posted
Another nominee, but not because they did anything GOOD: Lee Harvey Oswald. It would have been nice if he'd lived long enough to actually stand trial and make some statements, instead of getting shot.
quote:These were Wilson's only successes in Latin American relations, however. The rest of his dealings with South, Central, and Caribbean American countries largely failed, and many of them even resulted in bloodshed. Wilson's attempt to help Nicaraguan rebels eventually required him to occupy the country by force in 1914. The same blunder occurred in Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916, when Wilson eventually sent in American troops to occupy the islands. During Wilson's Presidency, the United States also purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark. It is ironic that despite his loathing of imperialism and his deep belief in self-determination, Wilson resorted to military action in Latin America just as his predecessors had. Although Wilson had problems in the Caribbean, his greatest challenge came from Mexico.
quote:Between 1914 and 1918 the United States invaded or intervened in Latin America many times, particularly in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. The U.S. maintained troops in Nicaragua throughout his administration and used them to select the president of Nicaragua and then to force Nicaragua to pass the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty. American troops in Haiti forced the Haitian legislature to choose the candidate Wilson selected as Haitian president. After Haiti refused to declare war on Germany, Wilson had Haiti's government dissolved and then forced a new, less democratic constitution on Haiti through a sham referendum. American soldiers also expelled small farmers from their lands to work in chain gangs on public works projects and transferred the land to plantation owners. In 1919, Haitians rose up in rebellion against the Americans, resulting in 3,000 deaths. Gleijesus (1992) notes: "It is not that Wilson failed in his earnest efforts to bring democracy to these little countries. He never tried. He intervened to impose hegemony, not democracy."
(Note also his words of praise for Birth of a Nation and his success as a recruiting tool for the KKK.)
(Incidentally, wikipedia seems to be plagiarized by just about every other "informative" site out there--unless, of course, it's the other way around.)
This site also talks about how his Latin American and Carribean policy was a failure.
Haven't you expressed disagreement with Bush's policies in Iraq? Wilson seems like a Bush clone to me. In fact, after I had that thought, I found this article drawing the same comparison.
quote:Far from making the world safe for democracy, Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Congress so compromised the principle during 1918-1920 that informed observers (and leading Wilsonians) such as Walter Lippmann developed a realist worldview to demonstrate why democratic systems were dangerous as either the originators or objectives of foreign policy.
posted
Interesting. I will keep your points in mind, but I'm not sure that they tell the whole story. I'm not saying they're wrong, i'm just not sure they don't have a certain slant to them that might not be providing the whole picture.
I am aware that Wilson is a product of his time and his culture, and your information definitely casts him in a more negative light, but I still think though the implementation was flawed, the idea that America can be a force for change is a good idea, and that America should be pro-active as a force for good deserves serious consideration. Certainly, I think it's a far better idea than just sitting behind fortress America and letting things run their course.
I have expressed some disagreement with the Bush camp as to how effective invading Iraq and Afghanistan might be in reducing terrorism and as to whether it is the best thing to do to grow democracies, but I do think the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan have the potential to be good things for Iraqis and Afghanis. In other words, I'm open to the idea of invasion if it leads to greater good--democracy, freedom, standard of living, what have you.
Don't you think that helping to overthrow Castro and start democracy in Cuba might be a good idea?
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posted
The thing is, Castro would never have been able to keep control in Cuba if not for the Platt Ammendment, which the US forced Cuba at gunpoint to adopt in its constitution. Wilson is not responsible for that; it's before his time. But he is in part responsible for the "Platt Ammendment Mentality," because he invoked it so many times. His constant meddling (and that of Roosevelt and others) made Cuba weak for democracy because it demoralized any tendency toward homegrown democracy.
So overthrowing Castro? Well, it would just seem like cleaning up the mess the US did so much to help create.
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I am not clear from your post whether you think the U.S. should meddle some more and help to overthrow Castro or whether meddling will further make Cuba weak for democracy.
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I don't have a strong opinion on the question of whether the US should invade Cuba to create a democracy right now, because I perceive the issue as being ridiculously far from being on the table. I would say the US should have meddled less in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (especially the twentieth). Having already meddled so much, the US should have held true to their pattern of behavior when Cubans felt sure that they would depose an obviously communist dictator (basically, seeing as how Cuba was a de facto teritory of the US up until Castro), or at the very least, not have betrayed the attackers in the Bay of Pigs. I also think Kennedy should never have made a promise that was outside of his right to make in order to bring "resolution" to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
If there were seriously a consideration of invading Cuba right now for the express purpose of setting up a democracy, intellectually I would lean against it (though perhaps not in my heart) because I don't think you can create democracy effectively by ignoring the sovereignty of nations.
If an invasion were to be mounted as a way to end/punish the numerous human-rights violations under Castro, then I would be a little more open to it, but I would tend to oppose such an invasion if it were done unilaterally (or virtually unilaterally) because I think this would lead to a further puppetization of any countrry being aided in this way. If we want to take out brutal regimes, I think that's a good goal, but we need to have the world on our side. (And think about when we plan to take out China.)
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And I agree with you that good can come of the Iraq invasion and hope that it does, while I do not care for the circumstances under which we invaded or the precedents we established.
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Abraham Maslow. His death was a tragedy that robbed the world of one of it's best minds. He was in full stride and had gotten himself into a great position and then *poof* he's dead.
Bejamin Franklin. Sure, he lived to a ripe old age, but if there's anyone who deserved a shot of the old partial immortality so that they could be alive today, it'd be old Ben.
Alan Turing. Yeah, he really helped us win World War II and revolutionized the world of information theory and pretty much (with appolgies to Charles Babbage) invented the computer, but he was gay. So let's hound him to death. On such things are our super-genuises destroyed.
Chaim Potok. This is as close to the original point of the thread I'll get. Knowing that there will be no more of his books to read makes me sad.
On a Hatrack note, we (and the rest of the world) lost Centurion way too soon.
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In terms of political figures, I'd go with Yitzhak Rabin. I could be wrong, but I felt very optimistic that the changes he was making were actually going to do something to help bring about peace in Israel, and I mourned his death.
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posted
I agree with many of the choices made so far, but the one that actually invoked an emotional reaction was Douglas Adams. He wasn't very prolific, but everything he wrote was pure gold. If only to see the finished version of The Salmon of Doubt, and to see how the Hitchhikers Guide movie would have come out if he'd been around to continue his fight with the studios, it would be worth it.
posted
But if Jesus lived till he was 80, he could have died on any shape! Can you imagine if he passed out and hit his head on a dodecahedron floor tile? Think of how much more iron would be used across the world in the building of dodecahedrons for churches! We'd be running low! Madness I tell ya!
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I find it depressing that as a culture we mourn the death of entertainers much more than almost anyone else. I remember a space on Hatrack where I was expecting a "Shirley Chisholm has died thread" but she just wasn't as important as people like that guy who used to be on Law and Order. Our values are broken.
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I don't think you've got the right of it this time. I don't think it's celebrity worship, or we'd be hearing about a lot more athletes, for instance. I think people are talking about entertainers as artists, and it seems not-inappropriate to me, because artists can touch us on a personal level, while political figures typically do not. So I'm sad that Harry Chapin and River Phoenix, say, didn't live to be older not because I am unaware of history or don't value MLK, but because these performers, while not as earth-moving, affected me more personally.
Also, this is a thread (ostensibly) about people who died too soon. This is not uncommon with entertainers, but politicians tend to not make it to the top until they've been around for a while. In general, then, we don't tend to know about the ones who "died too soon." The ones we do know about tend, in more cases, to have lived long lives, and therefore not fit the topic. (This is not simply a "mourning famous people who have died" thread.)
Finally, you have posted twice now to sneer at the topic. I think that's kind of rude.
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posted
I don't know about that, Squicky. Art is the way people connect with the rest of humanity. Scientists and politicians are very important. But artists can connect with people in a way that other public figures can't. When someone who helped us learn about our own humanity and our place in the world through their art dies, there's bound to be an emotional reaction. It doesn't lessen the importance of the people who contributed to society in other ways, on a large scale or a small scale. It's just a different kind of experience.
When Shirley Chisholm and Johnny Carson die around the same time, I have a stronger emotional reaction to losing the person I spent every night with when I was going through high school. It has nothing to do with values. It has to do with the human experience, and being honest with myself about it.
[edit: I bow to your fast fingers, Ic]
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posted
ehhh...while I'm not going to say that the reason you offered aren't also in play, there is a great deal of celebrity worship and it's attendent self-centeredness in this. People don't mourn the performer as a person so much as they mourn the loss of the performances. I see a lot of what's been said as equivilent to the idea that players on your professional sports team give a darn about you. It's a poor place to put value in your life.
This shallowness and egocentricity is to me one of the central sickness of American society. Celebrity worship is, to me, one of the more visibly distasteful aspects of it.
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posted
I think that it should be Princess Diana. She was involved with charities working to help children, homeless people and AIDS sufferers, as well as with the campaign to ban land mines.
quote:People don't mourn the performer as a person so much as they mourn the loss of the performances.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here . . . or what the point is. Of course we moan the loss of the performance: it's precisely through the performance that these performers touched us. It's not like we know any of these famous people as actual human beings. Heck, in the last year, I've heard stunningly negative things about Ghandi, Thomas Jefferson, MLK, and Abraham Lincoln as people. Are they true? Beats me. Their private pecadillos are nowhere near as relevant to me as the effect their lives have on me. The same is true for the artist.
As far as self-centeredness, that seems like an easy criticism to throw out in a thread that asks people to reflect on what they personally wish there had been more of, but I'm not sure there is any relevance to the charge. Am I "self-centered" because I miss my grandmother? Well, technically, I guess the answer is "yes," but that doesn't make it wrong, or suggest that I care less about others than I should.
Sometimes it really is acceptable to indulge your own feelings.
I agree with you about the excesses of our celebrity-obsessed culture. But I don't agree that this thread is inherently symptomatic of that disorder.
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posted
There's a bit of hypocrisy evident in anyone who has 3000+ posts on a famous author's cultural forums coming down on people who appreciate the work of celebrities.
There's a wide range of activities that could be defined as "celebrity worship". One definition could be buying all the trashy tabloids and obsessing over who's dating Tom Cruise, or what Britney Spears wore to the grocery store. Another definition could be immersing oneself in the work of a skilled and famous artist, and letting their work change how you think about life. Not a lot of people on this forum "worship" celebrities by the first definition. But by the second definition, I dare say everyone here, along with everyone in any part of the world where fame has a meaning, has engaged in some form of "celebrity worship." It's not a cultural thing. It's a human experience thing.
I'd say, though, that it's a bit misleading to use a term more fitting one thing to describe the other. It also seems somewhat... well I don't want to start throwing out words that would turn this discussion personal, but there's something amiss in feeling that your appreciation for Star Wars, Chaim Potok and Douglas Adams are somehow more noble or intelligent than another person's appreciation for Harry Chapin or Jimi Hendrix.
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posted
PedroZamora, from the third MTV "Real World." He was many, many young people's first exposure to a real (to them) person with HIV.
He moved us forward much, but I think we would have moved faster if he hadn't died. And I wish he could have had a longer life to enjoy. Way, way, way too short.
quote:I remember a space on Hatrack where I was expecting a "Shirley Chisholm has died thread" but she just wasn't as important as people like that guy who used to be on Law and Order. Our values are broken.
This is a fairly constant theme in your posts, Squick: that paying attention to one thing implies a lack of appreciation or acknowledgment for the other.
Did you start a Chisholm thread? Or did you just file away the little bit of information that nobody else did to be used later in your sneering?
posted
Icarus, I think I was folding my "People seem to regard performers as their own dancing monkeys." complaint into this. To hopefully make it clearer, it the difference between "I love you." meaning "I understand aand cherish the person that you are." and "I enjoy the things you do for me."
When people mourn the death of an entertainer, they are usually mouring their loss of things that'll entertain them. It's not that these people were taken too young, but rather that I want more jokes or songs or whatever.
The orientation that entertainment is the most important thing is the self-centeredness and shallowness that I'm decrying. I'd go so far as to say that the problem starts first when you find entertainers as prominent people to form emotional attachments to.
From my perspective, this thread in many ways displays the idea that entertainers are more important than everyone else. This is obviously something that is pushed heavily in our culture. I'm saying that not only do some people not think this way, but that some find it a really bad way to think.
You may have a different perspective on what's going on in this thread. I can respect that, but I still hold to my perspective.
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posted
Why would I start a Shirley Chisholm tribute thread? That's not the sort of thing I do. It was just for me another example of the orientation of many people here. And yes, I'm always filing away information about the social contexts that I find myself in.
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posted
And the fact that it's not the sort of thing other people do doesn't mean people here find her less important than Jerry Orbach. It means that Jerry Orbach's death is more the type of thing that's discussed here.
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And this ties into the fact that I said I saw it as an example of a prevelant attitude. It was hardly the sole example of the attitude that I'm talking about.
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Why don't you start that sort of thread, Squicky? By refraining from starting that sort of thread, aren't you part of the problem? You say you don't do that, but you do criticize other for also not doing it. Isn't it better to build something yourself than to criticize other people for not building it?
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posted
To further support the theory that entertainers are more important to my self-centered perspective of the world, here's a few that I don't think were mentioned yet in no specific order:
Chris Farley Kurt Cobain Jason Matthew Thirsk Eric Blair (George Orwell) Ernest Hemingway Charles Dickens Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Van Gogh Darth Vader
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posted
For much the same reason I don't post a landmark. I generally don't personally appreciate the "so and so has died" threads and don't feel like posting them. I did however find it somehwat depressing that I belong to community that finds Jerry Orbach's death a much more comment worthy topic than Shirley Chisholm's.
Can people understand why that would be?
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quote: Why would I start a Shirley Chisholm tribute thread? That's not the sort of thing I do. It was just for me another example of the orientation of many people here.
Ah. So you're disappointed in yourself for not starting a Shirley Chisholm tribute thread? Or are you disappointed in all those other people out there who cared about Shirley Chisholm who, like you, didn't start a tribute thread?
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posted
I'm disappointed that that substantial subset of the Hatrack population who values tribute threads found Jery Orbach and the like a much more fitting subject of such a thread than Shirley Chisholm. I was certainly not under the impression that there weren't people on Hatrack that honored Shirley on hearing of her passing. But I was disappointed in the presented social standard of entertainers being of more worth to many people here, which I saw this as an example of.
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posted
Perhaps the demographic of "people who mourned Shirley Chisholm" does not substantially intersect the "people who make tribute threads when someone dies" demographic.
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posted
Which is fine and not at all out of line with what I said. Actually, that pretty much is what I've said, although I added the idea that the group of people who value and make tribute threads is a large one.
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posted
So you're making a generalization about the prevalent attitude of all the people here based on what type of threads are started, yet you refrain from starting your own threads regarding things that you believe in?
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quote:although I added the idea that the group of people who value and make tribute threads is a large one.
So perhaps tribute threads are not the best way to determine what a community really values? After all, presumably you really valued Shirley Chisholm, and yet started no tribute thread.
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posted
They are not exhaustive, but they do indicate the values of some significant section of the community. Were there no tribute threads for semi-famous actors and other assorted celebrities, I'd wouldn't conclude anything from there not being a tribute thread for other people. But having those, the absence of tributes to other people does indicate a relative valuing, at the very least in terms of who is worthy of a tribute thread, among the people who are involved in such threads.
And, as I've said, this is merely an easily demonstrable example of something I see in the social context here. That's not to say that all people here fit this description, but rather that I see this in a significant number of people.
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posted
I don't know who Shirley Chisholm is. The only reason I know who Jerry Orbach is is that I've overheard coworkers who watched Law & Order talking about him. Incorporate that into your respective social theories however you like.
I think with political and social leaders, a few major ones were said early on that most everybody says "ditto" but then entertainers get named because more people have a favorite actor who died than a favorite politician who died. Not that this means much either way, I'm just sayin'.
quote: But having those, the absence of tributes to other people does indicate a relative valuing, at the very least in terms of who is worthy of a tribute thread, among the people who are involved in such threads.
What percentage of Hatrack do you believe starts tribute threads?
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The man practically revolutionized performing arts. If he were able to live out a full life, i think we would have seen even greater performances, perhaps lasting ones.
Maybe not deep, but that's my choice.
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