The international standing of the US is literally never going to recover https://t.co/k21jJ9fv0z
— #1 Venlil Enjoyer (@EmpressThaliaa) January 27, 2025
Like I don't mean to be overdramatic, but this is straight up the end of the American century
โ #1 Venlil Enjoyer (@EmpressThaliaa) January 27, 2025
Itโs the fact that Americans have 0 idea how important it is that America has so many Allieโs around the world that Trump is just now cutting off one by one for absolutely no reason because he failed to communicate.
โ You were warned ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ (@Rickie99_) January 27, 2025
I canโt believe weโre burning down the world for literally no reason. I am never forgiving republicans
โ Flaming (@FlamingAUS) January 27, 2025
me when i have to end my alliances built up over a century because i'm bored
โ Amadรกn (@Mr_Elephant2004) January 27, 2025
its true lol. i think many countries are going to rely far less on the us now
โ pierbi (@pierbiwierbi) January 27, 2025
the hostility is insane, the amount of people on here who act like its deserved and shows the us is strong is insane aha. comes across as incredibly petty and weak
โ Jan202021 (@Dixie202021) January 27, 2025
losing power in the global south speed run (new record: 6 days)
โ SandstormRefrigerator (@Pokemonprimed) January 27, 2025
Yeah, it's basic diplomacy. America would lose badly in Sid Meyer's Civ right now.
โ Tom (@iamtomgranger) January 27, 2025
Anyway remittances from the US account for 3% of Colombia's GDP so a single deportation flight is pretty devastating to their national economy. And the threats worked immediately
So we are thankfully not going to be deprived of all the many things Colombia exports here. I don't know what those things are besides coffee and cocaine but X (formerly Twitter) informs me it's a lot and very important. Crisis averted.
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It must suck because midwit millenials on Reddit say so? Whatever bro. If that's the way you want to live your life.
It's not quite that simple. That's why he had to write a whole book.
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BIPOC that book has been shit on in history fields way before reddit smoothbrains got ahold of it.
It's never been considered worth reading and it's never been anything but bad pop history
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I might take some of the criticism seriously if it wasn't so batshit over-the-top insane. Like claiming it says the complete opposite of what it really does. I've seen them try to link him to HBD. It's nuts. He doesn't make any really controversial claims or use facts that are in dispute. All the criticism I've seen has been of a straw man.
It reminds me of the Black Athena bullshit in the '90s. That book really did suck. But it turned into a sport to write bad reviews of it. Everyone piled on. Everyone. Eventually there were over 100. And as they're competing to be the most scathing they go nuts. They end up denouncing a bunch of totally reasonable ideas that the author didn't come up with just because they were mentioned somewhere in the book. So after that, I don't take reviews too seriously.
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Sure, but there's a reason the criticisms started. You don't have to go all contrarian wing cuck and act like the book by someone with no history background, written in a time we had far less understanding of pre-columbian American societies is for some reason good or accurate. It's still shit even ignoring the r-slurred pile on.
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I might give a shit if he was trying to change our understanding of some historical event, but he's not. That's like me saying these people can't review the book because they don't have a biology background.
What you're not understanding is: It does not fricking matter. The book is not about pre-Columbian American societies. It's not about infectious disease. It's not about livestock. It's not about crops. We know a heck of a lot more about the flu than we did back then, and none of it matters at all in this book.
The historians are just butthurt that because the last thing they want is any link between science and their little playground. What's next? Outsiders might start pointing out some discrepancies. Like people in their "histories" marching and rowing at speeds ludicrously beyond anything humanly possible.
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He's literally making an argument as to why western societies prevailed over native societies.
BIPOC, It literally is. It's advertised as explaining why the west dominated those societies.
Again BIPOC, historians talk all the time about the insane exaggerations of older sources. The fact you think anyone would take this as a new discrepancy some outsider would point out shows how fricking moronic you are. Read any legitimate history book dealing with old sources and they will mention something about the numbers of men involved, the speed, the sketchy as frick timelines etc. This isn't new you dumb gorilla.
In short keep yourself safe.
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When you actively try to misunderstand everything I say it doesn't make me look r-slurred, it makes you look like an r-slured cute twink. Also you already look like one because that's what you are.
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What you're saying is fricking stupid. Imagine defending work that is r-slurred and widely dismissed. No one with any sense defends diamonds work.
His very basic argument that Guns, Germs and Steel enabled European societies to conquer the world can be dismissed by just looking at China or the Middle Eastern societies. Both had large cities, disease, firearms and access to steel. Both were completely dominated by the European powers up until the end of empire in the 20th century.
Gunpowder was even invented in China and arguable early cannon tactics were really perfected by the Turks.
India and Africa had access to European trade for steel and guns, had disease, in fact Africans were more resistant to a lot of the big killers than Europeans were, still dominated by the European powers.
His argument is r-slurred and so are you for believing it.
!historychads history slapfight.
The reason things fell apart for some societies and the euros dominated is societal structure. European societies proved more resilient and better capable of projecting power and control than these other societies. By Diamond's shit tier logic Rome never should have collapsed in the west nor Persia in the east. Both societies were more settled, experienced and seasoned by disease, and far superior technologically than what knocked them out.
Again please commit suicide
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His very basic argument that Guns, Germs and Steel enabled European societies to conquer the world
No it isn't. You're gonna have to actually read the book because various parts of this post are:
Not relevant to the book.
Addressed in the book.
The point that the book is actually trying to make.
And this just doesn't make any sense at all.
I can't read your mind to find out what you imagine "Diamond's logic" to be. So we have no common frame of reference to even have a discussion.
It seems you want to talk about why Europe came to be in a dominant in the Old World in the 1800s. Well, this is a pretty old-fashioned choice, but Mahan really has some insightful things to say. Like when he observes that...
!historychads do you see what I have to deal with here?
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These are great powers in the Old World with indirect connections with Europe going back millenia. That's not what he was writing about. I mean ffs Turkey is a European country at this time. He was writing about places that had no kind of contact at all with Europeans until they showed up on a ship one day. Places where there's an extreme difference in technology between the invaders and the natives.
Not even joking, I'm having a really hard time following your logic because sometimes you're arguing against the book and sometimes you're against what you imagine is in the book.
Ohhhh I get it. Your imaginary straw man Diamond
wrote that once an empire gets guns, germs, and steel then it's pretty much invincible until the 20th century. Yeah, that's really stupid.
So you're saying straw
Diamond is wrong because China and Turkey had guns but they were "completely dominated by the European powers" throughout this period.
(Starting when? I'm assuming you mean 1532 with the Battle of Cajamarca. Silly me. You wouldn't know without reading the book. This whole time I've been assuming we're talking about ~1500-1900. If you'll indulge me, I'm going to continue to. You can have your straw man but you can't move him to a different time period.)
First problem with your argument: Ottoman Turkey was itself a European power. Until a century ago their capital was Adrianople.
Second problem with your argument: China was never "totally dominated" by Europe. That's so stupid I don't need to elaborate further. Turkey hasn't ever been "totally dominated" by Europeans either. If the French and Greeks had gotten their way in the early 1920s maybe you could say that. But they didn't. And it's not even within the time limit you set: "the end of empire in the 20th century". One of the biggest of those empires that ended was the Ottoman Empire.
Third problem with your argument: You imply that Europe didn't have any really big technological advantage over China and Turkey. I'm nitpicking a little here, but that's not true for China during all of this period. In the 1600s Chinese knew that Europe already had better technology. The gap gradually widened until the early 1800s. But throughout this whole time, the Chinese pretty well held their own, even going on the offensive on Formosa. Then steamships arrived and everything changed instantly. They couldn't be opposed at sea and they could go up rivers into the heart of China. This one technology made all the difference.
Anyway, I'm really confused as to what we're supposed to be arguing about. All I know is, you keep being wrong over and over.
!historychads I'm pretty tired now. The only history I want to think about now is in Sniper Elite 5.
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I havent read the book, so I cant speak to whether its r-slurred or not, but I'm with redactor on the fact that most historians are r-slurred and spend more time trying to prove the lessons of history line up with their ideology than just helping the world to actually understand our history.
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Replying here because the two of you are all over the thread
I've seen leftoid try to argue that Diamond is a mega racist but if you read even the prologue of his book it's evident that the man is not that at all.
GGS's main problem is that it's written by an anthropologist trying to do history, linguistics and economics. The way he describes how "the west won" is not quite right. The spaniards didn't single-handedly destroy almighty native empires like the aztecs and incas through "gun, germs and steel". Both aztecs and incas were empire with rivals and internal dissent. Both nations were certainly weakened by "gun, germs and steel" but this wasn't the whole story.
Likewise with China; China has had whole stretches of history where it was separated into multiple competing nations. It so happened that the 19th century Qing dynasty held the entire region and its armies were weakened by the peace dividend, but it wasn't inevitable that the yuros would find the middle kingdom unified and static.
This is the danger of trying to make a grand unified theory of world history; you can get details wrong. Diamond is like Marx in that I think both have some really interesting ideas mixed in with nonsense, mistakes and oversimplifications
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Yeah, I think he greatly overestimates how important the weapons of the Spanish were. They were very useful sometimes, but not war-winning. Horses are war-winning though. Completely changes the nature of battle. And the surprise of seeing all these things for the first time must have devastating. So while I may quibble with him parts of his evidence, I generally agree with him that the shock of suddenly running into steel armor, horses, etc. for the first time was the decisive factor in these wars.
Everybody always has rivals. Everybody always has internal dissent. It's no coincidence that in both cases it bubbled over exactly when the Spanish arrived.
I can't remember anything he said about China.
That's not what he was trying to do. And if he was, he did as good a job as anyone could.
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It's been years since I read it but the question that sparked the book was a tribal in papua new guinea asking "why did the white man have so much cargo [cowtools and prosperity] ". Diamond's explanation of this veers close to a historical theory IMO
I agree with you on this. I've more respect for his flawed attempt compared to the peanut gallery of leftist academic that say Diamond is racist for saying societies with written alphabets were better in the long run than societies of verbal history lmao
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I remember a subtle difference. That the Papuan guy didn't ask the question, he thought of it while watching him do some craft thing. But again, it's been 25 years.
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