[Lingster]

Funny thing is that several years I offered ZZZ to move his boards here, with him remaining as moderator.  He declined, and now they're virtually dead.

[Lingster]

Make sure you put "NSFW" in nude image post titles.  I made the change this time.

[Lingster]

Larger version:

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[Lingster]

Somebody named a kid "Truman Capone"?

[Lingster]

That has to be one of the most frightening things I have ever read.  Even so, thanks for posting it.  I can't pretend it gets me any closer to understanding why, but will anyone ever truly know the answer?  I doubt it.

Seems like he was just born crazy and mean.

[Lingster]

Invincible is a very interesting comic.  It started off almost as a Silver Age "Teen Titans" type comic, but at issue 10 (I think) has and incredibly and astonishingly ugly twist that changes everything the reader thought was going on 'til then.  Readers were stunned. 

It would seem the young lady on the cover may be a half-sister or love interest for the title character, of the same species.

[Lingster]

Profile of the shooter in the NY Times.

[Lingster]

I should also mention the importance of indigenous assimilation to successful colonization.  Among the larger tribes (i.e. the Cherokee), it was not unusual to see upwards of 50% assimilation to European cultural and technological traditions by the early 1800s, and intermarriage.  Because families often concealed their indigenous origins and because of modern-day political correctness, this is often understated or ignored.  In the south, tribes such as the Cherokee and the Creeks intermarried with African populations to such an extent that it's been suggested that most African-Americans are substantially Native American in descent.

There's also an enduring legacy of "tri-racial isolate" populations such as the Lumbee, the Melungeons and the Jackson-Whites.  They're basically rural populations with European, African and North American ancestry who formed kinship communities, and they still survive as definable groups.

[Lingster]

Well, the original thirteen colonies that became the U.S. were settled in a patchwork fashion.  This is my (admittedly limited and faulty) summary of how that happened:

1. New England was mostly puritans who left Britain in waves starting in 1620, and initially settled Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and eastern Long Island.
2. New York and most of New Jersey were originally New Netherland, but wound up firmly in British hands after the Glorious Revolution (though history books usually cite the date of the original English conquest of New Amsterdam, rule was actually pretty shaky until William ascended to the throne).  There were also numerous Palatine Germans who settled in the Hudson River Valley.
3. Parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware were originally New Sweden, but the Dutch seized those settlements in the 1640s, I recall.
4. Pennsylvania became an English colony of Quakers and other non-conformists, including sects of German Anabaptists, many of whom still keep enclaves in Pennsylvania.
5. Maryland was a colony of Catholics, mostly English.
6. Virginia was successfully settled earliest (starting in 1607) and often attracted wealthy second sons of English nobles.  Like the Hudson River Valley under the Dutch, a form of feudalism was tried early on.  At the time of the Revolution and until the state was decimated during the Civil War, Virginia was the richest and most influential colony.  It never recovered its role after the Civil War.  The first African slaves were imported into British North America in 1619, and thereafter became a major population source.
7. The Carolinas and western Georgia were settled mostly by pioneering families of Virginian extraction, as well as what we call Scots-Irish (Scottish protestants with connections to Ulster) settlers and of course Africans.
8. Eastern Georgia was a debtor colony.  Its importance is exaggerated, though.  It was never tremendously successful and was mostly intended to occupy land to defend against Spanish claims to the area.  It is still surprisingly sparsely populated, probably because of its swampy, humid climate.

 

Overall, the largest ethnic group in the colonies were English people from Sussex and other southern counties.  A decent-sized chunk of the women who came over early on were criminals, prostitutes or debtors who'd gotten into trouble in England, which may partly explain why Americans are somewhat more violent than Brits.

I am aware of the several meanings of the Cross of St. George, which is why I likened it to the Confederate jack.  Numerous southern states still incorporate Confederate iconography in their state flags, though it's usually pretty subtle, at this point.  The legend is that the Confederate flag was intended to be based on the Cross of St. George, but was changed to a St. Andrew design to avoid provoking Jews in the southern states, many of whom were resentful of English anti-semitism.  Jews were extremely important to the Confederate cause, though that's been largely sanitized from textbooks.  Of the three most important political figures in the Confederacy, one (Judah P. Benjamin) was Jewish.

A big part of the importance of Enlightenment-era ideas to the U.S. is that they were codified into the U.S. Constitution (and state constitutions) and thus locked into our culture.  (The Confederate Constitution is extremely similar to the U.S. Constitution – many paragraphs are verbatim or nearly so.)  The focus on limitations to government in that document are extraordinary.  Generations of Continental fascist, socialist and communist propaganda have been blunted by the armor of the Constitution, and so the political culture of the U.S. polity has been constrained from totalitarian recidivism in a way that Britain's has not.  (Britain is geographically closer to the source of the problem, and lacks a written constitution, so you're more susceptible to regrettable fads like socialism.)  In many ways Americans are truer to 18th century "Englishness" than today's English, because despite waves of immigration from all over the world, our political culture has drifted less than yours.

[Lingster]

First off, three points to address in your historical account:

1. After the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, many of the belligerents wound up here.  Virginia Tech's nickname is the "Hokies", but further north on highway 81, the University of Virginia's nickname is the "Cavaliers".  Virginia was substantially settled by cavaliers.  Up north, New England was largely settled by puritans, aka "roundheads".  So cultural divisions dating from the English Civil War were a substantial part of the hostility between north and south from 17th century colonization all the way up to the 19th century U.S. Civil War.
2. The Confederate battle flag or naval jack (derived from Cross of St. Andrew) is not flown as a challenge to the U.S. flag (Old Glory) or government.  It's usually flown for one of three purposes: ancestor tribute, regional pride or white pride/racism.  A rough analog would be Britons who fly the English flag (Cross of St. George).
3. The Alamo is pretty much only relevant to Texans.  Texas came into the Union as an independent country requesting annexation.  The Alamo was a battle in Texas' war of independence from Mexico, which occurred earlier.

The reason Americans place a higher regard on self-reliance than Britons is that Enlightment-era ideas played a stronger and more enduring role in North America than in Britain.  And they survive here with more force than in Britain.

Wilson charges that the European press' policy recommednations are irrelevant to the situation at hand.  That irrelevance makes them seem exploitative and thus distasteful to many Americans.

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