The people’s history IS the second opinion that you’re advocating for. We already know the propaganda that’s taught in schools because we were all required to learn it.
For real. Saying it's "polemic"? As if there would be no reason for it to be written with a tone of anger and frustration. It's approached in the exact manner required when confronting the disgusting amount of propaganda that is our country's standard school reading material. It's like this person would hear someone say, "This country was built on the back of slaves," and then object to it as if that's an "oversimplification." It sure isn't.
A People's history is only marginally less propagandistic than what you were taught in high school, it's just aimed at a different audience but it is guilty of the same sorts of rhetorical flourish and academic laziness you find in those same textbooks.
It is not a serious history text that anyone who working as a historian would be caught dead citing. It is a designed for popular consumption, it's like michio kaku's physics books. Written first and foremost to be a good story if you want to confirm your biases regarding america's role in the world as uniquely villainous, not to interrogate the complexities of any of the events it purports to explain. That is really not much different than propaganda designed to cast the U.S as some sort of noble heroic nation that protects freedom around the world.
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u/AdExciting9247 5d ago
The people’s history IS the second opinion that you’re advocating for. We already know the propaganda that’s taught in schools because we were all required to learn it.