I think she does - the bill is about materials being sent home with kids from schools that include sodomy or grooming or the incredibly vague ‘lgbt agenda’

It’s designed so that instead of banning books individually, they can just sue for anything they don’t like.

The headline makes it sound ridiculous - and in a way it is, of course - but it’s potentially dangerous. I don’t know how much sway her organisation has, if it’s big or niche. Hopefully zero

Yeah i suppose you have a point. I never think of sovcit claims as credible, but if that’s what someone needs to hear or believe in a tough time, could be a different story

Its pretty easy to hear a credible-sounding claim and take it in, without doing the research to debunk it

Yes, that is exactly what sovcits do.

I suppose where we differ then is if sovcit beliefs are ‘credible-sounding’

On the other hand, belief in a widespread historical myth that has been argued by professional historians isn’t exactly ‘soveriegn citizen’ level - even if that myth has been overwhelmingly dismissed by the majority of their colleagues.

Its pretty easy to hear a credible-sounding claim and take it in, without doing the research to debunk it

Well, it was never going to look like the Americas even if it was true. The claim is that they discovered the land, not that they circumnavigated it or were able to chart the coasts with Renaissance-level precision.

There’s no good or compelling evidence. But there’s lots of ‘evidence’ that while dismissed by most academics, can be used in support of the theory in a vacuum, for example the existence of a pre-Colombian carving in Arabic (which isn’t actually that, but was believed to be by some).

The idea isn’t based on the map alone, it’s only one piece of the corroborating ‘evidence’.

Again, I’m not arguing that it’s a true claim, just that it’s not on the surface insane

Al-Masudi was a very able cartographer, and his 10th Century map of the world is really impressive. And yes, it includes a continent to the West of the Old World.

Obviously this doesn’t prove a genuine knowledge or discovery of the New World, but its a noted oddity.

The theory that a Muslim population discovered and settled in the Americas is widely discredited and shouldn’t been taken seriously, but it is a published theory and supported by at least some academics. Most though dismiss is as either ‘psuedo-history’ or even ‘propaganda’, so yeah…

This theory might be ahistorical, but how sinister it is is debatable (“Yeagley believed that Shabbas and the other authors were simply trying to gain acceptance for Arabs, further integrating them into American culture by making them ‘native.’”). The American myth making around Colombus might be more based in fact, but lets be honest, there’s a lot of fake history there too.

The word ‘admiral’ does come from the Arabic ‘amir’, - circuitously via medieval Latin and Old French.

So yeah the post is untrue, but I wouldn’t call it ‘insane’ necessarily. Its a reasonably common, and interesting, myth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Masudi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/did-muslims-visit-america-before-columbus

“Simpon, huh? New man?”

“Actually sir, he thwarted your campaign for Governer. You ran over his son. He saved the plant from meltdown. His wife painted you in the nude.”

“Uh, doesn’t ring a bell”

Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.

Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.

The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.

My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it

I suppose I’d call myself more curious than sceptical - I could look shit up and I can’t be bothered - but how do you define when humans became humans? I imagine its an estimate based from anthropological and fossil records and stuff

They definitely didnt help, nor did the right wing media or the Labour Party centrists undermining him

But ultimately he lost because of Brexit.

In his first election, despite the pressure against him, he took the Tories to a hung parliament and forced them to make a deal with the DUP. Cos people were sick of Austerity and liked his domestic platform

But when managing Brexit became the main issue in 2019(?), Johnson had a really strong message of ‘oven-ready brexit’, ‘get it done’, and Labour didn’t have a coherent strategy. They didnt want to go full ‘reverse it’, cos lots of votes for Brexit came from Labour seats. They also didnt want to go full ‘get out deal or no deal’ because generally the left and progressive voters were anti-brexit.

Corbyn was elected to the leadership on the strength of his domestic and anti-austerity policies, and when the focus shifted to Brexit he was out of his comfort zone.

That’s my analysis anyway. I liked Corbyn’s foreign policy, but it wasn’t what built his popularity