Why aren't more people talking about Tom Riddle's irrational, phobia kind of fear from death and the cause of it?
Personally I think it's heavily related to his environment growing up in the Great Depression and WWII. The adoption act just passed in the year he was born and it wasn't working effectively for years while the system was overwhelmed with children.
When the Depression hit they lost their foundings, people were often starving and child sicknesses like whooping cough, scarlet fever Tom probably saw children die in his close environment through his childhood. We see that he stole trinkets but it's more likely that they stole food and clothing from each other as well. It's also important to note that Mrs Cole was canonically an alcoholic so it was not a case of an emotional supportive and responsible adult taking care of them.
As Tom leaves for 2nd year Germany starts the WWII, before his 3rd yr he is still London when the first air raid happens, bombs meant for military targets end up in the city centre. Food rationing was normal. He misses the Blitz by being in Hogwarts but most of the city is destroyed with horrible condition when he returns, there are heavy bombings at the end of july. Continuing with v1-v2 bombings. Tom was surely either in an aid shelter or out in the city at one point. It's possible that at that point he was unaffected by the sight of dead people, children lying around daily.
We know that he wanted to stay at Hogwarts for summer but Dippet denied him and I can only hope it was out of ignorance and not purposefully sending him back to a war zone.
All through this he had a trace on his wand due to being underaged. So he could only use his raw magic.
It's no wonder that he decided he never wants death, that if he had survived all of this he deserves to escape death himself. He mutilated his own soul multiple times just to cheat death, that's desperation wrapped in arrogance.
He was a traumatized war orphan with incredible high Intelligence and scarily potent raw magical power, he had zero chance against his hubris.
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No more historically inaccurate Viking shows. I want a show that follows regular Norse people. Most of them are farmers. The ones that go out viking (because itâs a fucking VERB) donât have heavy armor. No more white people in locs and cornrows. Give me hairstyles they actually wore. Give me loose fitting clothing (they didnât cut clothes to be form fitting until ~the 14th century). They take bathing seriously. They mention ALL the gods and not just Thor and Odin. Just. Historically accurate Norse people.
This might be a little Ted Talk... When I was designing Allison and Susie, I noticed that Susieâs voice is much higher and she comes much earlier...That reminded me that in the late 20â˛s and early 30â˛s (the times the cartoons started), it was popular to have a high female voice in song. By the time the 40â˛s started coming around (a loose estimate for when we thought Allison would come), a deeper female voice was becoming more popular. I thought it would be cool to design them with some style differences that represented Susie being the most optimal back in the âold daysâ and Allison having a newer style that stole her attention. Iâm a little more familiar with menâs fashion than womenâs fashion, but I do know that less dynamic waistlines were popular in the 20â˛s, as well as hair that floofed on the ears. The 40â˛s had a difference with longer hair that floofed at the bottom and a more visible waistline distinction. IN CONCLUSION, Susie is the prettiest girl when it starts, but tastes change and Allison becomes the new standard of beauty. ~Drawing Entity
Hi, hi! I wanted to ask you a question if you don't mind! In short, I have seen the rare pair prompt from this year and one of them is "historical" and that made me think of something I've had on my mind for a while.
So...Who do you think aph Spain (the hetalia character) represented before 1492 (or 1469)? Like, Portugal was Lusitania and then he became Portugal, but...I have no idea who aph Spain would be exactly. The idea of Spain before 1492 is ... quite abstract.
You always have interesting answers, so I wanted to hear your opinion!
Well... here's the thing, I do imagine Spain being Spain already, kind of. Like, it wouldn't be the Kingdom of Spain, as in the political unit/state we know today, but it would already be the nation of Spain. What I do imagine is Spain switching kingdoms. I mean, he would go to wherever they needed him the most. Or, on occasions, he would actually be shelttered somewhere else, cause I imagine "invaders" trying to get their hands on the nations' embodiments so he may be dragged out of dangerous situations if he was not considered to be self-sufficent.
My headcanon is pretty simple, but it results from a kind of complex view on history, so I'm going to try to explain my headcanon for Spain (and Portugal) prior the creation of the Kingdom of Spain. Bare in mind that this is going to be a EXTREMELY long text, and it may be controversial. My intention is not to offend anyone, it's just what I've understood after years of reading about Spanish history. Some of my ideas may be wrong, and of course, in Hetalia you can do whatever, I do base my headcanons on history a lot, but you do you. Here we go.
Ok, first I think I must explain my view on Hetalia's characters. To me they do represent a kingdom or country (nation/state), but most importantly, they represent the people from said country (at the end of the day, a nation or country is made up of its citizens, otherwise, Italy's characters shouldn't exist till the 19th century, and that would make no sense). This means, for me Hetalia characters represent the nation itself, the national identity of its people, and not so much the territory or even the "political" reality in which they exist. And the problem here is that from an "identitary" and "national" perspective, Spain has existed for a long long time, but not so much the current political unit of the Kingdom of Spain. Of course, we could date the Kingdom of Spain's birth around 500 years ago, and make the Hetalia character of Spain represent this kingdom, but we would have 2 problems with this. Fisrt, he shouldn't be alive before 1469-1512 (or even later dates), and second, this take would make it seem like if the Kingdom of Spain, the Spanish Nation, and the Spanish identity appeared out of the blue in the late 15th/early 16th century. This wouldn't make any sense, since Spanish people from the mid 16th century were pretty much exactly the same, and identified themselves in pretty much the same ways they did in the late 14th century, so... it's not only that their identity is linked, or related, but that it was pretty much the same. And this happens because though the political unit of the "state" of Spain didn't come to existence till 1469 or even later, the nation, the idea, the identity, was already there. Let me explain it a little better.
The idea of nation-state (1 nation = 1 political unit) didn't exist in the Middle Ages. It was a theory that came up in England in the late 17th century, it saw some changes during 18th century France, and didn't become a real thing till after the French revolution. It just happened that some countries, like France, England, or Spain itself, were almost already nation-states on their own, for they had a national identity at the same time they were political entities, so they didn't experimented significant changes by adhereing to this new concept of âpolitical nationâ. But being nation-states was not something they were fully aware of. Previous to this notion of nation-state (1 political unit, this being a modern state, had to forcefully represent a single nation, and a nation had to be represented in one political unit only), a nation could very well be devided in several kingdoms, for people from different regions may very well have different political or economic insterests, so there was no problem with a single nation being made up of several kingdoms, with diferences in cultures or ways of living, and that didn't mean they were not part of the same nation or shared a common identity.
And that's exactly the case of Spain. It is evident, and there's no way to deny this, that people from the Iberian Peninsula had, at least since the late 12th century, a very clear and obvious notion of Spain as an ideal to achieve, and recognised a common Spanish identity (which of course, didn't just came out of the blue in the 12th century, it was a process linked to much earlier times, but it is in the late 12th century that this identity became so obvious it could no longer be ignored). And yes, I'm including Portugal as well. And no, they were not called "hispanics" (hispanos), they were called espaĂąones and all its variants. Some people, including some historians, seem to push forward the idea of the medieval notion of Spain being only a geographical thing. But I have to disagree (of course, there are many historians who also disagree with this "geographic only" interpretation of Spain, it's not that I'm going against every historian out there). You don't usually identify yourself as being from a geographical place, other than your hometown or very specific region, and you certainly don't talk about a geographical place as your nation, at least not usually. However, all Christian kingdoms in the later Medieval period in Spain identified as Spanish. Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, they all identified as Spanish, and all their kings considered themseleves Spanish and rulers of the "Spanish people". The way the chronicles mention Spain, and the way some authors talk about it, makes it evident that they're not talking about the name of a merely geographical accident (a peninsula), and the identification with Spain goes well beyond a "geographic" identity. Even if we were to accept the theory that Spain (most commonly written Hispania/Espanna at the time) was only a geographical term, we should then have to consider that geography was at the time one of the main pillars for group identification and sense of belonging, because that's what people from the Iberian Peninsula identified with. So we either accept the idea of Spain in the Middel Ages having not only a purely geographical meaning, or we accept that geography was the very basis for cultural and "national" identification, because there's no way to deny that people from the higher classes in the medieval period identified as Spanish, and being Spanish was an important part of their identity. Actually, given the many kings' obsession with recovering their ancestorsâ Visigothic kingdom, (commonly refered to as Spain itself and which was obviously a kingdom and a political identity and entity on its own), claiming that Spain was just a geographical term with no identitary, national, nor political meaning, seems quite biased.
The truth is, that all Spanish medieval kingdoms fought for a unified Spanish nation and aimed to "restore" Spain. They called themselves Spanish, they had a shared and common identity (of course, with regional diferences, like everywhere else), and had a very clear ambition, to reunify Spain into a single political unit. This is why you sometimes hear people saying Spain is the "oldest" modern nation. Not because it is really the oldest nation, or state, but because the Spanish people were among the first ones to actively seek the "1 political entity = 1 nation" thing, that didn't really came to existence till the late 18th century. However, the fact that the Spanish medieval people had already thought about this organization of their "nation", doesn't mean they accomplished it. In fact, they didn't. This was mainly because even though they all agreed they all wanted their nation to be united in a single kingdom, all kingdoms had their interests, and of course they all wanted to be the ones to lead the new "Spain". Even after the formation of what we know as the Kingdom of Spain, Portugal still tried to unify both kingdoms (Spain and Portugal) and form a single political entity, but of course, the new king of the united Spain had to be Portuguese, otherwise, they wouldn't accept the union, and of course, Spaniards (from the Kingdom of Spain) were not happy with that. At the same time, the kings of Spain (the kingdom) also wanted to unify Spain, so they would try to integrate and asimilate Portugal into Spainâs territories whenever they thought it possible. Portuguese kings would often marry their princesses and sometimes princes into the Spanish monarchy in hope of placing a Portuguese king on the Spanish throne and therefore reunify Spain under Portuguese rule. The so called "Iberian Union" is a very good example of Portugal's policy gone wrong. By the way, in 1414, during the Council of Constance, the representatives of Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Navarre came together in a single group representing the Spanish Nation. And if someone says "oh it was not the Spanish Nation, but the natio hispanica", let me tell you, that's just Latin, because Latin was the prestigious language at the time, and it's a religious, hence prestigious, issue that was being discussed at the Council (and there were people from all Christian Europe, so of course they would use Latin as Lingua Franca).
As I said in the previous paragraph, I do include Portugal as one of the Spanish medieval Kingdoms. Why? Well, Portuguese considered themselves Spanish till the late 18th century, when they no longer identified as such for two main reason: 1 the rise of romanticism and nationalism, together with he notion of nation-state, reinforced the Portuguese identity and severly weakened the common Spanish identity, 2 for the sake of simplicity, Spanish and Portuguese were refered to as such since the 16th century, (I mean, foreigners would often use Spanish only for the subjects of the Spanish Kingdom, and not include Portuguese under this term, and instead only use Portuguese to refere to... Portuguese XD), and they had been fighting against that perception of "who is Spanish" for centuries, I guess they just gave up trying to make people understand the actual meaning and identity behind "Spanish". Portuguese kings and nobility became really really irritated whenever they heard someone using the term Spanish to refer only to people from the Kingdom of Spain, and therefore, excluding Portuguese from that identity, and they were quite annoyed by their neighbours calling themselves Spanish while ignoring them. Some kings even wrote letters of complain to their Spanish counterparts, claiming they were as Spanish as they were, so they could very well drop the "Spanish" in their titles. Let's say, Portugal got annoyed at Castile, Aragon and later on Navarre for choosing to name their new kingdom Spain, which indirectly "stole" that identity from the Portuguese people. But the fact remains, people from those kingdoms were nonetheless Spaniards, so they were not really "stealing" anyone's identity, for it was already their national identity before becoming a unified kingdom, it just happened that since the new political entity was named Spain, after the Spanish nation, people only associated Spain and Spanish to that new political entity rather than to the original Spanish nation. But again, the Spanish citizens were obviously Spanish in their idenity, and were pretty much the same they were prior the unificiation, they just became politically united now, but their culture and identity didn't chage much.
On a final note, but that's just me, I don't consider Portugal to represent Lusitania. I just can't. Though most of today's Portuguese territory was indeed included in what was the Roman province of Lusitania, not all of it was. The northern part of Portugal (which is were the Portuguese Kingdom was âbornâ) was never part of Roman Lusitania, nor was it settled by the tribe of the Lusitanians. Not only that, but, even though most of Portugal was within the borders of Lusitania, half of Lusitania was on Spanish territory. Almost the enitre community of Extremadura, most of Salamanca, and a bit of Ăvila and Toledo, were part of Lusitania. So, yeah, most of Portugal was in Lusitania, but half of Lusitania was not in Portugal. And what's more, Lusitania's capital, Emerita Augusta, is the capital of the Spanish region of Extremadura, MĂŠrida. And since I am from that exact region I just can't accept Portugal being Lusitania XD I know Portuguese people, language, culture, and even the country itself are often refered to as luso, or lusitano, and that is not a modern invention, it's a term we have been using since the Middle Ages, if I'm not wrong, so this is not a rewriting of history nor anything like that, it has been commonly used as a poetic, lyrical way to refer to Portugal and Portuguese people, language, culture, etc, but I just can't acept it from a historical point of view. Not only because the borders don't match whatsoever and its capital is and always has been in Spanish (or should I say Castilian) territory, but because there's no historical relation between the Roman province of Lusitania and the formation of the Kingdom of Portugal in the Middle Ages. Though the term luso and lusitanian have very often been used to refer to Portugal and anything related to the kingdom, there's no historical correlation between the Roman province and the country of Portugal whatsoever, so it just makes absolute no sense to me. But again, I'm all focused on history, and Hetalia is about historical characters, yes, but it's sometimes difficult to figure history out when nations become real people, so... I just can't see Portugal being Lusitania, but I understand that for the sake of simplicity, plot, or whatever, sometimes you need to make things easier and clearer, plus, it's true Portugal gets very often refered to a luso, or lusitanian, so don't take it wrong, it's just my opinion, and being from Extremadura it just feels weird to see Portugal as Lusitania.
And after all this long-ass rant,my conclusion is the following. For me, at least till the birth of the Spanish Kingdom, Spain already exists, and so does Portugal, but none of them represents neither Portugal nor Spain. To me both characters already exist, because their people already exist. There's already people who have Spanish identity and Spanish elements in their culture, and of course, there's Portugal, that already exists as an independent kingdom, so there's already Portuguese people out there with Portuguese culture and identity (even if at the time they shared their Portuguese identity with their Spanish one). However, "Portugal" (the character) does not exactly represent the Kingdom of Portugal, and Spain, obviously, doesn't represent the Kingdom of Spain. They both represent, together, the "early" Spanish nation. What I imagine happening is that they switch kingdoms. I mean, in Castile there's this thing going on, while in Aragon there's this other thing going on, so one will stay in one kingdom, and the other will aid the other one. Of course, I do imagin "Portugal" (the character) to spend much more time in the Kingdom of Portugal, and since I imagine him as the elder sibling, he is of course the one to take the role of the Portugese Empire (which guys, was the first European empire of the modern era, and it came to be before Spain was even a country). By the way, I do base their age on their Kingdom's birth, otherwise it would be very complicated, so yeah, the representaiton of Portugal is older, it may be a bit contradictory with everything I've explained up till now, but I love the idea of Portugal being the elder brother, so I don't care about history now, just dynamics lol XD So... yeah, that's it, I do imagine them existing, but none of them represents neither a Roman privince, nor any medieval kingdom specifically. Actually, for me, the real drama would probably start with the Portuguese Empire, because Portugal being the elder, becomes the one in charge, and it is then that he stops swiching kingdoms that often, getting too fond of Portugal, and starts really becoming Portugal's representative, little Spain being left alone having to deal with different kingdoms which don't agree on almost anything. Funny thing is, I imagine Portugal being always a bit wary of France, and not liking him too much (like they donât hate nor dislike each other, it's just that Portugal is more aware of France's doings), so, for example, I do imagine him wanting to take on the role of "Aragon's representative" in one of the earliest wars against France. Basically, being the elder, he would feel responsible for the protection of the people in the peninsula, and Aragon shares a border with France, so I do imagine whenever there was an attack coming from France, he would want to be the one in the front line.
And after all this wild ride, I think I've finished. This is super long. Like super long. I was very bored this afternoon, it was a really bad idea to ask this question today.
RE: Alexander Hamilton Enslaved People (Historical Receipts)
Okay, so I had stumbled upon this post by the user (Historical Non-Fiction) claiming that recent discoveries has come to fruition, proving that Alexander Hamilton had enslaved people. The website link that post shared was kind of sketch, so I had taken it upon myself to bother my lovely friends on our amrev discord server to help me find real, solid proof. This is what we found. *Cue Law and Order sound effect*
I could not have compiled this without the help on there! So, THANK YOU, @queerrevolution1776â specifically for helping me with this! Go follow this blog, please! (Also, @clear-as-starlightâ has also helped me immensely in general as well so go follow her while youâre at it.)
The primary source where these historical receipts came from all links back to this paper by JESSIE SERFILIPPI - which is a fantastic read. They did a brilliant job compiling all of this information and honestly, they wrote it more flawlessly than I did (I just wanted to show you all the physical images of these historical documents instead of leaving yâall with some link and calling it a day.)
If you donât want to read that for whatever reason and/or you are like me and just wanna see some physical proof, Keep reading below for the direct sources that paper had used!
I always encourage people to do their own research and find as credible of a source as you can get. Here are the receipts that were discovered:
1. From Alexander Hamilton to George Clinton, [22 May 1781]
 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-1174
Hamilton to Clinton, May of 1781.
"I am told it has lately risen something, and I expect by Col Hayâs return to receive a sufficient sum to pay the value of the woman Mrs. H had of Mrs. Clinton."Â
(Mrs. H being Mrs. Hamilton.) This is relating to the purchase of a woman from Clinton for Mrs. Hamilton.
2. Alexander Hamiltonâs Cash Book
On March 23, 1796, Hamilton recorded in his cash book a payment of $250 to Philip Schuyler for
â2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.â
The photo provided above is taken from his cash book, stored at the Library of Congress.
3. Purchasing slaves for John Church (Angelica Schuyler Churchâs husband)
This is for the purchase of a woman and a male child, although the purchase as listed being for John Church, Angelica's husband. At the time of the purchase the Church's were, according to the paper, moving back to America for good. So, the plausible deniability there is that the purchase was for the Churchâs, not for Hamilton himself. Here are two things to consider: One, it doesn't matter. He purchased slaves for his family. Two, the next photo lends a great deal of credibility that either they were his or the family exchanged slaves as well.
4. Leasing Slaves
This is a log for receiving payment for the work of a slave male child. People did not lease slaves that weren't theirs, or at the very least, someone certainly didn't collect payment for their work. So, again, two situations. Schuyler Sr. let Hamilton borrow his slave and Hamilton leased the boy, or he was Hamilton's.
Later it would be written by Schuyler Sr. that he was sad for the Hamilton's and Angelica (Hamilton's daughter) for the loss of their male slave to yellow fever (which is presumably the same male) and regrets having send the children back when illness was in the house. That would place him outside of Schuyler Sr.'s possession again. Assuming it isn't the same young man, it is still more proof that Hamilton had slaves in his house. Continued on this below:
From Phillip Sr. to Eliza on November of 1794.
"The distress you have experienced from my Angelicaâs indisposition, and that accompanied by the death of one of your servants from Yellow fever has deeply affected my feelings, may gracious heaven preserve you my Hamilton and the children from the fatal infection, If I had known of Dickâs death before the children had left me they should not have gone."
(Angelica being Hamilton's daughter.)Â Â
Some extra sources to look into: You may find the photos provided stored at the Library of Congress.
Thanks again to @queerrevolution1776â specifically for helping me with this! Go follow his blog, please! And do not forget to give this paper by JESSIE SERFILIPPI a read. RAW LINK: (https://parks.ny.gov/documents/historic-sites/SchuylerMansionAlexanderHamiltonsHiddenHistoryasanEnslaver.pdf)
Also, please consider this is a very recent discovery, so do not feel like Lin Manuel Miranda was purposely trying to mislead people with his musical. He based that musical on Ron Chernow âs biography of Alexander Hamilton and has stated that very clearly. Lin had never claimed to be an expert on Hamilton - and back when he wrote the musical, this information I just dumped upon all of you wasnât common knowledge at that time. So please do not take this post as a #CancelLinManuelMiranda or #CancelHamiltonMusical thing. I love his work and I love that musical as an entertaining pieces of fiction. I do not condone cancel culture.
Hamilton was an asshole; a very fascinating one that I enjoy studying - and at the end of the day, he was painfully human. He should not be idolized or treated as a saint by any means. He was some white dude from 200+ years ago - I am not really surprised he owned slaves ~shrug~
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It is curious that the Mongols who migrated to Turkic lands in Central Asia became Turkified, but they didnât actually get Sinicized in China. Well, from the book I read some things about nomadic habits were disrupted tho in China, in that the Mongols became more used to sedentary lives and nomads in Mongolian homeland got impoverished and likely neglected during the time (it was pretty bad that even the members of some royalsâ appanages got impoverished, but prob Yuan as a whole had a lot of problems) â but in Northern Yuan era the Mongols returned to Mongolia and pastoral nomadism was fully restored. But!! It was hypothesized in the book that this bit of sedentary habit the Mongols acquired from their time in China caused them to no longer fully unite and able restore their former glory during Chinggis Khanâs era. Who knows eh.
But the Mongols didnât lose their culture in China. Some influences were taken in tho prob, thatâs normal. Instead, Mongols in Turkic Central/West Asia got Turkified and the Turks in Mongolia got Mongolized.
Islam likely provided the Turks with even deeper sense of unified identity compared to other Turkic identifiers tho. I think Iâve read the quote that says âthe Turks werenât Turks until they adopted Islamâ or so? So it wasnât actually Turkic identity that made the Turks especially âstrongâ like this lol, but it was Islam. The Islamic influences in Turks were esp strong because they were practically at the core of Islamic world. I can attest that this is rather true tho; Indonesians were Hindu-Buddhist before Islam came and now nearly 90% are Muslim lmaoooo.
In the United States it is Labor Day. Just like with Veterans Day most people neither know nor care what the "holiday" means. In the case of Labor Day it's just a three day weekend, the last hurrah of summer.
Since the elite owner/moneyed class have been waging a particularly effective campaign of class warfare for the last seventy years people in the U.S look upon unions and organized Labor as corrupt and worthless entities. History not only goes ignored, it is distorted and twisted because those warping the narrative know that they can.
What little rights and dignity you still have as a worker were paid for in blood. People literally fought and died for the right to fair pay and decent working conditions. Businesses and corporations waged actual war against workers ( See "The Coal Mining Massacre America Forgot" Smithsonian Magazine, Apr 25, 2017 for an example). They have NEVER sacrificed profits willingly. Exploitation of immigrants, the poor and working class has been their business model since they were forced to actually pay for work done. Labor Day was created to honor the hundreds of thousands of people who protested, marched, struck, fought and died so that the average US citizen could be treated with human dignity at their job.
Now we have rewound to the Gilded Age. Billionaires are lionized and deified. Wealth is worshipped. Obscene luxury is not only accepted but aspired to. Rants and Tweets and posts may vilify people like Jeff Bezos but Amazon still exists. "Convenience". That's the catchall absolution to free us of any individual social responsibility. Those in abject poverty outnumber the wealthy elite ten million to one but what does that mean? Nothing. We look down with pity (contempt) and up with reverence (envy). We do not honor those who work and respect the work done, we celebrate those who exploit the work of others and monetize ideas.
Let me postulate this. Capitalism is not inherently evil. Iterations of it have existed since cities arose. It is the current corrupt and mutated form of ideological capitalism that has poisoned modern culture and the world. Communism is untenable because it ignores some basic human psychological traits. Without a massive repurposing of culture and society to create a change in human behavior that is ingrained it can not succeed. On the other hand, a mere redefining of value can remove much of the toxicity of capitalism. How? It's not that complicated. Install a very simple baseline. That being that all human beings deserve dignity and the requirements to live a life without want. Take from the overall profits of the system the amount required for everyone to be housed, fed and secure from illness. It's not even an excessive amount. If your company can take care of all its workers, pay them fairly and provide them with a good life, then what you profit above and beyond that would be fairly earned. So you're only a millionaire instead of a billionaire. Is that a hardship? Is that even unreasonable? The only reason billionaires exist is because greed has become an acceptable trait. That and the successful portrayal of poverty as a moral failing.
The one thing capitalism does well is spur innovation. If the culture and society allow that innovation to enrich the few to the detriment of the many, that is a cultural failing more than a symptom of a failed economic ideology. At the current time there is no serious socio-economic alternative model that realistically threatens capitalism. With organized labor weakened, belittled and mocked, the threat from that sector is diminished as well. Consider this. With the current climate in the U.S and the "shortage" of workers, if there were unions with the strength and membership they possessed in the 1940s-50s the pay of EVERY worker in the U.S would be rising. Corporate profits would suffer, the stock market would be in decline but you know what wouldn't be in decline? The actual economy and your paycheck.
Ok, I'm going on another historical rant. So let's talk about the Fifth French Republic the current government of France. In Origins Adrien says that the first president of the Fifth French Republic was Rene Coty before the first elections and while this isn't entirely wrong it's complicated. Because Rene Coty is already the president of the Fourth French Republic and seeing as he wasn't elected under the Fifth French Republics governing document does that make him the first President of the Fifth republic or the last of the fourth? He could theoretically be both. I side with him being the last president of the Fourth Republic and Charles De Gaulle being the first President of the Fifth Republic as he was elected under its governing document.