Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I suspect that you haven't read much of the 1619 Project and have formed your opinions on it on the basis that woke SJWs irritate you much more than their critics. Will Wilkinson's Substack on the subject is pretty strong, especially this:
Intellectually, you basically know that's right, but emotionally it's not something you have any interest in talking about, so while you aren't running out to say that you disagree with most historians because dunno, reasons, you are happy to say that you are annoyed by the 1619 Project for going and making that history the sort of public controversy enters your brainspace. |
I read sections of it when it came out. I bounced all around the thing. And what I saw was a political piece dressed as history. But not really history. Because when pressed, the author of the centerpiece article argued it was not history.
She also said it wasn’t journalism.
So what it must then be is an essay?
Okay. As an essay, the argument the revolutionary war was fought to preserve slavery is both factually and facially... rubbish. Applying Hitchens’ Razor (that which is asserted without [sane] proof can be rejected without it), that claim is Up In Smoke.
I’m not annoyed by it. And I don’t think it was done by SJWs. I’m spotting what is obvious based the piece’s main claims: It’s advocacy.
I like my advocacy kept where advocacy ought to be kept - in a corner reserved for things deserving extreme suspicion and scrutiny.
And on the facts, it appears there’s a whole lot to scrutinize here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ilentz/605152/
ETA: And when you build a thing around the claim the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery, which almost everyone admits is untrue, and was a bad argument to make, you undercut the rest of what’s offered. You pull up the curtain and admit you’re so strongly wedded to an agenda that you’ll say something reckless to seek to push it forward. It’s like saying something outlandish in an opening at trial. The jury immediately doubts the rest, and for good reason.
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