobs? This was all because Hitler and the nazis were obsessed with a perfect Aryan race.

The nazis also rounded up and tossed the unemployed in camps and called them "workshy."

They believed modernism/liberalism had corrupted german culture - and this is most evident in the "degenerate art/music" events they held all over the place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_Exhibition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_music

That Robert E. Lee was an honorable fellow, and that the South was fighting for states' rights. If you're interested in this stuff, you should really read Lies My Teacher Told Me

I would highly recommend [what's the matter with Kansas] (https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493738579&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas) by Thomas Frank. It is an engaging, informative look at the context around why an entire state of low-income voters voted for policies that were drafted to harm them.

I am planning to pick up a number of books I saw on this list.

Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City is probably the best true crime I’ve read. Some older true crime novels can be really campy and sensationalized.

Also, it’s not true crime, but Mary Roach’s Stiff is a fun read about cadavers and the human body after death.

The same Eisenhower who extremely critical of wealthy industrialist taking control of the national and attempting to exploit the poor to their benefit? I'm not saying everything he did was good, but he was aware that a certain, powerful segment of the population was more interested in ranking up a high score in their bank accounts than helping people.

> Neoliberalism, love it or hate it, saved the economy in the 80s and 90s.

That's a massive over-simplification, and mostly inaccurate. While several important metrics from measuring the economy did improve during that period, "real wages" (wages adjusted for inflation) didn't grow significantly between 1981 and 2011. A lot of the economy growth came from women entering the work force in larger numbers & obtaining wages comparable to men, from computers & automation massive boosting the productive per worker, and a massive increase in the access to credit (debt). Of the three, Neoliberalism/Laissez-Faire economy only really affected the third, with probably overall negative consequences. At the heart of the Great Recession was the house market collapse: Because of the lack of real wage growth, people couldn't afford to buy houses except through increasing ridiculous mortgages, which they were able to obtain since the investment class demands growth. This debt bubble was leveraged to create even more (imaginary) wealth, which showed up in most of the economy metrics (especially the stock market). It just disappeared when reality set in and real wages couldn't support incurred debt, crashing the economy.

> Nixon brought in the Environmental protection agency.

I put Nixon on the list for breaking the law to maintain political power. Without Watergate, he would not have made the list.

> Political parties respond to the needs and wants of the electorate.

The reason I mentioned think tanks is that they are one of the tools used by conservative to re-frame and shape the wants of the electorate. Most traditional think tanks collect facts and do analysis to build policy recommendations, but many conservative ones (especially ones funded by the Kochs) begin with the ideology and cherry-pick the data to support the policies they have already written. It's both intellectual dishonest and much easier to build a convincing narrative with. I suggest reading Dark Money and Democracy in Chains if you want to examine the interplay between conservative think tanks, public opinion and money.

> People are the ones who vote after all.

Which is why voter suppression and gerrymandering play such an important role is US elections. Given the ugly history of disenfranchisement in that country, it's much easier to build support for preventing "the wrong people" from voting that it is to actually convince other people to support your policies. It's disguising and disgraceful. Thankfully, the Supreme Court up here has been consistent on supporting everyone's right to vote.

You know what I hate? The fact that black communities have been isolated in economic ghettos by Federal Government policies like redlining and then have to put up with ignorant people like you who ignore all the crime in white communities so you can hate on people different than you.

You want cultural differences, how about Meth? Or a history of owning slaves? Or maybe you mean the fact that we imprison people who use one type of cocaine for much longer than the kind that is popular with white people?

This is the type of stupidity and ignorance that makes reddit look ugly, why don't you go read some actual history before making up hateful shit about black people?

I really can't recommend Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb enough. Teller in particular is amazing, so much so that he was the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove.

That book, and the precursor, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, are great reads if you want to understand both the science and the politics behind the bomb projects. They're written by a historian, so they're not too crazy into the math, but they will explain to you the issues, such as why you need U235 to make a bomb rather than U238.

Not exactly

The German scientists who were working on the Nazi nuclear program were taken prisoner by the British and kept incarcerated in Britain. Their rooms were bugged, and they were secretly recorded discussing in disbelief the news of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. They knew the science and theory, but many of them didn't believe it was possible.

You are correct they didn't have sufficient uranium. Indeed, thanks to the Allied special forces and air-raids, and Norwegian resistance fighters, the only access to heavy water was destroyed and the largest shipment of heavy water itself was sunk (ironically).

I highly recommend Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It won a Pulitzer Prize in its own right. An utterly fascinating book and extremely well written.

Speaking of the Koch Brothers, eeryone should read Jane Mayer's Dark Money.

It is absolutely essential reading for understanding what has happened to the Republican party and our greater political zeitgeist.

The book Command and Control gives a good accounting of that story, along with a really interesting look into the history of nuclear weapons. I'd highly recommend the book if you're interested in nuclear stuff.

Some examples that help cultivate (rightfully so IMHO) the idea that the Koch brothers are "evil"-

1-Koch Industries is one of the top 15 polluters in the U.S. [source] (http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/bob-beckel/bob-beckel-koch-brothers-are-one-biggest-polluters/)

2-All the while they've given upwards of 100 million dollars to the climate denial effort. [source] (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-deniers/koch-industries/)

3-Koch Industries produces over 2 billion pounds of carcinogen formaldehyde and has actively worked to keep it from being classified as a carcinogen. [source] (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations)

4-They've been accused of attempting to steal 31 million dollars worth of crude oil from Native Americans and were the biggest oil and gas industry donors to the congressional committee with oversight of the hazardous Keystone pipeline. I don't think all that cash was to make sure things were kept safe and clean. [source] (https://newrepublic.com/article/120922/keystone-xl-senate-bill-amendments-influenced-koch-brothers)

5-Just this month they did their part to smear the benefits of electric cars. [source] (http://insideevs.com/koch-brothers-attack-electric-cars/)

6-This [video] (https://youtu.be/2mbJhjCbwo8) gives a decent idea of how they've gone about promoting the dismantling of public education.

I could go on but I've got shit to do. Keep in mind this is nothing compared to the decades long campaign they've run to siphon away more and more money and influence from the poor. If you really want to see a bigger picture, read [Dark Money, by Jane Mayer] (https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597).

Stiff - The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, if you want a light read about dead people. More amusing than it sounds.

There is literally a book (and documentary based on the book) about this. Called What's the Matter With Kansas

ITT: Conflating 'Make America Great Again' with Nazis.

Of course.

I think part of the problem is really that people are looking at only granular parts of problems today and don't have enough historical context. Its useless to follow every story about everyone and every little thing. There are lots of ups and downs in politics and there's no reason to be so reactionary to every single new and probably manufactured "scandal".... that's what's exhausting. I like to keep updated on a few big issues, I follow the careers of a few people I find inspiring (and follow a few that do things that worry me), and spend the rest of the time reading up on topics in book form... they have the advantage of being written over time, and with more vigorous standards for accuracy. The news, while still important where immediate info is necessary, is essentially click bait now. You don't need to get caught in the rip tides that pull you everywhere constantly, just understand the general trajectory of the important things.

edit: to those curious about some book recommendations: I'm by no means an expert in anything really, and the books you read should really be about the topics you personally are interested in, so don't take my word as gospel (or any author's). I like American history, ancient history, international relations, and though I think they're more boring I force myself to read about the health care system and the American education system because I feel they're important. I'm also looking to read some books on the military industrial complex and cyber security/ big data because I don't really know anything about them other than the stuff I see in passing on the news or here on Reddit. So if anyone knows a good overview of those issues, feel free to let me know.

• For a good start on human history and the beginnings of modern economics/ intl relations (basically why the West has historically dominated), try Guns, Germs, and Steel I believe there's also a documentary if the book is too dense for your taste (it is pretty dense).
  
  
• Perhaps if you're interested in why people get so damn heated talking politics, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
  
  
• If you wonder why people vote against their own social and economic interest: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Full disclosure: I liked this book, but I lean left. I'm not sure if it matters, the point of the book is just to track how the Republican party went from being the party of elites, to the party of blue collar workers.
  
  
• If the Supreme Court interests you at all, I liked Jeffrey Toobin's, The Nine
  
  
• The achievement gap? Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
  
  
• Health care? There's a lot, but this one is an easy read and it compares the systems of Britain, Japan, Germany, and I believe Cuba (which is very good for their GDP!) and the US's. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
  
  This is just some stuff I've listed off the top of my head. Another thing that I find helpful to better understanding intl relations are books about the major genocides of the past few decades, which are hard to get through (because of the brutal content) but... What is the What (Sudan), First they killed my father (Cambodian genocide), Girl at War (more of a autobiography, but still chilling) there's a couple of others I've read that I can't remember now.
  
  Anyway, just go to Good Reads and look at Contemporary Politics. Perhaps Great Courses has a political philosophy course too that you can draw from if you wanna go even farther back into the origins of society's structure and political thought.
  
  Also podcasts! I've just discovered these but there's a lot of audio content (FREE!) that you can listen to on your commute and whatnot. I like Abe Lincoln's Top Hat right now.
  
  Edit edit: wow thanks for the gold!!

There are still options like The Body Farm and safety testing (aka, when crash test dummies aren't enough). You might find the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers enlightening.

Iran had a secularist, western style democracy. Then it demanded to audit the books of BP, so the CIA overthrew it and installed a dictator who would let the west keep looting the countries oil.

I recommend this book on the subject :

http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463470354&sr=8-1&keywords=all+the+shahs+men

Everyone should read New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's book about the Kochs and (to a lesser extent) other far-right billionaires, Dark Money.

In what I think is my first ever top level post here I'd like to discuss and point out some recently published claims by former officials that likely Israeli spy devices were found near the White House sometime in the last few years. Let me quote the article, bolded parts are mine:

> The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

> But unlike most other occasions when flagrant incidents of foreign spying have been discovered on American soil, the Trump administration did not rebuke the Israeli government, and there were no consequences for Israel’s behavior, one of the former officials said.

> The miniature surveillance devices, colloquially known as “StingRays,” mimic regular cell towers to fool cellphones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.

> The devices were likely intended to spy on President Donald Trump, one of the former officials said, as well as his top aides and closest associates — though it’s not clear whether the Israeli efforts were successful.

Naturally these claims were denied by the Israeli embassy and no part of the U.S. government was willing to officially comment on it. They got another former counter intelligence official from the Obama administration to comment on these claims on the record and he said:

> “The Israelis are aggressive intelligence collectors, but they have sworn off spying on the U.S. at various points and it’s not surprising that such efforts continue,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former coordinator of counterterrorism at the Obama State Department and now director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.

> Benjamin, who emphasized that he was not aware of the FBI's investigation into the cell-phone spoofing, recalled once meeting with a former head of Mossad, the premier Israeli intelligence agency, when he was out of office. The first thing the former Mossad official told Benjamin was that Israel didn’t spy on the U.S.

> “I just told him our conversation was over if he had such a low estimate of my intelligence,” Benjamin said.

Anyway, I imagine none of this is that surprising to informed commentators (the United States has caught and jailed an Israeli spy in the United States before, Jonathan Pollard) -- and the U.S. government probably tries to do the same thing to Israel. But none the less it sparks a little dissonance that one of our closest allies is engaged in such behavior despite our vigorous (and even more vigorous under Trump) support of them. I'm not sure what the standard protocol is to respond to these things but is troubling that the administration made no attempt to rebuke the Israeli government (as the officials claim).

This, in my opinion, undermines his 'America First' attitude. In general, criticisms that one is failing to live up to ones own standards are a lot more potent than the claims that one is failing to meet the standards of others, so we'll see how this comes up in the 2020 election. Some of the Democratic candidates are practically just as pro-Israel as him, though, so it may not come up.

We should always be wary of 'anonymous officials' attempting to further their own agenda but these claims do fit into my previous understanding of how Israel operates and Trump's sympathy to Israel so at the moment I believe them. Let me know if you think there is a good reason to doubt their veracity.

What should the response be? I don't really know, but surely some sort of response or punishment is warranted by blatant espionage. It makes me ever more wary of exactly who is benefiting from our close relations with them, even aside from the consideration of the influence of the Israeli lobby.

lol jesus fucking christ, everyone understands that aipac is shorthand for a constellation of pro-israel lobbying groups and donors. go read the israel lobby if you're seriously this dense

I'm sure /u/Dr_Poz was referencing this insightful book from 2005:
What's the Matter with Kansas?

"Surprising Op-ed"??


"Singing a new tune"?!?!


Charles and David Koch are the unrivaled kings of gaslighting and manipulation.

They have spent literally hundreds millions of dollars, over decades, on a concentrated effort to influence academia, the media, and public policy towards their pro-corporate (profits) and anti-goverment (public accountability) ends.

"Dark Money" should be required reading for everyone.

Buy it, trust me: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307947904

Or listen to the audiobook free here:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/3uoaTlB5oPA

Part 2: https://youtu.be/gcQQKalLbZs

Good next up:

http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/

http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Deadliest-Export-Democracy-Everything/dp/1783601671/

> In my view, the second certainly wasn't

According to Rhodes [1], the Japanese command knew what affected Hiroshima was an atomic bomb [2] but concluded that since it took 4 years to build the first atom bomb, it would take the Allies 4 years to build the next. The folks at the top kept believing that they could force the Allies to a negotiated peace and that westerners were too weak - hence the suicidal efforts in Okinawa/Saipan and kamikaze to demoralize Allied troops.

The Yalta conference required Stalin to enter war against Japan within 90 days of the end of the German campaign. Depending on how you do the math and count timezones, Russia declared war against Japan and entered combat on day 89, 90 or 91.

According to Cook in Japan at War there were 4,335,500 Japanese soldiers at the time of the surrender with about 3,500,000 stationed outside the "home islands" (mostly stuck in Korea and Manchuria). This was a lot more than the Allies thought that Japan had.

Notes:
1 - I forget whether it was in Dark Sun (most likely because it was the followup written after the fall of the Soviet Union which opened up a lot of their secret archives) or The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
2 - The Japanese had 2 atom bomb projects: a chemical separation project in Tokyo and a gaseous diffusion project in what is now called North Korea around the Chosin Reservoir.

Animal and pet bodies are generally disposed of via a process that essentially liquifies the flesh in lye. I know that there was some amount of push several years ago to expand the service to human remains.

There's a company in Europe that was trying to push the idea of "planting" a person's body by using minimal preservation chemistry and no coffin, and putting a sapling above the body.

I'm not Tibetan, but even I can appreciate the symbology of their Sky Burials, wherein a body is sliced and left exposed to the elements, and is swiftly reclaimed by vultures.

However, there is one outstanding option for OP: Donating his body to science! Organ donors are lauded, as they well should be, but there's a pressing need for bodies for research purposes, particularly bodies of younger folk or children. The research gained through body donation can save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, for decades after it's donated. Bodies have been used to research car crash impact effects--dummies are fine, but there really is no substitute for strapping a body into a car and launching it into a wall to see how it breaks (or doesn't!)

I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in alternative body disposal methods to read Stiff, by Mary Roach. It is far and away my favorite non-fiction book--hilarious, respectful, inquisitive, and educational!

in fact there is evidence that ethnically diverse areas have less social trust and cohesion.

http://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046

We have been brainwashed for years into thinking diversity is good, but where is the evidence? In general people often self-segregate into ethnic communities because they like living near people who are like them. That is just the ways humans tend to be.

As for Muslims, is there any country on earth with more than, say, 15 or 20% Muslims that isn't plagued with civil war? Yugoslavia? Lebanon? Perhaps our leaders should have considered this before importing millions of Muslims into the West.

You are correct on the title, "What's the Matter With Kansas", but it goes onto much greater depth than the single issue voting. It really delves into and explains why the social conservatives are being played to go against the fiscal conservative values they once held and who is profiting from them.

At the time it was written, 10 years ago, Thomas Frank made the prediction that this was the direction American "Conservatism" would head, and he has been dead on the money! An excellent read for those completely baffled by the ignorance of the average American voter.

It's from the book of the same name. Written in '97, Strauss and Howe look through history and map out generational archetypes and the natural ebb and flow of events centered around Anglo-American societies. I'd highly recommend it. In the book, history is divided into cycles of 80-100 years (a Turning), roughly a generation. Then, the cycles are divided into quarters, a new generation being formed every quarter of a cycle. The authors analyze each generation and their general mood within society. In terms of what's coming up in world events (according to Strauss and Howe), America is currently at the tail end of an Unraveling. The next Turning being the Crisis phase.

I agree. I think the country's economic strength and global leadership peaked about then, and both the loss of the Vietnam War and the fall of the Shah signaled the beginning of our decline.

My comment was really directed at the decline & fall of the republic in terms of political process. I trace the decline of political process effectiveness to Gingrich, whose scorched-earth, win-at-all-costs partisanship destroyed good-faith governance. If there's one person who broke the American model of government, it's him.

I do sort of wonder if the decline and fall of political systems lags the decline and fall of their respective economies. That might make for an interesting study.

If you've never read Strauss & Howe's The Fourth Turning it's well worthwhile. It's fairly easily picked apart in some of its detail, but is chillingly prophetic in its broader strokes and provides good food for thought.

This book came out by an idiot:

https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

Now millions of conservatives actually believe that national socialism = socialism.

Don’t need future scientists, current scientist already figured out

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/

It's just a comparison of how stories play out in American and British media.

There is academic work on this by some of the most reputable IR scholars on the planet...

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

If you want peer reviewed work I wouldn't look to some guy on youtube attempting to compare and contrast news clips.

Links to articles, advertisements, new initiatives and books specifically mentioned:

Sarah Kliff & [The Weeds Podcast] (https://www.vox.com/the-weeds)

A Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorist, a False Tweet and a Runaway Story

[Democrats in Split-Screen: The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/us/democrats-midterm-elections.html} Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theorist Gets Prison Time For Threatening 6-Year-Old Victim’s Father

The billionaire GOP patron behind Trump's social media bot army

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

UK Labour Film

TrumpCare Ten

Obamacare is in real danger

Nevada's legislature just passed a radical plan to let anybody sign up for Medicaid

Trump gives Priebus until July 4th to clean up White House

Interesting timing of this post for me. I was having trouble getting to sleep last night, so I was reading Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. (This was a mistake, but only because the book is very interesting and well written. I got through 86 pages before I gave up and turned the light off. I never got sleepy.)

There are a number of stories in the book that might relate, but this reminded me most of Thomas Holmes (The Father of Modern Embalming.) The Wikipedia entry doesn't really have much trivia about him. More can be found on this page. His info is about half-way down the page. Roach goes into more detail about his story, but the part I thought of here is in that link:

>Holmes retired to Brooklyn, New York where he sold root beer and embalming
supplies. According to Christine Quigley, author of A Corpse: a History and Mary
Roach, author of Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Holmes shared his
Brooklyn home with samples of his Civil War era handiwork. Embalmed bodies were
stored in the closets, and preserved heads sat on tables in the parlor. Not all that
surprisingly, Holmes eventually went insane (Robert Mayer wrote that Holmes became
mentally unhinged after an accident) spending his final years in and out of institutions.
Shortly before he died he is said to have requested not to be embalmed.

By way of a little explanation: I work closely with a medical examiner's office. I was affected a good deal more, at first, than I expected since I don't go there every day and usually work at one remove from the actual place and the work done there. When I asked how people cope with that kind of work, both death investigation and pathology, along with a long and sensitive discussion about the job Mary Roach's book was recommended reading. I borrowed and returned it and eventually bought my own copy, but only last night started reading it. I'm only through 87 pages, but so far, it's a good read. If you want some perspective and maybe a different way to think about your own "final arrangements", or if you're just curious about stuff like what happens to bodies left to science or medicine, you may find it enlightening. She handles the subject with respect, humanity, and humor. It isn't nearly as gruesome as I thought it would be, but I have been exposed to a lot more death and bodies and such in the last three+ years than the average person, so YMMV.

>Das Fragwürdige an Israelkritik ist mE die Singularität - die lautesten Kritiker hört man immer nur über Israel schimpfen.

Genau das gleiche Argument kommt bei USA und Trump-Kritik auch andauernd.

Erstens, ist es völlig irrelevant, da Kritik in einer bestimmten Diskussion erst mal für sich steht. Sie ist entweder berechtigt oder nicht aber sich dann, wenn man es nicht schafft die inhaltliche Kritik zu entschärfen, einfach darauf zu berufen, dass es ja auch "nordkoreanische Todeslager" gibt, ist einfach nur unehrlich. Ich muss mich mich nicht in eine Diskussion "einkaufen" in dem ich erst mal eine Liste der Top 10 autoritären Regime abarbeite um mich anschließend für eine Israel-Kritik "reingewaschen" zu haben. Würdest du dich mit dem gleichen Maßstab beurteilen, würdest du wahrscheinlich in kürzester Zeit selbst daran scheitern.

Zweitens, (und hier kommen wir wieder zur USA-Kritik zurück) ist der Grund warum man die USA und nicht den Sudan, warum man Israel und nicht Nordkorea kritisiert der, dass sich sowohl die USA als auch Israel als Teil der westlichen Wertegemeinschaft sehen. Von diesen Ländern darf man nicht nur einen höheren Standard an Menschenrechten erwarten, man kann auch hoffen, dass Kritik an diesen Ländern eine größere Wirkung hat, als der tausendste Artikel über nordkoreanische Straflager, die Kim Jong Un o.ä wohl kaum interessieren werden. Genauso wie es von Ungarn erwartet wird, sich an europäische Werte zu halten und Orban überproportional kritisiert wird, obwohl er keine buchstäblichen Todeslager in seinem Land hat.

>Meine Bitte: Schaut es euch selbst an, geht auch in die Palästinensergebiete, redet mit Leuten. Wer dann noch ernsthaft von einem rassistischen Apartheidsregime sprechen will, bitte.

Und hier redest du einfach Quatsch:

>Eine israelische Regierungskommission stellte beispielsweise 2003 fest, dass Israel sich ihnen gegenüber "gleichgültig und diskriminierend" verhält. In der Tat findet die Ungleichbehandlung israelischer Araber unter israelischen Juden viele Anhänger. Eine Umfrage vom März 2007 kam zu dem Schluss, dass 55 Prozent der israelischen Juden getrennte Freizeitangebote wünschten, während mehr als 75 Prozent sagten, sie wollten nicht im selben Haus leben wie ein israelischer Araber. Mehr als die Hälfte der Befragten meinte, wenn eine jüdische Frau einen Araber heirate, sei das Hochverrat, und 50 Prozent sagten, sie würden an ihrem Arbeitsplatz nicht arbeiten, wenn ein Vorgesetzter ein Araber wäre. Das Israel Democracy Institute berichtete im Mai 2003, dass 53 Prozent der israelischen Juden "gegen die volle Gleichberechtigung der Araber sind" während 77 Prozent der israelischen Juden glaubten, dass "es bei wichtigen politischen Entscheidungen eine jüdische Mehrheit geben sollte". Nur 31 Prozent "sind dafür, dass es arabische politische Parteien in der Regierung gibt". (...)
>
>Quelle (hier gibt's den 60-seitigen Aufsatz als PDF /edit: allerdings ohne den oben genannten Auszug, wie ich gerade gesehen habe)

When I tried to explain Fascists were historically considered the extreme right-wing, he actually sent me a link to Jonah Goldberg's book as proof that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Thanks Jonah, for making Americans even dumber than they were before you started writing.

>My continuing complaint with the trump-a-nistas is quite simple... "Why do you continually vote against your own interests?"

Wedge social and cultural issues. People should definitely read What's the Matter With Kansas.

> I don't really know much about how general people around Europe would have reacted towards Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however I can help a little with how the scientists of the German Atom Bomb project reacted.

> The scientists who had though to have been working on the German Nuclear Program had been detained during Operation Epsilon and then interned in a bugged house in England. During that time, the reaction these scientists had towards the Bombing of Hiroshima was recorded.

> Obviously, they all have differing opinions on the subject, some for example, such as Otto Hahn, who had discovered Nuclear Fission and won the Noble Prize in 1944, but otherwise had no part in the program, was glad that the Germans never achieved making the bomb (he even considered suicide, believing himself responsible.) Others however, where dismayed they had failed.

> They all seem to wonder why Germany didn't manage to build the bomb, comparing that project to the thousands of people working on the V1 and V2 rockets, as well as talking about the relationship between Germany, and the Scientists, compared with how America treated there project, because they say the Germans didn't trust the Scientists working on the project, and the project would have been difficult to push through because of this, especially as they say the German Government wanted immediate results, not having to wait a long time until the project was complete.

> They also had conversations about what went wrong with the theory behind the German Project (and Heisenberg soon worked out how to build the bomb, after hearing of the dropping of the American Bomb).

> If you want to read more about it, main source is Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts, which has an extract here which says which books you can read the whole transcript in.

After having read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (a historical work on The Bomb that won the author the Pulitzer) and seeing how many resources the USA was putting into The Bomb, I don't believe Germany could have ever done it during war time. They were making good progress on an energy producing reactor, but a deliverable bomb was far beyond their war-time means.

Social networks especially for men have been on steep decline since the 70's. A highly accredited academic wrote about it a while back and he got shit for some reason because he partially blamed multiculturalism. Even if you dismiss the multiculturalism angle which I do his research was very well done and shows a bleak picture of the American social landscape. Charles Murray also wrote about this stuff in Coming Apart.

https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518974854&sr=1-1&keywords=coming+apart

I will add that the reason men have struggled more with this is because men's groups are exclusive rather then inclusive. Or rather the inclusiveness is based on some metric. I.e we all lift, or we all ride bikes together, or we all enjoy climbing. Female social groups are inclusive. You're welcome here no matter what you do as long as you don't do anything to rock the boat.

Surprisingly both groups are still hierarchical. Female social groups rank hierarchy by the most social person that distributes rewards with equal allocations. Male social groups reward the man that gives out the most the equitable shares.

Explained more simply women give each person in the group an entire pie and the most popular is the one that finds the pie shop. Men work together to make a pie and the leader is the one who carves up the pie and gives it out fairly. I.e. the males that contributed the most ingredients or more involved in preparing the pie get bigger pieces. Men that take the pie all for themselves or give up the pie to others are considered too dominant or too weak.

This goes all the way back to male apes going on hunts while female apes stayed back and waited for meat to be brought to them.

Our modern society is shifted to favor the female schema over the male one and men will suffer until more balance is reached.

people's history of the united states by howard zinn

Not about nazism, but very relevant if you're an american trying to make sense of this country.

This is wrong on multiple levels, built the most galling one is that somehow you're suggesting that radical Islam is a direct result of Western involvement in Muslim countries.

That's incomplete at best and dangerously ignorant at worst.

First off, some of the biggest state sponsors of terrorism are allies with the US (re Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the UAE) and have experienced fuck all in terms of bombing and aggression. There's a lot of money to be made in warfare and chaos.

Also, the main cause of radical Islam is the religion itself above all else. You're insane if you think otherwise. This isn't a bunch of ragtag fighters battling imperialism and defending their innocent families from Western bullies. These are bloodthirsty scumbags who cross borders and slaughter civilians in an effort to spread their monstrous ideology and attain power.

And finally, if the West is so oppressive, corruptive, and murderous why do so many Islamic governments cry out when we threaten to cut off revenue streams and support?

EDIT: Here are some suggestions:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/11/17/10-must-read-books-on-terrorism/

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669

http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Inside/dp/0307278832

http://www.amazon.com/Hatreds-Kingdom-Arabia-Supports-Terrorism/dp/0895260611

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak_(United_Arab_Emirates)

One of the great investigative journalists, writers and speakers of the 20th and 21st centuries. I recommend having a ready of his books of essays, e.g. Arguably.

He spent a massive amount of time actually on the ground in places like Kurdistan, Iraq, Cuba (immediately post-revolution, leading in great part - along with the writing of Orwell and various dissidents - to his disenchantment with communism), and so many other places. He was also tremendously well-read and well-informed, as you'll see when reading his essays.

He was a leftist who despised the Clintons for their conduct (his book: No One Left to Lie To) but unfortunately died before this last election - his writing on Trump would've been gold, as would his struggle over the lesser of two evils. He was not afraid to break with the left on different issues, e.g. Iraq, because he'd spent so much time on the ground in Iraq and Kurdistan and had done so much research into things there, and he was greatly disappointed in the post-war rebuilding efforts that followed the removal of Saddam Hussein, but he was in Iraq at different times to see and celebrate progress where it happened (e.g. elections).

He read every word George Orwell wrote (that's available, even later-found letters and diaries). He was basically against dictators and despots everywhere.

In later times he was famous for speaking out against religion, especially where it was also despotic. This is what most people on the internet seem to know him for (hence the often vociferous attacks against him), but this was a small part of his career over his lifetime.

Really, you do yourself a great service by reading his books of essays, very few of which are about religion but most of which are very, very interesting. My father is a conservative Christian, yet he greatly enjoys reading Hitchens' essays!

From the UK deputy PM at the time of Hitchens' death:

>One unexpected tribute came from deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who worked as an intern for Hitchens years ago. Hitchens was, he said, "everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious".

>"My job was to fact check his articles. Since he had a photographic memory and an encyclopaedic mind it was the easiest job I've ever done," said Clegg. "He will be massively missed by everyone who values strong opinions and great writing".

This is a useful companion piece to Eric Schlosser's recent "World War Three, by Mistake" in The New Yorker. (Hat-tip to /u/puck2 for posting that article to this subreddit.)

For those still not sufficiently alarmed, PBS will premiere the documentary Command and Control, based on Schlosser's book of the same name, in its American Experience series next week (Tuesday, January 10, 2017).

Jane Mayer, Dark Money

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains

This is well-documented and reported. Please do some reading, specifically on John Olin and the Koch Brothers and James Buchanan and the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society hostile takeover of higher education and public discourse in general. Even the Tea Party was astroturfed.

We know all parties and countries and special interests use shills. So why wouldn't there be paid conservative shills or propagandists?

It means that generational archetypes repeat every fourth generation, not every other generation. It's why we often get along with our grandparents... they're usually the same archetype as us ;)


Looking at the past 8 generations

--

Missionary Generation (Archetype: Prophet/Aggressive)

Lost Generation (Archetype: Nomad/Neglected)

GI/Greatest Generation (Archetype: Hero/Indulged)

Silent Generation (Archetype: Artist/Sensitive)


--

Baby Boomers (Archetype: Prophet/Aggressive)

Generation X (Archetype: Nomad/Neglected)

Millenials (Archetype: Hero/Indulged)

Meme Generation (Archetype: Artist/Sensitive)

--

Generation PleaseSaveUsOhGod (Archetype: Prophet/Aggressive)


....


In general, the overprotected and moralistic Prophet generation raises the indulged and idealistic Hero generation; and then the empowered Hero generation raises the firebrands that will comprise the new Prophet generation. Alternatively, the neglected but resourceful Nomad generation raises the Artist generation, and then the Artist generation then births and raises the next Nomad generation at a time of greater emphasis on individual autonomy and less insistence on protecting children (most recently, the 60s, the 70s, and the early 80s).

Gen X, like other Nomad generations, are underprotected as children, which makes them very resourceful and efficient adults, though it does scar them. They are neglected by culture, as well, precisely for the reason that the prima-donna generations of the Prophet and the Hero border it. Where the Hero/Greatest/Millenial generations can do no wrong, the Nomad/Lost/Xers can do no right.

This large-scale pattern repeats as you go back in time, all the way back to the War of the Roses, in fact. Whenever the Prophet/Aggressive/Moralistic generation becomes the elders of the society, the western world has experienced a profound crisis, after which the civic order is born anew. This is happening now; but it also happened 80 years ago during WWII, then ~80 years before that in the Civil War, then ~80 years before that in the Revolutionary war. In fact, this tight periodicity keeps going back, again, to the War of the Roses. You can check it all out in the excellent book (written in 1996, economic boom times in America, yet that predicted the Great Recession as well as the deranged state of the civic order and political discourse today), called The Fourth Turning.

Thanks for this... have you read "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong"?

Great book that highlights a lot of missing or flat our false information our textbooks are shoving down kids throats. Often in blatant attempts to actually change history or just ineptitude.

Going to give your book a read now. Thanks!

Another book worth mentioning: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Won the Pulitzer prize, an instant classic, and perhaps one of the finest non-fiction books ever written. It paints the story of the bomb on a very broad, panoramic canvas, tracing the entire process of turning an outlandish, futuristic idea (all the way back to the musings of H. G. Well) into a real weapon with fatal and geopolitical consequences, through a complex landscape of politics, history, philosophy and psychology. Along the way it drip-feeds a course in elementary particle physics so that the technical details are easy to understand even for a layman — in fact, the first half of the book is pretty much the story of the atomic physics, from the discovery of the atom to modern quantum mechanics. The book is also superbly written; quirkily, occasionally lyrical, and very adept at making its characters come alive with plenty of juicy dramatic tension. (My only criticism about the book: Not enough Feynman!)

You should read up on how Hillary harrassed the alleged victims of Bill's abuse.

> She further alleges that Hillary Clinton, shortly after the alleged rape, verbally intimidated her, implying that Broaddrick better keep her mouth shut -- or else. At a political event two weeks later, Broaddrick claims that Hillary approached her: "She came over to me, took ahold of my hand and said, 'I've heard so much about you and I've been dying to meet you. ... I just want you to know how much that Bill and I appreciate what you do for him.' ...

Just imagine if somebody out there accused Trump of doing such a thing. There would be non-stop MSM coverage.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/07/30/why_do_bill_and_hillary_clinton_still_get_a_pass_127590.html

Here is a great book by Christopher Hitchens that compiles all of the garbage of Clintons called, No One Left To Life To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton- http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996

The Clintons are genuinely terrible people.

>AIPAC doesnt spend that much money compared to other lobby groups

They are one of the most powerful lobbying groups in this country and by FAR the most powerful with regards to foreign policy.

Read this book.

A little about the author:

"John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York."

He's a brilliant writer and this book in particular lays a very solid groundwork for understanding just how much Israel has us on puppet strings. Oman may been an actual anti-semite, but the points she's making are not anti-semitic.

Quicksand, by Geoffry Wawro

Power, Faith, and Fantasy by Michael Oren

The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan

The Revenge of Geography by Robert Kaplan

The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr (although to be honest I found this one a little dull)

Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Little America by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Soldiers of God by Robert Kaplan

Sleeping with the Devil by Baer

Dirty Wars by Jeremey Scahill

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile

The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti

Eastward to Tartary by Robert Kaplan (I actually haven't read this one yet but it's definitely on my to do list and I'm a huge fan of Kaplan's writing, observation, and analysis.)

The Ends of the Earth by Robert Kaplan

This is a partial list of some books I've read in the past couple of years. I put stars next to the ones that I think are the really really excellent ones. Some of them aren't entirely about the Middle East but the concepts in them are really important if you want to understand the region. I hope you look through the list and at the very least look at some of the books that Amazon recommends to go along with these books.

Oh, you should also check out this essay. I like to think it's decent reading if you want to understand what motivated Bin Laden and the context surrounding his life.

If you manage to read just a few of these, and also keep up with the news (I recommend a subscription to the Economist and to the New York Times) you will be a phenomenally well educated person about the Middle East.

If you are interested in stuff like this you should check out the book Command And Control.

It really highlights how close to utter devastation we have been during the past 60 years...

One of the top reviews from Amazon:
As a former Titan II Missile Facilities Technician, this was a page-turner for me. The author got it right in his descriptions of the attitudes and culture in the missile career field, the systems in use, even the music we listened to back then. It is rare for a military themed book written by a non-military writer to be so spot-on (IMO). The descriptions of some of the close calls we (we citizens) had with H-bombs are chilling, and the story about the Damascus Arkansas Titan II explosion was weaved in perfectly throughout the book. Time well spent.

Try Legacy of Ashes. Superbly researched and covers everything from OSS beginnings to Iraq.

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

Nutrition is just the tip of the iceberg. Try mathematics, history and civics, literature...

I am pretty sure MotoGP will race at Qatar in 2018. Unless there are some major geopolitical changes, Dorna will race there until the Qataris stop paying. The Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis, Bahrainis have had squabbles for a long time. The Saudis saying the Qataris sponsor terrorism is the pot calling the kettle black and they know it.

I recommend this article for some context on the Gulf "crisis": http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-can-the-qatar-crisis-be-resolved

Steve Coll is a great journalist, recommend his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Republicans have been pushing the idea that Nazi’s we’re liberals for over a decade now. https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

The craziest part isn’t even that this book got written. It’s that the right wing in America today shuns the author for not supporting Trump enough. Its crazy how far removed they’ve become from reality, even in just the last decade.

After reading The Fourth Turning and witnessing what has occurred the last 4 years and is currently happening now, yes. It was written in the 90s and predicted a great possibility of a WW2 type event sometime around 2020-2024. It posits it based on natural historical cycles and gives tons of proof and evidence, beyond conjecture. 9/11 came like being sucker punched and no one really had premonitions but now, you can feel it in the air. Heavy.

Right (about world leaders' respect for Mussolini - don't know about Churchill arranging for his capture).

My amateur understanding is that prior to Hitler, fascism (like communism) was more acceptable in "respectable circles." Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism expands on the point, but one possibly-illuminating trivia point is that one version of the song "You're the Top" had the line "You're Mussolini" delivered as a compliment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_the_Top

If you read Hitchens' No One Left To Lie To, it's clear that Bill Clinton is a total scum bag.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996

If you're interested in learning more about the history surrounding Operation Ajax and the overthrow of Mosadegh, I recommend reading All the Shah's Men.

I think if Coleman and Krieger ever read "A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present" by Howard Zinn I think they would have a stroke. Or their heads would explode. One of the two.

Here too. I was raised in Michigan and our history courses were a joke. I also learned we dominated the world in WWII, saved the allies, we're the reason you aren't speaking German, Reaganomics propelled capitalism to Super Saiyan level two, which killed communism, etc. Also, we gave black people rights but they haven't quite managed to get it together.

If you want to learn the things the Republicans don't want you to know, you can either read A People's History of the United States or watch it on Netflix.

I haven't read too many books about the subject, but one that I really like is 'Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001', by Steve Coll. It's incredibly illuminating and a fascinating read.

Robert Pape's 'Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It' is also one of my favorites.

>have you not seen the persecution that our ancestors suffered under Islam?

I'm not an expert on the history of Islam in India. Some say the Mughal Empire killed 80,000,000 Hindus through the centuries, others say that this is garbage and that the Mughals had a pretty hands-off approach toward governance, others point out that there were Muslim dynasties in India who fought against the Mughals, others talk about how Islamic rulers and their methods ranged from everything from Akhbar to Aurungazeb. So I'm not sold either way.

>This is a clash of civilizations and the Neville Chamberlain routine against Islam has failed.

See, this is the simplistic and superficial "Them and Us" narrative that I cannot stand. Radical Islam is very much a product of so-called "Western civilization".

The CIA and the State Department funded radical mujahadeen in Afghanistan through the '80s, and former directors of the CIA like William Casey were Christian fundamentalists who wanted to see an alliance between Christians and Muslims against the "godless communists" of the USSR, and Saudi Arabia--the premier source of radical Islamic fundamentalism--has been a key regional ally of the West since World War 1 when the British helped the al-Saud family and the fundamentalist Wahabi clerics gain power over the peninsula. Check out Ghost Wars and Carbon Democracy for good pieces of scholarship on all of this.

Then when this came back and bit the US in the ass on 9/11 the government promptly invaded and occupied Afghanistan and then Iraq, eventually extending the war--undeclared and covert--into Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. Hardly a "Neville Chamberlain" routine.

And even after all this, the US government thought it was a good idea to turn around and once again start arming radical Sunni militants, in order to destabilize and counterbalance Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon, and increase the influence of the Gulf States (which themselves are the primary source of funding for terrorist activity).

But hey I guess this is all too complicated for some people so I guess we should just stick with a black-and-white fairy tale about Good and Evil so our heads don't hurt too much, right?

>Is there any politician out there willing to fight for Canadians? Is that too much to ask?

Sorry to tell you the government doesn't work for you.

These links will take a while to digest, but if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you owe it to yourself to become informed about the true state of the world.

Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Rd wolf on economics

http://www.rdwolff.com/

"Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role."

Crisis of democracy

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653/

Education as ignorance

https://chomsky.info/warfare02/

Overthrowing other peoples governments

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

Wikileaks on TTIP/TPP/ETC

https://youtu.be/ABDiHspTJww?t=17

Energy subsidies

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Manufacturing consent (book)

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed- Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Blum:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/

The real news

http://www.therealnews.com

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (PDF). This is the key essay that later became a book that explains how strong of an impact the Israel lobby has had on U.S. foreign policy (by both parties) and why. The essay, at least, is worth a read.

I agree. More can be read on the topic of Koch and Walton donations in the fairly recent book Dark Money.

Not to mention NPR actually covered said book on Morning Edition.

Well, they may not know about radiation exposure effects (even though they know something about it. The absolute madman Louis Slotin took a dive near a reactor to fix it, and his colleagues were "shocked", and Japan itself tried to start a nuclear project, failing due to the fact, well, that only the United States had the capability of invest on it: developing nuclear bomb was expensive as hell), but they surely knew that it was different. They saw just a couple of planes, and then hell broke loose, and the aftermath of the explosion was a bit worst than the one of a firestorm. Mind that a fire bombing is not meant to create a shock wave as an atomic bomb does.
And after all of this, after the bombing of Nagasaki, the emperor (I won't ever remember his name) stated:

"The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

"a new and most cruel bomb": average Japanese may not care about the difference between a firebomb and an atomic bomb, but I can assure you that upstairs, they were concerned about the use of the new weapon.

As an ending note, if you love to read, and if you don't care about lengthy readings, Richard Rhodes wrote a couple of very well documented books about the matter:

• The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is about the development of the weapons, the Manhattan Project, and ends with the Nagasaki bombing;
  
• Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which is an amazing book that sometimes resembles a spy story and sometimes is just plain scary. Castle Bravo Fuck Up, for example.
  
  Have a good day :)

> didn't take you to be one who believed in this conspiracy theory

There is conspiracy theory about Jewish lobby and then there is influential Jewish Lobby. Trying to insinuate that there is only the conspiracy theory version is just clever argumentative trick, just like anti-Zionist = anti-Semite assumption.

As described in the excellent journalistic novel Ghost Wars, Saudi Arabian elites and Pakistani's ISI backed the Taliban, who followed a fundamentalist Sunni ideology known as Deobandi. Deobandi is rather similar in nature to Wahhabism, which is dominant in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Iran (and other regional powers like India) supported the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance wasn't Shia, and was mostly defined by being anti-Taliban.

The source of funding for Hamas presents an interesting case; while most of its funding came from Saudi Arabia in the early 2000s, this is no longer the case today. Shia regimes like Iran and Syria also have a significant role in funding Hamas.

In general, it is very useful to see the various conflicts between Islamic groups in the Middle East as a result of Saudi Arabia and Iran's geopolitical rivalries, and their proxy militant groups.

It's also interesting to note that the ability of Saudi elites to finance Sunni extremism around the globe is largely facilitated through their access to the world's oil markets, and their historic ability to surge or cutback oil production in order to control oil prices. In my mind, this marks Islamic fundamentalism very much as a facet of the world-capitalist system, rather than part of a "war of civilizations" that Western media so often likes to talk about.

I don't disagree with the bulk of this, but two points:

• Are you not perhaps underestimating the efficacy of Soviet intelligence operations against the Axis? Decisive examples might include the use of moles inside of Allied intelligence to verify German plans before Operation Citadel in 1943, as well as the activities of GRU agent Richard Sorge in Tokyo in 1941.
  
  
• Are you not perhaps overestimating the wartime efficacy of the OSS? Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA in particular, seems to paint a fairly damning picture of Donovan & Dulles' covert ops during World War II.

> Mainstream liberals and Democrats have largely been unable to...understand the behavior of the Republican Party over the last few decades

Just finished Jane Mayer's Dark Money. It's very enlightening in this regard. It's a hard read in the sense that is perpetually depressing, terrifying, and enraging, but it clearly explicates the unseen forces at work, including how the Koch network pours money into cut outs that are made to look and sound non-partisan and legitimate (which also aids in their mission to cheat campaign financing and tax laws) and pairs the cut outs' "research" with the worst elements of society (e.g., racism, poverty) to frame their messaging in an eerily similar way as Russian propaganda. That's in addition to all the shell non profits they use to skirt campaign finance laws and funnel ungodly amounts of money to politicians.

Even if I had at some point in the past said "both sides are the same" with respect to donors, I will never fucking say it again after reading this book.

If this sort of thing interests you, you may also enjoy this book. It's a bit older (IIRC it came out during the Bush administration) but it looks at the same issue through a bit of a different lens.

People also make the argument that socialists are Nazi's. I think the book was Liberal Fascism.

Edit: Here it is. Don't read the reviews without a gas mask.

I've never heard of this. Do you have a source? I'm not doubting you, just interesting after having read Ghost Wars.

> Einstein appointed himself with plenty, including persuading the US government to develop nuclear weapons.

This is not accurate. Einstein himself had to be persuaded to write that letter by his good friend Leo Szilard. Szilard was the first person to conceive of a nuclear chain reaction that could be used to build a nuclear bomb, but he didn't have the name recognition that Einstein did. So Szilard drove over to Einstein's house and they co-wrote the letter.

Source.

Also wrote No One Left To Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family about the Clintons. Brilliant short book, information in that book alone would be enough to keep the crooks from returning to power.

He had an entire book

No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton

http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996

They have to. They need to calibrate the sensors on the crash test dummies.

Read more about it - and many other creative uses for dead bodies - in Mary Roach's book, Stiff.

This sounds like another one of the Lies my Teacher Told Me

"no one gave a fuck"

Why did they have to use deception specifically saying that it was temporary and very limited to even pass it in the first place then?

No one wants to become a minority in their own country + important people with lower IQs, higher crime rates, and a higher dependency on the government (not even paying what they take) // baggage.

Quebec was an unstable person who needed psychiatric help. People are free to hear new ideas without being labeled fascists. Fascism requires actual force behind the ideas being consumed.

Your false equivalency no more justifies me reading Mein Kampf then blaming it for my heinous acts, after reading it. As purely an academic excercise, I am still well within my right to read or listen from a subjective standpoint so I may dissiminate truth from that medium. I'm required as an adult to operate within the framework of freedom of thought without inciting violence, something that goes over Felarca's head.

My guess is that most people will assume fascism has something to do with 'repressive conservatism,' or resembles more closely 'the right' by American standards.

Historically speaking and by definition, fascists were originally statist authoritarian leftists. The left has always been violent and historically fascist. Again, I know a lot of dictionaries may (improperly) have 'fascist' as being a 'right-wing' principle.


I think the definition of it should probably be researched by an academic, historian, or political scientist and not determined by what Meriem perceives it to be. I previously thought that also and would assume it is right-wing because we assume any system that wants to confine us is done by the right. Again, one would assume the definition is what the one you referenced is until you look at one of the primary fathers of fascism, Mussolini. He was a leftist, by the book.

This seems to be an interesting read. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change

Here's a link that includes a big chunk of the first chapter that includes the thesis of the author, Jonah Goldberg.

Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.

Books - General History of the Middle East

• Albert Hourani - A History of the Arab Peoples. This is widely considered to be the definitive book on history in the Arab World.
  
• Eugene Rogan - The Arabs: A History. Another essential and critically acclaimed book on Arab history.
  
• Roy Mottahedeh - The Mantle of the Prophet. Role of religion and religious figures in Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
  
• Mark Lynch - The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. An outline of the causes, reactions, and consequences of the Arab Spring.
  
• Thomas Barfield - Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Afghanistan is usually not considered a part of the Middle East in academic research, so I am including this one. It's probably one of the best overviews of Afghan History.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Military History
  

  
  

• Kenneth Pollack - Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991. Probably the best book on Arab militaries culture and effectiveness and warfare in the Middle East between 1945-1991. Very extensive and informative.
  
• Steven Ward - Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. A well-written history of Iran's military, from the Safavid Empire to the 21st century.
  
• Ahron Bregman - Israel's Wars: A History since 1947. A terrific book outlining Israel's strategic decision making for its military operations since its founding as a country.
  
• Bruce Hoffman - Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947. A look at the establishment of Israel and the development of the current Arab-Israeli conflict.
  
  

  Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
  

  
  

• Daniel Byman - Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know. A terrific primer on al-Qaida, ISIL, and jihadism.
  
• Lawrence Wright - The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Probably the best book for outlining the history of al-Qaida and why 9/11 happened.
  
• Michael Wiess and Hassan Hassan - ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. One of several recent books on ISIL, this one provides an overview on the history and organization of ISIL.
  
• Barry Rubin - Revolution Until Victory?: The Politics and History of the PLO. Although a little old (published in 1996), this books does a great job chronicling the history of the PLO and its role in the Palestinian struggle.
  
• Ahmed Rashid - Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. One of the best books on the rise and fall of the Taliban.
  
  

  Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
  

  
  

• Bob Woodward - Obama's Wars. Outline of the U.S. foreign policy decision making towards Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years of the Obama administration.
  
• Kenneth Pollack - The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America. A good overview of tensions between the United States and Iran.
  
• Michael R. Gordon - The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Follows U.S. strategic and political decision making process during the Iraq War and the U.S. occupation.
  
• Peter R. Mansoor - Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War. An extensive outline of the development and outcome of the Surge during the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.
  
• Steve Coll - Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. A widely popular and acclaimed book on U.S. covert operations from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan until 2001.
  
• Mark Mazzetti - The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth. An overview of the CIA's targeted killing program against terrorist organizations.
  
• Michael Morrell - The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS. Written by the former acting director of the CIA, this book examines U.S. counterterrorism successes and failures of the past two decades.
  
  

  Think Tanks
  

  
  Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
  
  

• Washington Institute for Near East Policy
  
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
  
• Middle East Institute
  
• Atlantic Council
  
• Council on Foreign Relations
  
• Brookings Institute
  
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  
• Institute for the Study of War
  
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
  
  

  Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
  

  
  

• Foreign Affairs - The premier publication on international politics. Has a paywall, but I recommend it. Also has a podcast.
  
• Foreign Policy - Actually a magazine, its website operates more like a blog. A major publication in the field. Also has a podcast.
  
• War on the Rocks - Reviews international political and security issues, U.S. national security issues, and alcohol. Also has a podcast.
  
• FRONTLINE: Syria At War - Their coverage of the Syrian Civil War. Amazing reporting and film. I highly recommend watching all of it.
  
• Jihadology - A clearing house for primary sources from terrorist organizations. Good place to go if you want to know what the other side is saying. Arabic skills sometimes required. Also has a podcast.
  
• Middle East Week - Looks at issues and topics in the contemporary Middle East that are not frequently talked about.
  
• Syria Comment - Blog run by Joshua Landis, a Syria expert, with frequent quest contributors. Focuses on Syria since before the start of the civil war.
  
• Musings on Iraq - Blog on Iraqi politics and society.
  
• Syria Deeply - A clearing house for news on the Syrian Civil War.
  
• CFR's: The Shia-Sunni Divide - An amazingly detailed and succinct outline of the history and issues behind the Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East.
  
• bellingcat - A blog that focuses on open source and social media investigations and analysis on international security issues. A fantastic 21st century approach to international issues.

If anyone hasn't read/listened to Dark Money by Jane Mayer you definitely should!

It traces the history of influence by conservative billionaire donors, and it's disgusting and infuriating -- but also incredibly informative.

In simplest terms, the Koch Foundation has put a poop ton of money into George Mason University and other colleges across the US. I highly recommend you read the book but GMU has been in the news this year because of the connections to the Kochs.

The book also goes into the Bush family and a lot of the Republican guard, shit I had no idea about. The Kochs made a shit load of money selling to the Nazis and USSR.

As long as we are suggesting things, People should read Dark Money by Jane Meyer

You sound like a guy who has never done any theory-grounded reading before. Let me make a recommendation for you:

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

This book is written by Waltz and Mearshimer, the latter being a Jew. They are considered, by far, to be the prominent political theorists of our time - diving into state lead conflict to a degree which will expand your mind beyond the typical "Jewish Lobby is BAD to say because I don't know why" thinking.

Their thesis falls under the notion that the Jewish lobby, aka AIPAC, is the most influential lobby in the history of the world. They have unprecedented amounts of leeway amongst our congressmen and executive branch because they rely so heavily on their campaign funding and swing-state Jewish voters. Essentially, entire careers of congressmen are held at the whim of the Jewish lobby, AIPAC. Their decisions are almost always hawkish in the sense that Jewish nationalism is the main driving focus of their policy efforts, hence why the Israeli-Palestinian situation is so fucked.

I am tired of hearing Israeli sympathizers constantly crying about extermination or hatred from others. Israels stance has always been to tolerate certain levels of terrorism to legitimize their policy efforts under the notion of 'not another genocide' and extremist protectionist attitudes. It is backwards and illegitimate at best. The worst part is that Israel is a democracy, so their entire foundation of support can be swayed by the voters. THIS is why there is so much frustration with Israeli and Jewish policy. They can change their government, but choose not to. They have education, but they rather buy into nationalism and the propaganda that their government feeds to them.

Waltz and Meirsheimer go into all of this. Alas, you will probably NOT do the reading and sit here attempting to speak volumes about how using terms such as "Jewish lobby" and "Jewish apologists" precludes to quazi-racism banter. Try again. You're out of your element.

What's the matter with Kansas is a great book about that whole issue. Conservatives (Republicans) appeal to dumb people in these types of states on a lot of issues including jobs, giving them false promises and then turning an about-face when the time comes that they're in office.

Republican policies have long benefited the rich, and not the average worker.

It is just for show. Israel isn't going to do anything against Iran militarily, though they have been recruiting terrorists against Iran while pretending to be CIA agents because they want to start a fight between Iran and the US. http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/01/13/false-flag/

On the other hand, it also shows how the US foreign policy system is so open to manipulation and control by wealthy donors who have their own agendas. How long have we imposed sanctions on Cuba, for no goo reason other than the fact that anti-Castro cubans fund campaigns in states like Fla and NJ?



But in reality, Israel's efforts to make Iran into an issue with the US, has started to make Israel into a BIGGER issue as people are pushing back. People are starting to wonder why we should back Israel at all
Not so long ago you weren't allowed to mention the "Israel lobby" in polite company -- now there are mainstream books written about it, and NY Times editorialists refer to the US COngress as "bought and paid for" by pro-Israeli lobbyists http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/friedman-line-congress-is-bought-and-paid-for-by-israel-lobby-is-shot-heard-round-the-world

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/
Even if Israel attacks Iran, nothing will come of it. Iran will simply rebuild its nuclear program and very quickly too. It is already MASSIVELY popular amongst Iranians, and if attacked it is going to be even MORE popular as Iranians are nationalistic.

The two books Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer and Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank pair extremely well and are required reading for anyone that wishes to understand how US politics has been shifted so far to the right these past decades. Dark Money, while extremely informative regarding the propaganda of billionaires, largely gives a pass to the Democratic party which Listen, Liberal reveals as being undeserved.

• Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan is a great overview of the science of statistics, without being too much like a lecture. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what statistics are just silly (like in ads or clickbait news) and what are actually important (like in scientific studies).
  
  
• You on a Diet by Roizen and Oz is touted as a diet book, and it kind of is. I recommend it because it's a great resource for basic understanding the science behind the gastrointestinal system, and how it links to the brain.
  
  
• All of Mary Roach's books are excellent overviews of science currently being done, I've read Stiff (the science of human bodies, post-mortem), Spook ("science tackles the afterlife"), Packing for Mars (the science of humans in space), and Bonk (sex), and they are all very easy to understand, but scientifically appropriate. I'm sure "Gulp" is good too, although I haven't read that one yet.
  
  
• "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown is a great, accessible overview of exactly why Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, told by the man who started the controversy.
  
  
• "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is a little denser, material-wise, but still easy to understand (as far as theoretical physics goes, at least!). Hawking explains the history of physics and the universe, as well as the future of the discipline. While there is a bit more jargon than some pop-science books, I think an entry-level scientist can still read and understand this book.
  

I recommend both! For Stiff, I advise getting the audiobook version. It's very well done. The book itself is not any more graphic than it needs to be and is respectful (although I did take issue with the author's apparent negative view of cosmetic surgery in an early chapter.) I found the whole thing fascinating. I was actually most fascinated though when she got to the chapter about the possibility of human head transplants. Here's the page on Amazon.

As for A Dog's Purpose, I messed up and accidentally failed to notice there was an Audible version until literally just now, so I can't attest to the quality of the reading. But the book itself (as stated, I'm only half way through) is really good. Here it is.

"his way of life" was built around the social hierarchy that was slavery. "The average Confederate soldier" didn't want slaves to be on the same class level as him. The vast majority volunteered to fight, only 12% of Confederate forces were drafted.

Ignoring that there were (and still are) racial tensions in the south and that a civil war broke out over something ambitious as "states' rights" is pretty ridiculous. Especially when the states still had their rights to establish and enforce the Jim Crow laws.

edit: anyone who disagrees with this post I made needs to read A People's History of the United States

For those interested:

• The Little Prince
  
• Eating Animals
  
• The Hero With A Thousand Faces
  
• The Illustrated World's Religions
  
• Jihad vs. McWorld
  
• Collapse
  
• Just And Unjust Wars
  
• Descent Into Chaos
  
• The Landmark Thucydides
  
• A People's History of the United States

This is something that takes a lot of practice, and many schools don't or can't teach it. Fear not, it's easier than it sounds.

First, some background:

http://www.amazon.com/Global-History-Modern-Historiography/dp/0582096065

This will introduce you to most of the historical method used today. It's quite boring, but if you're going to study history, you'll need to get used to reading some pretty dry material.

For a styleguide, use Diana Hacker's:
http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Style-Manual-Diana-Hacker/dp/0312542542/

It will teach you everything you need to know about citations.

As far as getting better at source analysis, that's something that comes with time in class and practice with primary and secondary source documents. If you're just going into college, it's something you're going to learn naturally.

However, I do have some tips.
-The main goal of a piece of historiography is to bring you to a thesis and then clearly support that argument. All REAL historiography asks a historical question of some sort. I.E. not when and where, but a more contextual why and how.

-Real historiography is produced 99.9% of the time by a university press, NOT A PRIVATE FIRM. If a celebrity wrote it, it's probably not history.

-Most, if not all real historiography is going to spell out the thesis for you almost immediately.

-A lot of historiography is quite formulaic in terms of its layout and how it's put together on paper:

A. Introduction -- thesis statement and main argument followed by a brief review of past historiography on the subject.

B Section 1 of the argument with an a,b, and c point to make in support.

C just like B

D just like B again, but reinforces A a little more

E Conclusion, ties all sections together and fully reinforces A.

Not all works are like this, but almost every piece you will write in college is or should be.

Some history books that do real history (by proper historians) and are easy to find arguments in, just off the top of my head:

http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-American-Working-Haymarket/dp/1844671453

http://www.amazon.com/Economists-Guns-Authoritarian-Development-U-S--Indonesian/dp/0804771820/

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battalions-Crisis-American-Nationality/dp/0805081380

For the primer on social histories, read Howard Zinn:
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/

What you're going to come across MORE often than books is a series of articles that make different (sometimes conflicting) points about a historical issue: (I can't really link the ones I have because of copyright [they won't load without a password], but check out google scholar until you have access to a university library)

Virtually any subject can be researched, you just have to look in the right place and keep an open mind about your thesis. Just because you've found a source that blows away your thesis doesn't mean it's invalid. If you find a wealth of that kind of stuff, you might want to rethink your position, though.


This isn't comprehensive, but I hope it helps. Get into a methods class AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and your degree program will go much, much smoother for you.

Not true...this is a common misconception. The Mujahideen (which is actually just a term describing one who engages in jihad, not a name for a single group) were composed of many different groups. Bin Laden was one of the major Arab influences in Afghanistan during the soviet war and after but we never funded or trained him. He had no problem convincing wealthy Saudis to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to his causes in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The United States was heavily invested with the Northern Alliance and it's leader Ahmad Shah Massoud who arguably was Afghanistan's best chance at actual peace. Al-Qaeda assassinated him 2 days before 9/11 because they knew if the US had any chance of winning in Afghanistan, they would need Massouds leadership.

>Source : http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414140900&sr=8-1&keywords=ghost+wars

For those who think this guy is lying, I present you

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-C-I-Interventions-II--Updated/dp/1567512526/

https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Shield-Mitrokhin-Archive-History/dp/0465003125

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006

A couple of books I've read recently about the intelligence side of things. Not sure about how their conventional forces compare to ours.

These disclosures are incomplete, and leave out some gory details - such as when the CIA sponsored a riot, then got the chief of police to fire on the protesters, all to create the impression that Iran was falling into chaos. The CIA helped design the impression of imminent Communist takeover, in order to justify their actions. They manipulated Eisenhower and Truman, as much as they did the Iranians. All the Shah's Men is a great book on the subject.

What is really sad is, prior to the coup, the US was widely adored in Iran as a non-colonial western power. All that Mosaddegh was asking for was the same partnership that the US had created with Aramco in Saudi Arabia: a 50/50 split of profits between the state and its western concessionaires. If the US had been consistent in applying its values, Iran could easily be an ally today.

As it stands, the only winners to emerge from the CIA's machinations have been the national security apparatus, and the muslim fanatics - in the long term, even the oil industry would have been better off sharing with Iran, rather than pillaging and being thrown out.

Well, what you're discussing here I make a living out of studying (theoretical political science). Just about all technology so far has been good technology, and anything in the not-too-distant future is going to be good technology, and anything in the way-distant future will probably be good technology.

The problem is not with technology, but the dissonance-gap created between the technology we develop, and our behavioral implementation of these technologies into society. Medicine was a good technology, and we've basically implemented it well (some states don't get common medicines, but overall we've been good with Medicine). Radio was a good technology and we've developed it well. Flight is a good technology and we've developed it well. The internet and miniaturized media devices? well, that's a complex one. Obviously it's a defining good of our age, and we could go on all day discussing how good it is for our society in various aspects. But, it's also bad in many -- again, not bad in itself, but in how we as a society have chosen to implement the technology of mobile media and the internet.


This will probably be my dissertation, so suffice it to say these technologies have driven us towards a more democratic political atmosphere (that's little-d democratic as in non-representative, not the party). Referendums, Senate election reform, 24hr. news cycles, daily polls, all serve to pressure elected officials as the democratic citizens pressure them for more instant results. The result is, effectively, an antagonist environment of partisanship, bickering, no-compromise, and misinformation. The evolution of immediacy-technologies (this includes flight, I suppose) has changed the pace of our world beyond what is responsible for most of us. To put it simply, what we have developed in terms of social-accessibility this past century is slightly beyond what we as a people are capable of working with maturely. Infotainment butchers credible news channels, misinformation and bias runs amok, fringe party movements dominate national election, the few qu'ran burning crazies grab headlines. This trend is not a result of human evolution, but a lack of. Our technology has improved and we haven't.

This goes beyond civics though, ironically we can socially flounder because of social media technologies. Just look at all the forever-alones on reddit/the internet, or when you go out with your friends for a drink and they all tap away on their smart phones texting other people instead of enjoying the real moment with eachother. Robert Putnam basically made this his focus of study which can be summed up politically here and more socially analyzed in his book Bowling Alone.

Fortunately, we've grown accordingly with technology where it really matters - international conflict and the nuclear bomb. We haven't had any nuclear winters because we were able to adapt to the new international atmosphere of Mutually Assured Destruction - we were smart enough to put aside our antagonistic nature towards our perceived enemies, and cooled our heads well enough to prevent a nuclear war for 60 years (and still into today!). There have been no major world-wars since we've developed mass-mobilization capabilities, and no crazy biological warfare (of course there are incidents like Hussein and his Kurds, or WW1 gas weapons, but those are regional events or in the case of WW1 an example of us toying with a new technology before truly understanding it)



So, thus far there's no real evidence that we've hit a breaking point where we've gone too far in terms of technological development. But we're getting pretty close. Historically there have been moments of technological development, and moments of social development. During the renaissance we began developing philosophy, human rights, and justice while simultaneously making huge strides in technology (industrial revolution anyone)? Maybe one sparked the other, maybe one allowed for the other, either way we and our technology grew together. I only hope that if we wish to continue our exponential push to singularity, we're able to kick our behavior/cognitive development along with it.

Jonah Goldberg wrote a book just like that, Liberal Fascism. It said that Hitler was vegetarian and an animal rights supporter, and also the NSDAP has 'Sozialistich' in the name of the party, ergo, the Nazis were pinko commie leftists.

There's actually a book on that.

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
   
2. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
   
3. A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn
   
4. Dune by Frank Herbert
   
5. The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty by Peter Singer

Edit: Nevermind, it looks like 'War is a Racket' is the book for me.

Found these amazing quotes in a review.

>"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." [p. 10]

>"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

>"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

Do you even read your "sources"?

CIA AND FBI NOT WORKING TOGETHER. CONSPIRACY!

THE US GOVERNMENT USES THINK TANKS THAT HAVE FORMER POLITICANS AND EX-MILITARY! THE CABAL GOES DEEPER THAN WE THOUGHT!

No, organizations "defending their turf" is one of the biggest management roadblocks inside and outside the government. Even units inside the CIA and FBI often don't work together. It's human nature.

And of course the government is going to use foreign policy think tanks staffed by former goverment and private foreign policy experts. (And non experts, they can certainly be incompetent). I mean duh.

I know I don't have the time to waste on reading this inane BS. All it is is a bunch of (often dubious) correlations that are supposed to advance an agenda. I'll stick with reading actual sources like The Looming Tower or Ghost Wars

Interesting fact about the term 'Megadeath' that I just learned from a cool book I'm reading, Command and Control by Eric Schlosser: It is a unit that describes 1 million deaths resultant from a nuclear attack, and was coined in some of the initial reports assessing the potential damage from an all out nuclear war (measuring fatalities in megadeaths, e.g. 40 megadeaths = 40 million killed) during the 1950's. I guess fans of the band are probably aware of this etymology, but as someone who doesn't really listen to them, I was not.

If you want to read more with some amazing technical details of the Titan silos, I highly recommend Eric Schlosser's book "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety". It's a compelling read.

Kind of an aside, but if you like "Bridge of Spies," read Command and Control. It's a great book about the cold war and MAD theory.

FYI the Mercer Famiky was/is a major player in the Koch network that brought us the radical right and who now own the Republican Party.

Read Dark Money, buy a copy for a friend.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

As they say, history book are written by the winners.

If you want to see more of the ugly parts of (the US) history that the books left out, I suggest A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

A People's History of the United States discusses the subject of manufactured racial strife extensively.
I recommend this book for this, as well as many other highly useful facts that are typically omitted from the normal discussions of US history.

I feel you. It can be extremely demoralizing. It's designed to feel that way.

Despite the feeling of stagnation, we are making progress. We are making huge progress in the minds of the people. I would say that we are in the eye of the storm right now, which is why it feels so eerie and stagnant. Remember that almost no one knew who Bernie Sanders was two years ago (I remember, this is around the time I discovered him myself, and nobody I talked to about him had ever heard of him). And now is the most popular politician in the country. That is BIG. Think of all the lexicon and "common sense" he's introduced into daily discourse.

Reddit and the online media are part of a huge bubble. Reddit has always skewed upper middle class, but I really think the concerted shilling efforts have had a markedly noticeable effect on the composition of its primary user base. To be explicit, I think it used to be middle-to-upper-middle-class students and commuting tech workers. Now that shills changed the focus of the discussion, you find a lot more urban professionals and media types. "Journalists", bloggers/vloggers, silicon valley, etc. Plus, I think, more wealthy international redditors (e.g. the 1% in India, China, etc.) Not that all of them are neoliberal of course, just that the ones who are have been empowered to speak their mind more, and the ones who have a progressive or libertarian streak have been pulling back and getting more dormant. The shills are still here as well, but I feel like they have less work to do now.

But the important part to remember is, like they always smugly told us, back before they were the ones who needed reminding, "Reddit is not real life". There is something big going on in the minds of the average American. It takes time for people's worldview to change. By virtue of our participation here, it's evident that we're early adopters. It feels like we've known these things forever. Take heart: I have never been a bleeding edge person. I always adopt new ideas at the cusp, right before the tipping point where it goes mainstream. It's regular enough to be predictive, imo. It happened with smartphones, it happened with Bernie, and it's going to happen with the upcoming revolution (political or otherwise) as well. We will have campaign finance reform, universal healthcare, marijuana legalization, and so on. The collapse of the traditional mainstream media. There will also be violence, and escalation, and war, but whether it's domestic or international I can't say yet. All this within the next ten years.

Read The Fourth Turning if you haven't already. I'm impatient, it's true, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's coming.

It's not just the media. There's an entire industry of right-wing authors for example that write books that border on mental illness.

Historically illiterate drivel like: https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

And here's an actual expert responding to this book:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/122231

And that book was a best seller, a book absolutely void of facts was a best seller.

Jonah Goldburg (of Liberal Fascism note) used to ask people that threw around the word 'Fascist' as an all Purpose insult the following question (paraphrasing from memory);

Other than the war, bigotry and genocide, what don't you like about the Nazi party platform?

Not to say that the above 3 are something to ignore in historical analysis, but as important as they are in the retrospective of the Nazi's, my suspicion is relatively few lower middle class voters were casting ballots for a war in the East. At least, as opposed to universal employment, say, or the Nazi whole grain bread initiative.

https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

They've been consistently lied to for a long, long time.

Yup. There's a whole book about the change.

It's actually more heart breaking when you know that basically the entire midwest once once considered the home of radical left politics in the US. As Thomas Frank notes in What's The Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America:

>I do not want to minimize the change that this represents. Certain parts of the Midwest were once so reliably leftist that the historian Walter Prescott Webb, in his classic 1931 history of the region, pointed to its persistent radicalism as one of the “Mysteries of the Great Plains.” Today the mystery is only heightened; it seems inconceivable that the Midwest was ever thought of as a “radical” place, as anything but the land of the bland, the easy snoozing flyover. Readers in the thirties, on the other hand, would have known instantly what Webb was talking about, since so many of the great political upheavals of their part of the twentieth century were launched from the territory west of the Ohio River. The region as they knew it was what gave the country Socialists like Eugene Debs, fiery progressives like Robert La Follette, and practical unionists like Walter Reuther; it spawned the anarchist IWW and the coldly calculating UAW; and it was periodically convulsed in gargantuan and often bloody industrial disputes. They might even have known that there were once Socialist newspapers in Kansas and Socialist voters in Oklahoma and Socialist mayors in Milwaukee, and that there were radical farmers across the region forever enlisting in militant agrarian organizations with names like the Farmers’ Alliance, or the Farmer-Labor Party, or the Non-Partisan League, or the Farm Holiday Association. And they would surely have been aware that Social Security, the basic element of the liberal welfare state, was largely a product of the midwestern mind.

>Almost all of these associations have evaporated today. That the region’s character has been altered so thoroughly—that so much of the Midwest now regards the welfare state as an alien imposition; that we have trouble even believing there was a time when progressives were described with adjectives like fiery, rather than snooty or bossy or wimpy—has to stand as one of the great reversals of American history.

Happily, and I hope I didn't come off as too abrasive. As I said, you seemed to be asking the question in very good faith.

If you or anyone is interested - not so much in the political decision or if or how to use the bombs - but just in the effort of making of them: The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a massive book (often considered 'definitive') that goes through the Manhattan project in great detail. The only other project that really compares to it is the Moon Landing.

Anti-intellectualism has been a part of American culture from its foundation. Our culture has always prided itself on its practicality and industry, and derided intellect, basic research, and arts as irrelevant. Smart people are viewed as untrustworthy and arrogant, their expertise fundamentally anti-democratic. Or, as Asimov put it, in American culture "democracy means 'my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.'"

Almost everything mention in this book.

I highly recommend the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” It changed my life in a time before the Internet was dominant.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684818868/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1511240442&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=lies+my+teacher+told+me&dpPl=1&dpID=51Rr06sJHBL&ref=plSrch

Hi! I skimmed through one cherry-picked article (Senior researcher: a relation of Mr. Chertoff ) in Popular Mechanics, which is owned by The Hearst Corporation, and therefore I am an authority on the entire extremely complicated and obfuscated subject of 9/11.

*American Free Press revealed that Benjamin Chertoff, the 25-year-old senior researcher who authored the 9/11 article, is related to Michael Chertoff, the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Http://www.wanttoknow.info

Army General Wesley Clark: Wars are Planned RE: Memo to take out 7 countries in 5 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

US MAJOR Stubblebine exposes 9/11 cover up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0xzsbSbVUE

"War is a Racket" By Smedley D. Butler, at the time America's most decorated soldier: http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410494742&sr=8-1&keywords=war+is+a+racket

Testimony from Controlled Demolition Expert Danny Jowenko (recently deceased) ON WTC7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHHvo6U4lA



What is a False Flag?

>I honestly believe the US military does not defend the rights of citizens or anything of similar matter.

Here it is from the horse's mouth - a five star general admitted that America's military is the hired muscle for Western capitalists.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

read all about it -- and the whole CIA corruption of Planet Earth -- https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006 -- still ongoing running our foreign policy for the good of Banksters, Multi-national Corps, and Military Industrial Complex ... under the guise of freedom & democracy until US rules planet earth's people and natural resources

All of this is well documented.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904

Of course I might be going out on a limb thinking you'd ever even try to read a fucking book for once.

If you are from the US, check how much you give Israel in aid annually. Zero percent interest loans, grants, access to the most modern weapons, military contracts, military aid, diplomatic backing, etc. Their weapons industry is based on US contracts and access to US military technology.

• The US pays for military research
  
  
• Israel gets the technology for free.
  
  
• They use the technology in their own weapons industry.
  
  
• The US BUYS IT FROM ISRAEL
  
  
• Profit (for them)!
  
  If you do not believe me, read this book.

https://i.imgur.com/vCIawHP.png

Sadly, specific names are increasingly more difficult to pin down because they have shifted their funding to means which are not traceable. Regardless, a small number of names and insight are provided in Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

As regards to the Body Farm. The university of tennessee gets many, many donations every year for research, they have a giant freezer full of cadavers awaiting their turn in the Tennessee sunshine. If you donate your body to science, there is no way to be assured where it is going to go. For more reference on this, check out a book called Stiff http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Nope, that's not what I was getting at. Feel free to argue with your own preconceived notions at this point.

I will point out one thing. There is a good academic book on lobbies, particularly Israeli. In this case, is this okay for the government to take their money that ultimately alters US policy? Are you outraged by this or these particular players get a free pass but when Russia gives out a loan it's a subversion of democracy? Are you hypocrite or perhaps you can acknowledge that there is a fundamental flaw in the system and Russians are doing nothing wrong but to play this by the "rules" that Western democracies have established for themselves?

This is really common - if you donate a body to science it goes where it's needed. The entire body isn't needed for research in one place so the remains can be parted out as needed.

I highly recommend the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - it talks about the options out there for our bodies after we die, and manages to be light-hearted but respectful at the same time. It's really one of my favorite books

How did we get here? Worth checking out if your library has a copy:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394703170

Then you'd like this:

https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X

The editor of the National Review wrote a book call Liberal Fascism. The comparison doesn't get more explicit than that.

>This is both anti-historical and incredibly wrong on so many fronts.

Overthrowing other peoples governments:

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

You are incorrect, I can tell you the facts and the figures and you won't reason to the right conclusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]
"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]
"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Well they had a very well organised spy ring stages deep inside the Manhattan Project. The executed people over it. Its quite well known.

Richard Rhodes: The making of the Atomic Bomb
http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Atomic-Bomb-Anniversary/dp/1451677618

The spies...
cut/paste from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies
------------------------------------------

1. Morris Cohen – American, "Thanks to Cohen, designers of the Soviet atomic bomb got piles of technical documentation straight from the secret laboratory in Los Alamos," the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said. Morris and his wife, Lona, served eight years in prison, less than half of their sentences before being released in a prisoner swap with The Soviet Union. He died without revealing the name of the American scientist who helped pass vital information about the United States atomic bomb project.[13]
   
   
   
2. Klaus Fuchs – German-born British theoretical physicist who worked with the British delegation at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. After Fuchs' confession there was a trial that lasted less than 90 minutes, Lord Goddard sentenced him to fourteen years' imprisonment, the maximum for violating the Official Secrets Act. He escaped the charge of espionage because of the lack of independent evidence and because, at the time of the crime, the Soviet Union was not an enemy of Great Britain.[14] In December 1950 he was stripped of his British citizenship. He was released on June 23, 1959, after serving nine years and four months of his sentence at Wakefield prison. He was allowed to emigrate to Dresden, then in the German Democratic Republic.[15][16]
   
   
   
3. Harry Gold – American, confessed to acting as a courier for Greenglass and Fuchs. He was sentenced in 1951 to thirty years imprisonment. He was paroled in May 1966, after serving just over half of his sentence.[17]
   
   
   
4. David Greenglass – an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Greenglass confessed that he gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians during World War II. Some aspects of his testimony against his sister and brother-in-law (the Rosenbergs, see below) are now thought to have been fabricated in an effort to keep his own wife, Ruth, from prosecution. Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years in prison, served 10 years, and later reunited with his wife.[18]
   
   
5. Theodore Hall – a young American physicist at Los Alamos, whose identity as a spy was not revealed until very late in the 20th century. He was never tried for his espionage work, though he seems to have admitted to it in later years to reporters and to his family.[19]
   George Koval – The American born son of a Belorussian emigrant family that returned to the Soviet Union where he was inducted into the Red Army and recruited into the GRU intelligence service. He infiltrated the US Army and became a radiation health officer in the Special Engineering Detachment. Acting under the code name DELMAR he obtained information from Oak Ridge and the Dayton Project about the Urchin (detonator) used on the Fat Man plutonium bomb. His work was not known to the west until he was posthumously recognized as a hero of the Russian Federation by Vladimir Putin in 2007.
   
   
   
6. Irving Lerner – An American film director, he was caught photographing the cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley in 1944.[20] After the war he was blacklisted.
   
   
   
7. Allan Nunn May – A British citizen, he was one of the first Soviet spies uncovered during the cold war. He worked on the Manhattan Project and was betrayed by a Soviet defector in Canada. His was uncovered in 1946 and it led the United States to restrict the sharing of atomic secrets with Britain. On May 1, 1946, he was sentenced to ten years hard labour. He was released in 1952, after serving six and a half years.[21]
   
   
   
8. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – Americans who were involved in coordinating and recruiting an espionage network that included Ethel's brother, David Greenglass. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried for conspiracy to commit espionage, since the prosecution seemed to feel that there was not enough evidence to convict on espionage. Treason charges were not applicable, since the United States and the Soviet Union were allies at the time. The Rosenbergs denied all the charges but were convicted in a trial in which the prosecutor Roy Cohn said he was in daily secret contact with the judge, Irving Kaufman. Despite an international movement demanding clemency, and appeals to President Dwight D. Eisenhower by leading European intellectuals and the Pope, the Rosenbergs were executed at the height of the Korean War. President Eisenhower wrote to his son, serving in Korea, that if he spared Ethel (presumably for the sake of her children), then the Soviets would simply recruit their spies from among women.[22][23][24]
   
   
9. Saville Sax – American acted as the courier for Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall.[19]
   
   
10. Morton Sobell – American engineer tried and convicted along with the Rosenbergs, was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment but released from Alcatraz in 1969, after serving 17 years and 9 months.[25] After proclaiming his innocence for over half a century, Sobell admitted spying for the Soviets, and implicated Julius Rosenberg, in an interview with the New York Times published on September 11, 2008
    ---------------------------------------------
    
    The Soviets used to fly 'supply' missions out of somewhere in the midwest I think, they used to load up the data in that plane and fly it across weekly to Russia via Alaska/Siberia (if I recall correctly). The US intelligence services were mainly oblivious, they were allies after all.

I'd recommend to anyone who's interested to read "Making the Atomic Bomb". One of the aspects that I didn't know about was one of the physicists(I can't recall which one) going to both Churchill and Roosevelt pleading to tell the Russians about it, saying that by not telling them it would instigate an arms race.

It also highlights Gen. Lemay's cold, calculating process of not bombing certain targets so they could get a good reading on destruction levels when the bomb was used. By contrast it also gives much history on the international level of research going on before WW2 and the discovery of fission and decay of elements. It shows that someone was going to develop the bomb because everyone was doing research in the field.

They epitomize libertarianism. They're largely (almost solely) responsible for the rise of right wing and libertarian think tanks and ideals in the United states over the last several decades. If you ever want to be disgusted by the efforts and successes of the Koch brothers and their oligarch friends, I suggest this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550262479&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money. It outlines how they've infiltrated the government, academic institutions, and general society with evil intentions and great success.

Here is another source:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

I grew up in Kansas. It’s stupid. There’s literally been books written about it

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_i_lwC1DbXTQKMJP

In addition to ignoring the Labor Movement.

Zinn for the win!

A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn

Amazon Link

Whew, okay. Pulled out my actual computer to answer this.
So, a lot of what I could recommend isn't short stuff you could read in an afternoon because 1. it's depressing as fuck, and 2. it's likely heavy with the sheer volume of references wherein at least one book attempts to bludgeon you with the facts that "this was depressing as fuck." Frequent breaks or alternating history-related books with fiction/poetry/other topics is rather recommended from my experience. Can't remember if I got onto this topic through Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong or just some random book found in the library.

The very clean cut, textbook Wikipedia definition of "sundown town", aka "Don't let the sun set (down) on you here.", (Ref: BlackThen.com), is:
> sometimes known as sunset towns or gray towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of segregation by enforcing restrictions excluding people of other races via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence.

For my intro into the subject however, read Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America. This is a very emotionally draining, mentally exhausting book though, frequently with lists of atrocities in paragraph form. I think it's an important read, one which frankly should've been covered my senior year of highschool or so, but it's a difficult one. Also on my reading list is The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration which is a surprising and sneakily hopeful title for such a depressing topic, so only guessing the narration may be somewhat more accessible.

Also, 'cause I totally didn't run to my kindle app to list out titles before fully reading your post, here's some below, and relisted one above, by timeline placement, best as can be figured. These might not be the best on each topic, but they're the ones available to my budget at the time and some are still on my reading list.

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

• Timeline 1831
  
  Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
  
• Timeline post-Civil War in 1865 through the 1920's, with thousands of towns still containing obvious racial divides (see "wrong side of the tracks", etc) and sometimes still utilizing laws to push black folks out of neighborhoods today.
  
  The Mis-Education of the Negro
  
• 1933, please see the book later down the list "Brainwashed"
  
  At the Dark End of the Street: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
  
• 1944 through the 1970's
  
  Assata
  
• 1960's through 1970's, about Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard)
  
  Revolutionary Suicide
  
• 1940's through late 1980's, about Huey P. Newton, Black Panther co-founder.
  
  Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
  
• 1980's through ?
  
  Sister Outsider
  
• 1980's essays on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class
  
  See also:
  
  Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival
  
  Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis
  
• "A powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders."
  
  Black Feminist Thought
  
• Supposedly there's a correct and incorrect version of this with severely cut or modified chapters, but not sure which is which.
  
  Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations by Bell Hooks
  
• Contemporary essays
  
  Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority
  
• from slavery through today, how black people have been taught they're inferior to the point they help drag themselves and each other down
  
  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
  
• Supposed to be really good, haven't read this yet.
  
  
  
  
  

>Should your wages go up three time because of nothing you did? Why?

I'll let Richard Wolff, a Phd economics professor elaborate why, and maybe... just maybe... you'll see the big underlying picture he's trying to convery. So pucker up that sphincter hole my friend:

From 1820 to 1970 the following sentence is true: The average level of wages ─ real wages what you actually got for an hours worth of work rose every decade for 150 years. There's' probably no capitalist country that can boast a record like that. It's absolutely stunning and unusual. even in the great depression, real wages went up because even though peoples money wages went down prices fell even more, so you ended up being able to buy more even though you had more dollars in your pocket, because prices fell.

What did this mean? It meant that Americans began to believe, and you know that how deeply that is in our political language, that we lived in a really blessed place. God, if you believe in that, must really like us, something magical about America: You came here, you worked hard, and amazingly, you got more. You could imagine to live in your own home. You could even dream at one point of sending your children to college. To have a car all your own. To wear nice clothes. It was amazing every family thought that it would live better than the generation before in the next generation better still. Parents got into the habit of offering their children to provide them with the education and the support that would make them have a better life.

And the irony here the United States and the marvel was that it was true... millions of people, the ancestors the most of us in this room if we're Americans came to the United states hoping to cash in on this operation, willing to work hard expecting that their life here would reward them with a higher standard of living then they would have gotten if they'd stayed where they came from, and mostly they were right. And it becomes part of the American culture in the American imagination. This is the place where if you work hard you get more pay. Yea... the work may not be pleasant. The work may be difficult, but the reward is at the mall. You'll earn more money and you'll buy more stuff.

Try to imagine with me what it would mean to a population that for a hundred and fifty years internalizes that image, that hope, that expectation if it were suddenly to stop being true. And I ask you to imagine that because that's what happened.

In the 1970's the rising real wage the United States came to an and, it has never resumed. The real wage of the American worker today, the average amount of goods and services you can buy with an hour of your labor is no greater today than it was in the 1978. You may be working harder. You may be working longer You may be working more efficiently because you work with a computer and all these other things. And indeed you are: You are delivering more goods and service per hour of your work to your employer. He's very happy about, but he doesn't pay you one iota more. This is an astonishing change, a sea change, a dramatic alteration in one's circumstance. It's all the more power in our country because it's unspoken. Because in the 1970's or 80's and 90's or to this day, nobody talks about this. Nobody confronts this. No one asks, "why did this happen?" "What do we do about it?" Instead as good Americans, we pretend that it isn't there. We imagine that if it's going on it's just about me and my job and my circumstance rather than a social process. And we imagine that it's not a social problem just my particular problem then I can solve it.

How did the American working class solve the problem. Two things they did, starting in the 1970's and right up until the crisis, and those two things are part of why this crisis happens which is why I'm gonna tell you about them now. The first thing Americans did is conclude,

>"Okay, I'm not getting anymore wages per hour, I know what, I'll do more hours."

Smart move.

>"And not only me the adult male in the house... but my wife. She's gonna go out, she may have been at home, she may have been a housewife... no more of that. She has to go out because we have to sustain the the family standard of living rising. And the old people have to come out of retirement and take at least a part-time job. And the teenager ought to do something on Saturday's at least, don't you think?

Here's a statistic to think about: the average number of hours worked per year by an American right now average, is 20% more than the average number of hours worked by a Swedish, French, German, or Italian worker. Think about it. For every 6 hours you work, they only work 5 or something like that. Some of you go to Europe and you enjoy lovely dinners with wine in an alfresco setting in an Italian town, and you say to yourself, "These people know how to live." And you imagine it's a matter of their culture they just love grapes. It isn't got much to do with culture:

What they have is... TIME.

They don't work like we do. They have time for long dinners. We are the country that invented fast food, and now you know why. It's a necessity, we don't have time to sit down. We need jobs to run by one of those takeout windows and yell something out at a disconsolate teenager who yells something back and hands you something you shouldn't put in your body in any case. And so Americans went to work most importantly the women. In 1970, 40% of American women worked outside the home for money. Today, double 80%. An absolutely fundamental change: those women had to do that. They merely thought of it as women's liberation and it certainly had those dimensions. They wanted to help the family, the point in fact is if the family was going to continue to consume to give its children what it had promised to live the American dream., since husband wasn't gonna get anymore wages ever again. She had to go out. But when the wife goes out all kinds of things change: Women in America, household women held together the emotional life of our society. They did the emotional work. They provided the solace. When that woman has to go out and do 8 hours of work and get dressed and do the travel and back home, she can't do it anymore. She may face that fact, but she can't.

Starting in the 1970's, the United States became the country with the highest rate of divorce, the relationships couldn't survive. We have 6% of the population in the world and consume over half the psychotropic drugs, the anti-depressants, what's going on? Are we crazy people? I don't think so. I think we are under extraordinary pressure. We work the longest hours on the face of the earth. We do more hours per average worker than the Japanese. That's saying something. And our families are stressed, deeply stressed, as anyone who has studied the situation knows. Our behavior has changed under the pressure of this extra work, and one way to describe it to you is to mention a book some of you may know. A Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, wrote a famous book with a funny title, Bowling Alone, he studies Americans participation in anything other than making their life hang together.

• Bowling leagues used to absorb millions of Americans. No more.

• Trade unions used to be centers of collective life. No more.

• Community organizations used to get lots of people. PTA's did too. No more.

Americans turned inwards in the last 30 years, and it's not some mysterious cultural phenomenon. It has to do with you're working too hard, you're stressed out of your mind. Your relationships are falling apart. Your intimate life is a disaster. But you don't want to see it in terms of wages and the job, and that's what I'm gonna stress.

So the American people ever resourceful did something else which further traumatized them. To keep the consumption going to deliver the American dream to their children, they went on a borrowing binge the likes of which no working class in the history of the world ever undertook before. Starting in the 1970's the Americans savings rate collapsed. We stopped saving money, but much worse than that, we BORROWED money. We invented a new way to give everybody debts. It's called the credit card. Before the 1970's they didn't have that. only the rich people had an American Express card. After that we developed the American Express card for the masses, it's called Master and Visa, and you all have them, you have lots of them. You collect them. You max one out, you get another one. And you keep hoping that this Russian Roulette will not get you. And so in 2007 we came to the end of the line for the working class. They couldn't work anymore hours, they were exhaust, they were stressed beyond words. and now they were overwhelmed by having violated what their parents have told them, "Save money little boy." "Hold something back little girl for a difficult time. For a rainy day. For a special expense. For an illness." Not only did we not save anything, but we're in a hock up to our ears.

Liberal Fascism

What's the Matter with Kansas. Not sure if that's still a popular book but it still holds up. I's like a textbook for why people vote against their own interests.

Welcome to the mind of a Trump voter. Where Putin and Duterte are heroes.


>Trump is simply the logical response to the Democratic Party going too far left on the political spectrum and ignoring the needs of the working class.

Trump makes all of his products in other countries. No way in hell that guy gives a shit about the middle class. He's just courting the undereducated people who will vote against their own interests. It's a GOP trade secret. Sorry dude. You are getting played again. A billionaire from new york city has no interest in helping your shitty cities. Every city that guy goes to, he dumps on.

I would recommend a book called "Whats the matter with Kansas". https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

What's the Matter with Kansas? is a good read. Despite being more than a decade old, most of the points put forth in it are relevant today.

It's a good title, and lately I've seen "What's the Matter with Iowa?" and "What's the Matter with Trumpland?"

Because the current government of Israel is far-right warhawks who need constant conflict so they can always be "defending themselves" and keep political power, and they do not tolerate ANY criticism

American is a thing that can be easily moved - Benjamin Netanyahu, unaware he is being recorded.

9/11 Was good for Israel because it shifted public opinion away from arabs and towards Israel - Netanyahu

See also: Mearsheimer & Walt, The Israel lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Published: 2007 by Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Available at:
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501
> "Pressure from Israel and the lobby was not the only factor behind the Bush administration's decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was a critical element."

Id.

Pro-Israel Lobby caught on tape boasting that its money influences Washington (WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT Rep OMAR WAS SAYING)

Netanyahu says THERE IS NO DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION FOR GAZA as he renews calls for military action - Times of Israel, Nov 2018

Netanyahu Beating War Drums is about Politics More Than Security - Haaretz, Nov 2018

Oh dear Lord.

This looks like the same sort of hyperbolic screeching as Jane Meyer's Dark Money. Some of these muckrakers need a heavy dose of Hanlon's Razor.

Fuck it. Finally ordering it now.

Really stoked to get fucking depressed about the CU decision again.

Edit: can I post a link to Amazon? I'm gonna post the link to Amazon. And here's the Smile.Amazon link.

Edit: Also, if you don't like reading and want a primer on this stuff... good documentary from HBO here.

Here are a couple of books that will get you on the right track:

The Reactionary Mind and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.

Great questions. I don't think there's an easy or foolproof answer to them.

>should lay people who have zero expertise in a field trust such general academic consensuses as being broadly correct?

Broadly correct? I would think that's a solid way to look at things. I'm in agreement with you.

>Are there good reasons for non-experts to be skeptical about the scientific consensus on vaccines, climate change or evolution?

"Good" reasons? Eh........I'll give a few scattered thoughts here:

• Some people are just going to be contrarians. I don't have any sources to link at the moment, but I think we've all encountered this at some point.
  
• Other people, often those who feel they have been marginalized by society (ex. white people who watched their friends go to college but couldn't go themselves—I'm referring to my own mother in this case), have a deep longing for "secret knowledge" and the sense of power it brings. Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy gives one of the breakdowns of this phenomenon while Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American History (1966) shows that none of this is new. For people who usually possess traits we associate with intelligence (they are intensely curious and often willing to reading extensively) but who feel like they have been unfairly excluded from the centers of intellectual life, the idea that that everyone but them has it wrong is a bit intoxicating. Especially when a small groups of other marginalized people begin listening to them. I am not justifying this phenomenon—it probably shares some of the same social DNA as the incel movement—but I am trying to humanize it.
  
• In addition to these two groups (contrarians and the intellectually marginalized), we might also add those people who have been turned off by the fervency and (please, don't throw anything at me) fundamentalist fanaticism of some popular science devotees. While 99% of modern people simply go about their days with a fairly healthy view of science and knowledge, we are all aware of the loud fringe who wants to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a "science denier" and launch social media crusades against them. Again, I'm trying to use a scalpel here and not a broad brush—it's the militant defenders of Scientism who have (like their religious counterparts) managed to turn some people off.
  
• Then there are what I like to "gut thinkers." These often genuinely good and kind-hearted people often make decisions (like whether to vaccinated their kids or not) based on emotion rather than strict reason. For them, there is nothing in the world more important than their child and the idea of their child being harmed by something they chose to do terrifies them. While they might not ever realize it, they operate in a similar fashion to those people in the "Trolley Problem" who refuse to pull the lever and save some lives because then someone would be dying as a direct result of their action. These people often hear conflicting stories (vaccines are safe vs vaccines cause illnesses) and it troubles their gut to the point where, rather than sitting down to rationalize a solution, they avoid the issue or default to whatever option requires the least amount of direct action.
  
• Lastly we might add those people who would otherwise accept scientific findings but who have one or two core beliefs or predispositions that can complicate things. For example, while we commonly label American fundamentalists as "anti-science," anyone working in that field knows from the work of the eminent George Marsden that they are rather ardently pro-Baconian science—meaning that they absolutely love empirical, directly observable science based on inductive reasoning. What they reject is deductive science and its long-range projections both forwards and backwards in time. I can say from experience that understanding this and acknowledging it in discussions with these people does wonders for the conversation and really disarms a lot of suspicion.
  
• I don't know that there is a perfect solution here, but one possible approach would be to start affirming "folk culture" within modern society. I'm literally just tossing this one out here and I expected it to be a bit controversial, but maybe it will stimulate some discussion. In essence, we (as modern, scientific Westerners) usually don't find it problematic to acknowledge, accommodate, and affirm indigenous forms of knowledge. In fact, we often condemn those who try to "Westernize" others for being colonial or destroying culture. For those who belong to tribes or ethnic enclaves, practicing non-scientific forms of knowledge is seen as a good thing by most of the intellectual elites in the West. But for those born into Western society, there is little socially-acceptable opportunity to seek out and develop alternative forms of knowledge. Perhaps creating a safe social arena for such a "folk culture" to re-emerge could give these above groups a healthy and socially legitimate avenue for exploring and fulfilling some of their deep unmet needs without the subversiveness that presently undermines a lot of the good work that science is doing.

This is frustrating. I agree with Maher on his point, but he really should have prepared himself to explain it. He just made a statement and didn't really bother to discuss it further... and in my opinion, that's probably part of the problem of American stupidity. Nobody has the patience to listen to further explanations or intellectual discussions.

I suggest to anyone interested in this topic to read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It was written in 1964, and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year... but it is still extremely relevant today.

You really have to study specific conflicts rather than generalized mid-east stuff. A lot of guys will read up on Iraq or Afghanistan before deploying there, but way fewer people will research Iran, which I actually consider the most important influence in the middle east.

All the Shah's men is a really good one. Try to look at books that aren't just "this is why this country is bad and scary" but highlight the culture of those countries and highlight the politics of everything.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

I believe you're a bit taken in by the neocon propaganda. Muslims don't hate us for our freedoms and they aren't too much different than you or I in their life goals.

The part I believe that you haven't heard ever is how the US has for decades oppressed and exploited other countries. There are numerous examples of US economic manipulation and exploitation that cause serious hardship for the poor of other countries. This leads to a lot of underlying resentment for western style of business practices and what can be spun by the neocons as "liberalism".

If you truly want to educate yourself on the actions of the US around the world, I would suggest reading the book Overthrow.

Both. Books and articles. Do a quick Google search and you will find plenty. Also, many many interviews on YouTube.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2008/01/the_case_against_hillary_clinton.html

http://youtu.be/qE8PG2mpo58

I have a book recommendation for you: Command and Control

It's a superb read regarding a series of briefs on nuclear weapon safety in fire conditions, and how safe modern weapons are in comparison.

Reading my first 'techo thriller' - a non-fiction booked called Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

If I'd have heard of the genre independently of this book I'd likely not find it appealing, but I am really really enjoying it. Absolutely blowing through it for how dense of a book it is. Also, if I could sum up the contents of this book so far I'd say 'shit is fucked'

Hiya, I am a person who lived in Korea in 2012-2013 and for six months up to April this year. I don't have a military perspective on the issue, but I can tell you a little about my experiences in Korea.

Firstly, know that this uptick in worry and hand-wringing about an imminent nuclear attack by North Korea goes in cycles. The US media get annoyed or bored with whatever it is that they are covering, and start to focus on NK again. This happens about once a year, usually in the springtime. In 2012 it was an imminent existential threat. In 2013 it was, too. As it was in 2014, 2015, 2016, and this year. You can almost set your watch by the coverage, and it is almost always as doomsday as the last time. I went on google's search engine and looked for 'north korea' as a search term for the time since 2004 and made images of each individual year here. Admittedly, 2017's graph looks a little different, but you can clearly see the cycles in the previous years. I would be willing to bet that 2017's graph is more due to POTUS tweeting and the generalized anxiety of the Left in the States than a genuine march toward war.

I'll be that you didn't know there was a genuine exchange of fire in Korea in 2010. There were tense moments of actual live fire for that whole of that year, leading to a 23 November bombardment of a South Korean island by North Korean artillery. 70+ South Korean houses were destroyed, and several were killed on both sides. Even with the tensions and the live artillery, the peninsula did not descend into open war.

In addition, you should know that the coverage of NK issues tends to be overblown in US media. I heard this story from even the likes of NPR the other day, and laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of it. It's lines like this that get the people back in the US riled up:

Defense Secretary James Mattis went within feet of the curbstone separating North and South Korea, where grim-faced North Korean troops stared across at him. It's known as one of the scariest spots on the planet.

That whole story is hyperbolic (and irresponsible reporting, imho). I went to the border at that exact place. It's part of a civilian tourist trip that runs almost every day. It wasn't exactly as the reporter made it seem, like he'd been helicoptered into an active conflict zone.

The DMZ is sad, confusing, and very absurd. But it's probably one of the safest places on Earth. You are infinitely more likely to be shot in any major United States city than at the DMZ. I'll concede that landmines are not a normal worry in US cities, but they don't tend to go off in the DMZ, either. The last time one went off was in 2015 (wounding two).

This time, admittedly, Trump is involved. But that doesn't change things too much except for making people feel more nervous. For this, I'm afraid that I have only a long-term remedy. You need to read Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. This book changed my views on nuclear weapons and greatly improved my understanding of the ways that a nuclear war could start. I don't feel comforted necessarily, but hearing about the ways that generals dealt with say, an alcoholic, depressed, borderline suicidal Nixon during the Watergate scandal made me feel a whole lot better about Trump being POTUS.

Finally, China. They are ascendant, gaining power, and working to make the region stable. They will not tolerate NK's bullshit rising to the level that the US might strike them. They'd just invade first. It wouldn't lead to massive, open conflict with the USA or South Korea. China is a player of the long game, and they will withdraw their support from the NK regime if necessary.

Hope that this helps! Please don't worry about this. Worry about more immediate problems in your own community.

I recomend the book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, also available in audio format. It's a much better history and synopsis of the issues at hand.

Also, Command and Control is a good (non-fiction) read on the topic.

My go to reading list,

Killing Hope, by William Blum

America's Deadliest Export Democracy, by William Blum

Who is William Blum?

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner

Enemies: The History of the FBI, by Tim Wiener

Who is Tim Weiner?

The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth about Economic Hitmen, Jackals, and How to Change the World by John Perkins

Confessions of an Economic Hitman, by John Perkins

Who is John Perkins?

I would like to nominate Roger Goiran, a Bronze Star winning OSS Captain. Roger was head of CIA's Tehran station in the early 1950s and in Belgium in the early 1960s. Goiran had a very promising CIA career but somewhat fell out of favor after he resigned his Tehran post in protest when the plan to depose democratically elected Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh came through. Goiran believed the plan to put the Shah in power compromised US principles and threw its support behind English and French colonialism.

He is mentioned in Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes and Meyer and Brysac's Kingmakers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aipac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpE4DbEx_Mo

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3E7A4DKCUG60V&colid=1J6ELJUM4DT29

Should keep you occupied for a while.

Virtually all of the hyperlinks lead to bogus media outlets and some of the arguments can only be argued by giving remarkably uncharitable interpretations of things other people said. Consider the one against Ellison. In 2010, Ellison said, “The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of seven million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of seven million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right?” The author deems this "paranoid anti-Semitic themes." Maybe, or it could be just true, given how many Middle East scholars have made similar claims.

Because if you have money, you too can buy Senators and Congressmen and Presidential candidates and play King of the World

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/sheldon-adelson-is-ready-to-buy-the-presidency.html


Spend enough money, and terrorists are no longer terrorists

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/21/iran-mek-group-removed-us-terrorism-list

And money buys lobbyists and PR campaigns
https://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=5970


Two bigtime mainstream profs of international affairs will explain it all for ten bucks on Kindle

>The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/

Here's the shorter version -- they had to have this printed in the London Review of Books because no one in the US would print it https://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/06/08/the-storm-over-the-israel-lobby/

Yes this! For anyone interested in learning more about how and why this whole situation came about (including right-wing media) I recommend checking out this book. I truly wish everyone in this country would give it a read (or listen) to better understand what the fuck has happened to our politics.

just some of my standard answers.


The Disappearing Spoon- yes, it's chemistry but I found it very interesting.


Abraham Lincoln's DNA- if you have a good background in genetics you might already know many of these stories. Read the table of contents first.


New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers- disease based biology. There is a follow up book if it turns out you like it.


Stiff- more than you wanted to know about dead bodies.


And by the same author but space based... Packing for Mars.

I hope these help... Cheers.

have you ever read stiff by Mary Roach? its quite good.

There is actually a lot of controversy on the lack of regulation for the global cadaver trade.

This is also a great read:

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

There are a LOT of uses for cadavers.

Reading this book made me want to donate my body to science.

What we practice in the US now, embalming with airtight caskets (they have “burping coffins” like Tupperware to release gas) began during the Civil War because of the hideous condition the bodies would often arrive home in after so long. If you’re down with learning about all the different things having to with the funeral industry and as well as how industry professionals have either lobbied to make some absurd practices legal requirements or will try to convince you they are when they’re not then these are fascinating to read, Jessica Mitford’s The American Way Of Death and Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers. Some of the most interesting reading you’ll ever do to be sure.

This book, Stiff is partially about the body farm, among other things. It is an awesome read
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393324826/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_-7YHzbP900CXB

Dude... It was never great by any stretch of the imagination.

Good primer would be Zinn's "People's History of the United States". In the words of Matt Damon, that book will "blow your hair back".

About the only thing remotely "good" this country ever really accomplished as a whole was assisting the Allied Forces in securing a victory in WW2. And the only real significant part we played in that (as far as the European theater) was materiel. If it wasn't for Operation Barbarossa and the Soviets kicking the ever loving shit out of the German forces we would have been destroyed (or never really got involved in the first place).

Edit: I'd like to add that even the "good" done in WW2 must be tempered by the fact that even General Curtis LeMay commented "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal". We were most certainly guilty of horrific atrocities and violation of international standards of war (i.e. the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings that actively targeted civilian populations) among other thing.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

A Peoples History Of the United States is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in politics, history, or sociology.

Sorry, but you are sooooooo very wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Origin

I encourage you to read Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars (Amazon) - it provides an extremely detailed look into the run-up to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the entire war itself and the aftermath leading up to 11 September 2001. I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, but the United States had absolutely no direct hand in the Taliban's creation. Certainly there were fighters that received training and funding via the US and Saudi Arabia, but the true origins of the Taliban were with a group that the US hardly dealt with but received the full support of Pakistan's ISI in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion during the 1990s.

You might like My Khyber Marriage and Valley of the Giant Buddahs. They are autobiographical reports by a Scotswoman who married a Pashtun and moved to Afghanistan in the 1920s. My Life: From Brigand to King--Autobiography of Amir Habibullah may also be of interest. It is an as-told-to autobiography of an Afghan brigand who briefly overthrew the King about ten years after the first two books were written. The Road to Oxiana is a bit clunky but offers a Western perspective on Afghanistan in the 1930s.

The more general Afghanistan of the Afghans, written by the husband of the woman mentioned above, focuses a lot of culture and cultural history, Afghanistan is a more general history and this Afghanistan claims to be more about the military history but I haven't read it myself to judge.

If you want something more contemporary, The Places In Between is a decent travelogue by an adventurer/preservationist/mercenary who walked through parts of the country. It didn't blow me away but it is interesting and most contemporary Afghan books from the West are such trash that this one shines in comparison. The author really did go to areas of Afghanistan about which most people know very little.

Ghost Wars is a popular book that focuses on the US involvement in the area during the Soviet Afghan war. Taliban is another popular book, and focuses on the Taliban in the 1990s and early 2000s. The link is to the second edition which I believe is updated.

> What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

Replace the title with any GOP controlled state.

> The middle class got reamed while the rich stood by and watched and placed bets on us.

The middle class doesn't understand the nature of capitalism. They believe the myth of “balance” in capitalist societies.

http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/commentary/MacaulaySpeeches.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#mediaviewer/File:Copyright_term.svg

Also the bailout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVjz1OyBJCc

Overthrowing governments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg_-NjjnvP4

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.” [p. 10]

“War is a racket. …It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” [p. 23] “The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.” [p. 24]

The 9 trillion dollar bank bailout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVjz1OyBJCc

Libor scandal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal

Rule of law is impossible under capitalism, since the kings of business (he who has the gold makes the rules) get to do whatever they want and the public gets fucked.

Important history:

http://williamblum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4

For anyone interested in a historical study of this, frankly, uniquely American problem I highly recommend Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. It pretty dated now (1968 I believe) but he does a remarkable job going through American history and examining the relationship between the experts (not merely academics) and the "common people."

China is the newest hegemony. The US didn't have a choice in Germany or Japan after WWII, since it was either step in or let Stalin take over. Read this fascinating article:

> Stalin had been secretly plotting an offensive against Hitler’s Germany, and would have invaded in September 1941, or at the latest by 1942. Stalin ... wanted Hitler to destroy democracy in Europe, in the manner of an icebreaker, thereby clearing the way for world communism. The book undermined the idea that the USSR was an innocent party, dragged into the second world war. Russian liberals supported Suvorov’s thesis; it now has broad acceptance among historians

The US was founded by slaveowners using the pretext of representation, but it was all about commerce. They put in place a horrific non-democratic system, the Electoral College. The US has intervened repeatedly in democracies and put in place brutal regimes. Read All The Shah's Men, for example.

One reason you might have started with a rosy view is that republicans control how US history is taught to schools across the country; see last two chapters of this book.

As for California, your Congressional representatives are amazing. I'm counting on them to nail that fucking orange traitor.

To counter the criticism above, it was the US that finally shoved the UN aside in Bosnia and stopped the genocide with a few well-placed missiles, albeit three years and 100,000 civilians too late, and it was the US that shoved the UN aside very early when Serbia attacked Kosovo later in that same decade. Fucking Kofi Annan and his inaction in Rwanda... (The hero of that story is Canadian: Romeo Dallaire.)

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684824299/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_c2DtDbW5C5ZWA

It's not simply ad hominem; his interpretation of facts has been disputed. The findings and ideas -- not just the man -- are controversial. Here are some good places to start for people who want to learn more. (The links with plus signs are books, not full texts online.)

An overview

Another overview++

A summary & review of three notable books on the subject

The Bell Curve++

The Flynn Effect++

IQ Tests

Race

https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527199813&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bell+curve

This book compares genders for IQ.
The smartest men are smarter than the smartest women.

The number of lowest IQ men is greater than the number of lowest IQ women.

This would suggest that "the glass ceiling" is just an artifact of which gender is smarter in aggregate.

Women try to redefine the problem and it does not work.

More interesting is the book The Plot to Seize the Whitehouse a story about how the rich elite of America tried to overthrow President FDR and how General Smedley Butler refused to cooperate and saved US democracy/ Smedley also eventually authored the great book War Is A Racket. General Butler is the greatest American hero this country has ever seen, Lindbergh is a glorified hack.

What's the Matter with Kansas. Good book.

(Relevant, because Kansas used to be at the forefront of progressivism.)

Everytime something shitty happens in Kansas(pretty often these days) I recommend this book

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

It's an excellent run down on politicians and single issue voters were played over and over again making Kansas what it is today. If you want to know why people routinely can be counted on to vote against their own interests it's a good read

> I believe the biggest event that led Bin Laden to set his sights on the US was the fact that during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia welcomed US troops into their border despite Bin Laden petitioning the government to leave the responsibility of defending Saudi Arabia (and Mecca/Medina etc.) to Muslims and the mujahidden.
> When the Saudi government spurned him and allowed the US to "temporarily" establish bases and put US troops on Saudi soil, he began to take serious issue with the Saudi government. And when it became clear that the "temporary" status of US troops in Saudi Arabia was bullshit, he truly began to hate the US.

Yep yep. Steve Coll goes into great detail about this in Ghost Wars.
Great read.

Not the guy making the claim but you can read ghost wars, it talks about what the U.S. knew.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669

I take issue with some of the points raised here:

1. This is not one of them, as it is certainly a reason why we stay. I'd also include the perceived PR failure of being the one to 'admit defeat.'
   
   
2. This logic is exactly what exacerbates these supposed hotbeds of terrorism. It's a product of fully internalizing the narrative of the War on Terror, which, I would argue, has led to things like ISIS. "...we will basically see a global terror state erupt," no we already have that in the form of Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan gives them a rallying cry and a casus belli for their actions. Our continued involvement in the war breeds more militants than a 'terrorist haven' ever could.
   
   
3. It's justifying a war by saying, "Well, we've been doing it for 20 years, why would we stop now?" which isn't exactly a great justification in and of itself. What's it matter that this is now a more conventional war? That just demonstrates that the conflict has gotten completely out of hand. The Taliban currently controls more territory than they have since the invasion. We're using the fact that nothing we're doing is working as a justification for continued involvement? Furthermore, it's not surprising that the Taliban's 2015 rise was the result of a power vacuum, since that's how they rose the first time. And guess what? We share a lot of responsibility for that conflict and vacuum too! It was a US, KSA, and Pakistani support that ratcheted up the conflict in the wake of the Soviet invasion and led to a lot of the destabilization that we've seen in Afghanistan, including the power vacuum left after the main players in the civil war were exhausted that allowed the Taliban to rise. Our actions, including attempting to stem 'terror threats' have directly contributed to a cycle that perpetuates that very terror and destabilization.
   
   >The british and french used to fight in these kinds of colonial hot spots for decades at a time, withdrawing troops and then sending more troops back whenever there was a flareup. Its not entirely different here.
   
   Typically using the logic of literal colonial powers isn't the best look in the year 2018.
   
   >Its important to note that this isn't entirely OUR WAR either. It is a civil war in afghanistan, that we are involved in.
   
   A civil war that only took the form it has because of our actions dating back decades.
   
   >Its important to note that this isn't entirely OUR WAR either. It is a civil war in afghanistan, that we are involved in. This isn't like Vietnam where we have hundreds of thousands of soldiers there, occupying the country. This is more just a war where we are supporting one side of it. We only have a few thousand troops there at the moment, we aren't the main fighting force. However, if we pulled out, the taliban would win and conquer the country.
   
   As you rightly point out, without our support the central government would possibly be overtaken by the Taliban, or, at the very least, forced to negotiate (though, they're now doing that anyway). The point here is that one cannot force a people into taking a government that they don't want without mass suppression and violence. Is that really the end game we want? If so, how exactly are we better than the Taliban? We've brought death and destruction to Afghanistan with very little to show for it, especially if we take things all the way back to 1978.
   
   >We simply can't have that happen, its unthinkable and the consequences would be horrific. So we will stay, for a very, very long time, if need be.
   
   And such a policy of perpetual war is morally abhorrent. I'd say that the War on Terror has skewed our collective moral compass, but, to be fair, it's never been oriented toward justice anyway, so we're really just seeing more of the same.
   
   Regardless, I'd advise we take a minute to think about how we got here, how Afghanistan became a hotbed of terror, why these terrorists do what they do, and the role we play in it all. Are we really working toward a better end for the Afghan people? Or are we just finding nails for the bloody hammer that is our military?
   
   Edit: For those looking for a good history of our involvement in Afghanistan from 1979 to 9/11, I would recommend Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.
   
   Edit 2: Changed some language with the clarification that OP was referring to US policy and not offering his own prescriptions.

The best account of the US's involvement is in Afghanistan that I've read is the Pulitzer Prize winning Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

From my understanding of how the implosion-type device that was Fat Man worked, the explosives that would drive the uranium into the plutonium core (which would cause the reaction) might go off. Since damage would have occurred when it was hit, the timing would be off on these detonations, preventing a full nuclear reaction.

For the record, there was also a concern that lightning strikes would cause the electronics on early nuclear devices to go haywire and detonate. It's a bit of a wonder that there weren't more nuclear accidents between 1940-1970.

(Source: Command and Control, by Eric Schlosser)

I'm currently reading Command and Control by Eric Schlosser, which weaves together a story about a nearly catastrophic accident at a missile site and the broader history of the command and control systems that governed the US nuclear arsenal.

Contrary to the widely held belief that nuclear missiles are highly "fail-safe" and stable in adverse conditions, most of the nuclear arsenal was (and perhaps still is) quite dangerous. Armed, ready-to-detonate bombs have been dropped by accident multiple times... Missiles have caught fire in their silos, threatening to fling a cloud of plutonium across hundreds of miles of American heartland... Warheads have been in the custody of an American force so tiny that they'd have no hope of protecting against a host country's decision to seize a weapon...

The list goes on. It is terrifying. I've long been deeply skeptical of putting too much power in the hands of an unaccountable government, and this book has solidified that fear so much.

The standard by which the US government evaluated choices with regard to nuclear weapon is hideous. Generals and Presidents talked regularly of options which would result in hundreds of millions of deaths, including pre-emptive strikes against the USSR during a period without any hostilities at all.

For supplemental reading, check out Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, The Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Nuclear Safety. By Eric Schlosser. A Pulitzer finalist.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

There is also a documentary on Netflix(?) about the Damascus Accident, where a liquid fueled ICBM exploded inside the silo.

I think it might be time you do some reading. This will do: http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322136184&sr=8-2

Warning: Will correct your views about the capabilities of the CIA.

Fuck AIPAC.

Suggested reading.

This book is one of the most neutral and honest takes on the subject I have read: http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Are you familiar with it? I think most people in this thread, on both sides, should give it a read.

This comment is also available in convenient book form.

http://amzn.com/0394703170

You should read All the Shah's Men.

1949: The First Israelis is a good one for Israel.

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror This one is a good primer to understand the politics that got america so deeply involved in the middle east.

Lies My Teacher Told Me is a fantastic resource for this sort of thing. He explicitly mentions Wilson's resegregation in the opening chapter.

>IMO, he makes G W Bush look like a saint.

Let's not be hasty.

This is the entire basis for the worst book ever written.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes!

Excellent Pulitzer Prize winning history of the Manhattan program.

Have you read up on the Saudi support of Al queda and the taliban? Or the numerous times that the US government had knowledge of the 9/11 terrorists moving around in the US and getting trained.. and did nothing?

>What he also should have done was get us in, and get us out.

ummm.. that wasn't the point though. The point was to establish an occupation and begin a nation-building exercise that would funnel money into the hands of contractors and thieves.

... and yet you want to go "blitz" into Afghanistan after the Taliban? Neocons crack me up when they call for outrageous nation-building fiascos and at the same time call themselves "conservative", but Democrats trying to justify a failed occupation are even more funny.

> We just really wanted to get bogged down fighting for decades in Afghanistan?

Bogged down? Do you not understand that spending a decade fighting in Afghanistan lines the pockets of the people who made the decision to go there?

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865


You need to get reading.


>Building 7 was hit with a perimeter column from the collapse of the main towers which caused it to become unstable and it was "pulled" down with cables to create a safer collapse.

None of this is true. If it is please provide citations. NIST itself says the debris from the other towers had no significant role in the collapse. There is no evidence whatsoever of cables being used to pull it down.

I think the reason you don't understand this conspiracy at all is because you are not aware of the facts.

Truman approved the bombing of Hiroshima in the erroneous belief that it was a military base and not a city with a military base in it.

Truman gave a radio address on August 9, 1945 in which he said:

> The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.

Truman wrote this speech himself. He tells us in a note in his handwriting dated "Aug 10 '45",

> While all this has been going on, I've been trying to get ready a radio address to the nation on the Berlin conference. Made the first draft on the ship coming back. Discussed it with Byrnes, Rosenman, Ben Cohen, Leahy and Charlie Ross. Rewrote it four times and then the Japs offered to surrender and it had to be done again. As first put up it contained 4500 words and a thousand had to be taken out. It caused me a week of headaches but finally seemed to go over all right when it was said over the radio at 10 P.M. tonight.

A photograph even shows him writing it.

In earlier drafts of this speech, Truman used even stronger language, asserting Hiroshima was "purely a military base." Truman also wrote to Sen. Russell on August 9, in response to a telegram in which Russell had urged that Tokyo be "utterly destroyed," that bombing civilians was still only something that might happen in the future:

> For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the "pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation and for your information, I am not going to do it unless it is absolutely necessary. It is my opinion that after the Russians enter into war the Japanese will very shortly fold up.

> My object is to save as many American lives as possible but I also have a humane feeling for the women and children in Japan.

Truman was likely misled by the advice of Henry Stimson.

Stimson had a meeting with General Groves on the morning of May 30 to discuss the targets of the atomic bombs, with the target committee's leading choice being Kyoto. Kyoto was a major rail link between Tokyo and Osaka, contained factories manufacturing armaments, was a "typical Jap city" whose wooden houses would easily burn, was a highly culturally significant city whose destruction would have a great psychological impact, and was home to intellectuals who would appreciate the significance of the new bomb. Groves later recalled that Stimson told him bluntly, "I don't want Kyoto bombed." On June 1, Stimson wrote in his diary that he had told General Arnold "there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto."

Stimson took his concern for Kyoto straight to the top. On July 24, 1945, he met with Truman and wrote in his diary,

> We had a few words more about the S-1 program, and I again gave him my reasons for eliminating one of the proposed targets. He again reiterated with the utmost emphasis his own concurring belief on that subject, and he was particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that if elimination was not done, the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians. It might thus, I pointed out, be the means of preventing what our policy demanded, namely a sympathetic Japan to the United States in case there should be any aggression by Russia in Manchuria

What did Truman take away from this meeting? He wrote in his diary,

> This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10^(th). I have told the Sec. of War, Mr Stimson to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old Capitol [Kyoto] or the new.

> He + I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.

Truman appears to have come away with the impression that Kyoto was a civilian target and the other options were military ones, when in reality every place on the target committee's list was a city inhabited primarily by civilians.

On August 10, 1945, Henry A. Wallace wrote in his diary of that morning's Cabinet meeting,

> Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, "all those kids."

After that date, Truman no longer says that he has avoided killing innocent civilians with atomic bombs. Now he says that this is just what atomic bombs do. In a December 1945 speech (p. 13), he claims that when he and Stimson talked about whether the bomb should be used, "I couldn't help but think of the necessity of blotting out women and children and non-combatants." In 1948, he said, "this isn’t a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that."

But to get more directly to your question: by that point in the war, any true purely military target that would have been worth nuking had already been bombed. The Army Air Force had literally been ordered to suspend them bombing of certain cities just so there would be some sufficiently impressive targets left for the atomic bombs. A warning shot over an unpopulated area was also considered, but this option was never put before Truman.

Study, I dunno. I like to listen to books about nuclear science, nuclear power, weapons, accidents and the like while I'm driving. I don't do many fiction books.

While it may not be studying, learning about the world around you can help expand your mind and keep it active while you're focusing on the road. I've listened to these books a few times over by now.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6

Szilard is featured prominently in Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is probably the best and most accessible history of the Manhattan Project ever written. It also has the greatest opening paragraph of any book, ever:

>In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilárd waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilárd told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.

Billy's Afghan adventures are chronicled in First In by Gary Schroen. First person account of the first team into Afghanistan after 9/11 (CIA prep for SF).

Also read Jawbreaker by Gary Berntsen which picks up where First In leaves off, including the taking of Kabul. Also a first person account.

Then read the prequel that ends on Sep 10: Ghost Wars. 2005 Pulitzer Prize.

These three books are truly a trilogy in every sense.

>Did you even go to college?

Yep. A couple of times, in fact.

>have you ever read a book?

Just finished this one. Excellent read. I highly suggest it.

>I dont expect someone like you to be an expert at philosophy, let alone be threatened by a concept so much that the only people who believe in it MUST be juveniles.

No, I just know enough about the philosophy to see the absurdity of it. I also know enough about human nature to know it's yet another in a long line of mildly interesting intellectual exercises that have no bearing in practicality because of the very nature of humanity.

>If you could entertain a future of private law enforcement, you might be out of a job.

It's more likely that I end up being assigned to a manned mission to Mars that your absurd AnCap ideas actually be tried in any actual civilization.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

Great book on the topic, that exposes a lot of the madness that led to and surrounded the incident. There's also a film of the same name.

He did not throw...oh, for fuck's sake, just google the background.
Then read.

An read some more.

Or watch a movie.

Don't have to you proved my point.

I worked EOD. Besides cleaning up IED's, we also did post blast and safing of areas. You see enough death and you look at the consequence of politicians you tend to go you know what this is a bad idea. Ten years later, areas that were supposedly safe, have people being put in cages and melted in acid, troops we trained refused to fight and let cities get captured by ISIS because fuck them they are Sunni and we are Shia and a number of repressive type behavior came from the Iraqi government. The people had it better under Saddam.

So peace muscles, why don't you read War is a Racket.

Yes. You could write a book with this as a premise. in fact there is a book that everyone in this sub would like. It's called "a people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn. It's a classic book that is a detailed criticism of the US policies over the years. Treatment of native Americans, slavery, women's rights, treatment of immigrants in the early 1900s, Vietnam, all the way to bush and Iraq. All the stuff we didn't go into much in school. We have a very biased version of history taught in our schools. Everything is spun in a way to make America good.

Link to book https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

You don't?

Because for a very long time in this country. In fact, for most of it's history, this country was violently racist. In fact, so many people of color were left out of opportunities that cost them their children's birthright, all to satisfy a status quo of whites first and everyone else dead.

Capice?

Live Read a little!

I highly recommend the book A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. RIP.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is good, although it talks more about the history of labor and oppression in the US than about what socialism itself is. Still, it's quite eye-opening, and this was the book that turned me.

Robert Putnam has done a significant amount of research related to racial and ethnic diversity. He published an article and later a book by the same name, entitled Bowling Alone wherein he discusses the detrimental effects of a multiracial society. The following is a quote from the above linked Wikipedia article:

>In recent years, Putnam has been engaged in a comprehensive study of the relationship between trust within communities and their ethnic diversity. His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30,000 people within the United States is that, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both between and within ethnic groups.

The more homogeneous the population, the more social capital that population has. Diversity is not a strength but is, in fact, a weakness.

Regardless of what you think about the idea of cyclical generations, Strauss & Howe do talk a lot about this in their work. It was written in 1997, but The Fourth Turning had a final section that was all about what they thought the next 20 or so years would look like if we entered a "crisis era" like that around the two World Wars.

If you don't get hung up on specifics, it's more accurate than you'd think. Like, they talk about a refocus on family values leading to a big backlash against no-fault divorce. We never really saw that, but everything they say was a dead ringer for the gay marriage debate, the reasons behind it, and how it played out. It's at least an interesting read.

It is very interesting, two guys (Neil Howe and William Strauss) using their research based on generation cycles correctly predicted in 1997 that some kind of event between 2005 and 2008 would happen that would be the catalyst to fundamentally change America. Low and behold, what happened in 2008? We had a economic crash and a financial crisis. Here is a 35 min video of them on CSPAN from 1997 talking about their generational theory and research:

Neil Howe and William Strauss on The Fourth Turning in 1997 CSpan

The Fourth Turning is the first book they wrote detailing their research. (William Strauss passed away in 2007).

Strauss-Howe Generational Theory

To give you some perspective, the Millennial Generation is what they call a "Hero Generation". The most recent example of a "Hero Generation" is the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought in WW2 (which that generation is virtually gone now).

>Hero generations are born after an Awakening, during a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire (hmm that sounds kind of like our last 30 years). Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident midlifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening. Their main societal contributions are in the area of community, affluence, and technology. Their best-known historical leaders include Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John F. Kennedy. These have been vigorous and rational institution builders. In midlife, all have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism, and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence in old age.

If you have any interest in this kind of stuff, I highly recommend reading their book:

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny(1997)

Neil Howe also published a book in 2000:

Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation

To quote one of the reviews:

>Still, the book is engrossing reading. It was actually recommended to me by a distinguished U.S. Army officer who suggested that the book could give military leaders insights into the wave of young people currently entering the armed services. I believe that many other professionals could also benefit from a critical reading of this book.


The recent research conducted today about the Millennial Generation largely supports Neil Howe and William Strauss generational theory.

Those two guy should be given some kind of recognition for their work.

Further reading: "The Fourth Turning"

Roosevelt was one of the first major Progressives of his day and his activism brought about the war mindset many progressive liberals have. When in war, there's no room for basic human decency, rationality, etc. Hence the left's irrational "wars" on climate change, capitalism, healthy eating. There's a good book about this subject

https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

I agree with your concerns for the future of the moderate left, especially when I see the likes of Sanders and Corbyn. But, honestly, the party’s are responding to the incentives given to them. The last generation of liberal politicians was the most moderate produced by either political system in a generation. And what did they have to show for it? Torn apart by both sides as out-of-touch elite technocrats, with the attack from the right feeling even more vicious for the party’s moderation.

A couple of decades of that also makes it pretty hard to muster the energy to say, “no, no, we should take the other side’s concerns seriously.”

Take Kevin Williamson. I honestly just don’t have much concern left for defending the author of this. Jonah Goldberg is another good example. I follow him on Twitter and like his dogs, but every time he says something about civility in discourse, this cover flashes through my head.

My grandparents emigrated from the bloodlands of Europe of world war 2. I was raised to be well aware of the horrors of totalitarianism from either side of the spectrum. Telling me that because I think government has a role in the solution to societal problems puts me on the slippery spectrum to Stalin and Hitler is both intellectually lazy and deeply personally infuriating. It’s better articulated and researched, but it strikes the same chord with me as old school John Birch Society crap. It’s exactly why the one point I reacted against in the first place was claiming that no one links liberalism and communism.

So what motivation do I have to come to the defense of thinkers who apparently are willing to lump my political preferences in the same camp as the 20th century’s worst monsters? Again, I understand that nothing I’m saying is particularly fair or constructive, and you could point to plenty of authors on the left guilty of similar rhetoric. But I also don’t see a groundswell of discussion insisting that those authors get a voice on Fox News or the National Review. I’m tired of being in the only camp (moderate liberals) apparently expected to take everyone’s views and preferences into account.

This guy nails it. "A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? is a vivid portrait of an upside-down world where blue-collar patriots recite the Pledge while they strangle their life chances; where small farmers cast their votes for a Wall Street order that will eventually push them off their land; and where a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs has managed to convince the country that it speaks on behalf of the People."

> A Democrat will blugeon the customer over the head with moral outrage and smug superiority because their "customer" is too much of a "dumb redneck" to see the amazing wonders of the same old product they've been offering.

This could be the cover blurb for "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

It sounds like you have two subjects, Sam Harris on Israel and is there anything stopping them. I am no friend to Islam, in fact I am in agreement with Sam that "it's the mother load of bad ideas." However, my feelings towards Islam does not blind me to the plight of the Palestinians. It's painful to watch and the sorrow that Israel heaps upon them only fuels and legitimizes the Arab/Muslim world against the West, specifically the US for funding Israel. What is going on there is nothing short of globally accepted genocide.

I too am a huge fan of Sam Harris. For the most part, I agree with everything he so eloquently states...except for Israel. I listen to his podcast every day and find myself marveling at his use of the English language in expressing such well thought out concepts and ideas. However, I try to avoid his talks on Israel, but it's really not that hard since it doesn't come up much. I just accept him for being soft on the subject.

Regarding "nothing stopping them" I hate to submit to the idea that they are on the path to steamroll all Palestinians and nothing will stop them. As long as the US is their money-guy, they will do whatever they want and nobody can say anything. Why? Because there is a huge Israeli lobby by the name of AIPAC that will destroy any American politician that questions Israel. They are organized towards one goal and fund both right and left leaning politicians and to see that goal come true, which is to ensure Israel takes ownership of the entire country of Israel and push out the Palestinians. Zionism is alive and well and its victim is the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, to say anything about the subject turns the speaker into a bigot and antisemite; there is no room to criticize Israel.

I suggest reading two books on the subject The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Entirely different situation with this woman. Rahm in Chicago is a dual citizen. His loyalty is not to the US. His father was an Irgun terrorist, the group that "taught the Palestinians all they know". Many false flags ( King David Hotel, USS Liberty) and used white phophorous on Palestinians as late as 2014. Please research on actual non Mossad propaganda on the situation. Hard to find, not impossible. Start with www.Mondoweiss.net

US Politicians Who Hold Dual US/Israeli Citizenship (as of 2014... More now)
http://american3rdposition.com/?p=12767

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

US imperial ambitions in the Middle East, and in particular the Levant, are themselves motivated to a large extent by Israeli "security interests." From a pure geopolitics standpoint Israel is way more trouble than it's worth. It's not antisemitic to acknowledge that the Israel lobby plays a huge role in directing US foreign policy.

u/photalysis

Yep, it's been going on since the late '70s. The Koch brothers and their billionaire friends (Richard Scaife, Rich DeVos, John M. Olin) have been slowly, systematically filling the government and academics from the bottom up with corporate-friendly lackeys.

Source: Jane Mayer's Dark Money

Trust me- if you're a donor, at least one part of you's gonna get used. Now, it might not be in a way you'd expect (your skin might end up in someone's ahem sausage enhancement), but the transplant lists are long as fuck. They're not gonna risk wasting even a tiny piece if they can help it

(Stiff-The Curious Life of Human Cadavers has more information on what happens to you if you're an organ donor postmortem if you're interested)

I cringed so hard when I was reading Stiff recently (which I actually highly recommend) and the author apparently interviewed Dr. Oz and cited him as a credible, medical source because of his work in cardiology.

The book came out in before his Oprah days and before having his own show, but it's just crazy how you can go from respected doctor at the top of your field to huge sell-out. I guess he just must be money hungry and eating up his newfound fame. I can't think of another reason why someone would make that career decision.

Along with Mary Roach’s Stiff, I have often recommended
Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance. The former is science writing about cadavers, albeit lighthearted, and the latter is a collections of essays-wrapped-in-fictional-example (for lack of a better term) about what the body and mind go through when dying in various ways.

While I rarely shill, I recommend to all the people of /r/EnoughTrumpSpam to read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by renowned historian Richard Hofstadter. It reminds you that this is not a new line of thought in America, but rather one that predates the establishment of the country.

http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/atheism#RecommendedReading

also.. here is my own list of things I've actually personally read and recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Sam-Harris/dp/0307265773

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170

http://www.amazon.com/Some-Mistakes-Moses-Robert-Ingersoll/dp/0879753617

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species-23-Chapters/dp/0060194979

No, it’s a sub for fans of this book

Similar but not the same.

Racial Differences in Crime Holding IQ Constant

Two studies have looked at what happens to racial crime differences after IQ is held constant. First, Beaver et al. (2013) looked at the degree to which racial differences in crime disappeared after controlling for self-reported life time violence and verbal IQ. Their sample consisted of  3,029 males.

African American men were 43% more likely to be arrested than White men. However, this dropped to a statistically insignificant 13% after controlling for life time violence and IQ. Before applying the controls, Black men were 56% more likely to have been incarcerated. After applying controls, this figure dropped to a statistically insignificant 18%. Finally, once arrested Black men were 50% more likely to end up incarcerated and, after applying these controls, that value dropped to a statistically insignificant 24%.

Secondly, Herrnstein and Murray (1994) analyzed a large nationally representative data set and found that the Black-White incarceration gap decreased by nearly ¾ after simply controlling for age and IQ.

Thus, racial differences in IQ probably explain a good deal of the Black-White crime gap, though not all of it.

I have found a lot of good discussion and support for men at /r/MensLib/

I've also heard about the term "social infrastructure" and how we have lost a lot of it which contributes to a lack of spaces for people to connect with one another. The historical "social infrastructure" for men have been bars, bowling alleys, VFWs, etc. but they have fallen out of favor as places for meaningful social interactions.

I haven't read it, but have heard the book 'Bowling Alone' mentioned alongside similar conversations. https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046

In a broader sense of community impact, the podcast 99% invisible has a good episode about social infrastructure. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-people/

I'm seriously in love with her now.

Black or white, the distain for education, learning, and "professionalism" is deep seated in our country. This.

I know I'm late to the party and there are a lot of good answers, and there are a lot of "hur der cause koran" replies...

This isn't so much on the extremism rise in Islam but more to the anti-western sentiment. This is more of a summary and lacking a lot of detail but a lot of it can be traced back to Operation Ajax in 1953 where MI6, with the help of the CIA, decided to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and put "their guy" (the Shah) in charge because Mosaddegh wanted to nationalize Iranian oil, thus making AIOC (now part of BP) pay more taxes if they wanted to drill in Iran.

It is hard to make a TLDR to the situation in Iran between the coup and the revolution in 1979 but essentially. Shah turned out to be a dick as a ruler, people were pissed at the US and GB for helping force the pro west regime change, started gathering in mosques since the Shah banned public gatherings due to riots, anti-west / radical clerics get into the heads of people that are pissed and things start going downhill from there.

Now you have a hard anti-west sentiment growing around the region and the west essentially cock blocking any attempt at people getting back on their feet so you have a lot of poor, uneducated people that have a lot of hate toward the US. They may not be completely sure why but as is the case with most extremely uneducated people they listen to what they consider to be smart people, in this case the clerics who are telling them to hate the US even more. A lot of the terrorists in the field (the meat shields sent out to die) are illiterate and couldn't read the Koran if you put it in front of them so they only know what they are told.

It doesn't help the US when it decides to go in every few years and bomb things back to the stone age. There may be justification to some of the bombing like removing someone who is truly bad but some of the people that live there don't see it that way, obviously. All they see is the US rolling in with their tanks blowing their houses and killing their children. This doesn't justify what the terrorists are doing by any means in my opinion but it may help shed some light on why they are doing it.

The more detailed read you could start with:
1953 Iranian coup d'état - Wiki


Steven Kinzer's - All the Shah's Men and Overthrow are also pretty good.

Overthrowing Mossadegh was one of the greatest mistakes America ever made. This is an excellent book on the subject if you're interested.

I think you'd get a kick out of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

There is short book I read to that effect. "Lies My Teacher Told Me" Good, interesting bits of history that you won't get in high school. Which is where I assume most of us stop studying history.

Also good: James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.

Topics that US history textbooks always get wrong (Reconstruction, settler-Native American interactions, deification of American heroes) or leave out (minorities, the Vietnam War).

The Intelligence Rift:

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray

On Civilization:

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond

Gums, Germs & Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared Diamond

The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival by Sir John Bagot Glubb

Read "Overthrow" by Stephen Kinzer. It's a great book that details all of the 14 governments the US has had a part in overthrowing. He does a great job of establishing the context in each situation, which often highlights how short sighted the people involved in these events really were.

Another comprehensive, really well written book on the same subject.

War is a racket.

I'm gunna buy it. I need other book suggestions to make it $25 for free shipping.

Here are some of my suggestions to others:

>The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Paperback)
>by John A. Nagl
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226841510

>Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Paperback)
>by John A. Nagl
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226567702

>War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier (Paperback)
>by Smedley D. Butler
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0922915865

>Cultivating Exceptional Cannabis: An Expert Breeder Shares His Secrets (Marijuana Tips Series) (Paperback)
>by DJ Short
>http://www.amazon.com/Cultivating-Exceptional-Cannabis-Breeder-Marijuana/dp/0932551599

It's quite a lot to bite off, but everything you want is contained in these four books:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/dp/B008TRUB6O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B000W93DEO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Bombs-Challenges-Dangers-Prospects-ebook/dp/B003F3PKXQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Rhodes is the guy for nuclear history. I've read all four, but the last two are, admittedly, somewhat forgettable. They deal with the continuing command issues surrounding nuclear arsenals and the eventual political movement to eradicate (or, as it happened, simply limit) strategic stockpiles.

That being said, the first two, Making of the Bomb and Dark Sun, are utterly indispensible. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1986 history of the scientific effort to elucidate the physical principles which led to bombs and of the miliitary-scientific-industrial effort to realize the possibility of a weapon. It discusses many interesting characters within this history, such as Ernest Lawrence, Leo Szilard, and of course, Oppenheimer.

I have to be honest with you - I've saved Dark Sun for last for a reason. This is one of the most phenomenally engaging books I've ever read. It has everything: the creation of doomsday weapons of, and I don't use this term loosely, unimaginable destructive potential and the obsessive quasi-fetishization of their refinement and testing on behalf of the United States' and Soviet militaries. Rhodes discusses the post-war split within the scientific community over whether to develop a hydrogen "Super" bomb, whether to share information relating to it with the Soviet Union, and the factional leveraging of security privileges and political favor to exclude those from research who did not take a sufficiently hard stand against cooperation with the USSR.

Dark Sun details bomb physics and the minutia of the testing program in just enough detail to remain compelling and accessible. Rhodes also does his best to humanize Soviet scientific personnel such as Igor Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet bomb, and the strained relationship they shared with their political patrons, such as the Darth Vader-esque Lavrenti Beria.

I hope this answers your question, and I hope that you enjoy these books as much as I did!

>It would be a damn shame (not really) were this Epstein saga to expose people like Clinton, Trump, Pinker and Krauss.

That can of worms goes deeper than you can even imagine. Epstein was so closely tied to the Democratic political machine that Florida state prosecutors wouldn't press charges on him when he was first arrested in 2006.

People are salivating at the prospect of this being tied to Trump, but he may actually come out of this looking better than people think.

I'd actually be more scared for Stephen Pinker. That Clinton was involved with Epstein is no surprise to anyone who knew anything about him, but what the hell was Pinker doing associating with that creep?

Of course, all this assumes that he won't just escape prosecution like he did the last three times he's been accused of exactly the same child molestation charge.

Welp. I was pretty against him for the longest time. I never liked the whole "good politician = good liar" thing. I never understood how democrats would blindly defend Bill Clinton like they do. He was just Republican-lite. The only thing worse than another Clinton to me is another Bush.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996 Good book, by the way.

Also in the "conspiracy theory" category:
Ghost Wars, an enthralling piece of investigave journalism done by the Washington Post's Steve Coll about the rise of bin Laden: http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669/ref=pd_ts_b_6?ie=UTF8&s=books
Hubris, another excellent investigative book about how the Bush Administration sold the Iraq War:
http://www.amazon.com/Hubris-Inside-Story-Scandal-Selling/dp/030734682X/ref=pd_ts_b_22?ie=UTF8&s=books
Conspiracy of Fools, a book about how Enron collapsed. I guess it's not really a "conspiracy theory" book in that it describes a conspiracy that actually took place and for which people were convicted.

Also I wouldn't be super confident about that - reading this book shows that the security and safety of nuclear weapons has historically been pretty slap dash.

anybody who is tired of not being worried about accidental nuclear annihilation should check out this book

Read Command and Control it's far from the first time Airmen were getting high while working around nukes.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, if you look at the Politifact tracker. Even so, we're never going to have transparency into the DoD or intelligence operations. There's a book called Legacy of Ashes that points out that the very existence of an intelligence office is counter to an open democracy. That really made it clear to me that we can't actually have everything in the open, and we elect officials to be in those dim rooms seeing what we can't and making decisions in our best interest.

>We basically have a history of doing incredibly stupid things in foreign territory when our government has an interest in getting into a fight.

You find it easier to believe that our government is run by evil geniuses than by idiots who do stupid shit?

You should read Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. You'll find that it's a history of complete bumbling and fuck-ups. Yes, even the Iranian coup they love to claim was success by blind luck despite their mistakes. Even JFK; not that they killed him, but that they worked overtime to hinder the investigation by the FBI to cover up their own idiot adventures in Cuba and elsewhere under JFK.

These theories just don't hold up. It's comforting to think there's a plan somewhere, even an evil one, that's guiding everything, but there really isn't.

From what I understand, the CIA had been running operations to assassinate Castro without Congress' consent and they thought/think that the Kennedy assassination was retaliation.

See here for a good history of the CIA and this incident in particular -- https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006

Indeed.

The CIA is responsible for some crazy shit.

I don't know if you have ever read Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner but it's a great book that talks about the agency from it's founding up to the 2000's.

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

This is pretty much the thesis of Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA about the history of mistakes and failures in the CIA. It's obviously biased against the intelligence community, but it makes some pretty damning claims.

Please, read the book Dark Money.

For people who are interested in more information on AIPAC, there was a book published a few years ago by a Harvard and a university of chicago professor:

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Here is the wiki on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy

Good question! This relationship has actually come under some academic scrutiny recently. In terms of realpolitik - israel is a US ally where there aren't really a great wealth of state actors who are considered us state allies, so the practical advantages of having a friendly nation state slap bang in the middle of an area that is teeming with anti American sentiment is clear ( arguably due largely to the sheer scale of US intervention in the middle east, which intensified from and after the gulf war in the 1990s, there's a book called "blowback", I forget the author but it could really contextualise the debate). The book I came on here to reccomend to you is by Miershiemer & Walt, called "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" - here's a clumsy amazon link (I'm on my phone) http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374531501 - it was fairly influential and has been discussed at policy level. It essentially argues that the costs (favourable arms agreements, housing grants [that can't be spent in the legal minefield of Palestine, but, sort of is]) don't actually outweigh the benefits of having Israel as a dedicated ally. It's definitely worth a look because it will weigh up all the pros and cons for you and show you what America gets for its massive expense, and will set out the debate so you can get an edge on the competition, good luck!

This is a very good book on Koch Bro's: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597

You need to read a book. For instance Dark Money by Jane Mayer

Once you've done that come back and talk to me about the Kock brothers.

I can't see it being a problem. Here's a Goodreads collection of cannibalism books if you need comps. Some appear to be YA.

For research purposes, I would recommend chapters in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (non-fiction). Contrary to popular belief, The Sex Lives of Cannibals doesn't contain cannibalism. It is hilarious South Pacific travel writing though.

If you wouldn't be weirded out by it, I high recommend reading Stiff. It's a really great read about the various ways they use cadavers for scientific research. It's actually quite helpful and important. There's a story in there about medical students at a University (I can't remember which) who would have memorial services for their cadavers at the end of the semester. Really neat stuff.

The Redneck Manifesto, Jim Goad puts a good finger on why exactly people in the US confuse class with race and even predicted the rise of SJWs to some extent years ago. Other material such as Lies my Teacher Told me and A people's history of the United States help put a better perspective from a historical standpoint.

TL;DR the books: The Wealthy (read: Not rich, but wealthy) decided that after the Civil War and after the conclusion of the French Revolution, they would pit the poor against each other and fight for the scraps instead of turning their eyes upward and see who is dropping the scraps. Seems to be working well.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

Gitmo, the secret prisons in Chicago, and Stop and Frisk, are all rights violations.

I do not support any rights violations by the Fed, State, or Local Governments.

You have a choice - you may stay ignorant.

OR - you can be come educated.

I advise reading the following:

Battle of Athens:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

TLDR: WWII Vets remove corrupt Mayor & Sheriff from office, after inaction from the Fed.


This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/0465033105

TLDR: Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. “Just for self defense,” King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend’s Montgomery, Alabama home as “an arsenal.”

Like King, many ostensibly “nonviolent” civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to selfprotection—yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history.


A People's History of the United States

http://www.amazon.com/A-Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

TLDR: We have a 40 hour work week, weekends, the right to organize and join a Union. All purchased with bloodshed, and via the barrel of a gun.

Banning guns = Tyranny.

All forward social progress will cease if we give in to tyranny.

Ever heard of a history book?

The People's History of the United States.

You should read it.

All history you learn in high school is that kind of bullshit. Unfortunately, a lot of history books will give you the propaganda dissipated at the time as fact, much as I imagine nationalistic history books written in 200 years will quote from CNN and Fox to describe Bush's great war against the terrorists who hate our freedom. People don't like questioning nationalistic mythologies. Especially when they explain that we're all great heroes of idealistic freedom.

Given that you're on /r/Anarchism, you'd probably enjoy A People's History of the United States. Or really anything by Howard Zinn. The Populist Movement by Lawrence Goodwyn is good for talking about the post-Civil War era economic bullshit. Any biographies or autobiographies of the founders (even those written from a nationalistic point of view) will be unable to hide their business dealings and positions of power before, during, and after the revolution.

Any decent US history class you take should have a good list of readings. Better than I can remember off the top of my head.

If you have a Kindle The Autobiography of Ben Franklin is free and goes into great detail about his wealth, his positions in the Pennsylvania colonial government before the revolution, and his terms as President of Pennsylvania after the revolution (before the Constitution was adopted abolishing such positions). It does, of course, completely gloss over the fact that he knocked up a prostitute at 19, or that he was constantly having affairs. But often history is about recognizing what people aren't saying.

If you're ever interested in learning about the lead up to 9/11 in full immaculate detail read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars. At around six hundred pages the book is quite long, but it is the most in depth analysis of what was happening on the ground of Afghanistan from the 70s through to 2001. Coll manages to do this in a uniquely non-partisan way, that I have found to be lacking in most books on the wars in the middle east.

Stolen from here: "Al Qaeda is a global terrorist movement with the United States (including the American homeland) as a prominent, if not the primary, target. The Taliban is a Pashtun political movement with a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan's largely Pashtun border".

Basically, the Taliban mainly cares about Afghanistan, Al Qaida cares about the whole of the Islamic world. They're active in lots of countries.

It's not that easy to explain, unfortunately. If you're really interested, I recommend the book "Ghost Wars".

I remembered the term wrong it is third place which is why google didn't bring anything up when you looked into it. Here is the wikipedia article on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Here is how I would describe it.

Third Place is a concept of a place that we spend a lot of time socializing and enjoying ourselves at that is neither work nor home. The Cheers bar, bowling alleys, cafes, coffee shops, book shops, heck even hair salons or anywhere you can socialize with people you get along with. Due to economic changes which means less money to spend and people more likely to work less set hours, the internet, and having less free time in general third places have disintegrated which has caused a lot of harm to socialization.

This is the primary book on the subject.


https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046

I believe there is a cycle nature to it. Read this book for greater detail.
.
We (America) have had religious revivals at roughly ~70 year intervals since the colony days. These revival periods sets the spiritual paradigm on a national level for each of the following 60 years. The philosophical system gets re-examined in depth during the revival period. But the latest "revival" movement of the 1960-1970's is different, in that instead of a focus on Christianity, a whole new direction was chosen. Coming out of that "new" direction, we are entering a Post-Christian America.
.
There will likely be another religious movement staring in about 15-20 years. How interesting and difficult will that be? Will we go deeper into anti-theism as /u/Croesgadwr put so well?

> there's been surprisingly little generation-level analysis since the gen x stuff faded away.

This guy builds a case that Generation Y represents a sharp contrast to the boomers. He says the psychological profile strongly suggests a throwback to the values of the WWII generation.

This guy also has a lot to say about Generation Y.

> I don't think the generation y label ever really caught on.

It's definitely a real phenomenon and used in marketing circles, at least. It certainly exists as a demographic artifact; it's the generational echo of the boomers.

We leterally are not hitler. http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189
See? fucking libtards.

But srsly tho. I love killing jews. I am hitler.

You don't even know what that term means.

www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

This.

>The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

If you look at the states with the lowest per capita income, a large chunk of which are the former Confederacy, it's a split. Mississippi has a large black population voting overwhelmingly Democratic, and a white population voting overwhelmingly Republican (now that the parties have finally switched polarities). The split is cultural/racial, despite the fact that the black and white working class in the state have far more things in common than differences.

My dad recommends What's the Matter with Kansas? as a way to show the split between the economic status of conservative voters and those that benefit from conservative policies.

There's a book called The Fourth Turning that I would HIGHLY recommend reading. It's by a historian and economist that got together and looked at trends the last few centuries that have lead to our great wars. They found there is a, roughly, 80 year cycle when shit MAJORLY hits the fan, and the generation of young adults has to fix it, for better or worse.

Ex: about 80 years ago was WWII, 1860 was US Civil War, 1780 American Revolution, etc etc (and this is just the US)

If I didn't know that these guys were scientists, I would think they were prophets. They predicted a ton of major events that came to pass including the market collapse and Great Recession and the FACTORS THAT WOULD CAUSE IT... at least 10 years prior to it happening.

The book doesn't take a side (liberal or conservative), it just looks at trends in history and economic factors and calls it like it is. It also stressed the DUTY that you and I and our entire generation has to make sure the world doesn't turn to shit.

Every shits on the millenials and compares us to the "Greatest Generation" from WWII, but the old people from their time were shitting on them and accusing them of being lazy and spoiled just like people are doing to us now. It's just a cycle. Stay strong, dude, and stay positive.

There's this book that was written in the 90's about our generation. It's called The 4th Turning. You might be interested in the theory that generational behaviors follow circadian rhythms and that we may in fact BE an echo of the Greatest Generation, or at least in the same position in the cycle. Check it out!

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  ----
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NRO was Fake News before it was cool.

Editor and Chief Johan Goldberg famously released Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning way back in 2008, when we were still debating whether Obama was a fake Muslim from Kenya and how long we have to wait for the Death Panels to kill our grandmothers.

That the article spends about eight paragraphs trying to explain how Erza Klein lied about Hillary's popular vote victory really doesn't help it along.

From here, if I remember correctly, read it long ago: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

What's The Matter With Kansas?

How did we NOT tell he's a succ?

>the U.S. needs more input from sociology and less from economics

SUCCiology OUT OUT OUT

>The Democrats have been the party of the social safety net, and have long wondered why so many working-class Americans don’t seem to appreciate those benefits.

E C O N O M I C A N X I E T Y: jobs edition

Currently: The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

After this I will probably read

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

On War

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

On Grand Strategy

A fellow on the combined defense discord layed out his recommendations for books on nukes, so I'll list them here.

On Thermonuclear War By Herman Kahn

On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century by Jeffrey Larsen and Kerry Kartchner

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition by Lawrence Freedman

Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces by Pavel Podvig

Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age by Francis J. Gavin

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Khan

Prevention, Pre-emption and the Nuclear Option: From Bush to Obama by Aiden Warren

Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy by Thérèse Delpech

Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy by Charles L. Glaser

Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict by Vipin Narang

Building the H Bomb: A Personal History By Kenneth W Ford

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy by Matthew Kroenig

Paper Tigers: china's Nuclear Posture by Jeffery Lewis

Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling

On this topic I always recommend people read Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It's really more a history of science/technology but it does cover the German and Japanese bomb programs as they relate to the Manhattan Project.

What I recall is that the general story of the Germans is that they lost some key physicists early on (many of them Jews who emigrated) and that Werner Heisenberg and his crew made an ill-advised decision to pursue a bomb design that required deuterium. Their deuterium came from a single source, a hydroelectric facility in Norway, and the French, Brits, and Norwegians were able to sabotage it often enough to keep the supply limited.

Add to this Hitler's fascination with some other projects-- and late in the war the better salesmanship from the rocket developers --and the German project really never had the resources necessary to win the race against the US.

The Japanese bomb project was really quite modest and probably doomed to failure as their scientists-- unlike the Germans --were isolated from the global community of theoretical physicists and thus lacked the necessary background to develop a bomb. They too lacked support from military/civilian leadership so their program was years behind the Germans, which itself was at least a couple of years behind the Manhattan Project.

All those factors considered, the US also had the tremendous advantage of not being a war zone. We could simply fence off a chunk of eastern Washington to develop uranium concentrating processes in secret. Ditto Oak Ridge in TN and of course Los Alamos in NM. No bomber raids and Oppie always had enough vodka on hand to make a Moscow Mule for his guests-- a far cry from trying to develop a weapon in an underground lab with unskilled slave labor, a la the German rocket program.

I just can't work for the Clintons and this is one reason why...reading this book (link below) and I too agree the DNC needs to wake up to their corruption. and if Hillary gets in we will get EIGHT YEARS OF HER! I am sure no one will challenge her. and I am 65... I can't bear for this to be my final years. all of it is hard medicine. I will say I still go back and forth but reading this book and listening to clips online of Hitch talking about the Clintons ... I go back and forth about how I could ever vote to put this corrupt couple back in power. Could it be possible they could do more harm than an idiot (Trump)? with their ties to corrupt foreign governments through the Clinton Foundation? http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996#reader_1455522996

I think the best book was written by someone on the left. Christopher Hitchens was actually a communist in the 60's, but took on a more socialist tint in his later years. Hitchens on Charlie Rose 4/28/99

His book No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton is a hair raising book, and I'd highly recommend it.

Edit: Corrected the link to the part with Blumenthal

Lies My Teacher Told Me = great book

I recommend Lies My Teacher Told Me or Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything. If you are looking for something a little more scholarly and drier then I suggest A History of Knowledge by Van Doren. As a world history teacher myself, I loved all of these books.

Howard Zinn is one of the best writers when it comes to history and if you let him, he'll change your concept of history.

Check out Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, we used it alongside some of Zinn's material when I was still beginning my college career. :)

Thank you very much for expounding on that. So much of what you say rings with truth.

>That was probably more than you wanted to know? :)

No, you reply was wonderful, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it.

Now that I understand the terms a bit better, I understand that I broke away from the blank slate model about a decade ago when I read The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. It discussed the evidence that IQ is both largely heritable (and less environmental) and affects life outcome in almost every way. I thought the book was compelling. What surprised me was the outcry from academia. I realized then that they had some sort of egalitarian agenda that they didn't want disturbed.

> You were the one citing the 4 of 5 statistic. I assumed you had the data.

FTA, means From The Article. Just quoting from the article. You mentioned an assumption.

> I know several others in similar situations. I don't have data, but that's because I have life experience.

That isn't how any science works. Not even the social sciences which aren't pure or even necessarily just applied sciences, but humanities with scientific principles.

> I lived in a small town for over 20 years.

See, here is where we really need to define what is truly rural and what is urban. There are also costs associated in small towns growing so if you come to a small town, and say you build new, those houses unlike the original ones, will have impact fees built into the cost. What you might not realize is that housing over the last few decades has gotten significantly more expensive, often because of sprawl or lack of efficiency.

Any its not the point of you car breaking down. What if you have an ongoing problem, what if the mechanic is busy? The point being you can be seriously inconvenience, and since you offered it as advice of how to live cheaply why should we assume some has a brand spanking new car. It likely might be a car that needs maintenance.

> I lived in a town of 10,000 people. You don't need to leave, especially with internet access.

Well I've know plenty of people in towns of 10,000 people and they often were bored out of their minds, so they would drive to the next closest larger city for things to do.

> Yeah, but the initial water quality is what we were getting at I thought.

No, that's the thing, modern treatment plants can take literally crappy water and turn it into something pristine. I know because I have toured the facilities and know people in the field. I also have a property with a well and have been blessed with good water, yet neighbors down the road have had problems. You need to test regularly, there is just more responsibility to have to worry about.

But see you're talking about a city of 10,000, so you may not really be living all that rural. Depends on how far out you live.

> Fracking issues? Really? Please cite one of these occurrences in Wisconsin.

Does it really matter that it is Wisconsin? You held up your statement like it was a universal truth. Wisconsin honestly has been lucky but note, its not just the fracking itself, but the materials, like sand and water which can drop the water table.

Well have always had this consideration especially if local agriculture sucks the water table down and people have to re-drill to get it.

> I lived in a rural setting for 20 years. I know the situation. I don't have to "trust you" on what I lived.

There is only one fact in that sentence, and even that's sort of debatable. It sounds like you lived in a small town in a rural area that had some of the amenities that larger cities might have especially due to recent advances in technology. Trust is not an issue. Numbers, data, research is what we should seek, and we don't trust those, we verify those. Trust involves faith.

But personal anecdotes are not applicable to general situations. So if that is going to be presented as evidence it may be dismissed by everyone as such. Doesn't mean its not true, just that we have no way of knowing, nor should we trust it, for the reasons stated above.

> Many rural areas are near small towns. A rural county usually has 'the town' that serves that purpose and is only 10-15 minutes away.

That's still travel. Again we're sort picking apart just some simple examples, there could be more, still beside the point. Gas will be more because anything that isn't in immediate proximity will need to either be shipped, or you will need to travel for it. If you hang out online for entertainment and order from Amazon, then the discount rural life might be just fine, if you have good Internet access. Again, if.

> A riding mower? If you're going to have a yard that big, you should probably afford it before you buy it. That's like saying that someone's swimming pool costs are too high.

No, its not. People choose to have a pool. No only chooses the size of their yard, it is part of the parcel they buy. Or were you only talking renting?

> I was saying that people who live in rural areas make less money, many times minimum.

Well then that complicates things further. You make less money in a rural setting, and you supposedly pay less, according to you because you don't have the overhead of the city. But on the flip side the reason people are paid more in the city is because of supply and demand which is why the housing may be more, you may have some more taxes, but all services are far more economical to provide per person or per capita because of economies of scale.

So what you have to do is calculate the CoL rural and compare to CoL urban factoring in all aspects and then compare. You might, I'm not saying you won't. I'm saying its not a guarantee that you will unless you do all the math.

> It might be anecdotal, but it doesn't make it untrue. A strong farming community can support itself.

Never said it did. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it has a very small sample size so we have no way of knowing the truth until it is no longer anecdotal. I'm saying that you have to look far more into the situation with all the data, and that still doesn't refute the OP which appears to be based on research or non-anecdotal evidence.

But, a strong farm community is harder to find. Why? Because the individual farmers that supported each other are growing scarce being replaced with industrial farming.

> Because cities tend to have liberals who want to spend that money rather than return it to the people who earned it and it's impractical to have a public bus in a town of 500.

Okay, now you are just being silly. If you check Wisconsin history, farmers used to be progressive because they were in battle with the train owners who liked to gouge them for their shipment costs. Its recent manufactured fokelore that Urban=liberal and rural=conservative.

You might actually want to read this one book, What's The Matter with Kansas which shows how of some of what you are referring to came to be.

> It also doesn't mean those problems don't exist in urban areas too.

It seems to be grasping at straws. All areas may have problems. Like I said over concentration has problem, under concentration also has problems. The OP was talking about a problem of rural poverty that any sociologist could tell you is a problem, but you, if I understand correctly, seem to be denying its existence by personal experiences.

> I disagree. I seem to recall hearing constantly during the farm bill debate about why the food stamps were included, and that was the reason I mentioned.

So you heard something once recently and that makes it a fact? You realize that is what is wrong with the current media and public, we don't challenge these ridiculous notions out of hand. Plenty of politicians on either side of the aisle support farm subsidies if it affect them or their people.

The OP topic was "The silent problem - rural poverty is rampant." Unless you have some information to say why the post is completely wrong that doesn't involve your singular personal experience coupled with a few people you know, then we'll have to go with the post having merit and needing further discussion and investigation.

> Have you lived in a rural setting? For how long if so? I get the feeling I'm trying to explain what a burger tastes like to a man with no taste buds.

Actually I know what a good grass fed burger tastes like, but we don't find them as often. Do you know why?

Actually I own a rural property that has been in the family for a couple generations. Its not farmed but it is in a rural setting. And all the problems that I cited, you know the personal anecdotes, those are all things that we contend with when were are there. Do you know why we don't live there full time? Because the city, a reasonable sized city offered many, many more choices especially employment. And grass fed burgers should I desire them.

> I disagree. Plus, if you think rural areas need the help, isn't this a good thing for them?

No. Not at all. Because the money isn't going to local areas that are desperate for tax money to maintain services like schools, another thing that doesn't scale well in the rural setting, no they stay just far enough out. It's a very deliberate tax dodge and its not simply retiring boomers, as many of them may not be well off. These are people who did not make money off the land as farmers but did so elsewhere and now flee from the city with their earnings and create paradise in the middle of nowhere.

> Not really. You can build/buy a 2006 2 million dollar house for $300,000. I know of a sale like that that just happened near my hometown.

This actually is getting to be beside the point, it was a simple observation that raises questions.

To be honest, I think it is more people who like the idea of having wealth that no one can see.

> That's a reasonable retirement mortgage if you invested wisely and are putting the sale of another house toward the purchase.

And if you didn't lose your pension, 401k, job, have a major healthcare problem or any number of circumstances. But that was just an observation. And now we're debating over budget mansions?

I'd go back and read the article itself and see if there wasn't a larger point you missed, no offense. It was never to argue against a rural way of life nor disrespect those who live in a rural setting. Quite the contrary. In fact, since it says it is the title and you said it yourself. You lived in a rural setting and even you don't it to be a problem.

So that means The Silent Poverty rampent in rural areas actually is a mystery especially if neighbors like you are unaware.

The book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a great read and goes into detail on just about every example you could want over the last hundred years. You can buy it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409

I blame the corrupt leaders and co-opted media. While you and I know the reasons for the Iraq war were lies, Fox is now saying we went there to plant the seeds of democracy. The media should be fact checking a excoriating those who lied in the past, but it is not happening. I really don't think that young people taking up arms know how corrupt our current government is. It is hard to believe. I don't want to believe it.

My 17 year old granddaughter, whose 4 year college tuition my wife and I have already paid for in advance, is thinking of enlisting. We are doing out best to disabuse her of the idea that military service protects and promotes freedom. I bought her "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler She thinks she will be able to serve with her boyfriend who is enlisting and the recruiters are lying. But she thinks she is in love for life and her boyfriend buys the military hero BS hook line and sinker. My granddaughter wants to give her prepaid tuition to her younger sister. She thinks she is being noble. I don't know if you have tried talking sense to a teenager, but they think their life is novel and different from all those who have gone before and that they are the best judge of the nature of reality. She literally has no idea what she would be signing up for.

My own grandmother used to say to me, when unable to set me straight about something in life; "you can't put an old head on young shoulders" and it is true.

Maybe a few kids who enlist want to kill and be bad asses, (there are always a few of those types of people) but I honestly don't think that is the motivation for most. They are duped. It is not their fault that they are young, inexperienced and naive. There are vast forces of propaganda arrayed against them. That is, in my opinion, where the blame lies.

War Is A Racket

war's always been ugly and cruel. pick up this book by two time medal of honor recipient Marine Major General Smeadley Butler called: War is a Racket.

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

and this was back in the 1930s. Very little has changed. the article mentions how the farmer was working in his poppy fields. that's because we're allowing the manufacturing and distribution of drugs in Afghanistan. this situation is Vietnam and Somalia all over again.

World History: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (It is also made as a documentary now)

US History: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

In regards to being sensitive for issues like slavery and the Holocaust, I recommend Teaching Tolerance. They have some good resources.

Not exactly what you want but all three of these books give rare perspectives on US history:

A People's History of the United States

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

He may be better served by A People's History of the United States.

Terrorist:

noun
1.
a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

If you havent already, you should read 'A People's History Of The United States' by Howard Zinn.

> I completely disagree with all your points other than the last one. I'm Korean, but I tried to write that from an international perspective. Honestly I didn't put a great deal of thought into the 'unpatriotic' implications because I think we should start moving past the 'OMG KOREA IS THE BEST OMG OMG' narrative that comes from most story concepts written by Koreans that take place in Korea.

Except it's not being written by Koreans.

> The main reason I began with a Japanese protagonist was because I wanted to open with the Sino-Japanese war. I also felt that opening with a Japanese character would be much more marketable to American (the biggest game market) audiences as they are much more familiar to Japan and then gradually introduce Korea as an independent country with significantly different culture. Having a foreign protagonist learning about the country is a tried and true method of doing so. I felt this would be a more appropriate way than to just ram gamers into a completely unfamiliar background leaving them confused.

This is also the same line of reasoning that led to the complete cast white washing of The Last Airbender, 21, Dragonball Evolution, and the upcoming Akira live action film.

It's also a very pathetic trope rooted deeply in racist colonialism.

> I also made the protagonist half-Japanese as I didn't want to drive home a narrative full of racial hate. I want the story to focus more on the evil Templars who (fictionally) took control of the Japanese government and call to attention the fact that evil is not racial, but societal, and that everyone has power to change it. Call that white-washing if you want. Personally I think it's a better way to stop this racial circlejerk bullshit.

I don't understand this line of thought. All it does is continually relegate the poor, beleaguered natives as sheep that can exist only to be controlled or freed upon the whim of the oppressor.

> I had also just finished reading Korea's Fight For Freedom by Fred McKenzie this very morning which is the main reason I was compelled to think of a story with this background. Among other things it outlines in some detail why the Japanese were so interested in the peninsula, and briefly goes into the Sino-Japanese war (which I see as the most significant event during that era).

Why can none of this be shown from a Korean perspective? I'd recommend another book: A People's History of the United States. Assassin's Creed is about freedom for those who live under oppression.

This is also why in Assassin's Creed: Liberation, most of the Assassins you encounter are actually former black slaves. You pretty much reverted this message by making your protagonist Japanese. The half Korean part doesn't do much because he never had a Korean identity to begin with.

> Also, you do realize how barebones that storyline was right? I skimped on describing Japanese atrocities as I've seen enough of that on this subreddit. Yes, my grandmother (who I currently live with) also speaks Japanese and has countless horror stories. She still uses Japanese terms for cooking ingredients. I even have a great aunt who apparently committed suicide in the 70s because of PTSD from being a comfort woman. I too feel the 한 when it comes to Korean history, but I think enough is enough. Every time Japan comes up in this subreddit I see a fuck ton of bashing. Does it really need to be mentioned in every gory detail every time?

What gory details did I mention? What was I bashing? I just thought it was surprising that in your barebones storyline, the most important details were about concubines and queens and not the injustices that were happening at the time when civil oppression is a hallmark of the franchise. AC3 devoted a lot of time to the ambiguous moral conflict between the colonists and the Indians.

It's strange that you didn't think the brutality of the Imperial regime was something worth mentioning in your stripped down storyline.

> For this fictional story, in my mind, 유관순 was more the product of love between two charismatic characters rather than a bastardization of history. In my mind she was the product of a father that had committed an unforgivable crime (the murder of Empress Myeongseoung) trying to redeem himself, and a mother that managed to overcome seeing that sin and loving the man instead, producing a daughter that could look past petty racial differences and focus on the issue of colonialism (From what I learned in public school about 유관순 she was different from a lot of her contemporaries because she didn't focus on hatred of the Japanese which was an easy narrative to sell, instead she tried to incite a hunger for actual independence of the Korean people).

Let me draw an analogy. Perhaps it will shed some light on why what you are suggesting is off base.

Imagine if Ubisoft made an AC game set during the British Raj and historically revised Gandhi's heritage so he's actually the bastard of a British noble and an Indian concubine. Does this sound like a touching commentary on overcoming petty racial hatreds to you?

> As for your last point, yeah, the 'going native' tool is common because it's a good tool for introducing an audience to an unfamiliar setting without a fuck ton of confusion. It might be overused, but it sure is effective.

Did Assassin's Creed need some English crusader to "go native" with the local Arab culture to portray what life was like in the Holy Land during the 1100s? Did Assassin's Creed 3 need to pull a Last of the Mohigans?

This trope exists because it panders to ethnic superiority fantasies, not because it allows a foreign audience to connect better to an exotic setting.

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll Check it out, very informative.

Not strictly about that topic but check out Command and Control, it covers the development of U.S. nuclear and nuclear safety policy from inception to present.

Does support some of what CommandoDude is saying, MAD was a U.S. invention. Doesn't cover the Russian aspect of it unfortunately.

Except torture has been repeatedly shown to be less effective than other methods of interrogation. Read The Black Banners, Legacy of Ashes, or one of the numerous other books that cover the CIA's recent actions before you continue to perpetuate the lie that torture works.

I grew up during the Cold War in a military family that traveled around the world from Germany to Morocco to Japan. The Cold War was just an excuse for the military industrial complex to make a shit-ton of money.
Just like any business there's this thing called 'marketing' where you try to convince the customer they really need your fancy widget. Has worked really well for decades now.
Yes, the Soviet Union was a brutal dictatorship where Stalin murdered millions to keep power. They also lost a substantial amount of their male population during WWII and were ruined economically following the war. They were in no position to project power and if one wishes to do the research the Soviets really did little compared to the brutal dictatorships the US installed. The books listed below go into far greater detail about all of this if you chose to do some research. The Russians are human beings led by a corrupt government they don't support.
The same goes for the US. An 8% approval rating for congress, the lowest they've ever received in US history bears that out. You can't claim to have the moral high ground and be the world's policeman when your own country's people have such low regard for it's leadership.

Legacy of Ashes

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

The Secret History of the CIA

http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-History-Joseph-Trento/dp/B002GJU3O6

All of Chalmer's Johnson's books

https://www.google.com/search?q=chalmers+johnson&rlz=1C1AFAB_enUS450US450&oq=chalmers+johnson&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j0l4.2975j0j8&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

We do know why they're happening.

Have you ever read a history book? Generally speaking every single discussion* they ever had required a "note taker" and it's our custom to speak about these decisions a couple decades after. Obviously the whole truth isn't out there, and certainly not everyone tells the truth. But the motives behind everything I mentioned were clear as day.

I would encourage you to read books like

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

http://www.amazon.com/Osama-Bin-Laden-Michael-Scheuer/dp/0199898391

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev/dp/1400078911

These men aren't all powerful, they don't take orders from some homogenous group that always retains the same position. And most importantly the information our leaders are given is often woefully inaccurate. The president more than anyone has the information that he is presented to him manipulated. Although some certainly have been more savvy than others.

You should read "Legacy of Ashes" if you want to be terrified by just how incompetent the CIA is and has been.

je ne connais pas cette histoire, mais l'histoire de la CIA est bien connue malheureusement, "Legacy of Ashes" est un bon bouquin sur le sujet, et ce que l'on sait fait tres peur.

Mike should read Legacy of Ashes for a different perspective of the OSS and CIA.

Haha - my girlfriend keeps telling me to start a YouTube channel. Personally, I think she just wants me to rant around the house less lol. But I've been thinking about putting something together - the lovely response from Redditors when I post comments like this make me think it might have a chance to be a successful way of getting the message out.

But if you're interested in reading about this stuff here are a few books by the people with real talent who did all the investigative legwork that I'm just repeating:

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307947904/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_V2.xDbT0G7T9Q

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America https://www.amazon.com/dp/1101980966/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_23.xDbQ9EHJR5

What gives the dynamic a particular look is the large population of Evangelical Christians. Now what you have to understand, is while the professed rates of religiosity are extremely high, the general population simply does not know anything about the Bible, or Judaism nor Islam. This goes for the evangelical crowd as well. There are a set of cliches that they all know, you know, 'Jesus saves," type of knowledge. So you end up with stuff like you see in this very thread, with 'we have a Judeo-Christian' background level of rhetoric.

The fact is that people just don't know anything about Judaism or Christianity.

On top of this you had a conscious Zionist political project, to make sure that culturally pro-Israel views dominate the news, academy and churches.

There are two academics who wrote a paper that eventually became a book concerning the influence of the Israel lobby. The book is a must read, but you should give the shorter paper a try for sure.

THE
ISRAEL
LOBBY
AND
U.S.
FOREIGN
POLICY

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0040.pdf

The book:

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Pew study on religious knowledge.

http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/

>every single one of your sources are megaphones of IDF

John Merscheimer wrote an entire book against Israel. If The National Review is a "Megaphone for the Israeli Army" then why did they invite John Merscheimer to write new articles ? It's completely illogical.

The Economist is the most respected magazine in Britain. It was founded in the 1840. Bill Gates says "I read every issue of The Economist, from cover to cover, it makes me think critically"


You claim that the targets were not Iranians. When I give you sources explaining a proxy war is happening, you falsely accuse the sources of helping the Israeli Army. While still refusing to answer about your claim

I have a very hard time following you.

I also forgot to mention AIPAC. They're one of the big reasons you see overwhelming support for Israel in the US Congress. Just keep in mind the US government does not always represent the citizens; hell, just look what happened over the past 10 years. As well, it's important to note that the aid we give to Israel is military aid which is used to support the MIC. I don't mean to keep replying but I'll put it this way: there is a lot to know about Israeli/American affairs. If you want to know more than the typical American does about the situation, I recommend skimming the Israel Lobby (fairly dense), Finkelstein, and Chomsky.

If you like non-fiction:

Periodic Tales - Hugh Aldersey-Williams


Dark Money - Jane Mayer


Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Yep, I'm supes liberal. Sorry.

This here is just bursting at the seems with real life examples of the state doing its best to save small property owners from the predation of the ultra wealthy. Can't imagine how "please don't dump mercury into the river that waters my farm" would go over without the state there to back that up.

“from 2005 to 2008, a single source, the Kochs, poured almost $25 million into dozens of different organizations fighting climate reform . . . Charles and David had outspent what was then the world’s largest public oil company, ExxonMobil, by a factor of three.”



Source: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - I loved her book Boink about sex which I read a few years ago. Really funny and informative.
  
  
• [Pretty Little Liars](http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Little-Liars-Box-Set/dp/0061801313/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411518792&sr=1-2&keywords=pretty+little+liars_ =) - I have read 10 of these in the past couple weeks. My little sister got me hooked on them and the show which we binge watched together on Netflix. Yes they are horrible and trashy but my inner 13 year old girl loves them and I must find out who A is!!! Judge away people because I dun curr.

One of my all time favorites is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, about a climbing season on Mount Everest where a lot of things went wrong.

I also enjoy Mary Roach - she has a great gift of being able to convey information while being really entertaining in the process. Stiff is my favorite of hers, but I also really enjoyed Packing For Mars.

>there are also surgical anatomy electives you can take later that involve surgeons (and aspiring surgeons) doing specific operations on one or more parts of your body.

This is also mentioned in the book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."

> never smelled a dead body

In fact, I'm reading this right now. Yes, there's a description of the body breakdown and the, uh, aromas generated.

I've been on a non-fiction kick myself.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is good. Very funny, very informative.

Packing for Mars and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers both by Mary Roach were also fun to read.

Books: "Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues", "10 Ways to Recycle a Corpse: and 100 More Dreadfully Distasteful Lists", check for related items on Amazon for both of these books.

Buy something from oddities/taxidermy shops. https://www.facebook.com/Csoddities - I don't know if they sell online, it's a small shop, but you get the general idea.

Take her/him to the museum of death or crime or anatomy. Many cities have them.

Go to together to St. Petersburg, Russia (Russia itself is morbid enough!) to visit this museum: http://www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/kunstkammer-museum-antropology-ethnography/

If you don't have much money, buy a (fake) shrunken and from Amazon, take it out of box and say it's real :)))

This website might be also a good start to find something close to you: http://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/anatomy-museums

Edit: also this book: http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why? by Laurence Gonzales

Swimming to Antarctica : Tales of Long Distance Swimming by Lynne Cox

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

I was home for a holiday, and found these laying around my mother's book stash. She recommended all of them and I thoroughly enjoy each one. Although, usually I read fiction. All of these books are intriguing, well-written, and educational. If you never read non-fiction a good place to start is reading Mary Roach. Here is her TED talk about orgasms.

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Yea because if you're not a white christian or jew it's obvious

We're fighting Muslims over sand no one should care about

Do you not understand our foreign policy?

Here is the most famous book on the topic

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Written by a harvard and a u chicago professor.

I'll say it again. You have no fucking idea waht you're talking about. White nationalists love Israel. You are so unbelievably ignorant. Fucking Hitler loved Israel

If you think we would have invaded Iraq without our relationship with Israel you're fucking delusional. And again proving your ignorance. Stay out of politics. Clearly you know nothing about anyone politics or American policy.

It is not exactly what you are asking for, but if you have not read it, you must read The Israel Lobby: https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/

That was the same conclusion reached in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

/r/911truth and r/holocaust has source driven stuff. The ron unz site is good.

Starter, source driven, articles.

https://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-911-conspiracy-theories/

Source driven full texts.

Jews and sexual 'freedom' agenda

http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/libido_ad.html

Jews as revolutionaries and subversionaries through history all the way up to the neo con movement.

http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/RevolutionaryReviews.html

https://www.bookdepository.com/Culture-Critique-Kevin-Macdonald/9780759672222

If you don't have the time to read 800 and 1200 page books here are two documentaries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCkc-ZF_TSY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiGYtQ1EWZw

this doc covers lots of the issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJl0bH8ey-M

The late Emeritus Professor Dr. Tony Martin covers jews and the slave trade. WITH SOURCES

https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Onslaught-Despatches-Wellesley-Battlefront/dp/0912469307

Here's a shorter read on jews and the slave trade.

https://wethoughttheywerewhite.tumblr.com/WhoAreTheJews

Those sources should cover 90% of /u/translate4mepls post. Please let me know if you have questions.

and if you need jews and bolshevism the Juri Lina books and documentaries are good and of course Solzenitzyn.

edit. if you are VERY short on time this is a compact documentary (20 minutes) yet still data/source driven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljMPafQpfDU

edit 2. sorry I left out more specific israel lobbying books.

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Israel-Israels-Lobby-America/dp/0982775717

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=2AP6DCM7502FT8F0FNZZ

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Right-Went-Wrong-Neoconservatives-ebook/dp/B003J56502/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=neo+conservatives+pat+buchanene&qid=1553479646&s=books&sr=1-1-spell

Need more sources?

https://imgur.com/a/RI1lA1j

https://imgur.com/a/IOSTDYs

https://imgur.com/a/rMMHiQv

https://imgur.com/a/mx4KK9X

https://imgur.com/a/oxPYWCc

https://imgur.com/a/sBtcAEh

https://imgur.com/a/XPosuJ6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJl0bH8ey-M

Also read the Hooton Plan and Kalergi plan. Here are two funny animations about this topic as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDeyuM0-Og

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faNge-o0V-k

need more?

Quick history on the last 200 years of jews.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/a8u6rp/the_cuck_and_based_map_of_white_countries/eced3ar/

Small collection of jpgs on the jews

https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/a9qw2y/the_rothschilds_started_the_civil_war/ecln6kd/?context=3

Thread on Study resources

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/a56b51/jewish_study_resources/

Step by step guide on Jews

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/a13foq/how_to_explain_the_jq_in_a_simple_stepbystep_guide/eamjm9n/

Jews and Communism

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/a1bf7q/debunking_jewish_communism/eaodfbt/

Why the JQ is important to white identitarianism movements

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/9wxv0m/what_is_the_specific_importance_of_the_jq/e9o46qe/

Jews and Pedophillia

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/9t18cm/ok_im_sold_now_what/e8vtgmp/

The JQ simplified in plain language.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubOfPeace/comments/9n7iin/2_am_schitzopost/e7krwez/

Thread on THE Epic Unz Article

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/9bi1rv/the_holocaust_did_not_happen/

Jew in their own words

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/93gzrj/can_anybody_here_just_admit_that_the_jq_is_dumb/e3d92gg/

A redpill story and some JQ info from /u/certifiedrabbi

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8szqmz/is_the_altright_environmentalistwhat_altrights/e14rdzd/

Jews vs the Parsi

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/91cejs/the_reason_you_fight_for_an_open_society_is/e2xqyvz/

Jewish Tricks: driving cognitive overload to overwhelm enemies

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8zmix9/cognitive_load_is_the_driver_of_pilpul_and/

Example of how jews first stigmatize, isolate and destroy enemies.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/8xbmrs/the_social_shaming_of_racists_is_working/e22bb07/

Examples of jewish subversion in the west

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8wisse/frequently_among_the_altright_i_see_posts_talking/e1vuaif/

Understanding Jewish motives

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8o4fmt/what_are_some_altright_beliefs_you_dont_100_agree/e00p9fx/

Understanding why whites ignore the JQ

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8o4fmt/what_are_some_altright_beliefs_you_dont_100_agree/e0125ba/

Do jews really want to genocide whites?

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8jfaao/i_need_some_clarification_on_white_genocide/dyzei69/

Data on broken social cohesion

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/8jee6p/does_the_altright_want_nonwhite_americans_to_leave/dyzflru/

Yes, it was a Princeton study iirc... a short summary can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

If you're interested in a detailed and quite focused historical review of how the US went from democracy to oligarchy I would recommend Jane Mayer's, "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right"

>A tinge of anti-government rhetoric is justified and healthy given government's role as the primary enforcer of feminist injustice against men.

This anti government rhetoric isn't grass roots. The right wing of the mrm has been astroturfed. Its not really for mens interests, its for the interests of billionaires.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597

Dosta ljetno štivo: http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=zg_bs_689737011_1/191-4977981-9015808

Šala, ali ova knjiga je ful zanimljiva ako imaš jak želudac.

Someone once told me that the parts left over after med school assignments sometimes end up in art projects. Is this true?

Asking because I'm 1,000,000% donating my body if I get to be science AND art.

Also: Stiff by Mary Roach made me want to donate myself to the body farm.

https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

You might enjoy this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Stiff-Mary-Roach/dp/0393324826

Stiff by Mary Roach. It deals with cadavers, which most humans don't like to think about, but the author writes it in a way that balances heavy content with humor.

Mary Roach! Mary Roach Mary Roach!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Packing of Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

I can't recommend these highly enough. Mary Roach is the most engaging, funny science writer I've read.

Also [A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman]http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Senses-Diane-Ackerman/dp/0679735666/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323874194&sr=1-1

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. The writing is so good you won't care about the squeamish content.

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum. A perfect blend of a historical retelling and science.

A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farguhar.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks. Short stories of the mentally abnormal patients of Sacks.

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Taylor. Very good insight on what it is like to live with, and recover from brain damage. Also talks science about parts of the brain as a nice intro to the subject.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety in the Human Body by Armand Leroi.

And of course,
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Written by Mary Roach who is hilarious and has other great books! I recommend these in particular:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

I read in Stiff that plastic surgeons practice on cadavers. Is that more or less gross than working on a live person?

And if you're intrigued about the decomposition of the human body, or what might happen after you donate your corpse to silence, here's a good read!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393324826/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_-lE.yb3TNHSXQ

It's one of my long time favorites. It's the first place I read about this skin slippage, termed "gloving."

I'm a lady! I started on rotten.com a long time ago, too. I've always been a little morbid I guess, but I am also just fascinated by the things we don't see that (a) we used to or (b) other cultures still do. My mom worked around a lot of medical illustrators for most of my life, too, so I grew up seeing random fetuses in jars and understood the importance of cadavers.

Also, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is one of my favorite books.

But I'd add, as other meta posts have before, that I learned way more than I expected when I started coming here.

you would probably get into this book, parts of it talk about the body farm https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

This book is all about the different ways human cadavers are used and it really is fascinating.

The interesting thing about rapid deceleration deaths is that it's rarely the pavement, tree, water, whatever that kills a person. Most of the body is pretty good at taking severe impacts. Hit most places with an object at the same speed and it's not immediate death.

However, there is one MAJOR weak spot. The aorta! It tears from the rapid deceleration. Immediate blood lose and you're a goner.

Here's a great book that talks about it. I was actually reading the falling death/aorta tearing chapter 32,000 feet over the east coast on my way to vacation. Nodded off, had one of those dreams where I could see through the floor of the airplane and weird falling sensation. Jumped, felt bad for the person next to me!

http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Really good book.

it's not 'taking over'

anti-intellectualism has been a 'thing' in mrrka for many years

hell, this pulitzer-prize winning book dealt with this very issue in the 1960s

I don't think this is exclusively an American phenomenon. However you may be onto something given how anti-intellectual American discourse can be and how averse Americans seem to be towards disciplines that they don't see as practical. A whole conversation on American anti-intellectualism seems to be what you're looking for. http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170

If you watch Jersey shore then it's probably still for fags. It's been around far longer then mass media though. Check out

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

It's funny that you call it self-imposed, but let me ask you... where did you learn the majority of your history? Did you research it yourself, or did you learn it in school?

If you learned it in school... is it the student or the teacher that is to be blamed? Come on, there are books written on the inaccuracy of the American Textbooks!

"Bravo Two Zero" or "Immediate Action" by Andy McNab.

"Supernature" by Lyall Watson. An old, but interesting and thought-provoking book.

"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku.

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James Loewen.

"People of the Lie" by M. Scott Peck.

Edit: I was going to suggest "The Hot Zone" as well, but Amberkisses got there ahead of me, so I upvoted him/her instead.

I teach college courses on writing, social justice, and activism. My students read the intro and the chapter on Columbus every Columbus day.

I'd also recommend Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

Ooooh, just one? Just a mention that I am atheist, though none of these are really directly in favor of atheism :)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-The-Autobiography-Species-Chapters/dp/0060932902

http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

http://www.amazon.com/Fahrenheit-451-Ray-Bradbury/dp/0345342968

http://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060929871

Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen.
http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

Important reading: The Bell Curve: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0684824299

an actual study : The Bell Curve

> suggesting color or race is any indication of intelligence

You don't know how foolish you look when you say that.

No. While there may be many things wrong with American society, there is absolutely no valid historical parallel between American society in 1960 and American society in 2011 that would predict the emergence of mass social movements. The causes for the New Left and the sixties were many, and almost none of those causes are shared today:

• Frustration with a culture of political repression (the McCarthy era) and general conformity.
  
• A decade-long economic boom, which allowed, for the first time, a critical mass of Americans to consider issues less directly pertinent to their lives. You don't have much time, energy, or interest in the morality of a war or the ethics of an existing social system when you're barely scraping together enough money to eat.
  
• A pre-existing mass social and political movement which had involved millions of Americans and already laid much of the groundwork for much of the later movements (from the New Left, to the feminist movement, to the gay rights movement), almost all of which had direct connections to the African-American civil rights movement, which exposed people to the systemic violence, widespread poverty, and racial injustice throughout the South.
  
• There was a high level of political capital and engagement. In the 1960s, political campaigns depended almost entirely on a volunteer staff, and were much cheaper to run. More people voted, more people attended places of religious worship on a regular basis, more people were involved in local organizations (from the local bridge club to the PTA to the bowling league). This meant that not only were people aware of what was going on in the world -- it meant that they trusted each other more, and they trusted government more. If you look at the 1960s, people wanted the government to fix problems in their lives; ever since Watergate, trust in government and other Americans has plummeted.
  
• There was a huge expansion in the number of university students. Between 1960 and 1975, the percent of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher more than doubled. That's not the percentage of people attending college, that's the percentage of the total American population with a college degree, including old people. The number of MAs and PhDs granted per year tripled in that period. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people with a college education tend to be more socially liberal -- the backlash against the repressive and socially conservative society of the 1950s should therefore come as little surprise as this new generation of young Americans entered the workforce.
  
• There was also a huge number of young people. The baby boom that followed World War II had produced a huge cohort of 18-29 year-olds -- the exact group which also tends to be the most liberal.
  
  The current climate is far different.
  
  
• Until 2007, apathy was the primary defining characteristic of the American political climate. Since then, we have seen spurts of outrage or excitement, but there has been nothing akin to the political repression that we saw in the 1950s, nor do we see anything akin to the political engagement of the 1950s and 1960s.
  
• Since the 1970s, the United States economy has been largely stagnant, with a brief surge of prosperity in the 1990s. In 2008, we entered the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  
• There has been no sustained mass grassroots movement since the 1960s. Attempts have been made -- the feminist movement, the environmentalist movement, the gay rights movement, &c. -- but none of these efforts were able to sustain the requisite commitment on the part of everyday people. Sure, all three of those movements remain as at least recognizable political influences in the United States today, but as insider politicos: people who raise money for candidates, who hire lobbyists, who send out mass e-mails, and who run issue ads. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is most certainly not a parallel to the groundwork and widespread radicalizing social effects of the civil rights movement.
  
• No one votes anymore, no one is politically, socially, or even culturally engaged anymore. Even on college campuses, it's difficult to get people to turn out for events without bribing them with free food. Books have been written on the decline of the American public sphere (see: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community).
  
• There has been little change in the percentage of Americans with a BA since the mid 1980s, and what changes have taken place has been the result of older Americans dying off. Moreover, the United States is an aging society -- hence our problems with funding social security and medicare.
  
  While I certainly agree that much has to change, you make the fundamental errors of assuming that it will change, that it will change rapidly, and that it will change as the result of people waking up and realizing what is going on.
  
  EDIT: wanted to expand some more on what I said.

You know, I don't have an answer. Most of the selections so far are from before Wallace's prime. (Quick aside: Philip Roth's best books are his latest, but who he was to the world was always the man who wrote Portnoy's Complaint. His worldview never changed. Rather he grew in his craft, and his later characters were various iterations of Portnoy getting old, perhaps with the great exception of American Pastoral.)

Anyway, I don't have an answer because Wallace arrived at a deadlock in American life that we have not yet overcome. He was a prophet of America's decline. What I believe Wallace wanted was certainty and authority in a time where it wasn't granted him.

Politically conservative (he voted for Reagan and admired John McCain), he was desperate for a sense of civic life that was already in decline, and he wanted badly to be led.

Raised by atheist academics, he sought out the comfort of the Church. He wanted unironically to believe in "the sub-surface unity of all things" but couldn't get himself to do so, conceding instead that, "You get to decide what to worship." His message, instead, was existential: life is what you make of it, so pay attention. But he wanted more. He sought "redemption" through literature and contemplation, seeking something of substance to soothe his "inner sap." Perhaps he found it in glimpses, but his long-time depression betrayed dissatisfaction. He searched endlessly in mythology, folklore, and collective subconscious imagery, only to catch his own tail in a Kafkaesque cat-and-mouse chase with himself.

In love, he was a bachelor, who one time contemplated murder over jealous love. He was a womanizer who held his manhood cheap, retreating to books to "feel less alone."

Like Hal in Infinite Jest, he found no authority, neither from his wild, filmmaking father, nor in the life-sucking entertainments of his time. Instead, Wallace found solace among the meek, the addicts, and the defeated (he himself suffered from alcohol abuse). Deep down, it wasn't enough. Deep down, beneath his giant brain, down in the bones of his Anglo-American stock, he knew something was wrong in America. He lamented our cafeteria democracy of boring politicians. He lamented what he called the "death of civics." Look at us now: government in chaos, the waning of religion across the West, an epidemic of addicts, no closer to cultural wisdom or unity, individuals still atomized and community still broken. (As an aside, I believe these premonitions sparked his interest in Quebec's secession movement. There, at least, people were fighting for something.)

In short, Tl;dr: Wallace was perfectionist born in a time that he couldn't perfect. What we have of him is a glorious attempt to surmount the chaos and fragmentation he felt in his heart and in the world around him. The reason I don't have an answer to your question is because I don't think anyone else got as close to articulating that as he did, and I think his fictions and his essays will be read in the future with great pity because I believe that we will rise to the occasion—in politics, in art, and in society—in due time. We always do.

The principle of Fürherprinzip is mostly organic. Humans naturally look towards strong leaders. And while the Third Reich was not completely organic, it was a substantial improvement over the liberal Judeo-Capitalist Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler's long-term plans for Germany would have fully brought about the National Socialist ideal.

\>Have you had many bad experiences with people outside of your cultural background?

Yes, I went to a high school full of Negroes and mestizos, but that's purely anecdotal evidence, no? I'm intellectually honest, so I'll give you something more substantial. It's a study by Dr. Robert Putnam, entitled Bowling Alone. In it, he initially set out to prove the axiom that "diversity is our greatest strength", but quickly discovered quite the opposite. While studying the great cities of America, he found that ethnic diversity is strongly correlated with loss of social cohesion, diminishment of social capital, and a decrease in overall community engagement, not just between ethnic groups, but within them.

This is the book. I can't find a free PDF anywhere, but I have no doubt that you'll be able to find a torrent of it somewhere.

This last point addressed your other queries, too. The reason society must be organized along racial and ethnic lines, without getting into the spiritual side of things, is that human nature ensures that that's the only kind of organization that WILL work.

How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Bowling Alone.

>Strangely, those with an active vibrant spiritual life tend to be people with large amounts of leisure time and excess income (ie, rich people and the elderly).

It's also that if you attend church, you have a large social circle of like-minded individuals, for which humans are hard-wired. This is a lament I tend to hear from my atheist friends that in America there are few networking opportunities as thorough as attending a church. A good book about this is "Bowling Alone" about the decline of American civil society (outside of churches, but church attendance is also declining).

I wrote about this over on that other site that shall remain nameless and got a few comments, but also some not-so-good ones. Perhaps the community here might be more understanding and less critical, because this makes perfect sense to me.

Strauss & Howe co-authored a book published in 1997 entitled The Fourth Turning that I could not put down. While researching another topic, they discovered something odd, so they switched gears and researched in depth. They discovered that truly, history repeats itself, with quite distinctive and repeating patterns, going all the way back to the 1100s.

Their premise is simple. Each "turning" is comprised of approximately four 20-year periods similar to regular seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. Each period lasts the time an average person is born till when we start having children. Four of these equal 80 years, an average lifespan.

The best way to envision this is to put yourself in the shoes of a person born in London England around 1904. Speaking in general, Zeitgeist terms, what would their life experiences be? That period was one of great technological advancement. Trains had been around for quite a while. Automobiles were new and were gaining in popularity. Next, what would be the life experiences of someone born in London in 1924? This time became known as "The roaring twenties" due to industrialization.

Lastly, what was the experience of a Londoner born in 1944? Starkly different. And to finish, envision the life experiences of 1964 London.

Strauss & Howe found the same repeating pattern over and over and over again, all the way back to the Dark Ages. The "turning" prior to and analogous to WWII included the Civil War. The one before that included the Revolutionary War. See where I'm going with this?

Each period corresponds to a season. "Spring" for us during this turning was just after WWII where we all rebuilt and put things back together. "Summer" was in the 1960s and everyone here knows what that was like. "Fall" was the 1980s. This is a period where things reach a zenith and begin to show signs of dying, just as during a regular fall the weather turns colder and trees lose their leaves. And then there's "Winter".

Guess where we are today?

Those born during each season also exhibit repeating patterns. We Boomers were born to buck the system, to challenge the conventionality of society, and that we did. The authors gave our archetype the name of "Patriots". Our job during the winter cycle is to help the "hero" generation, our present-day millennials.

And here is where I get to the reason for this long post. We are in this turning's "Crisis" period, which will end in approximately 2020 to 2025. Just as WWII's Dough Boys fought in the trenches during the last Crisis period, it will be the Millennials this time fighting the great fight. They will need our help, fellow Boomers. That's our job. We offer direction, but they are the one's who get it done.

And this makes me so proud and gives me hope. They are almost speaking in one voice: Enough of the madness, we want progressive policies. They are the ones who are to change the world. So your initial post is spot-on in that our systems and structures are becoming more and more dysfunctional, which will worsen until there's a single event, a tipping point if you will, that will bring everyone together. We have not reached the tipping point yet, but we can all feel and see it coming.

I just hope this time around we don't have a WWIII.

From what I've read and watched it does seem like he believes in the pseudoscience touted in The Fourth Turning, which is what I'm referring to. This is a separate concern from whatever he's peddling over at Breitbart.

The intellectual framework that explains many of the questions brought up in the podcast about the current state of American politics can be summed up
in two seminal books, A Conflict of Visions and
The Fourth Turning. After completing these two
volumes, Fox News will suddenly start making sense to you, since some of the language and terms used by the right wing are quite literally incomprehensible (what's "unconstrained vision"?) without these guides.

 

The first book in particular, about the distinction between people and processes, is very relevant today. Why does America tolerate a racist, misogynist, xenophobe? Because one won the election fair and square, while the other stole the
primary nomination from Bernie. So the right wingers are focused on the election process (regardless of candidate), and the left wingers are focused on the candidates (regardless of process). We are literally talking past each other when we don't
grasp this fundamental difference; no communication can take place.

 

About the creation of an Asian-American political voice, the right wing view is that more identity politics is NOT the answer. Again, the distinction between people and processes. We don't want to focus on Asian people (or Black people, or Green people...), instead we want to focus
on the process. BLM is an anger that exists because Obama didn't really make black peoples lives significantly better. Having a hypothetical Asian-American man in the White House wouldn't make our lives significantly better either. And having a racist, misogynist, xenophobe there won't make our lives
significantly worse either, and that's what processes are all about. Checks and balances built-in the system, as opposed to having a god-like dictator who's above the law.

 

If you are short on time, at least glance over the first 100 pages of A Conflict of Visions. The explanatory power of his thesis is profound, and reveals why we should fear the left much more (think 18th century French Revolution, which is what today's not-my-president protesters want).

Best explanation I've ever seen of this idea.

Might help to also explore the incredible repetitive and circular cycles of American politics. Amazing how we repeat ourselves so regularly. A good one I liked from the perspective of the President and how a good one governs with the tenor of the American political lean in mind:

Presidential Leadership in Political Time

I'd also check out:

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy

Despite it getting a bad wrap due to Steve Bannon using it to explain away his idiotic end of time accelerationism bullshit, it's an excellent book towards understanding how frighteningly repetitive we are.

From the article AlterNate linked, quoting what the Authors of The Fourth Turning said in 1997:
>Based on historical patterns, America will hit a once-in-a-century national crisis within the decade...'like winter,' the crisis or 'fourth turning' cannot be averted. It will last 20 years or so and bring hardship and upheavals similar to previous fourth turnings, such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. The fourth turning is a perilous time because the result could be a new 'golden age' for America or the beginning of the end. It all will begin with a 'sudden spark' that catalyzes a crisis mood around the year 2005.

So, according to them, we're looking at a massive crisis that would be triggered around 2005, and be in full force no later than 2007.

From Wikipedia:
>The subprime crisis impact timeline lists dates relevant to the creation of a United States housing bubble and the 2005 housing bubble burst (or market correction) and the subprime mortgage crisis which developed during 2007 and 2008.



edit: realized that I needed more exposition.

Liberal Fascism is also an excellent book. Well footnoted and referenced, written by Jonah Goldberg: https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189

I've been hooked on Jonah Goldberg since Liberal Fascism. I don't think i've ever found something to disagree about with him.

I don't think that has anything to do with fascism. I think they word you are looking for is Authoritarian.

Technically speaking we already live in a de facto-fascist state.
Fascism is the combining of corporate (private business) and government entities to form one power that controls the state and Means of Production for the economy.

Fascism forming in the United States (and maybe the world) has not come over night, but slowly thru the passing of laws and restricting individual liberties.

Giving businesses the right to own property, have rights as People (including the right to vote) and the Citizens United case was a large turning point in my opinion.


---

Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg

He's famous for writing "What's the matter with Kansas?"

I'm about to read What's the Matter with Kansas? It's supposed to answer this very question.

Do you have any data to support these assertions? Im curious, but hard numbers really are important here.

> http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

This seems as relevant as ever. Im adding it to my "to read" list, sadly itll be a while till I get to it though.

What's the matter with Kansasa

Look, I don't even know where to begin. That was a lot of assumptions. I'm sorry you have this view of the left. I don't believe at all that leftists dislike rural people, nor dislike them simply because they are rural. The hatred that many on the left is not directed at rural people, but conservative ideology.

The left does see conservative ideology as a major barrier to making the world better, for both economic reasons and reasons of social justice. But the left doesn't see the rural, white working class as the cause of this ideology. The ideology is perpetuated by the wealthy and powerful. But for me personally, I don't blame anyone personally for believing in this ideology. I don't think conservatives or even the wealthy are bad, evil people, I simply think they are wrong.

Liberals are more likely to pity rural folk, if anything (which granted is condescending), because we feel that they've been duped by the wealthy into supporting politics that simply make the wealthy wealthier, allowing them to exploit the working class further and destroy the environment for their own profit.

I know I can't convince you of anything here or even force you to see another perspective on your politics.

But I would like you start making an attempt to learn more about liberals, and get to know some personally. Liberals are people, and I feel like you've forgotten that. You've really managed to demonize them, because you sincerely believe that they have demonized you and the people you care about, but I don't believe that's largely true. You can cherry pick examples of anything. I'd really appreciate it if you would make an effort to talk to more liberals. Maybe asks some questions on /r/askaliberal, or expand your media diet. Especially try to talk to some in person.

This is a classic book which claims that conservatives, in the 90s, came to see politics as no longer a matter of rich vs. poor, but a matter of NASCAR vs Starbucks, as a cultural matter rather than an economic matter, which works out really well for the rich. https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

​

​

​

People have been asking that for over 10 years...

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457235862&sr=8-1-fkmr2

What's the Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank. 2005.

>Am I missing something

You are, in the 90's, pc games you had entire control of the game software and files, you could mod things for free and people could make levels and share stuff for free. Ever since mmo's and steam, the corporate world has been doing a full court press against software ownership.

Pre mass high speed internet penetration they had to give you the entire game to run on your PC. Ever since they discovered the average gamer is tech illiterate and not very bright, they've been doing horrible stuff to the game files like encrypting stuff and making them difficult to mod.

Paid mods is further erosion of control of game software so they can remove your rights completely to own anything you are paying for. They are basically theives at this point and it would take a long discussion of intellectual property law and the mass corruption of capitalist society to fully flesh out.

Your post speaks to your political and historical ignorance of how corrupt the world really is, you don't really understand how evil the companies around you really are.

IP law is corrupt and is never going to be non corrupt, capitalism is not compatable with rule of law. You do not live in a democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFxtNgOeiI

Book:

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

Before I begin your brain does not reason nor see reality as it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

What goes down in the US goes down in all capitalist western states, they all follow the same model of "politics as show" where the public has no input if you look at the research.

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatised soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865

I think most of us Americans feel shame over slavery and the Amerindian genocide, plus the numerous smaller abuses (railroad coolies, abuse of Irish, Japanese internment of WWII, etc.). Also those who have read our history recognize that our foreign policy has been nasty and exploitative since a few years after our founding (we exploited the hell out of the Caribbean and Latin America since the early 1800s, I highly recommend this).

That said, we've also done some wonderful things! Despite the propaganda and televised jingoism, most Americans are good-hearted and generous folks. I would even argue that we're the most benign and beneficent of the superpowers in history (compare us to Victorian British Empire or Colonial Spanish Empire or Holy Roman Empire or Rome itself, etc.).

I am proud to be an American, but also recognize that [like nearly ever people] we've done some horrible things. It is far more shameful to pretend we never did evil (Japan & Nanking, Turkey & Armenian genocide) than to recognize and admit our mistakes.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Einstein wasn't really involved in the project, though he played a significant role in warning the US government that it was possible and how bad an idea it would have been to let the Nazis get it first. Even though he wasn't involved, he had the name recognition that the president would read something that he sent.

Oppenheimer was basically in charge of all the science during the project.

Feynman did work on it, but he was pretty young at the time, so he wasn't one of the senior people.

There's a really excellent Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Rhodes that describes everything, if you're interested.

> Want to know more?

You should also read this book, "The making of the atom bomb".

I would love to have him around this election cycle. He would most likely be skewering Obama, and especially Hillary. He hates the Clintons, and was one of the first journalists to dig deep into all of their scandals.

The whole clinton strategy has been say one thing, and do everything the Republicans want: http://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996

Voting for her is basically the same as an establishment GOP candidate like Cruz.

If you want some insight into how truly corrupt the Clintons are, pick up No One Left to Lie to by Christopher Hitchens - and thats just the corruption that occurred in the 90s.

https://www.amazon.com/One-Left-Lie-Triangulations-Jefferson/dp/1455522996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481000042&sr=8-1&keywords=no+one+left+to+lie+to

Reading this thread makes me want to recommend [Ghost Wars] (http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669) to anyone interested in this topic.

Command & Control if you never want to sleep again. Its more related to the controls systems/procedures than overall development though.

> Now, Fat Man and Little Boy? Those were different stories. Apparently they were just kept under heavy guard before being loaded onto the planes, and actually arming them was as easy as pulling a pin (imagine a big hand grenade), setting the burst altitude, and dropping them out of the plane.

That lack of security control on nuclear weapons was allowed to persist for a shockingly long time. Some in SAC considered the lack of control a positive, arguing that the weapons wouldn't be rendered useless in the case of a decapitation attack.

Eric Schlosser's Command and Control is a great and easily accessible history on nuclear weapon safety.

Niet alleen daar, fouten zijn vrij vaak voorkomend. Lees dit boek: https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788

This is an entertaining book on the history of nuclear weapon incidents.

They also go over the Damascus incident, where a Titan Missile silo in Arkansas exploded in an accident. Apparently they made a film about it.

> and paying them to efficiently and cheaply extract and sell local resources.

For your consideration.

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006

Skp to the section about how the CIA overthrew the government of Guatemala so the United Fruit Company got a sweet deal with the new government.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for 2007 and is based on >50,000 documents(mostly from from the CIA archives), and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans (including ten Directors of Central Intelligence).

I think the biggest reasons people hate the US is because of the CIA and how destructive its history has been. http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006 is a great read. It explains why the world thinks we are meddlesome. And by we, I mean the US government, not its people. As a whole, the US population doesn't really get how destructive the CIA has been and the repercussions because of that.

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Not our first misadventure. Sure as hell will not be the last.

one of my Criminal Justice professors recommended this book: legacy of ashes
Not entirely focused on the MK Ultra but good nonetheless.
It's a very good read.

Also the Men Who stare at Goats a good cinematic example.

It's very intriguing to see how they added the program into the show. Very cool way to introduce 11 (messed up) but cool.

The CIA is the one who said that Iraq had WMD's to begin with. They also had the war plan already drawn up and in place. I thought this was common knowledge. There have been several investigative books written about this.

The CIA is a rogue organization that is the cause for much of the chaos around the world. "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner has the best book (best sourced and footnoted) on how the CIA actually operates.

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482114137&sr=8-1&keywords=cia

> A legacy of ashes

Some of the reviews here are useful: https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006

This is why there is such dissonance between the actual CIA and the one presented to us by Hollywood.

I'll just leave this here for those interested int he history of the CIA:

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

This is a good question.

I would like to echo that sentiment.

While the Koch brothers have had an aggressive political agenda for some time, applying their billions of dollars to influence a radical agenda onto US politics Dark Money, by Jane Mayer ...

The bigger issue here is:

• Do you trust the site?
  
• Do you trust the author?
  
• Do you trust the content?
  
• Do you trust the OP? reddit-user-analyser
  
  Be skeptical.
  
  Some of us are misanthropes, some of us are a bit kooky, some of us might actually be reasonable normal human beings; but some among us are bad actors which have commercial, corporate or political agendas. some of us are bots, trolls, manipulators.
  
  Again, this is a good question.

I've actually been really disappointed to read into the history and current usage of most modern non-profits (charities) and realized that they are basically a tax dodge for the super-rich. For instance, think of the tax breaks for donating to various non-profits. They don't disappear if you own the charity, allowing you to create charities, place your own money in them to reduce your tax burden, and spend it how you like.

And almost none has to be directed towards your stated goal, similar to how non-profits like The Wounded Warriors Project use less than 10% of the donated money to actually help veterans.

Even worse, depending on the type of 501 non-profit it is, you can usually use that money politically. Recent-ish court cases have determined that, even ones that were originally designed to not permit political spending, the word "primarily" allows for up to 49% of money to be spend on political issues directly. And obfuscation can allow for plenty more to indirectly support political issues.

A final piece of the puzzle is how you can set up tax-free trusts for your kids to avoid estate taxes. They sound good: the rich get no taxes to transfer money to their kids because the interest that accrues on the trust for a decade or two goes to charities. But when own the charity you are giving the interest to, it's just a tax dodge.

If you are interested in reading more, the book Dark Money is a fascinating read. It is a bit left of center, though. Provides a lot of background on non-profits and their inception though... they used to be illegal and thought of as thoroughly un-American. And now, they are used to take billions of dollars from the wealthy, while reducing their tax burden, to fund their political causes with no limits, thanks to cases like Citizen's United.

Sorry if this was all a little off topic.

Keep digging:

Look up Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean.

Look into the Koch, Scaife, Olin, De Vos, Bradley, and Coors families, as well as Sheldon Adelson.

Look into the economics departments at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and George Mason University since the 1950s.

Follow the money.

And look at the use of neurolinguistic programming in the higher levels of the fundraising, voter registration and get-out-the-vote schemes in both of our major political parties.

And once you've done all that, go volunteer to work for your county or state party political organization to see how the pyramid works and whether or not I'm talking out the side of my neck.

cc: u/Lamont-Cranston, u/troublesomefaux

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Yeah, it's that whole "What's The Matter With Kansas?" phenomenon.

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X
This is a great read on the subject.

"What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" is a great book on this subject. It talks a lot about how rural conservatives have been convinced into voting for harmful measures against small town America.

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478737100&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

As relevant 10 years ago as it is today, but i think people are beginning to catch on.