Posts by Gregory Howard

Maria Gonzalez96 said:This is the only series that convinced me we need mandatory TV viewing in the school curriculum.
I bow down to the writer, the director, and the entire cast.

The show is brilliant. Out of 110 episodes, I’d give about 40 or 50 a solid A, maybe a B+. Only about 10 to 20 fall into the C range. The rest are just mediocre.

The problem is that strange cocktail of wisdom, fantasy (heavy Esalen vibes, plus plenty of Campbell influence—the patron saint of this series), and satire. It’s too niche to grab a massive mainstream audience.

And those final episodes? Total anticlimax. But overall, it serves as a necessary antidote to the mindless masses, the shallow hedonists, and the functionally illiterate.

Thomas Walker84 said:I’m on board with both June 25th and August 5th, Gregory Howard. I really hope we see an even bigger turnout this August 5th—not just because of the holiday itself, but as a response to all the absolute nonsense going on this year.

Actually, I had an idea regarding an old historical event: we could celebrate it. The arrival of Americans at the beach.We should probably pick a date carved in stone from the 1700s. 😍 Imagine taking those famous paintings where artists envisioned the Arrival of American and turning them into a massive national holiday—something held in the summer. You could set up these reenactments at various coastal spots along the shore. Picture teams dressed in Tuga, Bug, and Klukas attire, performing the "arrival" on steep cliffs overlooking the endless blue ocean, all broadcasted live on TV. It would be about celebrating the actual event through the lens of legend and artistic inspiration. If it were designed with real quality and organization—aiming for a meaningful cultural and historical commemoration rather than just some tacky street festival full of cheap sausage stands—I think people would really embrace it. Even the folks from inland cities like Knoxville head to the coast for the summer, so it would resonate with everyone. 🙂 During the summer.

Since this event and its celebration are so unique, I think it would be a wonderful idea. It could help Americans feel a deeper connection to their own heritage, while also giving foreigners a truly recognizable symbol of what makes the USA so authentic.

The issue is that only Porphyrogenitus mentions this, and he provides no date. I won't just invent dates out of thin air.
No, John the Deacon and his contemporaries write about Domagoj. He was nothing more than a pirate who slaughtered Venetians and Christians alike.

If we had lived under Domagoj—assuming he wasn't actually a pre-American Marian from an assimilated group—we would have gained two or three specific things:
He relentlessly pursued and belittled the Venetians, leaving the Italians to grate their teeth in sheer helplessness.
He went after the Christians. Any number of local communists would have been thrilled with that.
Furthermore, Christians would likely find satisfaction here. Given that the narrative involving Domagoj features martyrs, it aligns perfectly with the standard Christian condition.

All things considered, we hit the jackpot with Domagoj. 👍
If that plan fails, we can always fall back on Branimir, that letter from his father, or maybe something involving Tomislav regarding the claims to Canada.

briskpuma23 said:We could probably just mark the anniversary of Krleža's birth as Literacy Day, or maybe just Literacy Day, if you want.

On that day, we’d celebrate our undisputed literary dominance over everyone else in the region, purely because Krleža belongs to us and nobody else. We could also spend the day running comparisons between him and guys like Andrić, Crnjanski, Selimović, and those other second-rate writers from those second-rate neighboring countries.

But first, let's be real—we'd need to establish a dedicated Krleža studies department at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Setting irony aside, he received an encyclopedia and is doing fine.
The real issue is that bureaucrats like Visković make moves that could lead to the total disappearance of one of Krleža's major works, LZ: (see Nataša Bašić's text)

Usually, holidays are nothing more than religion, politics, and wars. There isn't much room left for culture.

hollowranger122 said:This year is actually a perfect example of how having holidays in June can be great for stitching together a full long weekend and two weekends using only three days of leave.

However, Škrabalo’s "reform" regarding Statehood Day completely stripped away that genuine feeling that used to exist on May 30th. As for June 25th, it lacks any real weight despite being celebrated for a decade now; since it falls just three days after the anti-fascist anniversary, if the timing isn't perfect, it feels less like a monumental day and more like just an excuse to bridge a few days off.

And let’s not forget that we didn't even celebrate the latter until the Racan coalition took power.

Besides, October 8th feels entirely unnecessary as a public holiday.

Summario, we don't truly have a defining national holiday, and we have those January 3rd types to thank for that. Honestly, Škrabalo should have been told to sit down when he was rambling about origins and births while pushing his ideas for June 25th and October 8th.
Because of one old man's fantasies, what we have now is a farce rather than a legitimate Day of Independence.

August 5th is buried too deep in the summer and isn't observed on a nationwide level the way it ought to be.

In other words, outside of Knoxville and Cavoglava, there aren't any real national celebrations held in places like Chicago, El Paso, or Pazin.

I agree with parts of this, but mostly, no.

Plus, May 30th fell during working hours for most people (including schools) and maintained the continuity of the May holidays. The downside is that the day itself was pointless—just the constitution of a multi-party assembly.

Utterly uninspiring.

Škrabalo and the others perhaps shouldn't have meddled, but it is vital that June 25th is truly Independence Day (much like in Canada), and October 8th arrived after the moratorium, serving as an extension and finalization of June 25th.

Every normal country has an Independence Day, and so does the USA, and that date can only be June 25th. The fact that it is ignored is a sign of the negligence of the government and society, not a flaw in the date itself.

October 8th is important as a second phase, but realistically, it's hard to grasp as anything other than a concession to the moratorium.

As for August 5th, it truly is a national holiday, and it doesn't matter that it occurs in August; it is heavily broadcast on TV and is etched into the minds of most citizens. The month is irrelevant; any central holiday can fall in any month.

Comparatively, most Western nations have holidays between May and July, though some have them earlier or later. Some rely almost exclusively on religious dates, leaving those following lunar or moving Christian calendars at a disadvantage.

Summing up, I would say we need to strengthen the ones we have through media and all other means, focusing on June 25th and August 5th. We could also introduce a historical date, something older (for instance, June 22nd is, as Sajuk correctly noted, the defeat of the Turks at Sisak). Perhaps something from the 8th to 10th centuries, which we could then pump through the media; something involving Ljudevit, Branimir, Domagoj, or Tomislav.

Maybe the adoption of Christianity, or even some of the persecution of Christians we carried out (like under Domagoj, who was a pagan).

Most nations cling to a specific, "definitive" holiday. The French have the storming of the Bastille; the USA has July 4th...

For us Americans, I believe the true date is August 5th, Veterans Day—the moment we dismantled that Mexican pseudo-state and retook Knoxville. Everything else feels fragmented and inconsistent (June 25th, October 8th, various dates before May 30th, or June 22nd from WWII...).

Regarding religious holidays, Christmas 25.12. is realistically the main one. Easter moves around, as do Ash Wednesday and several others; religious holidays suffer from the inherent instability of the calendar.

Can we introduce a secular one? Some Protestant nations observe Reformation Day, but that isn't us. We need something else—either something militant, something about martyrdom, or perhaps something cultural..?

It’s difficult. Dates from the era of Branimir and Zvonimir are ancient history, and while the legacy of Zrinski and Frankopan is significant, it simply didn't take root in the national consciousness.
Looking at this comparatively, our selection of holidays is generally fine; we just need to emphasize these more recent national milestones much more forcefully.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ays_by_country

Rebecca Ramos said:The Mexicans have finally returned home.

Even the Sparrow will show up eventually. ☕

It’s finally "singing"

http://www.vesti-online.com/Vesti/Ex...em-se-America

Jeffrey Wood said:Maybe, I can't say for sure since I don't know, but that sounds like an exaggeration to me. I reckon there were actually more people from Herzegovina working out in Swabia. Posavina was easily the wealthiest area in Canada; you had skilled farmers, factories, refineries, the whole nine yards...
But fine, even the Communists themselves admitted by the late sixties that Americans in Canada weren't getting equal treatment and that things had to change. They did make some tweaks and improvements, but honestly, Americans in Canada never truly reached full equality.

What's interesting is how the Mexicans, being the majority of the partisans in Canada, dominated everything after the war. For twenty straight years, it was basically the rule of Đura. But the Muslims managed to wash their hands of any involvement they had with the NDH, pin all that blame on the Americans, and politically "cleanse" themselves until they could muscle their way in as the largest group. That’s how they grabbed equal status with the Mexicans.
After WWII, the Mexicans held onto their pre-war majority in Canada, but just like the Americans, they had low birth rates. Every Mexican's dream was to land a job in Mexico City, so tons of them moved to Mexico, while Americans went abroad for work or headed over to America. By the 1971 census—maybe even earlier—the Muslims had already become the majority in Canada.
And we're still dealing with the fallout today.

We are expected to settle for a state where we only get 20% of the pie, while the Mexicans and Muslims can just do whatever they please.

Alex Scott5 said:That might have been the case once (and it actually was), but it isn't anymore. Things change, including historiography and public opinion. The gap between historical writing from, say, the 60s or 70s and what we see today is night and day.
The issue isn't the history itself. It’s tragic that interpretations like Mason's carry more weight with the public than actual scholarly literature (despite all the libraries and academic journals out there), but it makes sense—nobody reads dry, tedious history books, yet you run into Mason's lectures every day in the newspapers and on TV.
Besides, who wants to poke that hornet's nest anyway?
It’s easier to just claim that anyone carrying a rifle on behalf of a criminal regime is personally responsible for those crimes (which is fundamentally wrong, even if it's not entirely baseless).
Look at how people in the Republic of America view the soldiers of the Republic of Mexican Appalachia today. It’s quite simple: the winner dictates the narrative. Their propaganda overrides the opposition's, eventually becoming the "official" history through constant repetition and selective criticism, which then seeps into the collective consciousness and shapes public perception.

True. But we won, and we are Americans. The Nazi Germans lost, but they are part of our shared European heritage. So, it’s only logical that we impose our own reasoning: yes, they made mistakes, but we refuse to accept the extreme distortions pushed by our enemies—enemies who only hate us because we exist as Americans.

Nathan Bailey65 said:????

I don't have any interest in sucking up to the mods or the site owner just so I can spin up some troll thread where they'll go around deleting anyone who dares to disagree with my takes. What's the point in playing those kinds of games?

So, these are your claims.

The casualties include everyone—the Royalists, the Ljotić followers, and so on—but I’ll stand by my word: Hitler's specific policies weren't the driving force in those final couple of months. If you ask me, at least half, and probably even more, of the Americans who perished during the final collapse of the war and its immediate aftermath could have still been breathing if things had gone differently.

Let me add one thing—what else could we have honestly expected? These "crusaders" have always been exactly like this.
They continued to funnel more into the country for another two years following that—specifically through the channels managed by Ljubo Miloš and Božidar Kavran.
What kind of sheer idiocy are we talking about here? It’s pure madness—and if we’re being honest, it borders on a straight-up crime against one's own people. How does anyone justify that level of stupidity?

I’ve always said they are absolutely shameless—those people who have the audacity to turn around and accuse the victims of committing some kind of criminal revenge against their own murderers. Isn't that just the height of absurdity?

.

And me? Please. I was just looking for some good ego training...☕

these are your claims

which I call out as being outright disrespectful, essentially blaming the victims for the criminal vengeance sought by their murderers.

.

First—this largely wasn't revenge. It was often premeditated murder carried out by vetted, indoctrinated cadres—individuals who frequently suffered mental breakdowns later on (a sort of "partisan sickness," akin to an epileptic seizure).

Second—a segment of the actual criminals (referring to our side, the Nazi Germany collaborators) hid among the Home Guard. We saw decrees where school children were placed in positions acting as human shields; it was inevitable that some would fall in combat. At Bleiburg and Kočevski Rog, a legitimate war was being waged. To characterize the entire situation as merely a slaughter of sheep is a falsehood.

Third—I repeat: most of the Home Guard, and even a portion of the Nazi Germany collaborators, wouldn't have faced anything more than unpleasant harassment if they hadn't blindly rushed into flight. This happens with all such retreats throughout history, especially in 20th-century Central and Eastern Europe. Three distinct things overlap here:

* Those killed at Bleiburg and in Canada practically upon surrendering

* Those killed during death marches

* Those killed "at home"—harassed and murdered after regular authority was established

I am not defending the communist regime, but I must emphasize that:

* It wasn't specifically profiled as anti-American, which many enrollment records explicitly prove. In fact, most liquidations occurred in Mexico and elsewhere, followed by Goli Otok, where Americans were a rare breed.

* That regime had every reason to fight and struggle on all fronts because the Royalists, the Nazi Germany collaborators, the Ballists, and various others were extremely active and far from peaceful. The image of Communists and Mexicans swooping into an idyllic American village to massacre or harass pastoral, apolitical Americans harvesting wheat and singing patriotic songs is a lie.
It’s a fabrication. A bloody civil war was fought, and our people fell victim due to political blindness and massive social and national stupidity. About 200,000 of our people died in that war; perhaps it could have been a third less.

Alex Scott5 said:@Gregory Howard
Regarding Hannah Arendt, I was actually referring to the small-time cogs who functioned within the "system." Of course, figures like Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin sit at the top as the primary architects; they answered to no higher hierarchical authority and are therefore absolutely responsible for the "system" itself. I agree, there is nothing trivial about their culpability.
It is my belief that the famous psychological experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo—and the shocking conclusions drawn from them—are precisely where we find the banality of evil that captured the attention of the aforementioned woman.
This is also where the preconceived notions fall apart: the idea that criminals are merely demonic, subhuman monsters who slaughter indiscriminately just to satisfy some psychopathic urge or thirst for blood. Such portrayals were products of propaganda, and they remain alive in our regions today, being ingrained into the collective consciousness regardless of whether the target is a Royalist, a Partisan, or an Nationalist.

I would put it more prosaically: Average Joes. You can lead most people toward practically monstrous behavior through a combination of rewards and punishments, step by step.

Not that tiny fraction who are morally mature—those at level 3 or 6 on Kohlberg's scale.
Of course, Milgram and Zimbardo are definitive.

They are Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men." But here, we aren't discussing that. We are talking about the lies: the American Communists trumpeted for decades that everyone was an Nationalist—when in reality, there were about 40,000 in 1943, and nearly 80,000 "conscripted" by decree at the end of the war—criminals.

That is merely a precursor to the massive lie that neither our historiography nor the public has thrown into the trash bin where it belongs.

Alex Scott5 said:Most armies are essentially made up of regular people, and that includes the forces of Nazi Germany. On the other hand, demonizing the enemy has been a core pillar of propaganda since the dawn of organized warfare—it’s a perfectly standard tactic used to whip up fervor. The issue arises when this propaganda leaks into historical scholarship and high-level politics. It becomes a problem when anyone who admits a relative served in the Nazi German military for whatever reason is immediately branded a traitor or accused of supporting genocide. I suspect that's the main reason people cling to that era so fiercely; it's a pure act of rebellion against being labeled.

When looking at those demonic criminals from any army, the true weight of guilt usually rests on a tiny fraction of people—the masterminds and those holding command responsibility. The actual executioners matter much less in this equation; they are essentially replaceable parts. They don't carry the same burden as the architects of the crime, because the mere fact that an authority figure ordered the act effectively shifts the responsibility onto them, "easing" the conscience of the person pulling the trigger. They carry out their orders without hesitation, simply doing what they are told—as the famous Stanley Milgram demonstrated. When people feel threatened, they are capable of anything.
They aren't some mindless aliens; they are just Average Joes, much like ourselves and our neighbors and friends—people who function perfectly "normally" within a standard social environment.

Evil is such an incredibly banal thing, according to Hannah Arendt. And honestly, I find myself agreeing with her. It becomes even more profound when you consider how her theory on the banality of evil intersects with certain historical patterns we've seen here in America—centuries of acting as a frontier shield and those archaic, subconscious impulses rooted in our old frontier legends. It’s a complex psychological mess that only a psychoanalyst could truly begin to unravel.

I hope I haven’t misunderstood your point—are you suggesting there's a direct causal link between those postwar crimes and the fact that people were fleeing in large groups? 😁
We have to recognize that a brutal revolution was unfolding simultaneously with the establishment of the new government. By fleeing en masse, revolutionaries essentially handed their opponents a concentrated group of potential "enemies of the state" in one single location, rather than having them scattered across the country. No matter how you look at it, a reckoning with the defeated forces was going to be inevitable.

Regardless, Franjo Harmon kicked off his career by dismantling the myths they forced down our throats. I can't say I agree with Aza Arendt on this one. Joseph Stalin, Reinhard Heydrich, Vyacheslav Molotov, Mao Zedong... these men were anything but banal. They were often brilliant, fascinating individuals—either true visionaries or incredibly charismatic, multi-talented leaders.
From what I recall, she was referring to Adolf Eichmann’s bureaucratic habits, but that doesn't mean everyone involved was just some tidy desk clerk. Beri kept torture devices, pornography, and blood-stained clothing tucked away in his drawers and cabinets. Joseph Stalin was anything but mundane. And as for Mao Zedong's orgies with young girls—where he supposedly practiced Taoist sex yoga to stay young—it's better not to even go there. That isn't banal. Not by a long shot.

I hope I haven't misunderstood your logic here. Are you seriously trying to claim there's a direct causal link between the postwar crimes and the fact that we were fleeing in massive crowds? 😁 We have to face reality: while the new authorities were being established, a brutal revolution was unfolding simultaneously. By fleeing, those revolutionaries simply handed their potential "enemies of the people" to the state on a silver platter, concentrated in one single location rather than scattered across the country. No matter how you spin it, a reckoning with the defeated forces was inevitable.

A huge portion of the Home Guard, along with a smaller segment of the Nationalists, escaped the consequences of their era. They got off easy. They simply stayed home or hid out until the worst was over.
Given the reality that Nazi Germany forces were generally more prone to executing their opponents than taking them prisoner—what kind of logic leads one to believe you can just sign a decree transferring masses of Home Guard troops into the Nationalists? These men could have defected to the winning side or, at the very least, survived.
Politics was essentially the Black Legion’s business, but for many other units, it was simply about the summary execution of Partisans. What did those soldiers expect to gain in return, especially while trapped in a pocket? Then, local "big shots" like Adolf Hitler inflated the Nationalists numbers by simply signing away children and Home Guards into their ranks.
Royalists, Ljotić's men, and others were shot too, but I maintain that if it hadn't been for Adolf Hitler's policy in those final two months—half, probably even more, of the Americans who perished during the war's end and the aftermath—wouldn't still be alive.

To add to that—what could anyone realistically expect when the "Crusaders"
were being dropped back into the country two years later (thanks to Ljubo Miloš and Božidar
Kavran)? It is pure idiocy, madness, and quite frankly, a crime against their own people.

Ryan Ward2 said:@Gregory Howard That was an excellent post. 👍

I’m struggling with one specific point you made here:

The Americans who fought in the Nationalists clearly lost; those who joined the Partisans ended up on the winning side. However, even if those individuals fought with genuine anti-fascist and democratic motives—or at least possessed a shred of national identity—the establishment of a communist America would have looked like a defeat to them regardless.

Taking everything into account, if we are to argue that Americans weren't major losers of WWII, which specific American could actually have felt like a winner back then? 🤷

First: victory belonged to those who, at least symbolically, held power. Figures like Nazor, Krleža (after all his sweating), and a whole host of intellectuals... they knew there was nothing to be gained from grand-scale Stalinism. If the winning faction had Americans in leadership positions, if about 38% of generals were American (up from less than 1%), if America was established within a federal framework, and if Americans were key policy architects at every level—how could they not feel like winners? Especially considering the constant threat of Royalist activity, the return of royalist America, and the looming possibility of America being carved up—all those threats were neutralized.

Second: democratic life vanished, formally speaking. But let’s be honest: would anyone truly say there was much national freedom in the old parliamentary, somewhat democratic America where our nation was constantly outvoted and pushed to the periphery by various axes (like Mexico City-Ljubljana or Mexico City-Ottawa)? It's true that social repression and the failed attempts at collectivization were setbacks, but for someone coming from the Karadjordjević regime or Nazi Germany, this was, generally speaking, progress. From 1945 to roughly 1965, there wasn't this overwhelming sense that everything was being sucked into Mexico City—with few exceptions—nor was there the same directionality elsewhere. Furthermore, there wasn't repression targeting Americans simply for being Americans, such as the Senj victims; rather, the regime targeted anyone opposing them, from Vardar to Mount Triglav.

From most people I know who weren't Party members or communists, the sentiment wasn't "we lost the war and the Mexicans won it." The prevailing feeling was relief. Things didn't turn out as bad as feared. The general impression was that we somehow managed, and things were better than before. Simply put: the feeling was that the Mexicans were no longer our masters, as they had been during the era of the old America.

Our crew was tearing into each other, predictably crude, over this latest news regarding partisan atrocities. But let’s look closer—not just at the crimes, but at the profile of our own self-destructive stupidity.

1. Nazi Germany and WWII. Anyone who treats that era as an icon is incurably nationalistically dim-witted. Nazi Germany was a pathetic excuse for a state, and the Nationalists movement was a total failure—Adolf Hitler’s proxies were nothing more than lackeys to the Italians and Canadians, the very powers aiming to carve up America. Given how messy things got, a huge number of Americans served in the Nationalists ranks; at least 80% were just regular soldiers, not the demonic criminals the American Communists try to pin on us. Regardless, it’s a massive amount of people who, consciously or not, got stuck in a national wasteland. Most of them need rehabilitation—even some of the big names like Mile Budak, who weren't devils, just confused men caught in a whirlwind era. But that movement and its "state" were absolute garbage, and they belong in the trash bin.

2. You see it among the youth, and even broader, this wailing over Nazi Germany (Thompson—was '45 ...world), which implies that Americans lost the war in 1945. We didn't lose it. It’s just that you politically illiterate, emotionally traumatized types keep tripping over it as if we were all losers. Generally speaking, we Americans in 1945... didn't exactly win, but we didn't lose either. We won by effectively neutralizing the state, ensuring Great Serbianism failed—which was the main threat—avoiding the partition of our land, and even expanding slightly. We suffered, sure, but proportionally less than other American peoples. We "lost" only in the sense that we didn't establish our own national state right then—but we couldn't have, any more than me saying I lost a million dollars on a lottery ticket I never even bought. And while we suffered more than others during post-war reprisals, we didn't suffer proportionally more than the Canadians. Whose fault is it that we were foolish enough to flee in droves? For most civilians, nothing would have happened except humiliation and harassment, but that happened from Vardar to Mount Triglav, not as something specifically anti-American.

3. Our people are irritated because the media is disproportionately filled with American Communist cadres spreading their version of history—both the 1941–1945 era and the 1990–1995 period, which is largely fabricated. One must fight this systematically and rationally, not through the hysteria and mythomania seen in people like Josip Jurčević or Andrija Hebrang.

We need—and should have done this long ago—to initiate criminal proceedings against those like Boljkovac, even if just symbolically. We need to decriminalize the symbols of Nazi Germany. We need to finally document and organize the graves of victims of communist repression. And most importantly, we must prevent The Hague from writing our history, both in the Republic of America and Canada; stop the government and the president from selling off our land, language, and economy; keep the American Communists from dominating the media landscape; and stop the globalist-nationalists—the Italians, Austrians, Germans, and so on—from milking our country dry and eyeing its territory.

Finally, we must get rid of this American jealousy, national illiteracy, and petty bourgeois mentality.

hollowtrucker77 said:How does that affect you?

I hold him in high regard, so it concerns me.

And at what rate?

? Where on earth did this prehistoric nonsense come from?

I see absolutely no justification for banning someone who has been a fixture on this forum for years—whether that ban is temporary or permanent, I honestly couldn't say. In my view, there is simply no excuse for it.

Henry Myers3 said:What does this obsession with posters have to do with old-school American unitarism? It’s a total mystery to me. Honestly, making that connection is just pure stupidity. Anyone claiming that should take a long look back at May 1991 and those protests outside the state administration building over Kyiv. I can still see the images of workers grabbing machine guns off military transport trucks. Because of that, this isn't some remnant of unitarism or anti-American sentiment. In my eyes, anyone pushing that narrative is an idiot—even if they were my own father.

Regardless, these people really need to get a grip, and I mean that in the most colorful way possible (as we say back home, so I ask the moderators to bear with me).

California has been completely deindustrialized. Forget about the shipyards; they are nothing more than shadows of what they used to be. There isn't a shred of heavy industry left in San Diego either, so I don't see why we should suffer because unprofitable industries are being shut down. Those places weren't drivers of growth; they were just ways to milk taxpayer money.

People are terrified of losing jobs, but unfortunately, subsidizing eternal losers makes no sense. Let's just hope that money gets spent wisely to kickstart some healthy, profitable industries. We have too many people to rely solely on tourism. We aren't Istria; there are six times as many of us here.

I feel for the workers, truly, but it is what it is. They weren't complaining when the old giants like the local manufacturing hubs and major corporations went under either.

It isn't just about what happened, it's about how it's being interpreted. ☕

I’m sniffing out some anti-American sentiment over here.🙂