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  • Showing only topics in ~humanities.history with the tag "ask.survey". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. What do you think are the most memorable examples of propaganda?

      Can be posters, advertisements, videos/films and maybe national/revolutionary anthems/songs. My favorites so far are: "Is Colorado in america?" (Basically a US flag with various constitutional...

      Can be posters, advertisements, videos/films and maybe national/revolutionary anthems/songs.

      My favorites so far are:

      "Is Colorado in america?" (Basically a US flag with various constitutional rights being
      written as violated in the US flag's stripes in Colorado, including the 2nd amendment.)

      "Daisy" (Lyndon B. Johnson campaign attack ad, implying that if you do not vote for LBJ, we would have nuclear war.)

      Honorary mentions for: Wake up, by the Lincoln project, which has a very similar "these are the stakes" tune for 2020. Mourning in America and We will vote are pretty good too.

      24 votes
    2. What do you think of alternate history?

      I tend to watch AlternateHistoryHub, WhatIfAlthist and occasionally Monsieur Z (but less so since the guy somehow got a far-right audience) so I've always been interested in the idea of alternate...

      I tend to watch AlternateHistoryHub, WhatIfAlthist and occasionally Monsieur Z (but less so since the guy somehow got a far-right audience) so I've always been interested in the idea of alternate history.

      However, there's more than that. There are books and writers (I.E Harry turtledove), 3 subreddits (r/historywhatif, r/historicalwhatif and r/alternatehistory), many games (HOI I, II, III and IV, civ 1-6, Vicky 1-3, etc), a forum and according to Wikipedia, people have been speculating about history since before the year 0.

      So what do you think of it?

      7 votes
    3. Are there any historical events, periods, figures or concepts that you find underrated?

      My personal picks would be the whole of Chinese history between the opium wars and communist rule (or the century of humiliation as it is called), and most especially the warlord era, given that...

      My personal picks would be the whole of Chinese history between the opium wars and communist rule (or the century of humiliation as it is called), and most especially the warlord era, given that this was effectively how European powers, Japan and many internal revolutionaries managed to bring down the greatest economy in the world to civil war and then total warlordism for 40 years. For a vague concept, my pick would be the great divergence, the period where the US and European nations rose above the rest of the world and became the predominant world powers and colonized most of it, along with the many potential causes of this.

      8 votes
    4. Rewriting History: what one decision would you go back and have someone change?

      I like thinking about alternative history. There are people like Harry Turtledove who write extensive alternative histories based on whether the South's main general's war plans got to the...

      I like thinking about alternative history. There are people like Harry Turtledove who write extensive alternative histories based on whether the South's main general's war plans got to the Northern armies' general in time for the Battle of Antietam. For me there's something appealing about thinking back through complex events in world history and finding critical moments and critical decisions that might have gone another way. I'm also quite taken with the idea that some historical events end up in hindsight looking like perfect storms, where a number of complex variables make the world we now know, but where any one of those variables would have produced a massively different result.

      But I'm less interested in thinking about waving a magic wand to change the weather of some day or to change facts on the ground or morale or something like that. What I'm most interested in are situations where someone's individual decision might have dramatically altered the world. Can you identify one decision that happened in the past that you would have that person making it change? How might that set us up in a different reality?

      A small note on housekeeping before I let you go. I know this might be a type of topic that walks the fence between something designed for ~talk and something best suited in ~humanities. I think of this as kind of an experiment to see how best to handle topics that straddle two different tildes.

      18 votes