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Creative Historical Interpretations Are Not History – American Thinker

Posted on December 18, 2022 by dgr

No substitute for a professional Historian. None!

The dominating narrative in American schools and the popular culture today is that slavery began in America in 1619. Unfortunately, there is about as much truth in that scenario as there was in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” media crusade in August 2014. Nikole Hannah-Jones and her Critical Race Theory comrades prove beyond doubt the accuracy of Arthur Schlesinger’s maxim that “history is a weapon.” They distort the historical narrative by omitting key facts that, if told, would present an entirely different view of the past.

There seems to be a general consensus, regarding the arrival of African slaves at Jamestown in 1619. They were first captured in Angola, and sold to Portuguese slavers based in Luanda. While in transport towards Mexico, two English corsairs flying a Dutch flag captured this Portuguese ship in the Gulf and removed some of the slaves, who were then brought to Jamestown, which was in desperate need of laborers. Here, “some twenty odd” Africans were exchanged for “victuals.”

Source: Creative Historical Interpretations Are Not History – American Thinker

Category: Analysis, Blog, History, Non-Fiction | Tags: teacher, writer

Jack London’s Endless Journey | The Village Voice

Posted on October 22, 2020 by dgr

Socialism leaves little room for tragedy — that’s partly the point of it — and London was in love with the tragic. A socialist world, as he envisioned it, wouldn’t be much to write about. “The Strength of the Strong” (1911), which London wrote explicitly as a defense of socialism, features a group of tribal types sitting around bemoaning their inability to band together. Thanks to this lack of solidarity, they are always being defeated. But some day, Long Beard says at story’s end, ”all the fools will be dead and then all live men will go forward. The strength of the strong will be theirs, and they will add their strength together, so that, of all the men in the world, not one will fight with another.”

Some day. Meanwhile, the passions that kept London traveling wouldn’t let him anchor in socialism. The tension between the individual and the collective — between London and the world — that propelled his journey would have to be resolved elsewhere.

London sought the elemental, and the elemental qualities he located in American life were not the inevitability of socialism but selfishness and death. In “The Minions of Midas,” an exceedingly elemental story, the titular minions are a cabal of workers who blackmail a capitalist. He must give them $20 million, or they will kill people. They are, they explain, tired of being drudges and need capital to win life’s battle. The capitalist stands firm; the minions murder innocents steadily and with impunity; the capitalist kills himself. The minions declare their intention to continue killing until the last capitalist generation. And there the story ends.