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by slowin·2d ago·view on hn ↗
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it.

> I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible.

Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already over-exposed to this stuff as is. I'm an atheist and I hate that I've been subjected to Christian propaganda my whole life as someone born and raised in the US. It's been a constant parade of ignorance.

Want to really understand the true nature of the US in the 21st century? Drop the bible and read Settlers instead: https://readsettlers.org/

3 comments
Stripped of religious rhetoric, political discourse in the US is best understood as the economics of brazen greed.
Yes, and racism and worship of fame.
Have you tried living somewhere else or would you like to? For what it’s worth, several societies who were and are predominantly Christian have done quite well, such that most people immigrate to them as opposed to other countries.
I’ve lived in other Christian countries and also don’t like it. I’m actually more interested in indigenous American culture and history.
Can you live in a majority indigenous area? Would that be appropriate if you are not indigenous? I say this because I do think many are too critical of Christian countries without ever experiencing another country. They don’t know how good they have it.
I think you’re confusing geospatial happenstance with religion. No, I don’t like living in a culture that believes a guy came back from the dead. Especially when it’s enriched via colonization. I don’t “have it good”, I literally live in an intellectual wasteland.

Have you ever been to the US? I’ve been to many countries and Christian culture is one of my least favorites.

What makes you think I’m not indigenous? I never said that.

Supposed intellectual wasteland is far better than an actual wasteland. If you live in the US, you most likely have it far better than most everyone else on earth. Immigrants know this much better than Americans who take their freedoms and comfortable life for granted. They are a hard working people and have earned their current privileges.
Oh, it's an actual wasteland too! Again, have you ever been to the US? Outside of our few Disneyland style cities, you're going to get nothing but Applebee's, freeways and obese people hooked on fentanyl. It's truly post-apocalyptic here. I've been to many countries and all of them have the US beat for quality of life. Walk-able, great food, aesthetically pleasing, rich history not built on genocide and land theft, no NFL/jesus/monster truck/gun culture...

Just because some immigrants abandon their homes to come be part of the problem, it doesn't actually make the US a good place to live. I think movies and TV really did a number on a lot of people giving them a misguided view of what it's like to live here.

> If you live in the US, you most likely have it far better than most everyone else on earth

Ask most everyone else on earth how much they pay per month for health insurance. Most can't even fathom how we live like we do once they start learning the details. It's horrible.

Could we get a version without the neologisms ("Amerika", "Afrika", "theirstory")? I was willing to spend five or ten minutes looking into something that I knew I had tremendous disagreements with, and then it ... started intentionally misspelling everything on the first page.

I mean, I'm sure there are many different senses in which I'm not the target audience for this work, but it immediately feels like it's actively leaning into "this book isn't for you" or "this book is meant to upset you".

On the other hand, I just realized that this is probably exactly what reading Richard Stallman feels like if you don't already agree with him. Like "I'm going to use lots of neologisms that I don't even explain, because I want to remind you of all my attitudes toward everything from the very first moment that you encounter my ideas."

Well, the author was an interned Japanese, so I'll forgive him for having a POV.

Afrika is actually the correct spelling: https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692

The key takeaways from the book are that the white underclasses were the foot soldiers in the genocide of indigenous people and while they had hard, labor filled lives, they were still the driving force behind manifest destiny.

A couple of areas it shed light for me that I didn't know much about:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_o...

I would argue that the cheap real estate that existed in the US up until the early 2000s was the tail end of the land theft and manifest destiny. The increased prices we're seeing may actually be closer to the true value of the land that was artificially depressed by being handed out for free to white settlers. The boomers were basically the last generation of settlers to enjoy this.

FWIW I mostly agree with Stallman and definitely agree with Sakai (the author of Settlers). The bible however, I find to be triggering in the way you describe.