Can you make a video about Thomas Paine in the future?

A well done video on the legacy of the Wild West. I still enjoy the Wild West stories form the myth but I’ll admit that in REALITY, this country needs to properly deal with the consequences. I don’t see liberal politicians ACTIVELY challenging the myth, I don’t see leaders calling to attention the legacy of violence wrought on the west and demanding change. For example, for a country that prides itself on citizenship, the Indian question and never been resolved. Are Indians true citizens? No I don’t view Congress as granting citizenship as anything really positive; just one attempt to assimilate. Has any president t argued that “listen the Native American is A PART of U.S. they represent something we’ve never gotten rid of-our need for conquest. But let’s change that. Let’s make the Native American a fully realized sovereign nation, let’s stop using reservations, let’s be as environmentally friend as possible. Let’s stop using state and federal governments to use violence to solve issues we must stop using religious/ezceptionalsim/ and individualism to justify why we do or don’t do stuff..” As you pointed out, the violence never left. In the 1860a-1930s, Mexicans faced serious violence by the state and federal government. All part of the nadir. Years later, the borders remain highly dangerous and Hispanic citizens pointed out that Trump’s rhetoric would cause similar violence their families faced years before. Then the mass shooting in El Paso occurred.

TY for the video! In support of the idea that the US American frontier is not fully represented by "The Wild West," I submit that Miami was not founded until 1896 because it wasn't until then that it was accessible by the railroad, and could only be reached by boat or by walking along the beach path. Further south in Florida would not be reached until years later, with Key West unreachable by roadway until the 1930's. Furthermore, roughly 10% of the land is still in dispute with one of the three Seminole nations, which has yet to settle their dispute with Uncle Sam in the 200 years since the Traty of Moultrie Creek (IIRC). While I'm posting, I also have to voice my support for the previous post by@@bradhorowitz2765

@@MarcillaSmith appreciate the support. Oh Miami! What a fascinatingly dumb get also hopeful place you are! (Admittedly I’m citing that viewpoint from Dan le betsrd show). That’s actually quite interesting to know that Miami and key west are “newer cities”. Considering the current state of Florida, it would not be a bad idea to resolve the treaty disputes. For starters it could reduce local/U.S. federal oversight on territories-thus no need to increase expenditures from the taxing population. Two, it would be a positive agreement to essentially respect Indian treaty rights and to help continue granting more protection and recognition. Three, by granting natives their rights through their treatises, it could mean a positive impact on the community (less crime, better health, more money, eco-friendly, less poverty). Admittedly that’s assuming all parties are going to be looking at their contents best interests. But I think the evidence speaks for itself.

@@bradhorowitz2765 It's an odd situation. Considering the circumstances, they might have it worked about as best they can. It seems ultimately intractable for the foreseeable future. I'm going from memory here, so some of this will be off, but most of the land is a part of Big Cypress National Forest. So the forest service allows them to live and move between their chickee villages, as they have for thousands of years, and continues to manage the land. The Original Council of the Miccosukkee-Simanolee Indians, as I believe they're called, is only about 100-200 people, so there's no way they could manage all of the land, considering parts include cities as large as Fort Myers. The US Supreme Court has awarded them like $600 Million, but they aren't interested in the money, they want to refuse to give up their rights to it. But I think there's a mutual understanding that they can't manage all of the land even within the preserve, considering the amount of development around it. They lead a very traditional lifestyle, even refusing to use the written version of their language developed by the "Big Tribe" of the Seminoles. OTOH, they will occasionally venture into the land occupied by the "Newcomers" in order to do construction or other work, and even purchase some modern conveniences.

Check out the wild west extravaganza

Sounds like a job for Dan Carlin.

We all want more imo I suppose we could make it so

While watching a Family Feud compilation, one of the survey question was "what's your fantasy job if you lived in the old West" and it made me wonder if the "Wild West" as portrayed in the media (filled with saloons full of violent gambling and womanizing drunken cowboys ready for a duel at any moment, among other clichés) was anything like the actual West in the 1800s. It prompted me to do a "myth of the wild west" Google search, and it's how I found this video.

​@@jzen1455 I'm under the impression that the frontier was the place where malign, antisocial people often went, though? ...You know, basically because in other locations, they'd go to jail.

A very interesting movie from my country, argentina, is The Last Indian Attack (el ultimo malon) from 1918 depicting a mocovi uprising that happened in santa fe in 1904 as a consecuence of the destitution of the natives and which ended with a shootout with some villagers. The movie was made by a socialist director and is simpathetic to the plight of the mocovi people.

I looked up the movie you mentioned and I noticed the Wikipedia article was available in only two languages; Spanish and Welsh, with the latter likely written by a Welsh Argentine. The diversity of your country is amazing!@@ill232

Canada too but don’t have quite the violence bit still had Indian schools and reservations.

Mexico even had a full out war that ended up in ethnic cleansing and slavery for the defeated Yaquis until the post revolutionary governments recognized their sovereignty.

Yes, but never at the scale the US did, not even close. Plus, nobody was thrown into reservations or forced to march to new lands, and plus, they didn't dissapear like they did in the US, in a lot of countries most of the population is half-native, and a lot of the cuisine and some cultural aspects were inherited from the natives. This did not happen in the US, in which the culture and cuisine is almost entirely white, not to mention the people.

Hmmm... I can't speak for Norway, but that's a bit of a generalization of America. Many Americans define the US by the decade immediately following independence and the first 10 constitutional amendments. Many Americans do in fact subscribe to the Western frontier myth. Interestingly, most Black Americans (I'm Black) view America and its definition as a whole: Founding Slavery Several attempts at civil rights during enslavement (Dred Scott Supreme Court decision etcetera) The Civil War The Reconstruction (or as we call it some version of 40 acres and broken promises) WW1 The Great Depression WW2 Civil Rights and Unrest era The Backslide (or as we call it Nixon leading to Reagan) The Clinton years 9/11 The Obama years The Backlash (Donald Trump years and Jan. 6th) This isn't to say Black people are more honest or in tune with reality. More like reality had us by the throat and made itself impossible to ignore. A long way to say people try to take what they view as the most triumphant and least problematic time to define themselves. Edit; I forgot to say: A long way to say people try to take what they view as the most triumphant and least problematic time to define themselves. However, America is too broad and varied to generally say _______ is how we all define ourselves. Even my statement on how Black Americans view ourselves is too much of a generalization as many of us receive the same cookie cutter history education as the Western frontier or Founding Fathers myth believers.

Yeah. Borderlands history has been an interesting inverse of that - like practitioners acknowledge that they're dealing with the margins of sovereignty, yet somehow that informs the whole

@@john2g1 Yeah I was probably brushing with big strokes, your experience might vary from the main narratives. Norwegian history also looks very different if one is Sami/Qven/Forest Finn/Jewish/immigrant in the "More like reality had us by the throat and made itself impossible to ignore" way as you put it. Thanks for bringing the perspective.

Politics is the death of a Nation's' morale.

I don't think Britain does this, but it does romanticise eras of being nationally isolated. People still reference the "nation of shopkeepers" which was a Napoleonic phrase from the era of the Continental blockade, forgetting the series of alliances Britain was in to oppose democracy. Then the major reference was the Battle of Britain when the country was isolated in its fight against the Nazis, apart from exiled soldiers from Europe and the whole empire that it mobilised to do so and recieved continuous American aid. Now we're under the strain of Brexit that can be blamed on the EU not giving in to every demand from whoever is Prime Minister this year. Children of Men really captured the whole Britain Bravely Soldiering On myth well.

Caesar had at least some minor historical excuses for his genocidal "pacification methods", though: The Romans lost, over the cause of several 100 years, on their own territory indeed hundreds of thousands of people to roaming tribes, and had thus suffered in result several national traumata . - That said, the Romans were also the first who truly mastered the field of diplomatic legitimation for war; it were invariably their enemies who started it. 😆

Caesar’s passage across Gaul was an unreal exercise in pacification. Search all you like through American history, you won’t find a parallel to the battle of Alesia, or to the mass amputations in Trans-Alpine Gaul. Even the most brutal Indian war falls short of the Helvetii campaign.

The native American tribes committed genocide on each other, there's nothing new, it's just the Europeans had more advanced technology so they were more successful.

It doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme

in his defense, he did bring lots of Gallic nobles into senates, and Gallic population didn’t shrink that much as the Indians, they were integrated into Roman empire. Indians never did.

I've always known they weren't accurate and I still love watching them 🤷

kinda amusing, when I think about some of the modern complaints about the works of Karl May. See, May was a 19th century german author of, among other things, adventure stories. In foreign lands. Which he never visited and mainly knew about based on the books he read in the prison library. (You can actually follow the routes in those novels on maps, he did that pretty well). His two most famous works? THe Orient Cycle, taking place in the ottoman Empire... and the Winnetou novels (and their respective "side works")... in the American frontier. THe Main character is an idealized version of May himself (though he did become more like his character later in life). He got many things wrong, but one thing to note: The vast majority of indigenous characters in the USA are constantly portrayed as victims of white expansion. Rather impressive for a 19th century author who based the stuff on books he'd read. ANd people complain about his writing, again, 19th century guy who came up with the stuff based on the literature he'd read while incarcerated.

@@undertakernumberone1 thanks for sharing, never heard of this guy before but this sounds like a must read, I wonder what set him apart from other Western writers during that time. Maybe his nationality?

@@juggernaut1133 Well, for one he is (at least once his works really found their formula) amusingly a pretty pacifistic writer, and rather religious (in the sense of, say, justifying to spare someone because he is a christian). And his work being primarily german, he is more well known there and, i think in eastern europe. CHarlie/Kara Ben Nemsi (His names in the west and in the ottoman empire, next to his western nom de guerre, "Old SHatterhand") in the vast majority of cases prefers to spare his enemies, even if he knows that they'll most likely be trouble later on. The character "Winnetou" for which 3, well, 4 but the fourth is a distant sequel, is named is an Apache chief which he befriends and becomes the blood brother off. (and a hwole lot of the stuff can be, in a modern PoV, be interpreted quite homoerotically...) I again repeat: He didn't write out of experience or anything. He read while incarcerated and went fantasy from there. So a whole lot of it is hogwash from a historical POV, and other stuff is "bad" from a modern day PoV. I enjoy the stories as a whole still. I think at least some of the novels might be available in englsih on Amazon for Kindle? But the issue is finding good translations... May's writing developed from the anonymous first-person observer-narrator (for example Der Gitano, 1875) to a narrator with heroic skills and equipment, to a fully formed first-person narrator-hero.[citation needed] With few exceptions, May had not visited the places he described, but he compensated successfully for his lack of direct experience through a combination of creativity, imagination, and documentary sources including maps, travel accounts and guidebooks, as well as anthropological and linguistic studies. The work of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Gabriel Ferry, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Balduin Möllhausen and Mayne Reid served as his models.[citation needed] Non-dogmatic Christian values play an important role in May's works. Some of the characters are described as being of German, particularly Saxon, origins. In a letter to a young Jew who intended to become a Christian after reading May's books, May advised him first to understand his own religion, which he described as holy and exalted, until he was experienced enough to choose.[11] May's writing developed from the anonymous first-person observer-narrator (for example Der Gitano, 1875) to a narrator with heroic skills and equipment, to a fully formed first-person narrator-hero.[citation needed] With few exceptions, May had not visited the places he described, but he compensated successfully for his lack of direct experience through a combination of creativity, imagination, and documentary sources including maps, travel accounts and guidebooks, as well as anthropological and linguistic studies. The work of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Gabriel Ferry, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Balduin Möllhausen and Mayne Reid served as his models.[citation needed] Non-dogmatic Christian values play an important role in May's works. Some of the characters are described as being of German, particularly Saxon, origins. In a letter to a young Jew who intended to become a Christian after reading May's books, May advised him first to understand his own religion, which he described as holy and exalted, until he was experienced enough to choose.[11] Trivia: Despite May's pacifism and (depending on the book and still steeped in the views of his day) actually somewhat anti-racist writing (like, say, in a story which takes place a few years after the Civil War, the Ku-Klux Klan,including former slave overseers, is a bunch of villains and there are black characters who from a modern day poV wouldn't fly but, considering hte period they are from, are more than just a flat stock character... And despite that, he was greatly admired by a certain austrian dictator...

His name is Marion Morrison. That wasn't his Christian name. He wasn't born with that name.

This is really interesting. You're the second limp wristed smooth brain I have seen talking about Blood Meridian and how it's the greatest and most true to life western ever written. What is it specifically about this book that makes you r*tards think this, I'm curious?

Cynics unite! as we search for humanity with our lanterns held aloft

@@CynicalHistorian "Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist" George Carlin

same

​@@SparksProx Oh Boo Hoo. You want history? Go watch a documentary or read a book.

@@SparksProx it’s a movie that probably wasn’t advertised as a historical movie

Go back to Europe settler

Yes and they are amazing movies

I still like the movies, well some of them. One of the best movies I've seen is High Noon, 1953 or so. Gary Cooper stars. I highly recommend it🙂

Bajor wasn't "deep space" to the Bajorans, or the Cardassians.

I don't know that I'd call Vietnam a populist uprising since it was a proxy war that would have been dealt with far better if the outside had left both North and South alone.

John Wayne played cowboys,soldiers only playing.

Literally no one likened Dubya to John Wayne. Fascinating the lies people will tell to fit in though.

I mean, of all the people to liken GWB to, that's one I didn't see coming

John wayne and Ronald Reagan would be more similar.

@@hour25-wi5px See now THAT makes sense!

IT WAS ENTERTAINMENT.... It was NEVER meant to be a real historical docudrama. Put down your iPhone and your Starbucks and stop making a big deal about this stuff. This isn't history.

True but the fact remains that media very much influences how people see history and define their nation's place in the world. Media should make a better effort to be more accurate to the eras they cover and not romanticize them or propagate harmful myths about the era.@@justinmc9287

​@@justinmc9287No it wasn't just entertainment... people believed these films depicted a true history...my grandfather & other older men I knew would in some ways mimic Clint Eastwood & John Wayne. These dudes were like the definition of masculinity to a lot of older men...talk to them.

@@jermainewatsonsr314 It is/was 100% entertainment. And here we are years and years later able to sit back and pick apart and trash things that were made before we were born not truly understanding them. As for people mimicing and believing this stuff...so what? Why is that a big deal? Oh yeah...the war on toxic masculinity. Lol. Well maybe I should go get a manipedi and frost my tips and get some organic free range gluten free hand moisturizer? You're wound up because "people believed"? People believe CNN and Fox News...doesn't mean anything in the scheme of things.

@@justinmc9287 LOL, OK boomer.

Django has the film language of a western even if it’s not a western

Which is why the last major train robbery in US history was in frigging Ohio...

And yet most of the game doesn’t even take place in the West

Well that purely depends on your definition of "West." If you're referring to frontier history, then everywhere has that. If you're referring to West of the 100th meridian, then none of that is at all similar whatsoever. Perspective matters

The overlap is because the “West” has always been primarily populated by, and characterized by, mainly Southern migrants. The stories are similar because the people are essentially the same. At least during the time period the stories were being born. The exception to this being California, which always had a separate story of its own.

I'm happy to make recommendations for further reading on any specifics if you need anything

@CynicalHistorian If you have anymore good ones to recommend that would greatly help

which specifics?

@CynicalHistorian If you have any other good book recommendations in addition to the ones listed in the video I could pull through that would be great. I'm lacking a good book source.

@CynicalHistorian The only books I've used so far is Blood Meridian and Under the Feet of Jesus. I'm essentially clogged up with Articles and Readings I've found online and I wanna use something different.

Reddit spacing is a hallmark of certified dullards.

But Germany did pay reparations to many that suffered under the Nazi regime. I do not have the complete details, but my Polish Grandparents received payments from Germany. It was my understanding that this was related to the forced labor my grandparents were subjected to. Germany has done much work to actively confront its troubling legacy in the 20th century. America angrily refuses to do this. Much scholarship has already been done to calculate the dollar amount that slave labor would have cost if paid for. The research includes detailed calculations of the greater economics of wealth gained from slave labor and land acquisitions from the native populations. When one looks at the stark differences that exist within communities that are the descendants of enslaved people and displaced natives, talk of reparations is not unreasonable or purely political. Unless you consider the actions Germany took after WWII to compensate victims and recognize its central role in that victimization to be political. I'd be surprised if you see it that way. It is a matter of justice and course correction. Keeping skeletons in the closet without acknowledgment and corrective action is not healthy. Can we agree on that?

@@lemuzyka That was done up to the 1990s, and it was paid to the victims, they could legitimately claim damages. Not going to lose myself in the details of that, because my more general point is that you can't continue this indefinitely through time. If you refuse to let events recede into history and don't let them cease to affect the present, you'll end up with things like that case in 2015, where descendants of Spanish Moors tried to sue the Spanish government for the deportation of their ancestors in the 16th century. As I see it, now in 2023, we're done with WWII with regard to reparations, and America should consider itself done with anything that happened up to 1945 as well. There is legacy, yes, but ask yourself: when would you stop? In criminal law, statutes of limitation exist for a reason. They should exist between nations and other historically relevant collectives, too, because at some point digging up old skeletons is not worth the strife it causes any more.

​@@Asankeket So as you stated, the victims of Germany's war crimes were paid. What is more, is that Germany has continued to take a stance in the world that accounts for what Naziism was and did. I see Germany's accommodation of Middle Eastern/Syrian refugees as a legacy of that. Certainly, the hesitance to be involved with supplying arms to Ukraine is another. It is also my understanding that German schoolchildren are fully educated about the horrors of the Nazi era. America, on the contrary, has never made an accounting. America has in fact created mythologies as opposed to reflective conversations about painful history. This includes the "Wild West" as well as the Confederate apologist "Lost Cause". These false apologist narratives have served to perpetuate the original transgressions of slavery and Native genocide. I am not sure if you, as a German, truly understand the incredible disparity that exists in America concerning wealth, health, incarceration, trauma, mortality, etc. that is correlated with race. So this is not about dragging up grievances that are generations old. This is directly related to the original sin. The American slave system was built over 250 years with all of the social constructs that supported it. Native genocide went on much longer than that. We are about 160 years removed from slavery, perhaps 120-100 years removed from the Native genocide. Yet the social constructs remain. The systems remain. Addressing these continued inequities requires an active stance, not a passive framework of "water under the bridge". If the former worked, then America's problems would not be. As a white American, I will also argue that modern generations of white Americans benefit from the barbarous privileges of their ancestors. The fact that white Americans find it so intolerable to speak of these horrible historical realities tells of the coddled image we learn of ourselves. Our Black and Brown fellow citizens grow up feeling fear, shame, and then outrage at living with the ostensible status of second-class citizens. I am a second-generation American and I am solidly middle class. My Polish grandparents worked so hard for that status, but they were also lucky enough to be white. My black and brown friends, whose ancestors have been in this country for many hundreds of years more than my own family still have not acquired the generational family wealth that mine has. This is not an accident or a representation of the personal failings of black and brown Americans. It speaks to America's willful amnesia, mythologizing, and a continued commitment to white supremacist systems. America has the largest imprisoned population in the world. It is majority black, descendants of enslaved people. Reparations I tell you.

Yeah it's really not that complicates

So France should give back England. 1066. Why is USA demonized for the way history happened?

@@user-tf3zs4ih4tCalm down and read the comment again. Defensiveness is impairing your rationality and interfering with comprehension.

No state in the union was 40%. Also you should watch _Warrior_ (2019)

@@CynicalHistorian - You're right. I was off by 10%. Idaho was nearly 30% Chinese in the 1870 census. Now, most of the Chinese influence in the small towns is found in their dirt, small pieces of broken pottery.

You’re

@@SkyguyFilmsZooruvfilms quite so, typo

Absolutely, except that a front moves as fast as soldiers do, whereas a frontier is more of a periodization over decades

Within the myth, anyone outside the strong white settler stereotype was on the margins of that story - they were marginalized by the myth

You guys got your idea of how to deal with the aboriginals from us just look at Neville the devil and his schools and the parallels of Carlisle’s Indian schools

Yes, at the end of the day, American individualism helps push America toward moral progress and away from racism. Even though that individualism has many racist facets to it, completely demonizing it means that you lose the thing that pushed America toward moral progress.

You're always young sir. Youth is more determined by the mind than the body. God bless

So a couple of things: Race is a social construct a completely made up thing based without scientific merit on skin color, features, and loosely ancestral area of origin In modern colloquial terms calling something "racist" is to say that thing is based without scientific merit on a group of people from another group with differong ethnicities Those two things explained I can say the was American attacks on the indigenous populations were racist in every definition of the word. The violence was groups of people separated by ethnicity. Additionally, specifically White Americans were labeled as the Caucasian race and the indigenous Americans were newly invented Indian race. I have seen other terms like Redman race, but keep in mind this is all unscientific made up BS. A long way to say English on Irish violence was ethnic (and often religious) violence just like in the Americas. However, if we're going to use the word racist American violence clearly fits the definition.

@@john2g1 What I am saying is that “race” is a post facto rationale for what was already being done.. There is what is called the Rumplestiltskin effect in some fields, that hanging a name on something makes it go away like the malign fairy in Grimm’s fairy tale. Earlier rationales were that Indians or Blacks were not Christians, but that got indefensible.

@@tomhalla426 I read your original comment after reading your response... What I said still applies. You're saying that modern people are applying post-facto rationale. I'm saying it is exactly what it is. I don't care why the English defeated the Irish. Land, a king's ego, a peasant class, national security... All of this could have been a part of the rationale. Regardless of the reasoning for England's conquest and oppression of Ireland it was ethnic violence. Regardless of the reasoning for the United States of America's conquest and oppression of every non-citizen living in what is now the United States of America; the conquest itself WAS racist. I don't know what is in your mind, but I'm trying to explain that you're accidentally (I hope) doing a thing that bad faith actors do. Take the Nazis... I can list a bunch of reasons as to why the German government and people targeted Jews. However, regardless of the reasoning the action was racist. Today we associate racism and racist with evil and a lack of intelligence (two unambiguously bad words). So bad faith actors will say "It wasn't racism or anti-religion. The Jews formed their own society in Germany and caused harm to the post WW1 economy."

@@john2g1 I think you misunderstand me. Hanging a name on some event does not explain it. Were the Mongols racist when they conquered the Chinese, Arabs, Turks, etc? Now, the NSDAP was operating on an explicitly racist version of socialism, for “aryans” only. They did believe they were the Herrenvolk. Southern US slaveholders were using the notion of “race” as an ex post facto rationale for what society they had, as that sort of excuse was a product of the early 19th Century. Supposing Spanish conquistadors were motivated by “white supremacy” is intersectional verbiage and an anachronism.

@@tomhalla426 Ah okay so perhaps we are not that far apart, but I would definitely say we have different views on events. No, the Mongolian Khans were not racist, because they attempted to conquer everyone including their fellow Khans. Also, the Khans lacked (to the best of my knowledge) the "our people and culture are inherently better" views of the Romans. The Spanish conquistadors implemented a system of female rape and male subordination, sterilization, and execution for the purpose of making the native population less shocking to future Spanish settlers... Smells quite racist, but oh yeah in order to distinguish true Spaniards from mixed ethnicities the Spanish literally wrote a racist book giving us terms like mulatto. ^^I don't see that as intersectional verbiage, nor is that how I would use intersectionality at all. That is just good old fashioned racism: a system of hierarchy and control based on the unscientific social construct of race.

Good points, seeing individual lives of pioneers. Instead of generalizations and stereotypes.

Ah yes, the terrible circumstances of having land, the world's most valuable commodity, given to you for free.

@@jeffersonclippership2588 have you ever done farming? The land being free doesn't make the work easy.

@zzar0humanity I don't doubt that, it's just my Russian serf ancestors would laugh in your face if you told them Americans back then had it hard

@jeffersonclippership2588 its not a competition you dweeb.

Of course, one can celebrate the good things in this period, the good men and women (who didn't think Indians deserved to be thrown out of their homes) one can celebrate those who weren't connected to Indian removal. There are good and bad things everywhere

I think we can tell better stories, without simplistic good vs evil characterization. We've done it plenty of times before and keep doing so

also gatito miau

Haven't seen the Reeves one yet. The other two have been fun thus far. We'll see with the second season of 1923. Don't care for Yellowstone though. Found it boring and melodramatic

@@CynicalHistorianI also don't care for Yellowstone but found 1883 super awesome and im eager to see the second half of 1923. I have only seen two episodes of bass Reeves and they are good dont know how historically acurate it is though