@Somber Star  
yeah I was gonna say. I’m just pointing out that the north wasn’t justified either, and actually kind of screwed the country over.  
@Stotter  

oh no, heaven forbid I be seen doing something shameful!  

@Stotter  
There is very little of human history that can be justified, if that’s what you’re looking for.

@redweasel  
I pointed out they were outnumbered not as justification for attack but a reason not to be afraid to. This neo-confederate painting of the north as bullies is ridiculous. Armed insurrection cannot be handled with a slap on the wrist, especially not when their goals were reprehensible. You cannot justify the Lost Cause of the South, it would be shameful to try.

@Somber Star  
oh yeah, if I had to name a date I’d say “american” expansionism started when cortez claimed literally everything in the name of spain in 1519.

@redweasel  
You mean officially. American expansionism (counting non-government such as corporate) started before there were even Americans and didn’t really end until a few decades ago.

@Somber Star  
they didn’t really get expansionist until that manifest destiny propaganda started popping up, in 1840’s, like 60 years after the declaration of independence.

@redweasel  
Technically, in all but name. Expansionism is basically imperialism without the structure.

@Somber Star  
huh, you make a good point. I’m not sure how imperialist they were right after rebelling against an empire, though.

@redweasel  
The U.S.A. was very imperialistic throughout its development. It’s just that originally, it was a part of Britain’s empire.

@Stotter  
well, it’s better than the whole thing being north korea.
 
attacking someone because you outnumber them and their country is smaller than you is like the worst justification to go to war.
 
and honestly the usa wasn’t an empire at all, until after the civil war that is. it wasn’t just a war over slavery.

@redweasel  
Considering how North Korea is, that seems like a worst case scenario. Anyway, it’s absurd to suggest giving up territorial integrity without a fight, especially when you outnumber the rebels. Related note: The states and counties of the Confederacy were already starting to split from the main government before the war was even over, so less the Koreas, more some short-lived historical empire.

@Stotter  
except that laborers didn’t have human rights either. that didn’t start to happen until the 1920’s, or 30’s in the usa. many places in the world it’s still the case that laborers are treated like property. only difference from slaves is they’re a lot cheaper, and if they pose a threat you can just fire them.
 

it really wasn’t all that dire. the union could just have bloodlessly pulled out of fort sumter and established a sort of “north korea/south korea” situation. the first blood was drawn by the confederacy, but the first actual attack of conquest was by the union, because they wanted to, not because they needed to. not saying the confederates were good guys, but the union were not only fighting out of necessity.

@Stotter  
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with slavery is the natural inclination those in the position of power have to abuse it. In fact, I think the only reason slavery was found distasteful enough to put an end to was that people realized that those on the unfortunate end were people before they learned to treat their possessions with basic consideration for their well-being.
 
I mean, that was the age where “fixing” animals was done with castration (probably sans anaesthetic), and many diseases and serious injuries they suffered were treated with death. If you think about it, a lot of people’s strongest arguments against slavery would have fallen by the wayside if slaves were treated like modern equipment and pets. Hell, for many people, that would be a drastic improvement in their quality of life, as terrible as that is to say.

@Somber Star
 
@redweasel  
I was speaking about their related intent, so not a disagreement there. I never made a claim about when the culture wars started in relation to the war, so no disagreement to be had there either. Obviously slavery was a big issue before the war, that’s how cause and effect works. One could argue the depersonalization came before the slavery as how else could they justify it otherwise. The difference between slaves and general labor is laborers still had human rights in society while slaves were regarded as property to use and abuse on a whim. Also, whatever plans Lincoln had in regards to slavery were made irrelevant as several states seceded preemptively assuming he’d be the president that ended slavery unilaterally, forcing this country’s hand on the matter. Any issue capable of splitting a country apart would have to be dealt with asap to restore it. Finally, putting aside the reasons for this cynical interpretation of Lincoln’s motives for his actions, they’re his actions. He had his leadership tested and kept the country intact and better for it. Side note, it seems we have common ground on Reagan as a politician. Bonzo probably had better economic ideas.

@Stotter  
I would argue that the “culture wars” emerged later in or even after the civil war, once slavery did become the big contentious issue that the media could use to fuel people’s hatred and distract them from the railroads taking over everything. but I admit it is a little blurry to say exactly when institutionalized slavery became obsessive depersonalization of “the negro,” slavery was a big issue even before the war.
 
I just don’t like to give lincoln the credit.
 
lincoln was a lot more like ronald reagan than people like to admit. he was one slippery snake of a politician and neither he nor his cabinet wanted anything to do with unpopular ideas like abolitionism, so he started his war over “safe” ideas like freedom and unification. I don’t think he gave two shits about slavery until the emancipation proclamation, when he jumped on the bandwagon late in the game.

@Stotter  
All of those organizations you named are related only by intent. There was very little, if any, cohesive structure or communication among them. Also, you’re going to have to source your claims about what the Confederacy feared and why.
 
Beyond that, keep in mind that the North was only okay with dispensing with slavery because for them it was a matter of convenience. Their factory laborers were slaves in all but name. There was no OSHA, nothing at all protecting the rights and well-being of employees from their employers. People died on those floors on a regular basis, and were callously replaced like broken parts.

@Rod Hungwell  
What bugs me is that war of northern aggression nonsense. Winners write history is a generalization, not a fact of life. Besides all that, even though they lost that war, they never stopped fighting the culture wars, through sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, racial terrorists like the Klan, redlining, all the way to the present where institutional racism is denied by the very people who contribute to the problem and those same people have no historical context to show how wrong they are because they believe in that Neo-Confederate pseudohistory. (Sidenote, in another example of that context ignoring, prewar Southern fears of the North imposing their will on the South..they were about slavery being ended unilaterally, ironically made easier to accomplish when the South seceded. Every statement about the Confederacy’s motives like that can be corrected by adding “because of slavery”.)

@Stotter  
Lincoln essentially used slavery as a cause for rally once he realized he was losing. Both sides were actually doing it and the war was more about the North imposing their will on the South via tariffs. You can cry “historical revisionism” but “winners write history” is also a thing, and while I’m not southern myself it’s still bugs me to see people asserting this.
 

 
I lol’d.

@Evil Emperor Proteus  
and now we’ve come full circle, and daemons are just spirits which dwell in our computers that are often summoned to perform tasks for us.

@Evil Emperor Proteus  
Well, to be more accurate, Rome took a dim view of the original Christianity under St. Anthony, but St. Paul’s more profitable version, which came to be known as Catholicism, was embraced rather fervently. Hence its continued dominance in Italy today.

@redweasel  
Most of the Christian and Abrahamic religions stole most of their lore from Egypt and other sources. Satan was originally a metaphysical force representing our inner animal and our will to defy it’s cravings. Classical Satanists were people who subscribed to an ideology of appeasing your inner animal instead of warring against it.
 
Demons were originally just spirits which did not dwell in the heavens and very few of them were evil, and would often be summoned to perform tasks in exchange for payment, which could be as simple as giving the Demon information on recent events or simply accepting teachings from it and documenting it so others can learn it.(presumably for the satisfaction of influencing the world through knowledge)
 
Most “Angels” before Christianity and such got a hold of them were abstract entities which looked completely inhuman, often resembling disembodied heads and body parts, golden or brass objects or giant eyes encased in a flaming pyramid fire or or a crackling black sun.
 
The initial purpose of Christianity was to threaten people with eternal torment so they’d join, which is why Rome took a dim view to it. I may actually be babbling, but the point I’m making is that most of the Christian mythos was taken from somewhere else, frequently makes no sense and is often contradictory.

@Stotter  
oh man, god is way more evil than satan. they can’t even pin down whether satan even revolted against him, or whether satan’s just a security penetration tester. god demands people sacrifice their children like a bull on the altar just for laughs. he arranged for his own son to get murdered horribly, just to win an argument. a son produced by god raping mary at that. and god’s planning on boiling this planet alive just out of spite, once he’s got everything he wants from us.
 
yeah ming the merciless, voldemort, lex luthor have nothing on god. evilest villain ever. ok sauron might come close, but all he did was torture elves until they were green, warty and metal as fuck.
 
…grand moff tarkin technically boiled a planet alive once, just because he was done with it. then destroyed a thriving paradise planet cultivated by ecological hippies, just to make people feel bad. yeah I think he beats god by a little bit. not even tarkin tortured his own son to death, though.

@redweasel  
And this somehow devolved into defending Nazis, Confederates, and Mao all in one comment. Ironically, Satan would be easier to defend, having only killed when God let him.

@Stotter  
evil is rarely, if ever black and white. most nazis were ardent lovers of their people and country, and most of the allied powers were rabidly antisemetic too. similarly, the us civil war wasn’t the noble corporate armies of the north going off against some dark cloud engulfed evil empire carving satanic messages in blood into the backs of their subjugated people. it was literally brother against brother.
 
if you want to talk about historical revisionism, don’t point to “history” that labels the losers of a war as evil, then claim it’s the truth, and any other evidence is just propaganda. how exactly did these nazis and confederates pay for all this propaganda, while their fields were being burned, lands stolen, and cities bombed/burned to rubble?
 
heck even mao gets way too much credit for a “holocaust” that was largely simple starvation due to hyper-industrialization.

@Somber Star  
That whole argument is historical negationism meant to salvage the image of the Confederacy which would otherwise be considered the most objectively evil enemy we ever fought until the rise of Nazi Germany, a government with such similar racial views that modern neo-nazis use the Confederate flag in countries where the swastika is banned, seeing as they’re both symbols of racial hatred. Related note, the Confederate flags they hang up now/recently were only put up there just as the civil rights movement began, for the obvious reason of trying to keep black people in their place. Side note, Lincoln won without being on southern ballots because of the large population difference between north and south.