History is written by the victors

Make another one about the US abroad.

Movies and other media: USA = savior
Reality: USA = murderers

One like = one cry for those poor American heroes that got PTSD from gunning down Vietnamese rice farmers.
- The Vietnam war was unjustified(blame French colonialism too though), but American soldiers were tortured- see Stockdale

I don't know what history books y'all read but the one I got wasn't shy about the shit we've got on our heads, even if some previously lesser known atrocities weren't part of the material

To be fair, I hear US history education varies wildly by state. Thanks states rights!
- So, there's a chance to meet someone from another state that may really have been taught a different history at school. How different depends on the state's political majority?
- What state portrays US history as utopian in the past 20 years? I grew up in Kentucky and definitely got a lot of stuff about slavery, Native American betrayals and murders, civil rights, Mexican American war, Hawaiian colonization, the only reason they didn't cover the Vietnam war or Filipino is because they ran out of time from assigning pointless art projects.
  Edit: Other stuff that was covered, bonus army, workers rights and child abuses
My schools and textbooks weren't shy about the acts of evil that were committed, but somehow found ways to speak highly of those involved in said acts
- Because people can do good things and horrible things in their life. Essentially no one is universally evil in everything they do.
If it ain't a retelling that it's all shit a la Howard Zinn it really tends to be rose colored glasses trying to explain how the true nationalistic spirit of freedom loving America always strives to win out in the end. But it's really a rotten foundation leading to a rotten house.
https://libcom.org/article/peoples-history-united-states-howard-zinn-0
- Zinn still begins his book by complaining about Stalin, who, last time I checked, never set foot in the United States. A People’s History is still a liberal text, one that insists that the USA is flawed but good. We read it in my APUSH class, and even today the teacher is a hardcore Biden supporter who thinks that communism is evil and that workers should allow capitalists to drain their blood. People who are actually interested in american history should read Gerald Horne.

Americabad, what a new and refreshing take thanks lemmy

Maybe there's a reason why Americabad is such a common take? Just something to think about...
- Yes, Kremlin, and more recently also CCP, disinformation on social media.
Just because you're personally tired of hearing about it doesn't mean it's wrong
I get what you mean. But something about the fourth of July just brings it out of me

Guys named Victor:

Actually History isn't always written by the victors. After WW2 a load of german officers fled to south America and began writing books about how great they were and could have won if only they had finished developing all their wonder weapons in time. This is the origin of a lot of persistent and false memes about how advanced and brilliant the nazis supposedly were. It's history written by losers.

You talk about memes. I don't know them. I think all states, including Germany, teach the story of the Victors in school
Interestingly, the CIA also rescued thousands of high-profile Nazis and brought them to the USA, where they were given positions of power and authority (Operation Paperclip, Operation Bloodstone), and began teaching people that changing anything is impossible and we need to fight communism because it is evil and authoritarian and goes against human nature and always fails (not because it’s the most effective way to destroy Nazism).
- Clean Wehrmacht mythos was critical to get West Germany fully into NATO by 1955.
The Lost Cause myth is the same thing

"Justice will prevail? Of course it will! Because the winners will claim justice!"

lelz. can relate. I was at a family's house for the holiday and they had a book about California history... Shit was funny as hell. The first 30 pages was basically just shit talking Californios, Spanish, and Mexican settlers. They quoted a lot of English, French, and United Statian visitors instead of the people who lived in California... Comments ranged from "the Californios looked uncivilized" to "they wasted the land they had". Then on page 31, they had 1 small paragraph were they talked about "an event" where the US acquired the land. Uh, ya mean the bullshit war where the US invaded Mexico and stole half of it?! The book continued with a whole chapter on the gold rush. XD Fucking trash!

Graduated high school with the belief that the US was a perfect, infallible nation.

Got to college. Couldn't get any classes. ~~~_Wondered~~~ pardon the fuck out me wandered into a history class in attempt to get a class, any class.

Was blown away. Ended up getting a history degree and becoming considerably more cynical and jaded about the whole thing.

What's that quote? History is written by the winners. Yeah, something like that. Not to say the alternative would have been better, but bad historians will always leave out the worst parts of a country's history.

What's that quote? History is written by the winners. Yeah, something like that.
...you mean the title of the post?
- Attention spans just keep getting shorter.
reminds me of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States
- My bad. I didn't even read the title, just saw the picture. lol

US History (College and any sane public school) actually does do a good job of describing all the crazy stuff the country has pulled against people.

It just conveniently skips explaining anything global in the past 40-50 years that has a direct effect on lots of things happening today.

Stuff like SEATO, Israel, how OPEC was neutralized, Iraq, Iran, KSA, Israel again, Afghanistan, 9/11, etc.

"We won WWII, absolutely nothing happened for 25 years, we landed on the moon, and now we're all caught up!"

Even if you look past the cruelties committed, it's still disappointing.

I've read a variety of books on various wars and those that we were involved in were mostly disappointing in regards to tactical decisions. Everything after the revolution either feels like a fluke or just simply feels as if we brute forced our way through with resources until the post WWII era where various campaigns failed due to guerilla warfare. I'm oversimplifying but especially early on in its life the country's militia was a bit unimpressive.