No day like today

"and I assume he comes from a long genetic line of historians"

Yep, that's where Historians come from. That's why colleges make their history majors submit to blood tests, because if we don't have that historian gene then we'd just be wasting our time.

@PaxRomana So that's why I did bad at history in school! My lacking history genes was to blame. It certanly had nothing to do with my lazyness.

@PaxRomana : I also have that magic historian gene. so proud to be part of the clan.

Luckily the internet is not flammable, so Donald Trump can't do this now.

@Californian123

With enough nukes, anything is flammable.

@Grubadubdub
Good point, but I'm pretty sure that the internet is stored on at least one hard drive in America, and if he nukes his own country he'll be dead, impeached, or more likely both, faster that you can say "Qin Shi Huang."

@Californian123 No, we should most definitely remember the recent past, so we don't repeat it. Unless you think drone striking civilians is a good "liberal" policy.

@MichaelZWilliamson I'm not sure if that has anything to do with this.

@Californian123 He might try to break the internet, like so many before him

@Californian123 To be fair he usualy only throw a childish tantrum when someone says something he don't like.

@Californian123

Wouldn't be to sure 'bout that....

sometimes some things need to be erased such as all evidence of 2016

@Girldownunder If you read the news, you get that impression. Certainly, terrible things happened (take Syria as the extreme), but also good things.

For instance, in Europe, a lot of people think very negatively about the EU and think the EU had a 'disastrous year'. The Brits even voted to leave (though at the end of the year in two polls it turned out 54% did not want to leave so Bregret — Orb International en WIN/Gallup). But 9 of the 20 happiest countries in the world are in the EU, the EU economy grew with 2%, government debt decreased, in the last quarter of 2016, 232 million EU citizens had a job (an all time record). In various EU countries there were elections and referenda, all passed peacefully and were fair.

In The Netherlands, a politician who had broke the law was tried and convicted in a transparent and fair process, showing a strength of the separation of powers.

World wide: never were there as few people in extreme poverty as in 2016. The Paris Climate Treaty was signed.

Is it good enough? No, there are many terrible things. Such as inequality, terrorism, democracies tending to slide into authoritarian regimes (Russia, Poland. Hungary, Turkey, maybe even the US in the long term, where money has hijacked democracy (the popular vote is marginalised by for instance gerrymandering districts), Republicans plan to abolish the anti-corruption watchdog of Congress, and a president has been elected who so far shows little respect for democracy and the rule of law).

We tend to focus on the terrible things (these sell more advertisement as they draw our attention) but even with good news, people can stay negative.

@Girldownunder "sometimes some things need to be erased such as all evidence of 2016 "

Said someone who is now bound to repeat 2016.

@Girldownunder 2016 might be horribly but the effect will first hit us this year so I am not optemistic about the future. Trump, the begining of Brexit, three national elections coming up with right leaning perons in three other EU countries gaining support. I am not thrilled at this prospect.

@Girldownunder No! We must keep records of 2016 as a warning to future generations.

Looks a bit like the attitude of Islamitic scholarship (if there is any). Tom Holland had a hard time writing about the actual history of the Islam. Everything that did not fit was eradicated, censored or adapted. Everything: events and non-events became attributed to Mohammed. Fundamentalists like Al-Qaida and IS do not care about the history and culture before the prophet Mohammed.

@Avis I don't think guys like IS actualy cares much about things like history. They seem to just destroy things they don't like for some vague reasons. Qin Shi Huang at least had some kind of plan. Or not, he may have been a little nuts too like many so called "great leaders".

'@Avis'
"Looks a bit like the attitude of Islamitic scholarship (if there is any)"

Of course there is.

"Tom Holland had a hard time writing about the actual history of the Islam."

Tom Holland is not a historian, which yes probably made it harder for him to write about history. Regardless of topic.

"Everything: events and non-events became attributed to Mohammed."

So you mean the early Islamic period has issues with contemporary propaganda, myths talked about like fact, and general romanticization and so forth?
Congratulations. This is ancient and most medieval history no matter where you look. You would have to be totally uninitiated in history as a discipline to be surprised at this, or think it was unique to the early Muslim community.
This is why I prefer modern history. Studying and researching ancient/medieval history is frustrating, full of gaps, and requires taking mountains of salt with every source you find and use.

"Fundamentalists like Al-Qaida and IS do not care about the history and culture before the prophet Mohammed. "

Fundamentalists also don't care about history after Mohammed, unless they can have it fit their vision.
The cosmopolitan and often risque era of Harun al Rashid's Baghdad is upheld as a golden age even by ISIS.....even though it was a puritan's nightmare. ISIS chooses to ignore this, or more likely they're also not historians and don't know what the heck they're talking about.

@Avis You can't refer to all Islamic scholarship as being characterized by the actions of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

History teachers are always the "dangerous intellectuals" that disappear first.

Always.

@CorruptUser
Eh, don't worry. According to Trump supporters, this time it will only be "Feminazis, BML, and Special Snowflakes".

@SvenTheBold I belive reporters and "SWJ" are on their list as well.

*unites China for first time ever*
*your dynasty lasts only fifteen years*

@sagas Hardly surprising. When you practice a philsophy whereby no reward for a good deed should be greater than the punishment for a bad one, people are going to get a little tired. It's basically asking for the system to be rejected. Take for example the first emperor of the dynasty that replaced Qin. He was an officer in charge of a prisoner party en route somewhere (hard labour, I think). Some of the prisoners escaped him. If he reported it, he would have been killed. So, instead he decided to start a rebellion.

@Gwynnion Yup. Same goes for the time when the British penal code had the death penalty for murder and for robbery: robbers were already risking death for their crimes to begin with, so they had less incentive to hold back from murdering their victims and the murder rate went up.

@sagas So true…

In Europe, every king tried to do opposite...
The descendants of Caesar, Alexander, Charles ...

Washington DC, soon

@Wolfette
You mean a administration that won't spend a full 4-8 years blaming the previous administrations??
That might be history in the making........

@Bonnieblue Blaming everyone and everything including (though excluding the centerpiece himself) previous administrations, isn't a new thing. Though indeed it's likley to be more cringeworthy than usual...

@Zervo
Can't be any worse than seven and a half years of Bush bashing.
Even Clinton and Bush laid-off sometime after their second year.
Obama didn't stop till the primaries were over.

'@Bonnieblue'
So you're saying Obama stopped significantly earlier than Bush and Clinton, whose second years you are pretending to remember?
Also lol at the context being Trump, who also bashed the shit out of Bush this very primary season. Really keeping abreast of the times my man.

@sagas
Obama didn't stop till this years primaries were over,"seven and a half years".
Until Obama started to campaigning for Hillary, he would still reference being hindered by "Bush era politics".
Bush Jr had his hands full by his second year and Clinton was butting heads with Newt.
Trump bashed the hell out of Jeb Bush during the primaries, and Jr, and Sr afterward for not supporting his nomination.
I'll give Trump the same consideration I gave Obama, Bush, and Clinton, anything still in place after the first two years, they own it.
If It's still there, It's because they want it there.
The whininess is some crap tossed out there as groundwork for future excuses (BS).

@Bonnieblue
Conservatickle: "he would still reference being hindered by "Bush era politics"."

Yeah, because (and I know this might blow your mind, but) Bush *did things*. Obama was trying to *undo those things*, and was having *a hard time*. His goals were hindered by (wait for it) *Bush-era politics* and the choices made therein (choices like the Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress, and which the President therefore can't just eliminate without shirking his duty to execute the law, which would cause a Republican uproar, because of course it would, and in fact should, etc., etc., etc.)

Example of your own complaint (now with full context!):
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/senate-torture-analysis/

"Obama banned "enhanced interrogation techniques" like water boarding and sleep deprivation, that were the subject of the report released Tuesday, soon after taking office in 2009.
'Old arguments'

But resolving those "old arguments" is proving more difficult. The United States, for instance, has transferred prisoners to foreign governments that still employ harsh techniques. And Obama faces questions about his own conduct in the campaign against terrorism, notably the drone expansion."

Conservatickle: "If It's still there, It's because they want it there."

The President: now able to pass laws without the consent of Congress!

'@Bonnieblue'
I wonder what specifically you're even talking about with Obama apparently nonstop talking about Bush exactly.

"Bush Jr had his hands full by his second year"

And Republicans were busy shifting blame to Clinton over not going after Osama and being light on terror. With the USS Cole being a favorite topic for this case. Then the economy was blamed on Clinton, with attempts galore to downplay the surplus of the Clinton years.

"Trump bashed the hell out of Jeb Bush during the primaries, and Jr, and Sr afterward for not supporting his nomination. "

Funny, I remember some very specific topic he bashed Bush Jr on that you seem to selectively not recall. And boy what a harsh one it was. Something about two towers.

"I'll give Trump the same consideration I gave Obama, Bush, and Clinton, anything still in place after the first two years, they own it.
If It's still there, It's because they want it there. "

You are aware that the US government is run by more than the executive? I mean granted I don't think Trump is aware of this either, but you should probably be aware of this.

@Bonnieblue Given the fact that Obama's trying to start WWIII I think he's trying to erase *everyone's* memory of his 8 year long golf trip.

@Theomniadept
Obama does appear to be trying to make it as difficult as possible for his successor to have his way.
Hopefully he doesn't cap his presidency by prying the letters "TRUMP" off of every keyboard in the white house, like a previous office holder was purported to have done.

Of course, considering what happened with the DNC emails, it might be prudent to replace all those keyboards periodically, anyway. Just make sure the replacements are made on American soil, in a factory under the strict control of the NSA.

@SeanR No, Biden will have all the T's removed that way when ever he tipes his name it will be Donald rump

@SeanR
Is this the go-to conservative way of complaining about people? Just make up a shit-ton of random hypotheticals and then pretend that everything you say is true and factual?

@SvenTheBold
Nah. I'm referencing something that purportedly happened when the Clintons left the White House.
The story goes that Clinton White House staffers pried the 'w' key off a number of keyboards on their way out. There are other stories. Some of it's been substantiated, some of it's been overblown. Whether or not it's true depends on who you ask.
Though, honestly, they probably really should replace the keyboards. Or at least have the NSA go over the things with a fine toothed comb every four years.

@Theomniadept
Most people are likening his actions to a 5th grader having a hissy fit over his "art work" being taken down at the end of the school year, So he's going to write on the wall.

@Bonnieblue
You do realize that Donald "The Donald" Trump just spent literally his entire campaign blaming the previous administration i.e. Obama for everything wrong with this country, right?

Conservatickle: "Yeah, but he deserved it, hurdurr!"
Everyone else: "#Logic"

I mean, as an American, let me assure you, it was all over our news, any American would know that, so I'm assuming that little American flag under your avatar is just wishful thinking on your part...

Don't tell Trump. It'll give him ideas.

History is written by the victors

@poodle_doodle yes :/

@poodle_doodle (((WWII)))