Time would prove that the kindness the indigenous people of New Guinea had shown to the Americans and Australians was real, but that their supposed “loyalty,” much touted by Allied propaganda, was not. The truth is that no one ever asked the native people their point of view. After the war ended, researchers seeking oral testimonies from New Guineans who had lived through the war were astonished to learn that the native peoples were united in one opinion: that they wanted the “whites”—among whom they included Japanese, Australians, and Americans—just to go away and leave them alone.
"No, we won't let you suffer. No, we don't want you here."
That’s intense! Imagine tipping over the point of no return and falling over 3x your hight, all while your feet and hips are strapped in place. No bailing from the stilts, no tuck and roll, just catching yourself like your landing the most insane jumping pushup, that is if your even falling face first.
The workers also don’t look too young. I wonder if this is sort of like the case of there being no bold, old pilots. Just seasoned workers who learn never to push their luck when balancing all day, or just folks who really learned how to take a fall early in their life.
I don't mean to downplay the severity, but there are procedural differences. Slavery was pro forma banned at the time. Effectively, I agree, for all practical purposes of the folk in chains, it was slavery.
And he might have ended up being a standup dude in another time.
That’s something that I think about often.
The average intelligence of the population of the world isn’t that great. Most people accept whatever reality is instilled in them. If you take a little baby and raise it up to think of some people as animals, they’ll probably never question it, and being surrounded only by people who accept that reality, they’ll never have a reason to question it. I very rarely meet a person who has ever really questioned their reality. It always surprised me when I do.
Most abolitionists came from a world where they were they weren’t exposed to slavery, so they were able to question it. Even then, only around 2% of the population were abolitionists, they just fought really hard for their cause until it rose up high enough to actually be considered for action.
I’m not even putting myself into that small group of people smart enough to question their reality. If I hadn’t grown up with the internet there’s a good chance I’d be a preacher in a Pentecostal holiness church somewhere. That small handful of people who question their reality help spread their questions to the idiot masses.
That’s why I admire people who fight for positive change above all other people. They fight an uphill battle daily. Sometimes they win big and I’m grateful they do.
One of my kids came out as gay. I grew up in a very homophobic environment in the 70s. I would quite often called timid people puffs etc. Sometimes around my kids, because that was how I grew up. You discouraged timid behaviour to stop them getting bullied. Realising one of your kids is gay was a real eye opener for me as to how bad these phrases are.
I would never treat a gay person differently. I just saw it as an expression that was common when I was young, and also in the environment I worked in. For context, I used to play squash with a guy from work, who everyone was convinced was gay. He actually got married in a heterosexual relationship a few years later, but whether he was or wasn’t never bothered me. This ofc doesn’t excuse the practise, it just shows how warped I was.
General Sherman early in life was quite alright with slavery and a casual racist against Black people, and later became an ardent anti-racist (at least, anti-racist with regards to anti-Black racism). He noted, some years after the US CIvil War, when asked by younger folk how so many people could have blithely accepted slavery, that man is more a creature of habit than originality.
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