Everyone’s talking about Tiananmen Square as if China is the only nation to repress some of its people. As if it’s the only “super power” to do it.
BEIJING – Chinese police aggressively deterred dissent on Thursday’s 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square, ignoring calls from Hillary Rodham Clinton and even Taiwan’s China-friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence…
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that China, as an emerging global power, ‘should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.’
(Read more).
I can totally read China’s mind: “THE US? REALLY? Didn’t ya’ll destroy an indigenous people and crush your own people with your own military and police every chance you found? Aren’t labor strikes without Americans shooting other Americans kinda new over there?”
We do have a few Tiananmen Squares of our own, to be sure. Read Zinn if you haven’t. Or maybe you were even there.
Still though, damn. I’m glad to be over here today.
Read more past posts:
It was the anniversary of the specific event, not some national holiday commemorating all mankind’s eternal struggle against the inherent evil of government. What did you expect Clinton to do, list every single act of oppression ever carried out by the US and then mention that maybe China’s leadership should acknowledge that it did wrong in ’89? She’s a politician — her VERY EXISTENCE is an exercise in hypocrisy.
Seriously — what would you rather Clinton did? Just not mention it at all? I’m fine with that, as China is moving towards a capitalist economy naturally and will democratize only with the willingness and work of its own citizens (the rants of foreign politicians will do little for them).
Zinn’s publications are rife with anecdotes-sans-context and examples-sans-citation. He goes out of his way to explain why he doesn’t use extensive notation! He asks insightful questions but can’t answer or even address them accurately or persuasively. If you tend toward dogmatically socialist interpretations of history then Zimm’s probably the best thing since sliced bread, but if not, the more trenchant works of folk like Vonnegurt (literary) or Chomsky (academic) cut straight to the chase and don’t embroider or beat about the bushes as Zinn tends to.
Being a libertarian, I disagree with Chomsky more often than I concur, but you darn well can’t say that he doesn’t know his stuff. The man is a walking encyclopedia and his scholarly publications are, in fact, scholarly — not the trite, politically-correct and apologetic ramblings you get with Zinn.
I never claimed it was a “national holiday commemorating all mankind’s eternal struggle against the inherent evil of government.” This specific mention of our own country’s past evils, the United States’ history of crushing its own people, is not about any inherent evil of all government(s) or all humankind’s struggle against it(them). It’s a simple matter of the pot not calling the kettle black. To anyone aware of our government’s misdeeds against its own people (as I’m sure you are aware), Clinton’s statement is simply ridiculous. However, most of our country[wo]men are probably not aware of how many American citizens have fallen to American guns, so she can get away with it. Clinton might have given some bullshit soundbite about our country atoning for our own sins or shut up completely. But, being a politician in a country whose citizens are largely ignorant of large chunks of its history, she probably knew she could get away with it. Or, then again, you know: she might not know herself.
I can’t claim to be well-read in Chomsky’s work, but I don’t find Zinn’s non-academic style troubling. My first issue with non-academic writing (if it’s about the subject matter Zinn writes about) would be a lack of “rigor”, but I don’t think I would levy that objection to Zinn. For one, there are citations where possible in the back of the book. He does not make use of footnotes/endnotes in the text, but the sources are listed with the chapers. He explains this, as you have pointed out, to be in service of easier reading (perhaps the only concession he makes to easy reading!). But, remember: Zinn never wrote this to be an academic book.
As I learned in a decade of academic philosophy, academic writing can do as much to obscure the truth as to bring it out with a lot of references to other people’s books. But I’m not a historian and can’t speak with any authority on citations in history books.
We can certainly disagree about Zinn, and that’s not something to worry about. I might be with you on the apologetic spirit of his writing. But, in his defense, it’s usually when someone has something to apologize for.
Johnny, did you photoshop that image to give it that blood-red color? I have always wondered whatever happened to the man who braved the tanks.
I did a little color enhancement:)
I take issue more broadly with the apologetic tone of Zinn’s work and others like it, and the dishonest muddling-together of historical recollection and interpretation said tone engenders. What little objectivity is present is strangled by vamping class conflict apologetics delivered from an uncompromisingly, even dogmatically socialist perspective. That’s not to say the accounts and quotations scattered throughout the book are unmoving, but rather that they’re small facets of a much larger history being focused on specifically and out of context for dramatic effect (Zinn has indeed said he wanted to invite “quiet revolution” through publishing his History).
This style of writing seems bespoke for an ever-more politically-correct audience, and I equate political correctness with intellectual disingenuousness. This can be deliberate or ignorant, mind, but I hold that the more academically-experienced one becomes, the more one must recognize their own inherent biases and the more opportunity one has to ignore, address or build upon them.
Your use of “country[wo]men” is an example of the stuff that irks me. Yes, the patriarchal dogma under which modern society operates is surely oppressive and unjust. The four extra characters don’t bother me instrinsically; what bothers me is that the only people those characters mean anything to are the types of people who need to see affirmation or recognition of their struggles, worldviews, mindsets etc in the behaviors of other people (or, indeed, people who think offering said lot feigned PC nicety is a good or prudent practice). Zinn has in fact gone out of his way to apologize for not mentioning specific races and social groups WITHIN his own books, as if the act of focusing on a specific group intrinsically means one is DELIBERATELY ignoring all others. That is the epitome of dishonest bull**** and SHOULD be shameful for anybody with a shred of integrity.
All that said, it really isn’t something to worry about. I don’t find these types of anecdotal, personally-motivated “historical” books appealing.
A note here — I normally don’t use so much ALL CAPS, as I equate it with yelling, but I can’t preview my comments and I don’t want to make an ugly post with non-rendered HTML or BBcode tags all over the place. I’m not yelling those words, just using CAPS in place of italics/bold.
One might also class being overly sensitive about the pervasiveness of political correctness in our culture as constituting “intellectual disingenuousness.” While I don’t mean to accuse you of this sort of dishonesty, I do know a great many people who would deny that the sky is blue if it meant denying something that is both factually correct and politically correct. The mindless backlash against political correctness is destructive and stupid. One might argue that apologetic pandering and atonement, however disingenuous, are a great deal better than aping some bullshit anti-political correctness.
“Your use of ‘country[wo]men’ is an example of the stuff that irks me. Yes, the patriarchal dogma under which modern society operates is surely oppressive and unjust. The four extra characters don’t bother me instrinsically; what bothers me is that the only people those characters mean anything to are the types of people who need to see affirmation or recognition of their struggles, worldviews, mindsets etc in the behaviors of other people (or, indeed, people who think offering said lot feigned PC nicety is a good or prudent practice).”
I can think of a few more people who might find value in it:
1) People who think that the term “mankind” is just plain stupid from a vocabulary standpoint. 2) People who grew up with political correctness as a positive way to move toward a more “inclusive” society.
3) People who recognize jokes, as I suppose it could be taken and might have been meant.
If I’m politically correct, I’m not “feigning” anything. Claiming that such terminology is used to validate people’s feelings or as something I’m writing to fake caring is presumptuous at best. This is a website I don’t even use my real name on. I’m not out to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, not as a rule. I think “mankind” is a less…descriptive term than humankind. Is that dishonestly PC or pandering? Or is it a result of philosophy seeking clearer terms?
But this post was intended to point out that our own country/government is guilty of repressing certain people(s). What does this have to do with political correctness? Or are you really claiming that even pointing this out is PC gone mad (which I doubt you mean)? Certainly, many of the misdeeds of our own government are certainly not politically incorrect so much as they are morally/ethically incorrect (if “incorrect” is indeed a strong enough term.)
The pendulum can definitely swing either direction regards intepretation of PC. I hold that it muddies the waters and unnecessarily frills-up communication — that is to say, it’s easy to tell when people are going out of their way to be PC, and it comes off as trite and offensive (even to folk it’s meant to appease) often enough so as to be counter-productive. Addressing the paragraphs of your post:
1) Apologetic pandering and atonement are better or more acceptable than pointing said actions out where & when one encounters them? If one accepts that the former is disingenuous then the latter is necessary, assuming one values honesty in argument. I hold that detached pandering is an embodiment of disingenuousness.
2) I missed the Clinton connection; my point was about political correctness itself and how it tends to distract from the substance of conversation more than anything else (it certainly wasn’t about you). Humankind is actually less descriptive than mankind — it has only one connotation. I should think people are able to decipher via context whether a person saying “mankind” was referring to men specifically or to all humanity.
3) I addressed this above — call it what you will; PC, pandering, atonement, whathaveyou. Assuming people are too stupid to comprehend context or too easily offended to tolerate use of “mankind” is presumptuous at best. But this is a ridiculous semantic argument, just as mine was — the real issue is deeper regards Zinn’s book.
4) Nothing whatsoever to do with PC, and no, that’s not what I’m claiming (I’m not making claims about you that I’m aware of — on reading back over it, it probably sounded like I did, and I apologize). I’m simply saying Zinn tends to pluck points in history from context and address them as if specific “elite” persons and/or groups were the soul and intrinsically malevolent source of their woes (again, we’re back to dogmatic socialist intepretations of history — people with control of the means of production are to be decried, people without it are to be lauded as martyrs).
If Zinn’s methodology isn’t an example of PC negatively affecting discourse about a critical issue, I don’t know what is. But again, we get back to style — he wrote the book to invite “quiet revolution”. There are more effective ways of addressing cultural and state imperialism, and Zinn has never employed them (not to my knowledge, anyway — he’s prolific and I haven’t read all his work).
Yes, “humankind” has, as you point out, one and only one connotation. Rather than contradicting my point, that reiterates it. I have trouble understanding why someone who worries about terms muddying the waters would take issue with an uber-clear term just because it smacks of being PC? Even if the intention of PC speech is questionable, I suspect that rational minds who value clarity might still accept a positive outcome of the PC-craze that has, for better or worse, gone mainstream. In use, PC terminology is becoming the way we talk and write. Regardless of whatever pandering MAY have spawned it, I think gender-neutral language is par for the course now. I seriously doubt that pandering is what people intend. I, for one, use it because I prefer the clarity and fairness of terms like “humankind.”
What about non-native English speakers? Ever known someone confused by our use of “man”, “he”, etc.? Perhaps my friend made certain assumptions about EVOLVING LANGUAGE in a purportedly democratic society — that we might prefer to actually use terms that denote both (or all) genders rather than only one. Fortunately for him, there is resistance to progressive language (“progressive” being used in the most literal sense) to help prove these assumptions/hopes/illusions wrong.
If language is EVOLVING and becoming clearer, I am happy about that. Poets might not be, but I’m no poet.
I think that reactionary arguments about PC-ness certainly “muddy the waters” as much as PC pandering does. Maybe more. The situation DEVOLVES into an argument about PC-ness and not about the original subject of discussion/publication., e.g., this comment thread. This post was NEVER about PC/anti-PC rants, but about the fact that China’s government is not alone in crushing its own people and how Clinton’s statement was ridiculous, given our own relatively recent history — a notion I think we’d probably agree on.
I am not getting into this argument!! :):)
I don’t think we’re actually arguing about the point of the post, i.e., that the US has its own history of crushing its own people.
But, nothing that the US Govt has done, vis-a-vis the native Americans come s close to what Stalin or Mao did to their people, or even what happened in Tian-an-Men square. In most cases, US soldiers and Native Americans fought pretty evenly matched battles, and in some battles the US soldiers or settlers won, and in other cases the Native Americans won.
revisionist or critical historians lik e Zinn , however, will always try to misinterprete events to suit their own particular viewpoint. in Zinn’s case, his quest in life is to vilify US society, so, obviously, he wil l twist history and interprete it to meet his needs.
Zinn and Chomsky ( when he is not writing about linguistics) are two major academic frauds, both protected by the traditions and rules of academic tenure, unfortunately.
Zinn’s biases (that he readily admits, but they’re still biases) notwithstanding, battles between American Indians and the US Army were far from evenly matched. Settlers and frontier folk might have been matched. But we’re talking about the American government using the American Army to crush American Indians and American citizens. That our government did it, and not frontier folk, is key.
If I’m not mistaken, his intention in writing deliberately biased histories is to balance out the histories writing by and for the privileged few (whoever that is). Whatever flaws he has, I wouldn’t call Zinn a fraud; he’s pretty open about how he feels and about his methods. There’s nothing to be fraudulent about. I haven’t read enough Chomsky to know.
Chomsky is a fraud, when he tries to be a scholar critical of US domestic or Foreign Policy. As a scholar on Linguistics, he is respected by all in that field.
As far as Zinn and “new history” is concerned, I dont understand how writing history that is biased,and sometimes in direct contradiction of facts, helps the folks who have suffered from not being the privileged party. Seems to defeat the point of searching for teh truth,if essentially, he admits to makingstuff up to help the ones who have been victims of the hegemons.
Which is why, in good history Departments, no one takes him very seriously,a nd even NPR or the Lehrer Hour wont invite him. Only media outlet that quotes him is the ultra-leftist, fringe network that is Pacifica Radio.
I think Zinn’s bias is in his subject matter/focus/approach, not in lying or presenting false stories. His intent is to get the lost stories from unheard people out there. I’m not aware of him ever admitting to making things up. In bringing what he sees as the stories of ignored/forgotten people to the masses in populist history books, I think he does them (us, as a child of immigrants from the working class) a great service in teaching what he sees no one else teaching.
I know a few well-respected historians (I won’t name names, LOL) in very good history departments who think very very highly of Zinn. Being a philosopher by trade (geez, how sad is THAT?!), I can only judge by what folks well-versed in historical research tell me.
We could argue all day about Zinn:)
Johnny, your point is well taken.
BTW, since you studied Philosophy, you might find this story interesting. A friend, who is a Philosophy Professor at local univ, and i started off a “Socrates Cafe” in Ann Arbor, both having been inspired by Christopher Phillips book. But, even in a place like Ann Arbor, we couldnt get the group going. We never managed to get regular, sane people to attend. All we got were people with mental health issues with crazy ideas, single issue freaks, weird dorks and geeks,and my friend even got a stalker!!!! We ran the group at various places, the Public Lbrary, book stores, Senior Centers etc, nothing worked.
After K got the stalker harassing her to the point the cops had to get involved, we just quit!!!! I now attend an informal discussion group at the Univ of Michigan’s Philosophy Dept. Kinda sad, that the Socrates Cafe idea failed in a place like A2.
Most of the time I’ve been a part of philosophy groups, the philosophy majors ruined them. Being one, I can say this: normal people do not major in philosophy. LOL
The most fun nights of discourse I’ve ever had consisted of things like staying up all night drinking coffee and talking about a philosophy club talk we just went to with my non-philosophy major friends.
Now I’m going to get hatemail from philosophy majors. LOL