Quote from: RPGPundit;425653I mean, let's face it:

They are unintentionally racist by revising history.
Unintentionally sexist the same way.
Due to that racists and sexists wouldn't much care for them.
Anyone who dislikes the confederacy wouldn't like the idea that they're still around.
Those who do like the confederacy would probably be upset at the way the setting just throws away some of their.. ahem... "core values".
They have mystic negroes, mystic chinese, and mystic indians.
Plus they shit all over freemasons.

Obviously there may be some other cases of intentional or unintentional insult, stupid PC-ness, historical whitewashing, stupid un-pcness, or whatnot that might make it offensive to group somehow not included above (I forget, for example, if they have anything that would insult homosexuals, or gypsies).

This setting is really the magnum opus of getting it fucking wrong, even when (tragically? ironically? fortunately?) its core concept gets it so right.

RPGPundit

It reminds me of Firefly, which is just White Washed US history with the confederates as the heroic failures.

Quote from: Werekoala;425956Sure it is - its allll about discrimination, not self-determination.

Well, only because empirically it is, and always has been. "Self-determination" in this context has this wacky side effect of historically meaning "The self-determination of rich, white men" at the expense of everyone else.

QuoteSo again, let's just eliminate states altogether - why even bother if its all going to be dictated from Washington anyway? Why maintain the charade that we're anything but "Americans" any longer? Who are we trying to fool?

Well, it looks like you're mainly trying to fool poor people, minorities and women.

I'm actually far more of a localist than you are, comrade. I just don't attach my position to racist, revanchist bullshit. Try it sometime!

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;425964I'm actually far more of a localist than you are, comrade. I just don't attach my position to racist, revanchist bullshit. Try it sometime!

I'd love to! Since apparently you know how this all works better than I do, how does one go about wanting to make decisions about how they are governed, as close to home as possible and with as little interference from a centralized Federal bureaucracy, without being called a racist?

Establish city states?

Quote from: Werekoala;425956... So again, let's just eliminate states altogether - why even bother if its all going to be dictated from Washington anyway? Why maintain the charade that we're anything but "Americans" any longer? Who are we trying to fool?

I'm sorry to say that in popular culture outside the USA you pretty much ARE all just Americans, although you might expect some appreciation of certain regions of the nation as having a distinctive character, Texas, wider Deep South, New York City [including Bronx Brooklyn and Queens], wider North East, California, possibly Florida and The Rest probably (Mid West?). But to those of us on the outside, you ARE basically one nation, and though I've heard it said by some Americans in New York that New York or Florida were essentially different countries, it didn't come across as being meant literally. I mean, what's the essential difference between Iowa and Ohio, or between Kentucky and Virginia? I'm fucked if I know!

BTW I think it's totally mad the way you all have separate legal systems for each state. What a completely pointless waste of time!! Yeah, I know, we have separate legal systems in Scotland versus Northern Ireland versus England & Wales, and Wales is kind of breaking away now. But I venture to think that on the whole for most individuals the sense of nationality of being Scottish rather than English is PROBABLY (forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong) significantly stronger than the sense of nationality of coming from say New Jersey rather than New York State, or North Dakota v. South Dakota, or Wyoming instead of Montana, or East Virginia instead of West Virginia. They have a pretty strong independence movement. The thing is - having so many legal systems - it's just not efficient.

Quote from: ggroy;425972Establish city states?

No, no - it has been clearly established that the only reason to want independence from a Central Federal Government (in America, at least) is because you're a racist. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to avoid that label.

Quote from: Werekoala;425974No, no - it has been clearly established that the only reason to want independence from a Central Federal Government (in America, at least) is because you're a racist. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to avoid that label.

This seems to be less the case in other parts of the world, such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

Quote from: Ian Warner;425914On second thoughts Deadlands is no more offensive than this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biy2kbqPqHY

Although I imagine when America does eventually tear itself to bits this will look pretty bad in hindsight.

That is pretty offensive actually, to my British eyes - they're dancing on graves the sick fucks. I don't really care who the dead guy is, at least if he's not Waffen SS, you don't dance on his grave, and even if he IS Waffen SS, I still wouldn't personally do it, not even for Hitler himself, at least not so many years down the line (though trying to be completely honest with myself I suppose I might have in 1945 I suppose just out of joy at the end of an evil era, had I been alive then). You can mourn the tragedy of a misspent life devoted to an evil cause without actually dancing on the guy's grave. Those Southerners who died for the South, for starters I'm guessing a lot of them didn't have an awful lot of practical choice what they were doing, and I'm guessing they could easily fight out of local patriotism even if they weren't particularly in favour of slavery; probably a good percentage of them (15%? 20%?) were as anti-slavery as the average Yankie, and a small percentage more so, and they're dancing on those graves too. Of course my knowledge of the Civil War is pretty woeful so I may stand to be corrected. Maybe you can prove to me that every Southerner or at least every one in the Confederate army was a racist wanker whose only interest was in suppressing the blacks, but I doubt it.

BTW, what about Lovecraft in his Cthulhu etc. stories having a character call his black cat N****r-man and sometimes writing about "negroes" as being a low and mean kind of person or something along those lines. Is he considered a racist?

Does that mean we should all hate on the Cthulhu mythos?

Quote from: Werekoala;425969I'd love to! Since apparently you know how this all works better than I do, how does one go about wanting to make decisions about how they are governed, as close to home as possible and with as little interference from a centralized Federal bureaucracy, without being called a racist?

Well, one sensible place to start is not to use terms that originated as a defense of a horrible system that actually enslaved millions of people and made their lives living, unfree hells. Or to defend that system as misunderstood.

From there, the rest is just anarchism, comrade. I can put together a reading list if you'd like.

Quote from: Omnifray;425982BTW, what about Lovecraft in his Cthulhu etc. stories having a character call his black cat N****r-man and sometimes writing about "negroes" as being a low and mean kind of person or something along those lines. Is he considered a racist?

Does that mean we should all hate on the Cthulhu mythos?

No, but we shouldn't hide or downplay the fact that he was a racist.

The main difference between HP Lovecraft and the citizens of the slave-owning states, of course, is that HP Lovecraft didn't coerce, beat, torture and kill millions of people, or participate in the system that did or violently physically assault those who attempted to abolish that system. A minor difference, I know, but it probably counts for something.

Quote from: ggroy;425977This seems to be less the case in other parts of the world, such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

Or Canada. We've had three votes on whether Quebec should leave confederation ("Canada: the Other Confederacy"). One reason it's a little less urgent whether it does or not is that Quebec doesn't have people in chains being whipped and burnt and forced to labour until dead.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;425987No, but we shouldn't hide or downplay the fact that he was a racist.

The main difference between HP Lovecraft and the citizens of the slave-owning states, of course, is that HP Lovecraft didn't coerce, beat, torture and kill millions of people, or participate in the system that did or violently physically assault those who attempted to abolish that system. A minor difference, I know, but it probably counts for something.

Did he participate in a system which denied civil rights to blacks? He was pre MLK wasn't he.

Quote from: Omnifray;426028Did he participate in a system which denied civil rights to blacks? He was pre MLK wasn't he.

Yeap, but I'm unaware of him being politically active. He also lived mainly in Massachusetts, which was one of the better states for blacks (though hardly perfect, of course).

Basically, Lovecraft's racism is incidental to his work. It's unfortunate, it's there, and it influences his work occasionally, but there's a lot more to the stuff he spent his life doing than racism.

The slave system has none of those ameliorations. Individual southerners might be more or less decent people, but the whole society was rotten, from top to bottom, and the chain of events that led to the Civil War was set in motion by the decisions and actions of millions of people to preserve that system at any cost.

Quote from: Cranewings;425957It reminds me of Firefly, which is just White Washed US history with the confederates as the heroic failures.

Cranewings,

 I call Bullshit! on your comment.

 If you actually pay attention to the show - Malcolm Reynolds and his crew are against slavery!! (There are at least THREE scenes in various episodes that make this very clear)

Its quite blatant in several scvenes that the bad guys morality-wise won that war they all talk about that took place seven years before the series. The 'Alliance' in the show quite clearly has slavery or condones it in some fashion.
However, the Independents or 'Browncoats' did NOT support slavery.

So Technically Mal and crew of SERENITY are mostly 'veterans of the North' if you look at it the right way.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;426039Cranewings,

 I call Bullshit! on your comment.

Yeah. I'm a huge Firefly fan, watch the episodes and movie over and over again with my wife, who loves the show as well, and I can honestly say I can see how people can make that Confederate reading out of it, but also that if one makes that kind of reading, then that pretty much means you WANT to go there in the first place, for whatever reason, pro or against. So it's in the eye of the beholder, to me.