Got the idea for this thread from the discussion on JB's Kaufmann video, so thanks for that spark!
Many aspects of our history are disappearing before our very eyes. Like something from Orwell's worst nightmares, anything that is not considered PC in the current climate is being systematically scrubbed from the collective consciousness.
This is nothing new. Soviets and Nazis were notorious foes of knowledge considered verboten by party officials. While one might think that people would not fall in with such small minded evilry, the masses have proven time and again to be literal and willing tools for TPTB in their mission to homogenize the culture at any given opportunity.
Same thing happened in China with the Cultural Revoluation/Great Leap Forward. Anybody whose thoughts deemed not to conform to Mao's socialist image faced not only persecution of any publicly shared materials, but large swaths of the population were outright killed for it.
I find it very sad...how much farther would humanity as a whole be today, had these things not happened? In the case of China, they effectively removed a fair percentage of their most creative and intelligent minds from the gene pool altogether. IMO, it's no wonder that China is now known worldwide for thieving of ideas and mass production of other people's designs. They've simply lost a lot of that creative ability as a population due to the events I refer to. It should eventually return through random mutation and import of genetics from other populations, but I think this really was a huge blow.
Much as I hate to say it, I do think that this is somehow a tendency of the human condition. In kind of a cognitive dissonance effect, we tend to remove things that do not fit the current paradigm of thinking. I'd like to think that in some instances people are really trying to do the right thing in sort of an error-correcting function. Unfortunately, if the current paradigm of thinking is wrongheadedly incorrect, the results are disastrous and far-reaching.
What's that? You're a Cambodian who disagreed with Pol Pot's image of a decentralized communist agrarian society? Bad news for you.
It goes on and on, back further and further. The Conquistadors were notorious for wiping out the Aztecs and destroying their codices. Kill them all, burn the books because GOLD.
The greatest library of antiquity at Alexandria...sacked, burned. How many secrets of the ancients, lost forever?
It continues to this day. Perhaps the most widely known current examples being the Bamiyan statues being blown to bits by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the sack of Palmyra and other sites in Iraq/Syria by ISIS.
Priceless works of art that survived from the 13th century BC...destroyed by a bunch of goat fucking morons in a day. Because it doesn't jive with their "religion", which wasn't even fucking invented until almost 2000 years later.
Whether it comes from religion, or government, or prevailing PC attitudes, all of this makes me sick. Humanity struggles so much in our ignorance, and these losers make it all the worse.
It reminds me of an old show they used to show us in school, Tomes & Talismans. (Yes, I'm a fucking fossil.) The premise was that humanoid aliens ("The Wipers") invaded earth and tried to (wait for it) wipe out all human knowledge. The show was the last secret underground human library and their works. Kind of a library oriented educational sci fi thing. DEWEY DECIMAL, BITCHES!!!
I posit that the wipers are us, in many instances. I consider perpetrators of such acts as inhuman, no better than the fictitious aliens on the show.
It would not surprise me if we were to find that when homo sapiens sapiens moved in Neanderthal man's caves, we probably painted over their wall bison with ours in much the same way. I don't know what drives this monkey behavior in us, but we would certainly be better off without it. Maybe we'd even be off this stinking mudball and taking our place amongst the stars by now, who knows.
So, with all that being said...this thread will henceforth be for the posting & discussion of videos or related materials that are disappearing, or similarly endangered. I have a feeling that many of these may well disappear from the public consciousness after we're gone. I'll start off with a few choice examples...
WWII produced some real winners. The goal, of course, was to make the enemy out to be a dunderheaded idiot, and the protagonist the intelligent hero. You had Popeye, Bugs, Donald, and all your childhood faves in on the act.
Made to make fun of the enemy, dehumanize them. Now seen as somewhat of an embarassment in today's PC climate, you won't see them much.
Race charicatures are a lot of the disappearing media. I remember watching the antics of Tom and Jerry when I was a kid. Ultra violent, of course. Although T&J are still around, their trademark moves are toned down significantly. Their progeny, Itchy and Scratchy of the Simpson's fame, only exist to poke fun at how abhorrently violent T&J really were (to today's tender eyes, apparently). Also of note is the character Mammy Two Shoes. 3 guesses why this one got the axe - black mammy archetypes simply cannot be tolerated in this day and age. That's racist. Edited out and re-voiced, Mammy Two Shoes (named so because, from T&J's perspective, only her shoes and calves were usually visible on screen) is now either edited out completely, or re-dubbed with an accent as pure as the driven snow.
Not that I condone racist charicatures, fellow Galaxians, but rather than covering up our past issues, I think we need to be honest and learn from them. For so many, it is as if these never existed already. One cannot learn from the past if that past is hidden. Progress cannot be made.
A more recent example...
You tell 'em, Uncle Jesse. Damn show got banned because the car had a rebel flag on it, when it actually pushed the value of equality in an age when racial relations were admittedly not that great. We weren't but 20 years or so outside segregation at that time, for Pete's sake. Is it really fair to hold it to today's standard? Again, is it better to remove the entire show from public view, or to examine the issues and ponder the meaning and progress we've made since then as a human race?
Running out of time to dedicate to this for now, but I'll be back later with more examples. What comes to mind for you, fellow Loungers?
