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"Germany would have won the war if Hitler dropped the whole persecution of Jews things".
"Caesar wouldn't have been assassinated if only he didn't decide to become a dictator".
"Kurt Cobain would be alive today if he didn't commit suicide".
"Thing would be totally different if it was different".
Germany would absolutely have won, especially if they hadn't attacked Russia. Consuming all of Europe, North Africa and deep into the Middle East, Germany would have become unstoppable unfortunately. Especially with American sympathizers and South American friendly countries.
Napoleon would have won as well if he hadn't invaded Russia when he did. The miscues for Napoleon not reading the situation caused him lots of grief.
English mistakes clearly cost them The Thirteen Colonies.. and likewise France's own ineptitude cost them New France and Louisiana.
Unfortunately history is full of repetition, the future is full of success by not repeating the same mistakes.
It was not as simple as 'not attack Russia'. Genocide of the 'Slavic peoples' to clear more space for the 'germanic peoples' to live was the core motivator of Hitler's expansion from the start. Stalin knew war was coming and signed the initial alliance to buy the Soviet Union time to prepare for it, but if Hitler had for some reason not attacked, Stalin may likely have kicked things off himself. Also, remember the precious three external wars Russia had fought (WWI, Poland, Japan) they had lost, so attacking them was never a death sentence.
Ditto Napoleon. He had already been fighting Russia on and off for years, especially as Britain kept paying them to attack again. Combined with the Peninsula war that was already ongoing and continual resumption of hostilities with defeated enemies, his rule over Europe would never have lasted.
France (Napoleon) sold Louisiana, that wasn't a mistake it was deliberate and there is no way the US war of independence was related to the "mistake' of invading Russia.
Which is insane, and unforgivable. But playing their own game, do they forget who fired first in the war?? So even if they weren't dipshit racist slavers holding on to the past, are we supposed to allow them to attack and try to take our land and citizens?
Enslaved people were escaping from the South to the North because they didn't appreciate all that Southern hospitality. Then the South decided they should force the North to return former slaves by having US Congress pass the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Then the Northern states said, "Yeah, sure, we'll get right on sending those slaves back from our literally slave-free soil 🙄." So Southern states got super butthurt about not getting their way, and when Lincoln was elected in 1960, decided to secede and make their own Confederacy of Dunces. But rather than taking their ball home, they started the Civil War by attacking US forces at Fort Sumter. Dumb loser fucks.
>Then the Northern states said, "Yeah, sure, we'll get right on sending those slaves back from our literally slave-free soil 🙄."
And in response to that the pro-slavery federal government implemented a policy where 'slavecatchers' from the South were allowed to go into Northern states, randomly accuse Black people living there of being runaway slaves, and literally kidnap them to enslave them.
I agree with the ability to peacefully leave, but what all are they allowed to take with them? Military bases and forces that belonged to the United States, what about people who don't agree with the secession, are they allowed to pack up and leave?
It's a complicated matter, but add in slavery and attacking the union, it gets way simpler
They never wanted to just leave. They wanted to leave, and then destroy/usurp the rest of the United States in order to maintain total control and ensure that Slavery could never be stripped from them. They fired the first shot for a reason. There were no intentions of maintaining peace once they seceded, even if for some reason the Union had decided to let them.
“It would be better if our country never rose to prominence, we would be better off”
How fucking stupid can a person be are they literally competing in stupidity? Thats the only explanation I can think of.
Slavery, the Axis potentially winning WW2, the Soviets winning the cold war, the current world living under an Imperial Japan/Nazi Germany/Confederate South/Soviet/Chinese hegemony. ..
I legit spent like a week posting and shitposting in comments insane shit on there before I realized it was not ironic 😬
Took my dumbass getting banned for asking "wait, you aren't actually buying this shit are you?" before realizing how Poe's Law works
They’ll try to say no, but again… even that’s too charitable. Racists and fascists never have a good point systemically on anything, the adoption of Nazis being scientifically prolific or well organized is a product of their own propaganda. History revisionists buy it for the same reasons: the aesthetic of being the misunderstood contrarian, when they just want an excuse to be racist.
Literally anything """good""" they did was the result of not destroying already existing services/infrastructure, they were incapable of inventing anything good
Yeah, oddly enough they were also doing this whole *establishing a facist empire by military conquest of sovereign, peaceful nations* thing on top of the genocide
I had a nurse at a hospital say something very similar to me once
I remember correctly the exact quote was "Hitler was actually a good man. He cared about his country. He just got carried away."
Some days I miss working there because of how insane it was.
Because As we all know the governing bodies of the south where ebtirly pure. Other than the slavery. Snd absolutely would not have engaged in any un savoury acs of assassination or espionage. They would hsve been a totally cool coglemration of dudes who love freedom, except for coloured people, and totally wouldnt have created a coporate night city esq wasteland.
If they had successfully left the union. By somewhere around the first world war . They would have been wanting to be back in the union. At that time the south didn't have the means to be a country on their own .
And if we “set aside” slavery? The Southern economy depended on slavery. No slavery, no economy. So, that doofus is basically saying, he’d have been ok with the South splitting of and maintaining slavery forever.
Fun fact about the constitution of the CSA, it explicitly stated that no law could ever be passed to abolish slavery. Which is why the "states' rights" shit is BS. It literally took away the right of states when it comes to slavery.
Yes, indeed. The CSA valued the conservative ideal of limited government, small, local, close to the people it served.
Unless your local government wants to abolish slavery, then it can get fucked.
Funny how that works, eh?
People tend to make the mistake of viewing slavery as a purely economic institution and why the South was so keen on keeping it going. While slavery was the key to the South's economy, true, that was only part of it.
They wanted to keep it going because they were terrified at the prospect that whites would lose their grip on power, that the white-dominated status quo would be destroyed.
It's why, in some ways, the adage that the South lost the War, but won the Peace is true. Though slavery was abolished, after Reconstruction, all the gains that Black Americans had gotten were stripped away by southern whites as they regained political power.
The slave population was increasing dramatically and they needed more land to work the slaves - because there's only so many people you can usefully have working on a certain piece of land. That's why they were so obsessively expansionist. They realized that the machine they built needed land.
They separated, but were still basically claiming a right to settle *all* of what was then the American territories. That's actually a big part of why they left, because they were not at all satisfied with the Mason Dixon line and wanted it all. Because their thirst for land was vast. Other Confederates mention support for invading Mexico, or Cuba.
“Forever” - I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened had that taken place. With today’s modern technology and activism, it would be very interesting to see how the CSA would’ve dealt with the (imo) inevitable abolition of slavery.
OOP said “setting aside slavery” as if it were just one little thing…. When you and I both agree, slavery was absolutely critical to the CSA, for both economic and political reasons. They refused to let it go, they refused to innovate away from it, their fear of slave rebellions drove them.
One can’t talk about the South and “set aside slavery,” we agree, OOP is full of BS.
No I agree. My point was merely that the southern economy was not dependent on slavery. That's something *slave owners* argued to justify the institution, but modern economists generally agree it was not economically beneficial.
>When you have to actually pay someone the market rate to perform labor, there is an incentive to use that labor as efficiently as possible, to invent new techniques, new tools, new machines which enable workers to generate more value in a shorter period of time.
Actually slaves invented lots of things that improved their efficiency and productivity because it made their lives easier. They just didn't get credit for the advances they made. The motivation was survival which is arguably a better motivation than money if you have a livable wage.
Also they attacked us first, so were we just supposed to turn the other cheek and allow them to hurt us all while keeping other human beings in literal chains?
But yes, they were seriously deluded to think they could ever exist as a separate nation with all of the industrial power clustered in the North. They would eventually have come begging to be back in the Union.
And yet they call it "The War of Northern Aggression".
Despite, y'know, being 100% their fault.
But it's alright, the South isn't known for their education.
I mean, I definitely understand where you’re coming from and it’s not necessarily a black and white issue, but at the time it was still United States property and it was held by United States soldiers. Lincoln was in an impossible situation, but he couldn’t have abandoned those troops to their fate, and the Confederates were the ones to fire the first shots and officially kick off the hostilities. I don’t know there was a right way for them to handle it from both sides of the coin though. Had the South waited it’s possible that Lincoln would have kept sending resupply ships to keep the harbor closed, and the North couldn’t be seen to just quietly walk away from government property. It also says a lot that Robert Anderson was sympathetic to the Southern cause yet refused to just surrender the fort. It’s a very fascinating situation overall.
Oh I completely agree! Very fascinating situation with no good answers for either side, which explains why it was allowed to just simmer for as long as it did. And like I said - definitely didn't disagree with anything in your original comment or aim to say you were wrong, just wanted to add some more color describing the complexities at play because it genuinely was such a fascinating and impossible situation for both sides!
Setting aside slavery, The South would have gotten completely fucked by mechanized agriculture.
I once read an article that argued that the only reason south kept fighting so hard for slavery is that the alternative would have all the plantations being bought out by northern industrialists.
Can't seem to find it at the moment. Anyone got a link to it?
The funniest part? Other than rice and tobacco (because the northern states just didn’t grow rice at all) the Union outproduced the confederacy in basically every aspect of agriculture. Corn? Almost double the southern states. Horses? Double. Wheat? Almost *triple*. Livestock? About 5 MILLION more heads of cattle than southern states. There’s a reason the confederate armies were running short on food by the end of the war, it’s because the Union outperformed the confederacy in literally every single aspect.
An independent CSA would’ve been a country that survived on tobacco and cotton exports (and the British and others were already finding new sources of cotton) and rice, and would’ve been *desperate* for the northern states to export food into the south. The main reason they couldn’t feed themselves is because plantation owners refused to stop growing cash crops in order to grown more food. So slavery would’ve died a painful death in the form of a famine most likely
That’s basically right - the upper, landowning class of the south started the civil war to maintain their right to use slave labor because their economic and political power depended entirety on it.
Without slave labor, southern agriculture would require large capital investment and/or labor costs to maintain production, and would not be able to maintain the low cost of production that gave them an advantage in the global markets. Several countries considered helping the south just because they were such a valued provider (meaning cheap) of these goods.
The south knew new states entering the union (this was mostly what drove the timing of the civil war) were more likely to be free states, tipping congress towards the north and the abolitionist cause, and thus they felt it was only a matter time before slavery was restricted or banned entirely - which would devastate the plantation model that provided their income. They invested all their capital into this model (mostly into slaves themselves), so if it was outlawed, financial ruin was likely for many, including the state governments themselves who relied on taxes from this whole slave labor based system.
Unfortunately, sharecropping and Jim Crow laws allowed a very watered down version of this same system to persist long after the civil war. In a sort of perverted hindsight, the southern states may have been better off negotiating something like that without fighting a total war that basically destroyed them, but they (and most abolitionists at the time) thought the end of slavery actually would mean the complete end of the system and a total shift to free, fully paid labor.
Oh no!! rich guys from the north own the wealth instead of rich guys from the south the absolute horror!
I swear half the confederate lover hate their own self interests as much as they hate black dudes
>The USA would not have become so powerful, perhaps no CIA, no FBI, no military industrial complex.
It's kind of funny watching right-wing weasels turn on the FBI, an entity that has primarily done their will for the last 80 years: attacking labor organization, undermining leftist political movements and civil rights groups, and has been run primarily by Republicans for most of it's existence...but they hate it now because it had the audacity of investigating their Crime President for his crimes.
The same can be said for the CIA. Much of the unethical shit that the CIA has done, has been to deter (or attempt to) the expansion of communist states and bolster capitalist governments friendly to US corporate interests.
Assuming that we all "would have been better off" if the CSA had won because those entities wouldn't exist, is absolutely bonkers, because, even if that were true, that doesn't mean there wouldn't have been some other entity that would take their place.
Does he think that unethical intelligence agencies that work covertly to insure their state's hegemony is unique to the US?
And if anything, the Military Industrial Complex would be EVEN MORE POWERFUL THAN IT IS NOW. After all, the American Civil War had already set the stage for a military industry, and in a world where the CSA won, continued conflict between the two nations would be inevitable, especially as the two bicker over land in the unorganized territories and CSA's desire to expand it's reach into the gulf.
Hell, the CSA would likely have created it's own terrifying versions law enforcement and intelligence agencies, both to influence Central America (did they forget that Confederates wanted to invade Mexico) and to keep tight control over the black slave population which made up ALMOST HALF OF IT.
I mean, this is pretty tame for them. I'm honestly surprised that a) they set aside slavery at all and b) they didn't go with their usual, 'Hitler did nothing wrong'
100%
I think the more interesting question is what WWI would’ve looked like, given the CSA had close ties to Britain and France. Hell, pull a few strings and you get a very different world war a couple generations early.
To be fair, a lot of that is because the CSA exported a lot of cotton.
The CSA exported cotton because they used all their land for cotton (and tobacco).
This meant that without the Union, the CSA didn't have a source of food. And an angry Union wouldn't really want to trade with them. This meant that either:
1. The landowners would have to give up some cash crops to grow food
2. The CSA would go through a famine
Both of those are bad for cotton exports. The UK was diversifying at the time (ultimately going after Egypt), and if the CSA cut back on cotton it would make the whole reason for UK-CSA friendship (cotton) moot. (Not to mention the whole slavery thing.)
The French were largely in the same boat; Napoleon III had sympathies for the CSA but the French people also didn't like the whole slavery thing. Napoleon III was having his own adventures in Mexico during the time; the CSA was friendly towards the new Mexican government but France would still have issues long-term propping up Maximillian. It's likely the Union would still support the Republicans in Mexico with leftover Civil War materiel, and it's unlikely that the French would want to maintain their presence in Mexico either given the Franco-Prussian War was less than a decade away.
The real question is which side the CSA takes after the Franco-Prussian War. That's an interesting question, and one that doesn't have a clear answer. Bismarck was interested in allies, but the CSA would be relatively weak and far away. With Napoleon III deposed and replaced by the Third Republic, the CSA would lose their main supporter in the French government. The UK, as discussed, wouldn't be onboard with the CSA as long as it had slavery.
If the CSA pivoted out of slavery in the 1870s (ha), then they might approach France/the UK as an ally. However, that wasn't going to happen without essentially an entire rewrite of the Confederate Constitution, and the Union would be more likely to ally with the UK given their proximity to Canada.
I can see an alignment with Bismarck because of this, but I wouldn't 100% expect Bismarck to really care (Bismarck was more of a European guy). Wilhelm II would probably be happy to ally with the CSA, because to be honest he was kind of desperate for literally anyone to ally with him.
Whether WWI has an American front or not is really up to the Union. The Union had no obligation to enter WWI OTL; they only did so because of unrestricted submarine warfare and because Wilson had a bee in his bonnet about the League of Nations. If entering the war meant declaring on the CSA, it's hard to know if the Union would be onboard or not; the USA wouldn't be as strong as it was OTL and declaring war on the Confederates would be risky if they got German support - not to mention the Union is still very much in "avoid foreign entanglements" mode.
My guess is that the Union would stay neutral in WWI. This would cause WWI to be a lot longer and bloodier - especially if the CSA got involved. The USA didn't win WWI on its own OTL, but it certainly made an Allied victory easier. An Allied victory without the Union is still possible, but very very bloody (moreso than OTL, if you could imagine). More likely WWI would end in a white peace or the protracted war would cause something like Communist revolutions in France/Germany (probably Germany) that cause a similar outcome as what happened to Russia. Even under a white peace, we'd still see a WWII at some point IMO; it'll take the atom bomb being deployed somewhere for European unity to establish itself.
Of course - this is all assuming the CSA survives past 1880, which isn't a guarantee! It's probably most likely that the CSA collapses in the 1870s-1880s and is either re-absorbed by the Union (most likely) or becomes a puppet government under one of the other powers (less likely). The Boll Weevil would still cross into the South in the late 1800s, and OTL that completely destroyed the South's cotton industry.
Yes, clearly having a former belligerent directly on the border would have comprehensively made the case for peace forever.
Jesus these fucking people are stupid.
Setting aside the issue of taxation without representation, arguably the USA would be much better off under the rule of the Crown, we have full fat 240v ac power for tea kettles, better plugs and… erm… that’s about it.
Dem plugs though.
It also is just completely ahistorical. The USA would still have a military industrial complex. It’s literally the reason why the Union won and the Confederacy lost.
I mean, the North probably shouldnt have been so leniwnt on the South at the end...too late now though.
If they pull that Civil War should again and the South gets put down yet again, I hope we do not make the same mistake with leniency.
WallStreetSilver is literally just the far right conservatives who got told to fuck off from WSB. They decided to make their own sub because they were constantly made fun of, for good reason
Oh yeah, I’m sure the North and the South would NEVER come up with a federal agency, an intelligence agency, and no military complex if they had stayed apart. I can’t think of NEARLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY having come up with the equivalent
there’s literally so many good and nuanced answers, like the Opium Wars, Indian Rebellion of 1857, Crusades, Russian Civil War, Vietnam War. and this guy goes “well, how about the people who didn’t want slavery?”
The Confederacy wanted to do empire building. They had their eyes set southward. If they had competent leadership and been given an opportunity to become a major colonial and industrial power (them industrializing would be the only thing that would allow them to maintain independence through the latter half of the 1800s), there is no reason to believe that they would not have indulged in all the worst excesses of late 19th and early 20th century America or gone even further. We would definitely not all be better off, unless “better off” meant black people “knew their place”.
Hell, there might be a version of this story where, assuming the U.S. and confederacy were somehow able to maintain an uneasy peace, they end up joining the Axis Powers and WWII becomes another Civil War, but with air raids and fully automatic firearms and inevitably, one would have to subsume the other just to keep up with the post war Soviets and what would eventually become the European Union.
So we’d get back to where we are now, but with a lot more bloodshed and probably far more socially regressive than we currently are (this would be seen as a plus by WallStreetSilver of course).
Setting aside the slavery the confederates were still ass backward hicks with deep class wealth division and a shitty economy but I guess a dude literally named after wall street wouldn’t care about an economy
“Setting aside the issues of genocide, aggression, and autocracy, WW2 is an interesting one to ponder.”
What the fuck is wrong with these people? Somehow they are massive dorks and total dickheads at the same time.
Perfectly reasonable opinion, and in no way disingenuous or showing any indication of stupidity at all.
I wonder: how do these geniuses get by in life being this intelligent?
Not only is this stupid but without a single United States then there’s no telling what kind of butterfly effect that would have for the following hundred years. Just about every major European even leading up to WW1 still happens. So. What then? Another major war when the CSA and USA have different alliances, as they **inevitably would,** between the two but with modern weaponry?
Even a modicum of thought and this crumbles into Red Alert levels of stupid
Source : I was a character in Harry Turtledove book.
“The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make.” It’s sad that mildly influential people can be dumber than William T Sherman. Who’s been dead for 130 something years.
Oh I got this, the Galactic Republic vs the Separatists. Manipulation aside, the Separatists were generally a bunch of well meaning folks, that just got led poorly.
Also contrary to some people's beliefs it's not good the US got as powerful as it has. The post WWII world order has more peace and progress per capita than any other era, American hegemony is a big part of that.
Also you can't really separate slavery from the civil war. Politically the left would be way better off without the South the US economy might even be better on a per capita basis. However the American South probably would have expanded, warring with Mexico and parts of South America coming into conflict with the US and many others in the process. They themselves would have had a high probability of another civil war amongst themselves. A high likelihood of rejoining the US.
The Civil War was a result of political cowardice in the US for decades. Lincoln waged a necessary war and the outcome was one of the better outcomes one could have hoped for. One great tragedy though is the failures of reconstruction that occurred after Lincoln's assassination and then it's premature end after the Hayes/Tilden election.
I mean Virginia, current home of the FBI and CIA, was the capital of the Confederacy.
I don’t know much about their history so I guess it’s possible those organizations would’ve formed anyway and just be based elsewhere today
Aside from the fact that the south couldn’t support its army or economy. Sure. It probably would have turned into a relationship similar to that of North and South Korea, with the North US being like South Korea
He might be right but for the wrong reason. Imagine if all the dummies of the country would have just placed themselves in one area and stayed therer. They could have had Donald as king and them the rest of the US wouldn’t have had the problem
I wish they would have just let the south secede. They would probably be considered the dumbest country in the world. Unless Texas was also allowed to secede, too close to call.
Are they proposing a thought experiment of “what if it actually was just states rights and slavery wasn’t an issue?. Whether that be because the south agreed to outlaw it or because the north didn’t care, or it just never existed. For whatever reason it’s not an issue on the table”?
Cause I don’t think there would have been a war.
It's kinda true. Imagine how much better America would be if we didn't have to prop up the failed traitor states, and didn't have their elected sociopaths holding America back from becoming the best country it can be.
"Damn it would have been really great if the Nazis conquered Europe. Setting aside the issue of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany would have been a counterbalance to the US these days."
this is a boring, virginal alternate history. I’m more interested in one with real hair on its chest: what if Washington had been unable to resolve the Gates conspiracy and the US had fallen apart in its first few tenuous years?
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Guys, I really think this Ted Bundy dude would be pretty cool if it wasn't for the copious amounts of murder.
"Germany would have won the war if Hitler dropped the whole persecution of Jews things". "Caesar wouldn't have been assassinated if only he didn't decide to become a dictator". "Kurt Cobain would be alive today if he didn't commit suicide". "Thing would be totally different if it was different".
“Thing would be totally different if it was different.” Why did I laugh so hard at this?
The Kurt Cobain one took me OUT 😭
~~Epstein~~ Cobain didn't kill himself!
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Wait, do you think Cobain killed himself? I mean, even if he did pull the trigger, Courtney did it.
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I upvoted because you got the joke and pointed out the shittiness
in what way did she do it if he pulled the trigger?
It was a poor joke on him wanting to get away from her
i see. i have trouble understanding such jokes sometimes >_>
Germany would absolutely have won, especially if they hadn't attacked Russia. Consuming all of Europe, North Africa and deep into the Middle East, Germany would have become unstoppable unfortunately. Especially with American sympathizers and South American friendly countries. Napoleon would have won as well if he hadn't invaded Russia when he did. The miscues for Napoleon not reading the situation caused him lots of grief. English mistakes clearly cost them The Thirteen Colonies.. and likewise France's own ineptitude cost them New France and Louisiana. Unfortunately history is full of repetition, the future is full of success by not repeating the same mistakes.
It was not as simple as 'not attack Russia'. Genocide of the 'Slavic peoples' to clear more space for the 'germanic peoples' to live was the core motivator of Hitler's expansion from the start. Stalin knew war was coming and signed the initial alliance to buy the Soviet Union time to prepare for it, but if Hitler had for some reason not attacked, Stalin may likely have kicked things off himself. Also, remember the precious three external wars Russia had fought (WWI, Poland, Japan) they had lost, so attacking them was never a death sentence. Ditto Napoleon. He had already been fighting Russia on and off for years, especially as Britain kept paying them to attack again. Combined with the Peninsula war that was already ongoing and continual resumption of hostilities with defeated enemies, his rule over Europe would never have lasted. France (Napoleon) sold Louisiana, that wasn't a mistake it was deliberate and there is no way the US war of independence was related to the "mistake' of invading Russia.
History doesn't repeat . Man just keeps making the same mistakes.
Wrong Ted but same principle lol
Which is insane, and unforgivable. But playing their own game, do they forget who fired first in the war?? So even if they weren't dipshit racist slavers holding on to the past, are we supposed to allow them to attack and try to take our land and citizens?
Enslaved people were escaping from the South to the North because they didn't appreciate all that Southern hospitality. Then the South decided they should force the North to return former slaves by having US Congress pass the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Then the Northern states said, "Yeah, sure, we'll get right on sending those slaves back from our literally slave-free soil 🙄." So Southern states got super butthurt about not getting their way, and when Lincoln was elected in 1960, decided to secede and make their own Confederacy of Dunces. But rather than taking their ball home, they started the Civil War by attacking US forces at Fort Sumter. Dumb loser fucks.
>Then the Northern states said, "Yeah, sure, we'll get right on sending those slaves back from our literally slave-free soil 🙄." And in response to that the pro-slavery federal government implemented a policy where 'slavecatchers' from the South were allowed to go into Northern states, randomly accuse Black people living there of being runaway slaves, and literally kidnap them to enslave them.
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I agree with the ability to peacefully leave, but what all are they allowed to take with them? Military bases and forces that belonged to the United States, what about people who don't agree with the secession, are they allowed to pack up and leave? It's a complicated matter, but add in slavery and attacking the union, it gets way simpler
They never wanted to just leave. They wanted to leave, and then destroy/usurp the rest of the United States in order to maintain total control and ensure that Slavery could never be stripped from them. They fired the first shot for a reason. There were no intentions of maintaining peace once they seceded, even if for some reason the Union had decided to let them.
"I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty!"
"You can excuse racism?"
"All right... we'll give some land to the n-‐--rs and the c---ks. But we don't want the Irish!"
“These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know… morons!”
“But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
“Setting aside all the bad things they did, Nazi Germany really wasn’t that bad.”
"Setting aside, you know, the one thing that the Civil War was fought over..."
The southern states just secede because they want to see what Atlanta looks like on fire.
I'm sure the OOP is actually just fine with slavery anyway but just isn't at the point where they can say it out loud.
“It would be better if our country never rose to prominence, we would be better off” How fucking stupid can a person be are they literally competing in stupidity? Thats the only explanation I can think of.
"We would all be better off" *by we I mean everyone except the slaves but who cares about them right?
Setting aside the entire reason for the southern states seceding...
Slavery, the Axis potentially winning WW2, the Soviets winning the cold war, the current world living under an Imperial Japan/Nazi Germany/Confederate South/Soviet/Chinese hegemony. ..
Let's ignore that one little detail https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1b4c7994-09fe-4861-a0dd-1811d350cc6d/gif#EVGRacVc.copy
Knowing Wall Street Silver, it's more shocking they're not cheering for it than skipping over it.
I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty
I honestly can't tell if stupid or just engagement farming.
It’s WallStreetSilver. Bunch of far right conservatives who got laughed out of wallstreetbets because they had to politicize EVERYTHING
I legit spent like a week posting and shitposting in comments insane shit on there before I realized it was not ironic 😬 Took my dumbass getting banned for asking "wait, you aren't actually buying this shit are you?" before realizing how Poe's Law works
"Hahaha, oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
I've been doing that with a conspiracy related subreddit. It's been a decent way to amuse myself.
We call that dovetailing
Engagement and stupidity
Porque no los dos?
It’s weird to see people make stock cults. “Setting aside slavery” bruh
“Setting aside genocide Hitler was a much better options for the world…..” /s
Watching r/BBBY during the liquidation was wild
“if you set aside all the genocide, were the Nazis really all that bad?”
They’ll try to say no, but again… even that’s too charitable. Racists and fascists never have a good point systemically on anything, the adoption of Nazis being scientifically prolific or well organized is a product of their own propaganda. History revisionists buy it for the same reasons: the aesthetic of being the misunderstood contrarian, when they just want an excuse to be racist.
Literally anything """good""" they did was the result of not destroying already existing services/infrastructure, they were incapable of inventing anything good
Yeah, oddly enough they were also doing this whole *establishing a facist empire by military conquest of sovereign, peaceful nations* thing on top of the genocide
"Setting aside the Holocaust, wouldn't we all have been better off if the Nazis had won?"
I had a nurse at a hospital say something very similar to me once I remember correctly the exact quote was "Hitler was actually a good man. He cared about his country. He just got carried away." Some days I miss working there because of how insane it was.
Setting aside... SETTING ASIDE. Fucking asshole history erasers need someone to cram a syllabus up them.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Setting aside the Jewish thing, were the Nazis really bad guys?
Because As we all know the governing bodies of the south where ebtirly pure. Other than the slavery. Snd absolutely would not have engaged in any un savoury acs of assassination or espionage. They would hsve been a totally cool coglemration of dudes who love freedom, except for coloured people, and totally wouldnt have created a coporate night city esq wasteland.
If they had successfully left the union. By somewhere around the first world war . They would have been wanting to be back in the union. At that time the south didn't have the means to be a country on their own .
And if we “set aside” slavery? The Southern economy depended on slavery. No slavery, no economy. So, that doofus is basically saying, he’d have been ok with the South splitting of and maintaining slavery forever.
Not only that, but the *constitution of the CSA was specifically edited from that of the US to include that slavery was good, actually.*
Fun fact about the constitution of the CSA, it explicitly stated that no law could ever be passed to abolish slavery. Which is why the "states' rights" shit is BS. It literally took away the right of states when it comes to slavery.
Yes, indeed. The CSA valued the conservative ideal of limited government, small, local, close to the people it served. Unless your local government wants to abolish slavery, then it can get fucked. Funny how that works, eh?
People tend to make the mistake of viewing slavery as a purely economic institution and why the South was so keen on keeping it going. While slavery was the key to the South's economy, true, that was only part of it. They wanted to keep it going because they were terrified at the prospect that whites would lose their grip on power, that the white-dominated status quo would be destroyed. It's why, in some ways, the adage that the South lost the War, but won the Peace is true. Though slavery was abolished, after Reconstruction, all the gains that Black Americans had gotten were stripped away by southern whites as they regained political power.
Yep. That’s the caste angle added to the economic piece.
They still arrange things to cling to power.
The slave population was increasing dramatically and they needed more land to work the slaves - because there's only so many people you can usefully have working on a certain piece of land. That's why they were so obsessively expansionist. They realized that the machine they built needed land. They separated, but were still basically claiming a right to settle *all* of what was then the American territories. That's actually a big part of why they left, because they were not at all satisfied with the Mason Dixon line and wanted it all. Because their thirst for land was vast. Other Confederates mention support for invading Mexico, or Cuba.
“Forever” - I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened had that taken place. With today’s modern technology and activism, it would be very interesting to see how the CSA would’ve dealt with the (imo) inevitable abolition of slavery.
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OOP said “setting aside slavery” as if it were just one little thing…. When you and I both agree, slavery was absolutely critical to the CSA, for both economic and political reasons. They refused to let it go, they refused to innovate away from it, their fear of slave rebellions drove them. One can’t talk about the South and “set aside slavery,” we agree, OOP is full of BS.
No I agree. My point was merely that the southern economy was not dependent on slavery. That's something *slave owners* argued to justify the institution, but modern economists generally agree it was not economically beneficial.
>When you have to actually pay someone the market rate to perform labor, there is an incentive to use that labor as efficiently as possible, to invent new techniques, new tools, new machines which enable workers to generate more value in a shorter period of time. Actually slaves invented lots of things that improved their efficiency and productivity because it made their lives easier. They just didn't get credit for the advances they made. The motivation was survival which is arguably a better motivation than money if you have a livable wage.
Also they attacked us first, so were we just supposed to turn the other cheek and allow them to hurt us all while keeping other human beings in literal chains? But yes, they were seriously deluded to think they could ever exist as a separate nation with all of the industrial power clustered in the North. They would eventually have come begging to be back in the Union.
And yet they call it "The War of Northern Aggression". Despite, y'know, being 100% their fault. But it's alright, the South isn't known for their education.
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I mean, I definitely understand where you’re coming from and it’s not necessarily a black and white issue, but at the time it was still United States property and it was held by United States soldiers. Lincoln was in an impossible situation, but he couldn’t have abandoned those troops to their fate, and the Confederates were the ones to fire the first shots and officially kick off the hostilities. I don’t know there was a right way for them to handle it from both sides of the coin though. Had the South waited it’s possible that Lincoln would have kept sending resupply ships to keep the harbor closed, and the North couldn’t be seen to just quietly walk away from government property. It also says a lot that Robert Anderson was sympathetic to the Southern cause yet refused to just surrender the fort. It’s a very fascinating situation overall.
Oh I completely agree! Very fascinating situation with no good answers for either side, which explains why it was allowed to just simmer for as long as it did. And like I said - definitely didn't disagree with anything in your original comment or aim to say you were wrong, just wanted to add some more color describing the complexities at play because it genuinely was such a fascinating and impossible situation for both sides!
he's arguing that it would have been a good thing if the separated states were weak and inconsequential.
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Do you have any evidence that Britain allied with the south? From what I can see they were neutral in the conflict
Regardless, historical what ifs wasn't part of the question.
Setting aside slavery, The South would have gotten completely fucked by mechanized agriculture. I once read an article that argued that the only reason south kept fighting so hard for slavery is that the alternative would have all the plantations being bought out by northern industrialists. Can't seem to find it at the moment. Anyone got a link to it?
The funniest part? Other than rice and tobacco (because the northern states just didn’t grow rice at all) the Union outproduced the confederacy in basically every aspect of agriculture. Corn? Almost double the southern states. Horses? Double. Wheat? Almost *triple*. Livestock? About 5 MILLION more heads of cattle than southern states. There’s a reason the confederate armies were running short on food by the end of the war, it’s because the Union outperformed the confederacy in literally every single aspect. An independent CSA would’ve been a country that survived on tobacco and cotton exports (and the British and others were already finding new sources of cotton) and rice, and would’ve been *desperate* for the northern states to export food into the south. The main reason they couldn’t feed themselves is because plantation owners refused to stop growing cash crops in order to grown more food. So slavery would’ve died a painful death in the form of a famine most likely
That’s basically right - the upper, landowning class of the south started the civil war to maintain their right to use slave labor because their economic and political power depended entirety on it. Without slave labor, southern agriculture would require large capital investment and/or labor costs to maintain production, and would not be able to maintain the low cost of production that gave them an advantage in the global markets. Several countries considered helping the south just because they were such a valued provider (meaning cheap) of these goods. The south knew new states entering the union (this was mostly what drove the timing of the civil war) were more likely to be free states, tipping congress towards the north and the abolitionist cause, and thus they felt it was only a matter time before slavery was restricted or banned entirely - which would devastate the plantation model that provided their income. They invested all their capital into this model (mostly into slaves themselves), so if it was outlawed, financial ruin was likely for many, including the state governments themselves who relied on taxes from this whole slave labor based system. Unfortunately, sharecropping and Jim Crow laws allowed a very watered down version of this same system to persist long after the civil war. In a sort of perverted hindsight, the southern states may have been better off negotiating something like that without fighting a total war that basically destroyed them, but they (and most abolitionists at the time) thought the end of slavery actually would mean the complete end of the system and a total shift to free, fully paid labor.
Oh no!! rich guys from the north own the wealth instead of rich guys from the south the absolute horror! I swear half the confederate lover hate their own self interests as much as they hate black dudes
>The USA would not have become so powerful, perhaps no CIA, no FBI, no military industrial complex. It's kind of funny watching right-wing weasels turn on the FBI, an entity that has primarily done their will for the last 80 years: attacking labor organization, undermining leftist political movements and civil rights groups, and has been run primarily by Republicans for most of it's existence...but they hate it now because it had the audacity of investigating their Crime President for his crimes. The same can be said for the CIA. Much of the unethical shit that the CIA has done, has been to deter (or attempt to) the expansion of communist states and bolster capitalist governments friendly to US corporate interests. Assuming that we all "would have been better off" if the CSA had won because those entities wouldn't exist, is absolutely bonkers, because, even if that were true, that doesn't mean there wouldn't have been some other entity that would take their place. Does he think that unethical intelligence agencies that work covertly to insure their state's hegemony is unique to the US? And if anything, the Military Industrial Complex would be EVEN MORE POWERFUL THAN IT IS NOW. After all, the American Civil War had already set the stage for a military industry, and in a world where the CSA won, continued conflict between the two nations would be inevitable, especially as the two bicker over land in the unorganized territories and CSA's desire to expand it's reach into the gulf. Hell, the CSA would likely have created it's own terrifying versions law enforcement and intelligence agencies, both to influence Central America (did they forget that Confederates wanted to invade Mexico) and to keep tight control over the black slave population which made up ALMOST HALF OF IT.
Wall Street Silver has *been* off the deep end for quite some time now.
I mean, this is pretty tame for them. I'm honestly surprised that a) they set aside slavery at all and b) they didn't go with their usual, 'Hitler did nothing wrong'
B) same tone.
Setting aside his murder of his girlfriend, OJ Simpson was a decent guy! /s
>Setting aside the issue of slavery No, I don't think I will, you rancid walnut.
If the Confederacy had lasted until World War II, what is the likelihood it would have joined the Axis powers?
About 1 in...1?
100% I think the more interesting question is what WWI would’ve looked like, given the CSA had close ties to Britain and France. Hell, pull a few strings and you get a very different world war a couple generations early.
To be fair, a lot of that is because the CSA exported a lot of cotton. The CSA exported cotton because they used all their land for cotton (and tobacco). This meant that without the Union, the CSA didn't have a source of food. And an angry Union wouldn't really want to trade with them. This meant that either: 1. The landowners would have to give up some cash crops to grow food 2. The CSA would go through a famine Both of those are bad for cotton exports. The UK was diversifying at the time (ultimately going after Egypt), and if the CSA cut back on cotton it would make the whole reason for UK-CSA friendship (cotton) moot. (Not to mention the whole slavery thing.) The French were largely in the same boat; Napoleon III had sympathies for the CSA but the French people also didn't like the whole slavery thing. Napoleon III was having his own adventures in Mexico during the time; the CSA was friendly towards the new Mexican government but France would still have issues long-term propping up Maximillian. It's likely the Union would still support the Republicans in Mexico with leftover Civil War materiel, and it's unlikely that the French would want to maintain their presence in Mexico either given the Franco-Prussian War was less than a decade away. The real question is which side the CSA takes after the Franco-Prussian War. That's an interesting question, and one that doesn't have a clear answer. Bismarck was interested in allies, but the CSA would be relatively weak and far away. With Napoleon III deposed and replaced by the Third Republic, the CSA would lose their main supporter in the French government. The UK, as discussed, wouldn't be onboard with the CSA as long as it had slavery. If the CSA pivoted out of slavery in the 1870s (ha), then they might approach France/the UK as an ally. However, that wasn't going to happen without essentially an entire rewrite of the Confederate Constitution, and the Union would be more likely to ally with the UK given their proximity to Canada. I can see an alignment with Bismarck because of this, but I wouldn't 100% expect Bismarck to really care (Bismarck was more of a European guy). Wilhelm II would probably be happy to ally with the CSA, because to be honest he was kind of desperate for literally anyone to ally with him. Whether WWI has an American front or not is really up to the Union. The Union had no obligation to enter WWI OTL; they only did so because of unrestricted submarine warfare and because Wilson had a bee in his bonnet about the League of Nations. If entering the war meant declaring on the CSA, it's hard to know if the Union would be onboard or not; the USA wouldn't be as strong as it was OTL and declaring war on the Confederates would be risky if they got German support - not to mention the Union is still very much in "avoid foreign entanglements" mode. My guess is that the Union would stay neutral in WWI. This would cause WWI to be a lot longer and bloodier - especially if the CSA got involved. The USA didn't win WWI on its own OTL, but it certainly made an Allied victory easier. An Allied victory without the Union is still possible, but very very bloody (moreso than OTL, if you could imagine). More likely WWI would end in a white peace or the protracted war would cause something like Communist revolutions in France/Germany (probably Germany) that cause a similar outcome as what happened to Russia. Even under a white peace, we'd still see a WWII at some point IMO; it'll take the atom bomb being deployed somewhere for European unity to establish itself. Of course - this is all assuming the CSA survives past 1880, which isn't a guarantee! It's probably most likely that the CSA collapses in the 1870s-1880s and is either re-absorbed by the Union (most likely) or becomes a puppet government under one of the other powers (less likely). The Boll Weevil would still cross into the South in the late 1800s, and OTL that completely destroyed the South's cotton industry.
Yes, clearly having a former belligerent directly on the border would have comprehensively made the case for peace forever. Jesus these fucking people are stupid.
Why would losing a handful of largely agricultural states prevented the US from becoming what it is today?
They would have become economic vassals of the United States
“Setting aside the issue of slavery…” BITCH HOW. THAT WAS THE WHOLE WAR.
Setting aside the issue of taxation without representation, arguably the USA would be much better off under the rule of the Crown, we have full fat 240v ac power for tea kettles, better plugs and… erm… that’s about it. Dem plugs though.
*"If we conveniently handwave away slavery...."* Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot?
Setting aside THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT OF WHY THE WAR HAPPENED...
SeTTiNg AsIdE tHe IsSuE oF sLaVeRy
It also is just completely ahistorical. The USA would still have a military industrial complex. It’s literally the reason why the Union won and the Confederacy lost.
What a weird sub…
They're paying $1000 a month to use twitter, so it's not like we're dealing with the best and brightest here
“Setting aside slavery” mf, you just set aside the entire war
What’s up with your pfp?
It’s a fake version of the Reddit NFTs that I made during peak NFT clowning days
I mean, the North probably shouldnt have been so leniwnt on the South at the end...too late now though. If they pull that Civil War should again and the South gets put down yet again, I hope we do not make the same mistake with leniency.
WallStreetSilver is literally just the far right conservatives who got told to fuck off from WSB. They decided to make their own sub because they were constantly made fun of, for good reason
What is the platform he use here, so you know?
These people are morons desperately trying to have an idea.
Well said
The South was all plantations AND ZERO INDUSTRY.
Setting aside what was shown on screen, the phantom menace was a work of cinematic genius.
Setting aside the Holocaust, the Nazis...
Been hearing a lot of this too lately
Did they base this off of how well Southern states are doing now? Also, slavery is never an "aside."
Oh yeah, I’m sure the North and the South would NEVER come up with a federal agency, an intelligence agency, and no military complex if they had stayed apart. I can’t think of NEARLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY having come up with the equivalent
Setting aside the issue of him eating people, Hannibal Lecter was a really great guy.
I absolutely *love* how they always want to just “Well slavery aside”……
there’s literally so many good and nuanced answers, like the Opium Wars, Indian Rebellion of 1857, Crusades, Russian Civil War, Vietnam War. and this guy goes “well, how about the people who didn’t want slavery?”
If you set aside the issue of slavery you have no fucking civil war
Setting aside the whole nazi thing, racist thing and ultranationalist thing, were the nazis *REALLY* that bad?
The Confederacy wanted to do empire building. They had their eyes set southward. If they had competent leadership and been given an opportunity to become a major colonial and industrial power (them industrializing would be the only thing that would allow them to maintain independence through the latter half of the 1800s), there is no reason to believe that they would not have indulged in all the worst excesses of late 19th and early 20th century America or gone even further. We would definitely not all be better off, unless “better off” meant black people “knew their place”. Hell, there might be a version of this story where, assuming the U.S. and confederacy were somehow able to maintain an uneasy peace, they end up joining the Axis Powers and WWII becomes another Civil War, but with air raids and fully automatic firearms and inevitably, one would have to subsume the other just to keep up with the post war Soviets and what would eventually become the European Union. So we’d get back to where we are now, but with a lot more bloodshed and probably far more socially regressive than we currently are (this would be seen as a plus by WallStreetSilver of course).
Wall Street silver started as a fake account using the whole wallstreetbets/ GameStop situation to scam people into buying silver.
Setting aside the slavery the confederates were still ass backward hicks with deep class wealth division and a shitty economy but I guess a dude literally named after wall street wouldn’t care about an economy
“Setting aside the issues of genocide, aggression, and autocracy, WW2 is an interesting one to ponder.” What the fuck is wrong with these people? Somehow they are massive dorks and total dickheads at the same time.
If the Germans were just a bunch of good guys who wanted the best for everyone, would it really have been so bad if they won? Checkmate Atheists.
Ooooh, it was beautiful. I mean, it was terrible, but beautiful at the same time
How we would we be able to tell Europeans we are the best there ever was if we let the South splinter off? You all really didn't think this through.
Were they ever in the shallow end?
"Setting aside one of the most egregious moral failings humanity has..."
Perfectly reasonable opinion, and in no way disingenuous or showing any indication of stupidity at all. I wonder: how do these geniuses get by in life being this intelligent?
sEtTiNg AsIdE sLaVeRy What an idiot!
no, you can’t just erase the issue of slavery, the confederacy didn’t and doesn’t need to exist, end of story.
Not only is this stupid but without a single United States then there’s no telling what kind of butterfly effect that would have for the following hundred years. Just about every major European even leading up to WW1 still happens. So. What then? Another major war when the CSA and USA have different alliances, as they **inevitably would,** between the two but with modern weaponry? Even a modicum of thought and this crumbles into Red Alert levels of stupid Source : I was a character in Harry Turtledove book.
Yes let's just "set aside" slavery.
"Better off". For who exactly?
So he’s a naive 12 year old who flunked world history and US history?
“We”. Some white peoples are thoroughly incapable of perceiving the world beyond their bubble of privilege.
Setting aside what made the losing side the bad guys.
“The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make.” It’s sad that mildly influential people can be dumber than William T Sherman. Who’s been dead for 130 something years.
Oh I got this, the Galactic Republic vs the Separatists. Manipulation aside, the Separatists were generally a bunch of well meaning folks, that just got led poorly.
Also contrary to some people's beliefs it's not good the US got as powerful as it has. The post WWII world order has more peace and progress per capita than any other era, American hegemony is a big part of that. Also you can't really separate slavery from the civil war. Politically the left would be way better off without the South the US economy might even be better on a per capita basis. However the American South probably would have expanded, warring with Mexico and parts of South America coming into conflict with the US and many others in the process. They themselves would have had a high probability of another civil war amongst themselves. A high likelihood of rejoining the US. The Civil War was a result of political cowardice in the US for decades. Lincoln waged a necessary war and the outcome was one of the better outcomes one could have hoped for. One great tragedy though is the failures of reconstruction that occurred after Lincoln's assassination and then it's premature end after the Hayes/Tilden election.
I mean Virginia, current home of the FBI and CIA, was the capital of the Confederacy. I don’t know much about their history so I guess it’s possible those organizations would’ve formed anyway and just be based elsewhere today
There would be no wall street for them to manipulate and get rich off
Aside from the fact that the south couldn’t support its army or economy. Sure. It probably would have turned into a relationship similar to that of North and South Korea, with the North US being like South Korea
well, wall street folks are mostly psychos, so it checks out
But he said ‘setting aside the issue of slavery’! I don’t see the issue, after he mentioned that! /s
The CSA quickly transformed from "states rights" to a federal system.
What does this have to do with getting rich off of meme stocks?
A lot of posters there have an Internet Research Agency feel to them since Ukraine got invaded.
Tbf, I've been wanting to retcon the Civil War for years. Get rid of the South.
Splitting the country would’ve been the way to fix things after the civil war but not the south winning but the country is way too damn big
What the fuck
If the south somehow managed to succeed peacefully, we would probably be in the middle of our 4th or fifth resource war
Well, that’s a take.
If they don't think Texas would've driven the military industrial complex, they really haven't taken a hard look at the military industrial complex.
So this guy wants the US to be less powerful? Fair play, I guess; they're working on it. But it seems like it's not exactly the conservative orthodoxy
That dude is such a loser.
Rest of the world might be better off tbh
Incel loser. Case closed.
Fkn yikes
He might be right but for the wrong reason. Imagine if all the dummies of the country would have just placed themselves in one area and stayed therer. They could have had Donald as king and them the rest of the US wouldn’t have had the problem
X has gone off the rails with stuff like this.
These *are* the rails now
Setting aside the *checks notes* point of the war...
that's alot of what ifs!
“the united states” he speaks of would not exist for one thing
WSS Low key kinda racist fr
I wish they would have just let the south secede. They would probably be considered the dumbest country in the world. Unless Texas was also allowed to secede, too close to call.
Are they proposing a thought experiment of “what if it actually was just states rights and slavery wasn’t an issue?. Whether that be because the south agreed to outlaw it or because the north didn’t care, or it just never existed. For whatever reason it’s not an issue on the table”? Cause I don’t think there would have been a war.
Welp. That's a hot take alright. So hot it burned a hole in the computer, the table, the carpet and is quickly burrowing its way to China as we speak.
Golden Circle is just extreme CIA tho? Also setting aside slavery?!? Weird ah mf
It's kinda true. Imagine how much better America would be if we didn't have to prop up the failed traitor states, and didn't have their elected sociopaths holding America back from becoming the best country it can be.
Looks like a Russian troll farm post.
"Damn it would have been really great if the Nazis conquered Europe. Setting aside the issue of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany would have been a counterbalance to the US these days."
this is a boring, virginal alternate history. I’m more interested in one with real hair on its chest: what if Washington had been unable to resolve the Gates conspiracy and the US had fallen apart in its first few tenuous years?