We have almost lost the chance now to hear personal testimony of WWII. I've met several Battle of Britain pilots too, but the last died in Dublin recently:
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/
Definitely controversial academically, but the idea of a generational cycle has been considered.
The myriad of trash google results on the topic aren’t even close to 1 in 4. Even an Israeli tabloid says it’s 1 in 10.
I do gather that some parents are rather sanctimonious and scandalized about their children learning anything but the most sanitized version of history. That seems so far to be the most presence in banning anything. Witness Harry Potter being listed as one of the most challenged book at the height of popularity.
History as it was taught in my grade school years certainly wasn't whitewashed and they are rather explicit about some of the horror. Moreover, the problem is that history wasn't taught well and made 'boring'.
This. 100% this. At school we got an extremely biased view of history, but even then it was taught soooo badly.
History (regardless of viewpoint, correctness, or accuracy) could be an enormously exciting topic. It's full of things that would appeal to any child when presented well.
But school history curricula for me was full of meaningless names, dates, actions - endlessly repeated with no enthusiasm at all.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
I would however like to point out that people are not only victims of society, and that they have a responsibility as a critical member of society and an elector. Historic awareness, understanding of economics, law and geopolitics.
To give an example: Mr Trump was not just votes into office, but RE voted into office. His plan was public for all to see.
More than 50% of American voters voted for him. I am having a difficult time to believe that 50%+ of the US are economically oppressed that had no choice but to vote for Trump.
Inequalities exist but they do not justify everything, neither do they explain everything.
Or are we saying now that 50%+ of the US has “no prospects or no hope”? Really?
Anyone thinking that is sorely mistaken about how good we have it, and I’m afraid is soon to find out. Destroying the apparatus of state and destabilizing international relations is not going to be good, certainly for those “with no prospects or hope”.
And that was not difficult to foresee.
I am just pointing out that you can make up any list in hindsight and make it look like Nostradamus prophecies.
Where is french revolution or the great war in that list?
By way of example, "the founding fathers were Christians" is a classic oft-repeated phrase I continually hear, to which I love talking about Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, all of whom were clearly agnostic (at the time, they were "Deist" which was essentially equivalent to "agnostic" nowadays). Thomas Paine's phenomenal book "The Age of Reason" was utterly mind-blowing and extremely radical at the time, receiving widespread banning and igniting firestorms in the culture. It's still a great read today! Especially fascinating when you consider this was many decades before Darwin would provide one of the most important scientific explanations that massively shrunk the area for God of the Gaps.
Some examples of the discomfort: to many white people now the history of slavery and racism is deeply uncomfortable. It's not even difficult to find hard evidence of such as many racist attitudes persisted well into the era of recordings and have been immortalized in movies and TV shows. I suspect a big part of that is the recency effect since we're still living with many follow-on effects of the practice even if we don't practice it actively anymore.
Much less talked about though is the history of racism and slavery among nearly all people at different times. For example a large majority of the black slaves that were sold to Europeans (including the Europeans living in the Americas) were originally enslaved by other black Africans and sold to the slave traders. Not all the slaves were sold either. To be fair the Spanish (at least in first half of the new world exploration) didn't have much of a problem doing the enslaving themselves as they routinely enslaved native people's after conquering them. We can also go back millenia and see the same behavior. Greeks, Romans, Persians, pretty much everybody had their slaves for as far back as history is recorded (and surely much, much farther).
We like to think we are enlightened nowadays, but I think history really demonstrates that as humans we are almost universally inclined toward enslaving other humans. Hopefully we're irreversibly past that now and well on our path to the Star Trek society, but even if that is the case it doesn't make the history any more comfortable.
I think it's important to be accurate with this stuff. 49.8% of voters voted for Trump, approximately 32% of eligible voters voted for him, and roughly 23% of the population voted for him. Don't discount apathy, disillusionment, and disenfranchisement in all this.
Yes, it was. America was setting up the scene for the pacific war by raising customs and tariffs on Japanese imports with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930). The Japanese were just democratizing when the US decided to kill their economy. Thus, the Japanese had one of two choices - take needed resources they purchased before by force, or accept a massive decline in standard of living. They decided to take the first route. Attacked the Chinese, and when the US started sanctioning it, eventually they bombed Pearl Harbour.
And don't forget how the Nazis were basically funded out of American pockets.
Just because the first shot was not fired by an American does not mean they were not the cause.
My objection was just about bringing numerology into the discussion.
I'm a little confused - if you agree, then why did you mention inequality in the first place?
As I said in my original comment, I think that is hyperbole at best, and deluded victim-thinking at worst. But I do consider that there is an issue of inequality.
So I softened the original statement, and then showed that it still did not explain or even justify the massive vote for Trump ("Inequalities exist but they do not justify everything, neither do they explain everything")
In other words, I interpreted the original statement generously and replied to the best possible version of the argument. That is one of the unwritten house rules, and it is what keeps HN a nice place.