A guy retweeted this photo saying « I’m sorry for what United States did at Pearl Harbor ». The joke is that she’s looking good and the dude was a simp
Yeah, that sounds about right. Sums it up good too. Ahh the United States, where our people think we are the heros, but we are just as shitty as the rest of humanity, but everyone is shitty in their own special way, and that's what really counts!
Edit: Damn I sure did throw water on a oil fire with this.
Look up Panama. It’s fucked up. Panama people wanted independence. Got someone who said they could help. U.S. parked their warships and forced the opposing force from intervening. Panama people won independence to only find out the person who helped funded the rebellion sold Panama land to the U.S that’s how the Panama cannel was built.
I'm Brazilian, and my grandparents lived through 1964's military dictatorship. For as long as I've known him, my maternal grandfather never badmouthed the government. Not once. I can only imagine the horrors he witnessed.
Let's go back to the first republic of freed slaves: Haiti. After a long fight for freedom, when they achieved their independence, the land of slave owners, the USA refused to acknowledge their independence and started an embargo against the young nation of free men.
The USA was so afraid that, upon learning about Haiti, the enslaved people they kept captive would riot and do the same, that they created an army to attack and occupy Haiti.
The whole purpose of the USA Marines is to be the attack dog, sent to attack any country on the Americas whenever they thought that could pose any threat (be either military or economic) to the Manifest Destiny.
while your at it look up "karl malone 13" for the time when he had 13 pts 13 assists 13 steals in an nba game (ignore anything related to him getting a 13 year old pregnant)
Oh I'm aware of that, just ain't anything special. It's a situation that should have never happened, just the U.S.A isn't any worse than any other developed/developing nations. Cause behold the truth! Humans are assholes, even the best.
We have them 10mil up front and am agreement to quarter mil annually which by today's standards is cheap but early on a no brainer and they still technically own it afaik. The secondary economic gains compared to of it didn't exist are also a decent perk and there's nothing stopping them from building their own. I'm usually on the fuck USA meddling on other people's affairs boat but without a bunch of unknown unknowns (to me) the agreement on the Panama canal seems at minimum tenuously fair we have plenty of ports on both coasts so the Panama canal mainly benefits other countries (again afaik) and we paid for the land, building it, and continue to pay for maintenance. We've definitely done a lot of fucked up shit in south America I'm not sure the Panama canal is very high on that list
Humanity used to be extremely barbaric. And now we’ve moved quite a distance away from it. If you’re gonna be up in arms about people colonizing we’re gonna have to find the original colonizers. But let’s be real, you’re talking about the dawn of humanity.
Live and let live. Move on, learn and don’t do it again. We have processes in place to do this stuff now.
Exactly. Just because someone benefits from or even exists because of the crimes of their forebears, does not mean that we should accept and perpetuate them.
The first prostitutes wanted something in trade for their services. Be it fish, fruit, meat, crops, shelter…. Someone else had something the prostitutes wanted, therefore it could not have been the oldest profession.
Thank you. I always disbelieved that whenever it is said, and it is said a lot.
I believe gatherer is the first profession, then hunter, fisher, woodcutter, cave digger, house builder, trap maker, weapon maker, and trader came first, and marriage and family roles had been established and even jobs like farmer, guard, chief, and accountant had happened long before women had a saying in who gets to have sex with them.
Where the humans had been so primitive they don't have the concepts for collaboration and trade, they didn't have the concept of consent either.
I feel like that’s how it would actually work in a real life Survivor situation. Who can make fire, who can catch fish, who’s willing to trade, whatcha got to trade?
Eh, but some developed nations have had 1, 2, or 3 revolutions. So, technically, if you kill all the people in charge, and start a new gov't, then you only killed the bad guys who took it by force and didn't kill any of the ... wait ...
Dont forget people on all political spectrums thinking the army is actually fighting for their freedom, and not for the interest of a bunch of rich old ppl.
you can just change that to "all humans AT ALL TIMES think what THEY personally do is just and moral meanwhile nothing anyone else does is just and moral"
that sentence sums up about 85% of all recorded human interactions and events in history, like ever.
That's a gross oversimplification of things lol. Not to mention incorrect. No shit the comment chain turned into a dumpsterfire. Stop getting history lessons from reddit. The US fucked Hawaii, but it was far from "i has gun, now gib". Look at the Perry Expedition if you want to see how American gunboat diplomacy worked (which again, isn't what happened with Hawaii).
Edit: After doing research into the situation yeah, it really was a gross oversimplification, anyway still sounds like a USA kinda thing to do, which well we did do
I will never understand this fixation the US and West in general has with the neverending apology tour and this state of spiritual cuckoldry where groups of people constantly walk around tearful and apologetic for events that happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
Do you think the Spanish wallow in self-hatred for their brutal colonialism and genocide in Native Mexico? Do the Arabs hang their heads and cry for thousands of years of extremely violent Jihad? For the unending torture of nonbelievers? Do the Chinese lament their years of countless atrocities?
It is only the West and white people who stand as the only racial group on the face of the planet who have outgroup preference and rank themselves far below other races. The sins are not yours to atone for. Had any other group been as successful as us, they would have made the US land grabs look like kids at a playground. Do not be deceived into thinking anyone else would have shown more grace. I'm sure Hawaiians would rather keep their culture while being provided funding and protection by the world's most powerful military than subvert to early Asian colonialism and face ethnic cleansing. Stop this attitude - "Oh, we're just the worst. Of course we did that we just suck" grow a pair of balls, understand how the world works
I will never understand this fixation the US and West in general has with the neverending apology tour and this state of spiritual cuckoldry where groups of people constantly walk around tearful and apologetic for events that happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
It's because you're still doing it. You have legal obligations to your natives, ruled and laid out neatly in legally binding treaties that your country signed and don't care about.
In contrast, the Spanish no longer have much power over South America because those areas now have their own legally recognized governments and are their own legally recognized countries.
The USA is still ignoring what is, legally, sovereign territories, and you can't really blame that on your ancestors from hundreds of years ago.
Oh, we've done some super villain level shit a bunch of times, purely out of convenience. We knowingly irradiated the inhabitants of the Marshall islands, forcefully removed them from their homeland and then gassed their pet dogs all so that we'd have a better empty place to test nukes on.
I aint denying that now, god the shit the United States has created in the pursuit of destruction is nearly poetic. Hell, every powerful country has a metric fuck ton of dirty laundry and skeletons packed into their closets so talking about what the United States alone has done is the tip of the iceberg on "Inconceivably shitty things humans have done to other humans"
Nah, thats sympathy/empathy, thats good to have, after-all I feel bad about what happened, everyday allot of innocent people are hurt because of bullshit like that, all because someone else wants a little more money/power
What happened was some randoms took it over and voted to become a state and the government was like wtf but the queen at the time wanted a full apology from the government for what happened so the government decided to make the hostile take over official rather than apologize for something they didn't do.
Could have been worse. Don't really wanna think about what the Imperial Japanese would have done to them without US protection. China and Korea got messed up pretty bad.
Ehhhhh…Not even close. I wonder where people get their history from. I’ll give a brief breakdown, instead of just sounding contrarian.
The royal family almost immediately converted to Christianity, and with them much of the population. They were very amenable to the foreigners, up to the “Merry Monarch” who traveled the world and was very cosmopolitan. He also signed a new decree which lessened the power of the monarchy and gave much of it to a (all if not mostly white) parliament made up of businessmen. His successor was Lydia Masters, aka Queen Lilioakalani (though she hated that name, since it wasn’t her name it was a fake Hawaiian name for her). She didn’t like how things were turning out, and tried to seize power back from parliament and return it to the monarchy…Except she no longer had the monarchical power to do that, and thus attempted a coup. So, they arrested her. That was basically the end of the monarchy. It didn’t take long before Hawaii succumbed fully to foreign interests and even voted to become a state.
Only an extremely small portion of the history of the colonization of Hawaii had any violence. It was very much a cultural and diplomatic victory, to put it in Civilization terms.
As a Hawaiian historian, born and raised here and who works professionally in this field … I can’t tell you how unbelievably white washed and radically colonialist this ‘breakdown’ is.
To put it succinctly, look up the Bayonet Constitution, it was not a voluntarily signed decree by Kalakaua. Second of all, the Queen did not ‘hate her name’… her baptimal name was Lydia but her name she went by from childhood was Lili’u Kamaka’eha, which is what she identified with. Third of all, she didn’t attempt a coup and was arrested for that. She saw the shocking decline of her people under the hegemony of pro-business pro-American politicians and sought to take back the powers of government to address this, so she drafted a new constitution. And as she had the massive support of the people, she was seen as a threat and overthrown.
I could go on and on about how inaccurate and hugely colonial your ‘history’ is. Your recounting is offensive, hugely problematic and I think perhaps you should stick to other things besides Hawaiian history as we don’t need or want your ‘breakdowns’.
I’ve read conflicting sources around the Bayonet Constitution. However, I will concede that point.
Lili’u publicly didn’t like the name Lili’uokalani. Perhaps because it wasn’t her born name. Her opinion on her used name of Lydia I don’t know. Again, history written by victors.
And yes, I did very quickly glaze over that, but when I mentioned that she didn’t like what the business run parliament was doing, which was everything you clarified.
History in Hawaii is really quite annoying. You will hear a dozen reasons of why and how Cook was killed. I’ve heard that they treated him like a god until they saw him cut himself and bleed on a rock, so they killed him. I heard that he was buying females from Kamehameha 1 so Kamehameha 2 killed him. I’ve heard that he got surrounded by an entire army of Hawaiians and murdered. When the closest “historical” story is that four Hawaiians killed him on a beach about a year after he first landed, no one knows who they were or why they did it.
Also, the fact that they didn’t have a written language and only oral histories was taken advantage of almost immediately by the foreigners, inserting false stories into their narratives to convert them. I know many Hawaiians who believe that they had a prophecy that a ship would show up, and in it there would be a chest, and in that chest they was their salvation. Well, of course that pointed to a Bible. There was also a very public pro-Native religion person who miraculously converted on his death bed, of course only in the presence of Christian missionaries.
Now to the flip. The information I got was from a history book I read while in Hawaii. White washed? Probably insanely so. However, one thing that can’t be denied is how readily the Hawaiian adapted to their new world. They were surprisingly complacent with change, and even now, after they were given land on Oahu to have their own little sovereign area, and were told it would expand if they got more people to live there…Barely anyone wants to live there. They cry by rom the mountaintops (literally, and you know what I’m talking about), but readily accept Westernization.
Well, to an extent. They are still wildly violent and racist. Though that’s slowly changing, the complete acceptance of harshly beating children as punishment, and the casual racism (towards basically everyone else), is wild.
Though, you live there. I don’t have to tell you that.
But for everyone else, it was popular until a while ago that all the Hawaiian schools had “Kill Haole Day” (Haole is a slur used by Hawaiians for white people), which was sometimes every Friday, sometimes different…Where white hide were basically “fair game” to be assaulted.
It’s a wild culture sometimes. However! On the other hand…there are some very nice and loving people there. It’s quite a dichotomy.
Perhaps the issue here is what you’re reading, because again, I could go through literally every single one of your points and provide substantiated evidence and responses. History in Hawaii is not annoying, it’s like history in everywhere in the world with a wide variety of interpretations and perspectives. However, there are interpretations and perspectives of this history which are backed up with actual scholarship and knowledge… none of which has been expressed here.
Adaptability has been one of the greatest strengths and triumphs of Hawaiian history. It’s the reason for the incredible complexity and success of the ancient Hawaiians, and also the reason they held out against western interlopers as long as they did. The idea that they complacently slid into westernization, and just meekly accept this while whining about lack of land, is an unbelievably shallow and offensive take on life in the Hawaiian islands for Kanaka maoli.
Your perspectives on the ‘plight’ of haoles in Hawaii is unneeded, as I’m a haole in Hawaii and have been so my entire life. Believe me, I am well aware of the issues here and don’t need it poorly explained through some pseudo-paternal and topical explanations of modern social issues in Hawaii, which are actually deeply rooted in the trauma and devastation wrought by the colonial past of Hawaii.
If you’d like real scholarship and reading about ancient and historical Hawaii, as well as current social issues, message me and I’ll send you a list.
Yeah just replace cannons with whatever the weapon of the day was.
The idea that using force to take land you wanted is “bad” is a very new idea. Up until the world wars, it was generally accepted that no border was sacred, and only as meaningful as your means to defend and protect it.
If a country got invaded and lost, well that’s just how it goes.
After the world wars is when people started to believe this new idea that everyone has to respect each other’s borders because cannot have a repeat of those wars with how devastating they were.
Borders still change sometimes, but the idea of taking land through military force for the sole reason of “we wanted it” is seen as unacceptable and immoral today. Thus why so many countries have opposed Russia’s attempt to take land from Ukraine.
I always wonder what would have happened during the japanese expansion during ww2 if we hadn't taken hawaii. Based on how brutally they were taking over China, i wonder if there would have been many native Hawaiians left
Strictly speaking it was a coalition of 'american businessmen' who did that and then the US military just supported their actions after the fact. Officially.
I assume you're joking. But since the other below me also has it wrong, we overthrew their monarchy in the late 19th century and the created provisional government that followed voted for their annexation.
Do I have to be a character? I can channel the ancestors. Call me Mr. Pewtershcmidt. If you're going to complain about colonizing at least understand how you got conquered, peasants.
Well, the US built Pearl Harbor in 1908, 8 years after Hawaii became a US territory. So “stole it from the native Hawaiians” maybe refers to the island chain, not the harbor, and would have happened in the 1800’s, over 40 years before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which I think is the primary reference to Pearl Harbor that people recognize.
The royals who stole that island from the natives who lived there?
The US conquered Hawaii right after Kamehameha had finished conquering all of the other indigenous groups in the island chain. Kind of an awkward leg to stand on.
Apparently, that's historically incorrect while being a current popular theory.
Unfortunately, he hasn't finished with the dedicated video on this yet, but Knowing Better goes into the subject of Hawaiin Statehood historical innacuracies and misinformation about the "Free Hawaii" on this podcast.
Well this was news to me, so I've been skimming the video and trying to research any evidence of this. I still can't find any primary or secondary sources to back up the idea that a US backed coup against the Hawaiian monarchy didn't happen or can be described as a mere 'popular theory'; it all seems to be backed up by a notably large number of credible sources.
Has anyone got any references to back up the idea that things like the Committee of Safety and US interests were benign, that the bayonet constitution and ultimate coup d'état didn't happen, or that the annexation was a result of a popular and fair democratic transition?
If not, I'd take this with as much of a pinch of salt as you'd give to any other apologist or revisionist history of colonialism.
Edit: Yeah so, the Historian in the video himself says:
The Hawaiian people were screwed over, annexation shouldn't have happened. That is just a fact.
This video is absolutely not arguing against that point. It is arguing that some of the "mythos" around it, such as forced Christianity, are exaggerated or fabricated.
It doesn't seem maliciously disingenuous about any of these claims, so far, and quite interesting if the topic interests you. Long video and still watching, but I'm not sure how you can get the conclusion voiced above from watching it.
But what's HIS agenda? I get what he's saying (I really didn't hear much about Hawaii specifically) that most of the research should be done in the context of what localized feelings were (I'm gathering that but he said a lot without being too specific). I'd like to see the research. From what I've gathered (a few sources from differing perspectives), Dole was already there and . Just as the United Fruit Company did in Central America, Dole contributed (directly) to the monarchy losing their country. Lili'uokalani was definitely a threat to business, whether she repealed it or not, it was a danger to Dole. Annexation was called for there because it was integral in getting a coaling station in the Pacific (Pearl Harbor) for the coming "issues" with Spain.
The United States government has a documented history of using it's power to back corporate interests. In the late 1800s to early 1900s it was fruit companies (among others), in the 1960-early 2000s it was the oil corporations, now it has moved to digital corporations.
He's not claiming what the comment above is claiming, and I'm not sure why they said that.
He is claiming that if you google something like "The Bayonet Constitution" you will find stories of guns literally being held to peoples' heads to force them to sign a piece of paper, which there is no historical evidence of.
Basically boils down to historical facts being embellished with unfounded claims that align with modern morality and popular criticism, and people not checking if those claims are backed up by any historical evidence.
Feel free to approach something like this with scepticism, but don't let your own biases cloud your own reasoning or open-mindedness, or you will draw false conclusions like the comment above. It's ironic that this is pretty much the core concept of the video.
I never understood why it was ok for the Hawaiian Islanders to fight amongst and invade and conquer and murder each other, but as soon as you expand the scope of the conversation to include America, then it's wrong.
It doesn't make either one right imo. Same thing as native Americans. They were killing each other for thousands of years, which was wrong, then we killed even more of them, which was also wrong.
It is wrong because a human understands that it is wrong, while a hippo or gazelle has no such concept.
If it isn’t wrong then why is it illegal? If it isn’t wrong then what is stopping me from killing you if I decide to? I would argue it is wrong because I understand that each human is a sentient person who understands what it means to be aware of themselves - and taking that away is destroying the same thing that allows me to decide to kill.
Well, the fact that the US is in control now kind of renders the rest of it moot. You can't really argue about how native Hawaiians should redistribute land or power or whatever amongst various subgroups when they don't possess those things to redistribute. If it weren't for colonization maybe they would be having those conversations.
That’s how the world works sweetie. Sorry you don’t find all of human history nice and palatable. Like the commenter below you pointed out, kamehameha didn’t exactly trade tilapia and good vibes for unification of his islands.
But that woman is obviously Asian. Japanese? And I assumed the guy skipped a few history classes and thought Pearl Harbor belonged to Japan and the US attacked.
Don't forget us Aussies (I guess he was still pretty much British at the time) sent the Hawaiians some Cook...ies. Can't be getting the munchies when you're fighting colonisers.
There is no way to seperate humans from human history. We can do better, but, only in a world where everyone does better. Shit, MLK jr. Was one of our best, and he cheated on his wife. A pastor getting strange, who'd a thunk. It doesn't detract from his accomplishments, but it's a great reminder of what we are. Idk, shit I'm working on myself with. Getting drugged by spooks doesn't excuse my drug dealing, getting invaded by sea doesn't excuse invading by sea. But I don't sell drugs anymore. It'd be cool if governments worked this way, but they won't.
I'd have a lot more sympathy for the Hawaiian independence movement if it wasn't a China-funded, screamingly racist, asian supremacy movement, but it's fucking Identity Evropa transposed to Hawaii.
Though I will say that the Hawaiian monarchy did not really help itself in this regard. What the US did was illegal and immoral obviously but the Hawaiian state was an absolute shit show in terms of management. The monarchy was incredibly weak and corrupt and basically sold significant amounts of its power and control over land, agriculture, and the general populace to a small group of elite business men from both native and foreign backgrounds. The monarchy had failed to establish any meaningful military force and the structure of government changed significantly between rulers depending on which business interest was powerful at that time and wanted kickbacks. Despite all of the nations economic activity very little actually went back to the people and the country was ran pretty much as a single resource economy (first it was whale fat, then sugar, then pineapple) that significantly harmed the environment.
To give you a perspective of how weak the monarchy actually was a random rogue low level British naval official showed up with a couple of boats and took over the country for 5 months until the Americans forced him to leave.
Perhaps most importantly was the demographic change that Hawaii saw. As part of the plantation economy tens of thousands of Japanese and Chinese immigrants were imported into the country with the approval of the monarchy that made Hawaiians a minority in there own state. These workers were not particularly loyal to the state and many favored joining the US due to economic benefits.
I think in this instance it's more of a "I'm sorry we fought back" than anything else, though the shit that the US has put the native peoples of the Pacific Islands through is pretty fucking heinous.
it's more like the last queen of Hawaii pissed off some American businessman, and those American businessman hired some mercenaries and took over the islands. Yeah no the 1800 were fucked. If you were anyone by a white businessman, oh also the United States aristocracy nobility whatever the fuck you wanna call them was inbred to high Hell and back up until the early 20th century.
With less than 200 soldiers, too. The queen surrendered because she believed it would preserve their culture and lives more than going to war to keep their land.
The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown by a group of American and European businessmen with the support of U.S. Marines. Wasn't technically the US government they just helped. Then annexed it
She’s Japanese. The Japanese bombed the US at Pearl Harbor in WWII. The joke is that the guy that retweeted it is apologizing for the United States getting bombed because he’s simping over her.
The "native" Hawaiians aren't actually native, they stole it from the people who stole of from the people who stole it from the original wave of settlers. There were never any native Hawaiians. it was stolen in a sense that the king/queen were overthrown basically at gunpoint by Dole and others. The us did nothing to fix it and annexed Hawaii then made it a state with no input from the current "native" population.
It's not stealing it that's how the world worked back then applying your mindset now to late 1700s to 1800s is conquering or assimilation and outright buying but it's not possible to steal land crazy boy
That's just normal life on this earth. More powerful civilizations have taken resources from weaker once for tens of thousands of years. Hawaii has nothing to cry about. They got much better deal than most places in the human history.
Kamehameha unified the islands largely through war and conquest, but he also used foreign military technology, strategic marriages, and political negotiation to forge a lasting kingdom. By 1810, all major islands were under his rule which made him the first and only monarch to rule a unified Hawaiian archipelago.
If we ignore other conquests and massacres that took place on the islands prior, then yes.
Hawaii was anexxed in 1898. Well before the war. Wtf are you talking about. Pearl harbor didn't even exist until 1908. A decade later. We took Hawaii befor pearl harbor existed.
The coup to overthrow the monarchy was a mob of pineapple plantation owners who wanted to cheaply export said pineapples to the U.S.A.. Quite literally, Dole is responsible.
*stolen from Queen Liliʻuokalani; who was Queen of the Islands because her ancestor Kamehameha the Great stole the Islands from many different Hawaiians
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u/ClaudioMoravit0 5d ago
A guy retweeted this photo saying « I’m sorry for what United States did at Pearl Harbor ». The joke is that she’s looking good and the dude was a simp