• ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      11 months ago

      The Alamo was for Texas independence that just so happened to be supported by the US and Texas just so happened to join them afterwards

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      11 months ago

      Technically the United States bought Texas and the rest of the Western States, after a war with Mexico.

        • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          The technicality they’re using is that the land was purchased after the war as opposed to taken as a result of the war.

          • bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            11 months ago

            Yes, but that land would not have been “sold” if they hadn’t lost the war. The war was fought to conquer land, and the payment was for war “reparations”.

            The U.S. agreed to pay $15 million for the physical damage of the war and assumed $3.25 million of debt already owed by the Mexican government to U.S. citizens

            Wiki

  • Krackalot@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    11 months ago

    Yes, that is correct. We either purchased the land or found ourselves the owners in mysterious ways after special military operations. /s

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      11 months ago

      This is the woke mob trying to repaint history. The settlers arrived and invited the native Americans to dinner and the native Americans taught the settlers about “maize” (which means corn) and then the settlers asked they would move to the very cool reservations where they could have the casinos and the native Americans were like “yeah bruh.”

      • kirk782@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        It is not new. Many countries do not teach the full extent of their dangerous past(cough Britain cough). A very specific example I remember is when a group of white folks overthrew the local government(a party called Fusionists) in the town of Wilmington, North Carolina. For a very long time, information about it was kept under wraps and to this day, people on the wrong side of history have had places named after them in their honor.

        • IDontHavePantsOn@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          11 months ago

          Other than a few small skirmishes, what have the British done? I mean it’s one small island, how many countries could it oppress? 10?

          • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            11
            ·
            11 months ago

            No, there are very many places that actually don’t. I grew up in GA, native American history wasn’t taught past the pilgrims meeting and inventing Thanksgiving, nothing about the Mexican-American war, maybe a cursory mention of Japanese internment.

            But it was mostly the revolutionary war, WWI and WWII from the perspective that the US became and is the benevolent world force it claims to be.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      36
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      We already owned that land and they tried to steal it.

      However, war is literally how we founded the country.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      Of all the wars we fought, you picked the one that wasn’t about conquering land, and was started by the Confederacy btw

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        It was a different country. We got their land. By conquering it. And then we destroyed their country. Rightfully so.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Civil wars are, by definition, a nation fighting itself.

          It was always the position of the Union that the Confederacy were rebelling citizens, and that fact was the legal basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, later decisions regarding the very concept of a secession without an act of Congress, and quite a few court courses for treason and sedition.

          • Skates@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            Technically couldn’t it be argued that the confederacy were the ones that were the real USA? Even the constitution agreed with them that some people are worth less than others.

            If you need to change the constitution to have your side be right, you’re on the right side of history, but you’re not the same country. You’re the new guys who took the country by force from the previous guys, because you didn’t like how they did things. It’s a good thing you did, but let’s not pretend like they were the traitors - the winners of the war were the traitors.

            I just think it’s okay to be a traitor if you’re betraying a shitty cause, and by acting like it’s not okay, we’re just enforcing the “snitches get stitches” and “loyalty instead of morals” mentality. Which I get why you would want to do as a country, because you’re trying to keep the power and not raise future traitors to your questionable policies. But I don’t get why you’d want to do this as a human, who will be at one point in time responsible for making a similar decision. You’re just making it worse for future you if you’ll ever need to be labeled as a traitor for, eg: fighting to remove gerrymandering.

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              11 months ago

              couldn’t it be argued the Confederacy was the real USA?

              No, though they did try to argue it and they lost

              If you need to change the constitution

              They did it by following the Constitution’s rules for change. The Confederacy tried to subvert the Constitution because they were losing. You don’t get to cherry pick which parts of the constitution matter and ignore the other parts. The Confederacy saw the writing on the wall that the US was going to follow the procedure outlined by law to become a free country, and they decided that the law, the constitution and the entire united states could go fuck itself. There is no world in which the Confederacy is good, decent or sympathetic. They committed treason so that they could continue to kidnap, rape and murder an entire class of people and no amount of “well if you look at it another way” will change or excuse that.

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    don’t write him off as stupid. this isn’t a person trying to be correct and failing. this is a person trying very hard to establish a world in which the truth is irrelevant, and instead from moment to moment the truth is whatever they need it to be in order to justify their positions and actions.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      I’d love to see Puerto Rico to become a state, just because I think it’d be cool, but I wouldn’t blame them one bit for looking at the asshats on the mainland and wanting to get away. Either way, their current status shouldn’t continue.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    11 months ago

    I think a successful completion of a deep national and international history course together hard exams should become a prerequisite for any political office in the US.

      • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        14
        ·
        11 months ago

        It bought them all, but Mexico was really poor so they got it cheaper. The US was willing to pay $50 million.

        • chaogomu@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          No. It did not.

          The US did offer to buy the territories, Mexico said no, then the US invaded and took them. During the peace process after the war, the US then paid less than half of the initial offer for the territories that it was never going to give back.

          Later, the US bought a sliver of land on the border for a slightly inflated price, but that was its own thing.

          But you can’t really call an armed invasion, and then a pittance paid out in damages, to be “Buying them all”.

          • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            20
            ·
            11 months ago

            The United States could have just taken all of Mexico, but it didn’t. It paid for the land. The population of the western states was made up of Americans anyhow, less than a thousand Mexican citizens lived in those areas at the time.

                • chaogomu@kbin.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  11
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  If a guy takes your car at gunpoint, and then hands you a fiver, he did not just “buy your car”.

                  A peace treaty at the end of a war of conquest is not a “purchase agreement”.

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              11 months ago

              Someone: puts a gun to your head and says “I’ll give you $4 for your car”.

              You: “This is a free and fair trade.”

              • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                5
                ·
                11 months ago

                That wasn’t the case, the Mexican government was run as an oligarchy. The United States threat was to threaten to turn over their lands to the public.

            • frezik@midwest.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              11 months ago

              The US took most of the land from Mexico that was worth taking. There’s little viable agricultural land south of Texas. Also, it put a lot of land in between Mexico and New Orleans, which is an incredibly important international port. With that secured, no foreign army would be able to threaten that port without major logistics challenges, much less fighting through the US Army and every local citizen with a gun.

              The US grabbed what it wanted and let Mexico keep the scraps.

              • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                3
                ·
                11 months ago

                That is looking at it from today, not from how it was viewed then. The main reason Mexico was fine with selling was the massive desert that separated the two areas and the extremely violent native population that inhabited the region. That reason didn’t become peaceful until the 1920s.

    • wildcardology@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      The US bought the Philippines from Spain for $14 million. Then fought a war with the Filipinos.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    55
    ·
    11 months ago

    We didn’t get California and Texas by war, we got that by Devine right. Manifest Destiny.