politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The United States as a whole has been shifting towards progressive policies since its creation... as has the whole world.
Before its creation, people were much more egalitarian. Native American women could control their own bodies.
Sure things look good when you start right after the last huge anti-egalitarian shift.
Pre-columbian Americans kept each other as slaves for centuries..at the very least. So the lie that native American women controlled their own bodies is a slap in the face of the countless who were kept as slaves. Egalitarian...hardly.
I said “more” and gave a specific example in which way. The property of there being slavery didn't change until much later, whereas the Christians immediately made life worse for women who until then controlled their own bodies.
There is no lie. Why are you trying to catch me in one instead of having a honest discussion?
But the women never controlled their own bodies for thousands of years...likely since the first women. There are "fluctuations" where they have more rights for short stretches is time. You could cherry pick specific locations in a specific century of course. For example right now in the entire US, women have fewer rights than 10 years ago (fluctuation) but far more than 100 or more years ago.
That's Hobbesian fiction, not history. Check out this book for a version less driven by Victorian propaganda: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
This book denies thousands of years of native American slavery?
No, it pretty explicitly mentions it, but you should read what I'm writing, not looking for a reason to get worked up.
Let me spell it out: losing your bodily autonomy is bad. Therefore it's bad when there's slavery or misogyny. And of course it's worse when there's both. The fact that (a fraction of) tribes had slavery doesn't invalidate that they weren't also misogynist. Unlike the society that followed after, which both had slavery and and believed that a good Christian woman is the property of her man.
So read this, then again from picking out an irrelevant detail to nitpick on.
Yes a "fraction" of tribes had slavery. 25% of the tribal population in the pacific northwest alone were slaves. A horrific and a dominant part of their society. The way women were treated by good Christians was terrible but to compare that in to the sheer number that were held as slaves in the past is disingenuous. Children sold for food. Children and women stolen from tribe to tribe to bolster numbers(forced assimilation which qualifies as genocide today). Were you a natural born tribe member female that hasn't been captured? In that case you had a better life though you did partially through the exploitation of slaves and genocide... for thousands of years. A couple of hundred years of harsh Christan rule was in no way a step backward.
What are you talking about? That 25% number is wrong. You found that on Wikipedia, ignored the statistic it actually applied to, and attached it to “tribal population”. Please don't lie with statistics, even if that wasn't intentional.
And most importantly, slavery increased rapidly as colonialism ramped up. Obviously Christian rule with substantially increased slavery and also misogyny is worse than a smaller degree of slavery and no misogyny.
Just read the book. It's great.
Do you truly believe slavery was rare among pre-columbian native Americans?
Let's say for argument sake you are right. For 30,000 years slavery was a not-so-common occurrence in the America's. Then for 200 years it increased. Then decreased for 150 years to a level far far below any point in history (per-capita). What has been the trend?
That's not data that can be summarized as a trend. Just like climate data, the changes in the last centuries are very drastic compared to before. If the fluctuation before happened mich slower, there's no trend that can be modeled.
And even in more recent times, the pendulum has swung back and forth. FDR put massive public works programmes in place that would never get funding today, and LBJ (despite, y',know, fucking up his entire legacy in Vietnam) introduced Medicare, which would be derided as socialist today. Reagan was a massive backslide.