Confederate: bad idea or the WORST idea?

[Maltaran]

11 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Nnedi Okorafor pushes back on those people claiming slavery couldn't possibly survive into the industrial era.  Go to https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/888051385585086466

 

That's Jemisin, not Okarafor

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I mean, of course slavery could have survived into industrialization.  That's more or less how Russia began its industrialization (though they abolished serfdom in 1861).

Separately, betcha the premise is that Lee wins at Gettysburg and that's the moment.  It's silly, but bet it is.

[Zorral]

By the way, they think maybe their back history to the whole mess will be that Lee's first Maryland invasion was successful and they sacked D.C.  (In my opinion from what I've studied about that -- that couldn't have happened either, even if Lee's orders hadn't been found accidentally fallen to the ground.)

Slavery in the south was already being industrialized.  Which is another reason the North's economic labor force was antagonistic to slavery and CSA -- which the War of Southern Aggression (the official name of the Civil War in the U.S. records) made no bones about expanding to the entire continent, and hopefully the whole hemisphere.  Where slave labor rules there's very little space for free labor, i.e. jobs.  Good fracking grief -- their idea of knowing the history is having read some of Shelby Foote that one time, some time.  Shelby Foote, who sourced NOTHING, not cites, no sources, and who made whole cloth remarks and conversations that figures had -- for which there is no source for those of us who have dug into the the primary historical documents.

IOW, they never planned to keep themselves and their peculiar institution confined to the seceding states.  The entire point to expand slavery everywhere.

The problem is that these people don't know enough history of either slavery, the slaveocracy, US. history or the War of Southern Aggression to make this work -- which is why it DID NOT HAPPEN in the way they are going to promulgate it. That slavery of other kinds via different means now exists I will not argue with,  and that the legacy of slavery -- white supremacy, the carcel state etc. -- remains, I will not argue with.  But they should not exist, and this kind of bull in the china shop thing WILL NOT HELP, either people learning history or healing from the history itself.

It will be a travesty as was Nate Parker's Birth Of A Nation. And because they've proven that sensitivity to any issues of race, women, graphic violence and torture and rape are not in their repetoire -- and this gives them the perfect excuse to revel in all these horrible things that are still tearing the nation apart.

What cannot be white washed is that slavery = rape and every kind of violence perpetrated on people who have no legal right to object or fight back.

Which is why so many can't seem to let it go.  They want and revel in with all their being, the joy of feeling dominant, doing whatever they wish (or their fantasy surrogates to women and others whatever they wish), to deliberately make people suffer both physical abuse and emotional abuse.

We see this particularly in the many stories or program that involves artificial intelligence / androids.  There is no fun in hurting and degrading a sentience that doesn't feel it.  Thus all the plot lines is giving the androids a/is actual humanity or having them develop it -- so they can feel humiliated and degraded.

We say, for the sake of the story, so people can have identification with the characters we have to give them human feelings.  I.e. we need that dominance from built in abuse.  Which is why this will not help and make things work.

Entertainments have civic, ethical, social, political and historical responsibilities too.  To say "it's only for fun," -- just think about what that fun consists of, and how Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin were attacked by the south.  One could be rode out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered in the slaveocracy for receiving that book in the mail.  They blamed the book for inflaming abolitionists and the north.  Never say that "entertainment" can never have effect upon the polity and individuals. 

Then there's this, that so many of us find the entire concept sickening on so many levels, delights the ilks that are D&D -- it means they won, which is supremely depressing.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

By the way, they think maybe their back history to the whole mess will be that Lee's first Maryland invasion was successful and they sacked D.C.  (In my opinion from what I've studied about that -- that couldn't have happened either, even if Lee's orders hadn't been found accidentally fallen to the ground.)

Slavery in the south was already being industrialized.  Which is another reason the North's economic labor force was antagonistic to slavery and CSA -- which the War of Southern Aggression (the official name of the Civil War in the U.S. records) made no bones about expanding to the entire continent, and hopefully the whole hemisphere.  Where slave labor rules there's very little space for free labor, i.e. jobs.  Good fracking grief -- their idea of knowing the history is having read some of Shelby Foote that one time, some time.  Shelby Foote, who sourced NOTHING, not cites, no sources, and who made whole cloth remarks and conversations that figures had -- for which there is no source for those of us who have dug into the the primary historical documents.

IOW, they never planned to keep themselves and their peculiar institution confined to the seceding states.  The entire point to expand slavery everywhere.

The problem is that these people don't know enough history of either slavery, the slaveocracy, US. history or the War of Southern Aggression to make this work -- which is why it DID NOT HAPPEN in the way they are going to promulgate it. That slavery of other kinds via different means now exists I will not argue with,  and that the legacy of slavery -- white supremacy, the carcel state etc. -- remains, I will not argue with.  But they should not exist, and this kind of bull in the china shop thing WILL NOT HELP, either people learning history or healing from the history itself.

It will be a travesty as was Nate Parker's Birth Of A Nation. And because they've proven that sensitivity to any issues of race, women, graphic violence and torture and rape are not in their repetoire -- and this gives them the perfect excuse to revel in all these horrible things that are still tearing the nation apart.

What cannot be white washed is that slavery = rape and every kind of violence perpetrated on people who have no legal right to object or fight back.

Which is why so many can't seem to let it go.  They want and revel in with all their being, the joy of feeling dominant, doing whatever they wish (or their fantasy surrogates to women and others whatever they wish), to deliberately make people suffer both physical abuse and emotional abuse.

We see this particularly in the many stories or program that involves artificial intelligence / androids.  There is no fun in hurting and degrading a sentience that doesn't feel it.  Thus all the plot lines is giving the androids a/is actual humanity or having them develop it -- so they can feel humiliated and degraded.

We say, for the sake of the story, so people can have identification with the characters we have to give them human feelings.  I.e. we need that dominance from built in abuse.  Which is why this will not help and make things work.

Entertainments have civic, ethical, social, political and historical responsibilities too.  To say "it's only for fun," -- just think about what that fun consists of, and how Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin were attacked by the south.  One could be rode out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered in the slaveocracy for receiving that book in the mail.  They blamed the book for inflaming abolitionists and the north.  Never say that "entertainment" can never have effect upon the polity and individuals. 

Then there's this, that so many of us find the entire concept sickening on so many levels, delights the ilks that are D&D -- it means they won, which is supremely depressing.

 

Simply beautiful.  

[Kalbear]

11 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I mean, of course slavery could have survived into industrialization.  That's more or less how Russia began its industrialization (though they abolished serfdom in 1861).

Separately, betcha the premise is that Lee wins at Gettysburg and that's the moment.  It's silly, but bet it is.

Per the article of Ran's, it isn't; it's the possibly apocryphal story about how Lee's invasion plans of the North were wrapped around a cigar and ended up in the hands of a Northern soldier, which prompted Lee to abandon those plans. 

As the article notes, this is also precisely the point in which Turtledove takes his alternate history viewpoint, which again makes me think that they should think about adapting that series if they're going to do anything (or at least give Turtledove a boatload of money). He did a lot of heavy lifting for the worldbuilding, including making the US more socialist, the CSA fall into a Nazi-like regime after WW1, and slavery being abolished due to pressure from France and Britain (which doesn't solve racism, but does stop slavery). 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, Zorral said:

We see this particularly in the many stories or program that involves artificial intelligence / androids.  There is no fun in hurting and degrading a sentience that doesn't feel it.  Thus all the plot lines is giving the androids a/is actual humanity or having them develop it -- so they can feel humiliated and degraded.

We say, for the sake of the story, so people can have identification with the characters we have to give them human feelings.  I.e. we need that dominance from built in abuse.  Which is why this will not help and make things work.

 Eh, that's the point where it becomes interesting though. It becomes a moral question once the AI/Robot has shown itself to be something more than an unfeeling machine. It's not a matter of fun so much as it is about meaning. That's the crux of why Westworld is so good. If they were just toasters or microwaves or cellphones their abuse would have no meaning or importance.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As the article notes, this is also precisely the point in which Turtledove takes his alternate history viewpoint, which again makes me think that they should think about adapting that series if they're going to do anything (or at least give Turtledove a boatload of money). He did a lot of heavy lifting for the worldbuilding, including making the US more socialist, the CSA fall into a Nazi-like regime after WW1, and slavery being abolished due to pressure from France and Britain (which doesn't solve racism, but does stop slavery). 

 Seems to me that would make a lot of sense for these two. It's pretty clear that their strengths lie in adaptation.

[Ran]

I'm not sure what's apocryphal about Special Order 191. There's maybe some dispute about how important it was, and a quick Google even shows lengthy arguments insisting it had been a Confederate ruse of war, deliberately placed in the hands of the Union, that somehow went wrong. But apocryphal, that's not something I've heard before.

Haven't read Turtledove, but I'm going to guess that they're going to end up with a very different conception of what happened after that turning point. From what I've heard, his efforts to shoe-horn the alternate history to roughly correspond with (but be different from) the major events and wars of the first half of the 20th century was pretty strained. And to be fair, I think they're going to have a pretty hard time coming up with a genuinely recognizable world if they do it legitimately. A North America with a split between the U.S. and Confederacy is going to end up likely playing very different roles in conflicts that developed in Europe and Asia...

 

I can fully understand why they're starting with writers to figure out the main thrust of the present story and the rough shape of the world, but they're going to need a historian or three to help them with the fine details.

[Zorral]

If they wanted to do a real alternate New World slavery story they'd have done SO SO SO SO SO much better to have adapted Steve Barnes's Insh'Allah series (Lion's Blood; Zulu Heart). But that would have taken genuine courage for controversy and digging into real and present issues facing the USA, rather than just exploiting antebellum model of slavery's evolution into the contemporary North America for snark and profit and the adulation of certain ilks.  I say this based on GOT and their responses to honest criticism of everything they've done badly on that show, from very bad writing, characterization, plotting, economics, social and historical matters.

[Zorral]

38 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 Eh, that's the point where it becomes interesting though. It becomes a moral question once the AI/Robot has shown itself to be something more than an unfeeling machine. It's not a matter of fun so much as it is about meaning. That's the crux of why Westworld is so good. If they were just toasters or microwaves or cellphones their abuse would have no meaning or importance.

You're missing the point.  Why the abuse in the first place?  So that it can be interesting?  Look at the reasons behind that.

[Ran]

There's really no such thing as a good story about people that doesn't feature some kind of conflict. A story that's about humanity's ills are going to often have to have oppression of someone, somewhere, as a mechanism to explore that.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You're missing the point.  Why the abuse in the first place?  So that it can be interesting?  Look at the reasons behind that.

Because it is in our nature. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is interesting. Again, this is what makes Westworld so good. When confronted with this sort of advanced artificial life, folks react in different ways. Some abuse them. Some befriend them. Some fail to recognize that they are anything more than an appliance. 

[Zorral]

To be able to argue these matters effectively, particularly what the slavocracy's objectives were (number 1: expansion of slavery) there are a few items one needs to read, because what most people think they know about antebellum slavery, "the underground railroad" abolition and the roots of the War of Southern Aggression are at best out-dated, and at worst, just wrong.  For example, Eugene Genovese's thesis that slavery was feudal not capitalist, has been dismantledby vast scholarship in the last twenty - thirty years. Enormous amounts of scholarship has gone into the history of antebellum slavery in all its aspects since the Civil Rights Movement, and historians everywhere have been reaping the benefits of this in the last 2 - 3 decades.  The same is true for the war effort itself.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself;

Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley;

Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee--The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged  by William C. Davis;

General Lee's Army: From Victory to Defeat by Joseph Glatthaar;

This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy by Matt Karp;

The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry by Ned and Constance Sublette;

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement by Fergus M. Bordewich;

Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey.

Mary Chesnut's Civil War; the carefully edited after-the-fact diary of a the wife of the South Carolina senator James Chestnut Jr., until secession, after which he served as an aide to Jeff Davis and a brigadier general in charge of the SC reserves (though not seeing action, of course, being such a slavocracy nabob);

The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams.  He writes of his first hand experiences at the highest levels of England's and France's government during the first years of the war, as private secretary to his father, Francis Adams, as minister to Saint James.

Two things we must never forget about antebellum slavery and the War of Southern Aggression: African Americans played an immense role in abolition and emancipation.  Escaped slaves and free people of color founded newspapers, wrote books, spoke at endless meetings, organized a relief and assistance for those who managed to escape.  They labored endlessly to keep the issues of the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott in the forefront of progressive minds.  Here we see the first nexus of authentic cooperative action -- not just words! -- of black and white, male and female. Never underestimate the power of people with god-given mission for moral improvement (look at how the evangelicals etc. have managed to just about disappear not only abortion, but any woman's reproductive health care from so many places in this nation, even though it is all legal).

And we must never forget that while the north for the most part, as well as the Union, when the time came, though deeply white supremacist, was also deeply antagonistic to slave labor, for it undercut wages across the board for everyone (as keeping the wages of Haitians at a few cents an hour is the benchmark for wages throughout the hemisphere currently)-- as well as threatening having work at all.  With this half of the 19th century receiving boatloads of immigrants every day, the competition for jobs was fierce.

Having slavery forced upon free soil states was not in their interests -- just as the Fugitive Slave Act was antithetical to their interests, economically, politically, and socially.  Anyone could point to your daughter and son, declare her, him a runaway slave and there was no legal recourse -- and you were supposed to help them.

Don't forget by now there was a large percentage of legally enslaved who had white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair, thanks to generations of white men raping African American women for both fun and profit -- every slave child born provided the slave owner with at least another $50 of credit, in a culture that didn't have money per se, only credit, vastly based in the bodies of their slaves.

So skin color was not a final defense by any means -- nor was an accused runaway allowed to have or speak a defense!  People in the north did not like this.  This brought more people into the anti-slavery factions than anything else, and did it so fast the south couldn't believe it was happening.

You have to know all this and much more besides, and know it inside and out, viscerally, before you can write successfully about anything to do with the history of the war, slavery, and what happened.  And the more one knows, seeing from hindsight, of course,  the more one knows it couldn't have happened any other way.

[Zorral]

38 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Because it is in our nature. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is interesting. Again, this is what makes Westworld so good. When confronted with this sort of advanced artificial life, folks react in different ways. Some abuse them. Some befriend them. Some fail to recognize that they are anything more than an appliance. 

I see it exactly opposite.  That we want stories of people abusing for fun -- for the sake of our entertainment -- says terrible things as well as conditioning us to think it is all just fine -- as long as we're the ones in the positions of being the abusers.  There is no need to make a/i self aware.  We want it to hurt it with impunity -- while salving our conscience once in a while, while still getting our jollies, as with Ex Machina, and all the attractive a/is.  (This was one of the more sensitive and well-thought treatments, I felt -- particularly since the a/i could feel resentment but still had the empathic and moral sense of a sociopath.)

It makes me both very sad and very depressed.

[Zorral]

52 minutes ago, Ran said:

There's really no such thing as a good story about people that doesn't feature some kind of conflict. A story that's about humanity's ills are going to often have to have oppression of someone, somewhere, as a mechanism to explore that.

But there are so many ways to explore those without exploitation and titillation.  But that's exactly what the viewer - reader wants -- the titillation. And what D&D and HBO provide. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But there are so many ways to explore those without exploitation and titillation.  But that's exactly what the viewer - reader wants -- the titillation. And what D&D and HBO provide. 

Sure, you can have conflict that is not violent, but again this is an intrinsic part of our nature. I guess you can lament the fact that shows like GoT are as popular as they are because of this, but I don't think it makes these sorts of stories any less legitimate. And you are certainly free to seek out entertainment that doesn't emphasize these sorts of themes.

[Ran]

Certainly it can be explored without titillation, although I'm not sure a story about conflict can be told without the conflict tying to exploitation or oppression somewhere. Unless you mean CONFEDERATE will be exploiting black actors/writers/directors?

I find it incredibly hard to imagine that any human event in history was inevitable, but I certainly know that Shelby Foote noted that the North fought with an arm essentially behind its back, and the number of Northern regiments which never got involved in the hostilties is substantial.

 

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

I find it incredibly hard to imagine that any human event in history was inevitable, but I certainly know that Shelby Foote noted that the North fought with an arm essentially behind its back, and the number of Northern regiments which never got involved in the hostilties is substantial.

 

 

I think this is the thing that bugs me the most about this premise (sight unseen of course).  Honestly, the South had a lot fewer people (particularly because a large part of the population was....forceably non-combatant (at least until the end).  It also had the disadvantage of (i)a substantial portion of the conflict playing out in its territory (Antietam and Gettysburg aside), (ii) a substantially underdeveloped rail network, (iii) limited industry, particularly foundries, and limited ability to produce war materiel as a result, (iv) and a monoculture (whether tobacco, cotton, sugar or indigo) agriculture that was not focused on foodstuffs.  While they did have a couple of truly excellent deepwater ports in the form of Charleston and New Orleans, those were quickly blockaded.  So....you know, nothing is inevitable, and Lee was a good general, but actually, his tactical genius in set battles was almost his downfall....  Anyhow, whether it was 2 years or 10 years, I think you end up where you ended up.

[Myshkin]

41 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I see it exactly opposite.  That we want stories of people abusing for fun -- for the sake of our entertainment -- says terrible things as well as conditioning us to think it is all just fine -- as long as we're the ones in the positions of being the abusers.  There is no need to make a/i self aware.  We want it to hurt it with impunity -- while salving our conscience once in a while, while still getting our jollies, as with Ex Machina, and all the attractive a/is.  (This was one of the more sensitive and well-thought treatments, I felt -- particularly since the a/i could feel resentment but still had the empathic and moral sense of a sociopath.)

It makes me both very sad and very depressed.

Is your position that any fictional depiction of violent oppression is inherently exploitative? That the only reason these depictions are created is for the titillation of consumers?

[Jaxom 1974]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Per the article of Ran's, it isn't; it's the possibly apocryphal story about how Lee's invasion plans of the North were wrapped around a cigar and ended up in the hands of a Northern soldier, which prompted Lee to abandon those plans. 

As the article notes, this is also precisely the point in which Turtledove takes his alternate history viewpoint, which again makes me think that they should think about adapting that series if they're going to do anything (or at least give Turtledove a boatload of money). He did a lot of heavy lifting for the worldbuilding, including making the US more socialist, the CSA fall into a Nazi-like regime after WW1, and slavery being abolished due to pressure from France and Britain (which doesn't solve racism, but does stop slavery). 

 

2 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 Seems to me that would make a lot of sense for these two. It's pretty clear that their strengths lie in adaptation.

Still thinks that their adaptation is lifting Turtledove and trying to get away with it.

And I do not think, overall, that D&D are that strong in adaptation...