The words Brer and bruh both originated as written forms of a spoken alteration of the word brother that is used especially in southern African American English. Brer appears most commonly today in written versions of African American folktales (such as those popularized by Joel Chandler Harris), where it occurs as a capitalized title before a male character’s first name.
“These are traditional African American folktales crossed with Cherokee and Creek folktales,” says [Honorée Fanonne] Jeffers of The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus—a compilation of children’s stories that detail the adventures of characters like Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf.
— Tembe Denton-Hurst
… folktales with African roots, introducing Brers Fox, Rabbit, Wolf, and Bear.
— Judy Freeman
The word bruh is also sometimes used in this way.
The little animals held a sit-down talk, and one by one and two by two and all by all, they decide to go see Bruh Bear and Bruh Rabbit.
— Virginia Hamilton
Bruh.
Seriously wondering if Brer Rabbit is supposed to be pronounced like Bruh Rabbit, and not rhyming with “rare” or “bear”.
One of my favorite tabletop wargame stories in playing a pretty detailed 6mm World War 2 game. I was set up as the Americans in a “supposed to lose” scenario where my platoon+mortar team+ a few bazooka teams+ 1 Sherman tank was defending against an assault with mechanized German infantry, scout cars, and multiple Panzers. Normally in the scenario the American player loses and is judged on how long they held out, or if they make it many turns in they get saved by air support.
I looked at the table layout and realized that between the German deployment zone and mine there was a spot with only one viable road forward, being flanked by hedgerows and other terrain. First turn I zoomed the Sherman tank up at max speed and parked it sideways on the road. The Sherman didn’t even get a shot off before it was destroyed.
German player had a good laugh at my thoughtless aggression. Until he realized my smoking Sherman hull was blocking the only viable road for his tanks. Even worse the scout cars and halftracks were in front of the tanks on the road, so the only vehicles heavy enough to push the Sherman (this game had weight rules for vehicles pushing each other) were the tanks stuck in the back of the traffic jam I’d created.
I spent the follow-up turns hitting the locked up vehicles with mortars and hidden bazooka teams. The German infantry dismounted to attack but they’d lost their massive advantage and had to fumble blindly through hedgerows into defending Americans waiting for them.
By the time the air support showed up they weren’t needed. The Germans were in a full rout.
From signing a treaty with the Nazis so they could both violently invade their neighbors to barely winning only because of massive lend-lease support from the US, WWII really showcased the Kremlin’s ability to be awful.
I think the cherry on top was how they destroyed and buried equipment they got from the US instead of returning it… but maybe it was the decades of murder and brutal occupation in USSR states.
Explanation: Antoninus Pius is one of the “Five Good Emperors”, a series of five Emperors in a row who were well-regarded by history. Antoninus Pius got his name (‘Pius’) because he was a good and loyal son to his (sometimes mercurial) adoptive father, the Emperor Hadrian. He proceeded to embark on no major military campaigns, and spent the next two decades of rule investing in public roads, bridges, aqueducts and other systems for publicly available water, and welfare measures for the poor, including for orphans (not an actual orphanage; the original pic is a little inaccurate but they’ve got the spirit). He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
He brought to the Empire extensive legal reform in all areas, increasing the rights of slaves against mistreatment or murder at their masters’ hands and ensuring that when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery. He also significantly reduced the use of torture in the Empire (reduced, not eliminated, because ultimately, as with slavery, the past is still a really shitty place). He had a warm relationship with the Jews of the Empire after his predecessor, Hadrian, quite famously… did not… and put Christians under his personal protection as Emperor (a state of affairs which sadly would fade after a few Emperors).
Not only that, but his two adoptive sons who became Emperor after him both remembered him very fondly after his death as a man of good humor and great patience, who enjoyed fishing and watching comedic plays and boxing matches. Man was probably one of the most wholesome human beings to ever become the most powerful man in the world.
when a man’s status as a slave was in doubt, one was to err on the side of freedom, not slavery
i have a new hero, that's awesome.. what an Eternal Dude this guy was.. a real example to follow, and there must be a long list of kings and so forth who genuinely measured themselves against him..
Unfortunately, while he is remembered as a wise and fair Emperor, he is generally overshadowed by his more militarily active predecessors, Hadrian and Trajan, or by his adoptive son, the Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
sorry to double reply, but i really wanted to make this other point because it bugs the hell out of me personally..
he is generally overshadowed
it's great that you chose those words.. it's true, he is eclipsed by them in history texts, written by historians.. this is obviously due to the fact that historians are obsessed with conflict.. there is nothing interesting to talk about when everyone is living a nice, peaceful life.. especially if it lasts a long time..
Tolkien explains this concept incredibly well in the foreword to the Hobbit, i think.. he says something like, "good days are nice to live, but nobody wants to hear you talk about them.. whereas everyone wants to hear a scary story.." historians like to talk about dragons..
as you are demonstrating here, thank you.. perhaps i should have said that Tolkien suggests it's hard to get a hobbit to listen, unless there's a dragon..
There are some really fascinating fields that have emerged since the revival of history as an academic discipline in the 19th century, and especially since the second half of the 20th century. Some really great work on the social fabric of past societies, rather than war, politics, and tabloid gossip that usually gets recorded.
Not that any of that is necessarily bad, I love reading about that too, lmao, but it's nice to have a wider view of things!
great work on the social fabric of past societies,
yeah, this is what i'm talking about, and how that social fabric has progressed, and is still progressing as a thing unto itself.. specifically in spite of war, which hates civilization..
thank you for adding that further context
that's why i loved this post right away.. it's about one of the guys whose life was totally committed to that fabric, and we still owe this guy today in a way we don't understand well..
thanks for adding that BRUTAL Roman context lol.. but i also want to make sure to shout the guy out for this one as well..
He reduced taxes on areas experiencing hardship, funded the arts, medicine, and philosophy, and still managed to have a massive budget surplus by the end of his reign.
this is what people need to understand.. most other Roman administrations were nothing but sieves because of their more typical behavior..
I've literally had Lemmy tankies tell me that all the dead people in the photographs were actually soldiers, who were massacred by the students, and no protestors at all died.
Are those the ones that showed Fat Man and Little Boy didn't make Japan blink any more than the previous destruction meted out during Tōkyōdaikūshū, yet they surrendered one day after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria made conditional surrender impossible?
Not even close. Fat Man and Little Boy, as post-war access to Imperial Japanese records show, were instrumental in convincing the Emperor to surrender. The Soviet invasion was ultimately not largely consequential to the surrender.
For a more public example, look at the Emperor's surrender speech:
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.
If you want cruel and unnecessary, the firebombings are much more condemnable and less justifiable than the atomic bombs. And killed more civilians.
Would this by chance be a reference to Kōichi Kido's personal diary where he asserts the emperor wanted to prevent further "scarifice of his children"??
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and others (Wilson et.) have argued Kido was trying to paint the Emperor in a benevolent light there not reflected in the emperor's July 30 reaction to the Potsdam Proclamation.
If nuclear bombs were what did it why did the military insist on still following through with Ketsu Gō even after Nagasaki was bombed and the Emperor would have surrendered without them? Rear Admiral Sōkichi Takagi was already looking to negotiated surrender in Feb '44. The Supreme War Council was reaching out about Soviet-mediated surrender in May.
Kawabe Torashiro, Deputy Chief of Staff, called the atomic bombings "terrible", but described The Soviets entering the war as "...a very difficult situation."
Hirohito himself in an address to the army and navy said
Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue … under the present conditions at home and abroad would only recklessly incur even more damage to ourselves and result in endangering the very foundation of the empire’s existence. Therefore, even though enormous fighting spirit still exists in the imperial navy and army, I am going to make peace with the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, as well as with Chungking, in order to maintain our glorious kokutai.
Emphasis mine.
I really don't buy one bit that the destruction of 160,800 tons constant conventional firebombing didn't have the supposed war-ending effect these two other bombs the dropping of which did not even result in a convening of The Supreme War Council allegedly did.
Even The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys under direction of the U.S. Secretary of War determined Japan would have surrendered by November '45 even without the atomic bomb or The Soviets closing off mediation. Just with air superiority and cutting off matériel.
Japan suing for peace, the war being ending anyway, combined with the horrific effects of nuclear bombs on human bodies—civilian bodies—has be consider the dropping of the bombs "highly fucked up", yes.
They melted children's bone marrow and caused them to die slowly of Atomic AIDS. It burned the pattern printed on swaddling cloth into infant's skin.
It wasn't cool when Kaiser Wilhelm "put men, women and children and old men to fire and sword", and it wasn't cool when Truman did it.
It was a warcrime, and an unnecessary and monstrous act
You really don't see the difference between needing hundreds of planes operating over the course of months to inflict terrible but imprecise and spotty damage vs. a single bomber being able to wipe away factories, railyards, garrisons, etc, and disable everything nearby in a broad swathe, by simply getting through once? Really? You don't see the issue with the Japanese quite EXPLICITLY making their plans to force an American negotiated peace around inflicting unacceptable casualties and the sudden ability of the Americans to duplicate the force they previously needed to expose dozens and hundreds of fully crewed and loaded bombers over multiple days and multiple sorties, to a single heavy bomber in one pass?
I'm not sure why you're attempting to downplay the shock caused by the atomic bomb on the Japanese government. The cabinet meeting on August 7 immediately began discussions of a surrender according to the terms laid out by the Americans in the Potsdam Declaration, and ended inconclusively rather than with acceptance or rejection. The atomic bombings were psychologically devastating, and gave great weight to the faction within the Japanese government advocating the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. There were MULTIPLE coup attempts, even after both atomic bombs and the Soviet intervention, to attempt to stop the surrender. Do you really think that the deaths of 350,000 people and the destruction of multiple strategically vital points in the anticipated defense of the home islands, in that context, had no significant weight on their decision to surrender; that the Soviet invasion was enough and the considerable resistance to surrender would have been unchanged by the absence of the bombs? I find that very hard to believe.
The idea that neither bomb, no blockade, AND no American invasion would be needed to force a Japanese surrender is not a mainstream modern academic view. There's a reason Gar Alperovitz is not taken seriously on the subject anymore. Hasegawa's book was iconoclastic but ultimately gained little traction, not because it was necessarily poorly researched, but simply because it falls prey to the natural bias of its author to lend undue weight to the matter they specialize in (the history of Russia-Japan relations). Hasegawa's argument rests much heavier on assertion than revelation - he offers context of the diplomacy between Japan and Russia, but shows nothing new in terms of facts or connections that would warrant the extra weight he assigns the Soviet intervention, nor does it show any new evidence or connections to lessen the weight of the evidence in favor of the need of further pressure to force a Japanese surrender. (full disclosure: I only vaguely remembered the book's reputation for reaching for its conclusions beforehand; I read Hasegawa's article after your post but not the full book for... obvious reasons of time and effort). Hasegawa also makes the claim that the Japanese were surprised by the Soviet attack, which is DEEPLY questionable at best.
Estimates for the casualties of the Soviet invasion were similarly catastrophic, and I don't know how exactly you reconcile the reluctance to surrender with both bombs being dropped and a Soviet invasion incoming with the idea that the early stages of a Soviet invasion would have been enough to force capitulation. On the other hand, if your argument is, unlike Hasegawa's, that a full-bore Soviet invasion is what would have forced a surrender, you are likely correct but are looking at casualties comparable if not exceeding the severity of the planned Operation Downfall.
The delusion that air power alone could force a surrender was very common in the air force during and after WW2, but as Vietnam showed, it's not actually a viable way to force a country to surrender. The 1946 analysis, though wildly optimistic, still presumed a heightened firebombing campaign which, may I remind you, had already claimed more lives than both atomic bombs combined. And if you believe that napalm doesn't melt childrens' bone marrow and cause thousands to die slow deaths of chronic illnesses and injuries, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The nuclear fears in our society lingering from the Cold War have more of a hand in that view than the actual facts of what bombing entails - nuclear weapons are uniquely terrible for their scale, not the cruelty of their effects. Terror bombing is cruel enough to match or exceed nuclear weapons; it just takes more resources from the attacker. Furthermore, the USSBS reached conclusions about the success of strategic bombing campaigns that are highly questionable, and very much connected to the fact that post-war budget cuts were on the horizon.
If you think it's a warcrime, if you think Truman is a monster for it, that's fine. But you have to accept what the alternative is, and own up to that. If you are determined to think that the use of even one atomic bomb was wrong, inherently, then you are faced with the unavoidable verdict that doing the right thing does not always save more lives in the end.
I can point out the single source on your assertion Shigenori Tōgō argued for accepting Potsdam on the 7th—Sakomizu Hisatsune's postwar testimony—isn't backed up by Tōgō's own memoirs. I can remind you the coups were quickly put down by the military itself and without Korechika Anami's support were doomed to failure.
We can parry assertions until this resembles Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. I don't want to do that.
You obviously feel very strongly about this.
The national myth of "tough but absolutely necessary" is pervasive. I have no desire to argue anyone out of their faith.
I don't enjoy this conversation. Unlike (I am assuming) you, history is not a special interest. My consideration for being here is a moral one.
I can't let someone justify introducing nuclear weapons to the world by killing civilians unopposed.
I do not agree with you. I am familiar with and unconvinced by your arguments. I am disappointed you hold the views you do.
America had other choices.
Have Stalin sign on to Potsdam in the first place.
Demonstrate Little Boy on an unoccupied target.
Do what Stimson suggested and offer the terms (preservation of the monarchy) America accepted in the end anyway in the first place.
America chose to introduce nuclear weapons the the world by bombing a civilian target.
America abandoned any moral positioning it to prevent the proliferation of these things and forced The Soviet's hand to seek nuclear parity.
Against a material starved and already defeated enemy.
No, I will never accept that introducing this horror to the world was good, not bad, nor neutral.
You do not nuke civilians like that.
Harry Truman is in hell.
I stand opposed to you and your position. If anyone comes across these posts may they know a minimum of one person on kbin disagrees with your stance.
Still don't dislike you, Pug. Would hope one day you come around, but I have no desire to continue this line any further.
That's fine, you're under no obligation to continue a conversation you dislike. I'm obsessive about history and majored in it, so it's a passion point for me that I can go on and on about, lol. I won't press the argument further.
Ah, for those wondering about the prettyboys comment, as it's a bit more obscure than the rest...
“Although they [the Celts] have good-looking women, they pay very little attention to them, but are really crazy about having sex with men. They are accustomed to sleeping on the ground on animal skins and roll around naked with male bed-mates on both sides... When they proposition someone, they consider it dishonourable if he doesn’t accept the offer!” - Diodorus Siculus
Diod. Sic. 5.32, if anyone was wondering. The translation here is pretty faithful. I found that you could creatively interpret "ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς τῶν ἀρρένων ἐπιπλοκὰς ἐκτόπως λυττῶσιν" as "but they were unusually rabid towards the intercourse of men."
In June, at the Battle of Belleau Wood, the trench shotgun allowed American soldiers to literally mow down the advancing enemy troops. “That shotgun volley was new to them,” J. H. Hoskins, a captain in an American engineering company, told the Nashville Banner, his hometown newspaper. “Every time a gun fired three or four Germans would go down. The more the surprise gripped them, the closer they would huddle and the deadlier was the fire.”
Saltier than Carthage (if it had been salted)
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