this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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Now that is not really difficult. Most Americans learn little about American history for a start (and even less about some key issues where America had its low points), and nearly nothing about international history.
What American kids learn about WWII is the glory that the Americans have won over European fashism and Japanese imperialism, and how they helped people after the war. What they don't learn about is how Germany got into the fashism (which has loads of shocking similarities to what is happening with Trump and the GOP at the moment!), or the atrocities that American soldiers and the government did back then.
As an American I learned about the trail of tears, the gilded age, the Haymarket Affair, and the utter failure of the Wilson administration and how it plunged Germany into desperation
What I didn’t learn about was how light our touch was in executing nazi and imperial Japanese leadership. And how instead we chose to back fascists over communists in basically all of Asia and South America immediately after seeing the utter destruction of fascism. Actually I did learn that Ho Chi Minh was democratically elected so I guess I learned some of that, despite attending a Catholic school.
They don't learn how the US helped Europe mostly to help the conversion of it's own overgrown war industry back into a civilian behemoth? By exporting all of its own products instead of rebuilding the local infrastructures? Odd.
I suspect they don't learn about the 1001 coups uncle Sam either directed or backed around the world, either.