Historian Joshua Zeitz wrote on X, “This guy represents California in Congress — one of 9 current states whose territory the US won in part or whole during the Mexican War of 1848.”

“These guys spent so much time erasing American history that they forgot to read it,” wrote BET host Marc Lamont Hill.

  • @potterpockets@sh.itjust.works
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    247 months ago

    Not included in this article is the numerous times the US Government would kill a bunch of indigenous people and drive them off their land. Or the times we’d forcibly relocate them to small pockets of uninhabitable land and settle where they used to live.

    • Kbin_space_program
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      117 months ago

      Or that Illinois was colonized by a guy who had to sneak by the nearer native populations as they had realized he was a fraud and wanted to kill him for defrauding them.

  • Sal
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    177 months ago

    Something somewhat weird about the treaty that ended the Mexican–American War, was the US paid the Mexican government.

    • Montagge
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      107 months ago

      It’s not weird when it was just $15 million and the whole point of the war was to annex land from a Mexico that was weakened by civil war.

      • Sal
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        37 months ago

        It is weird in that the US could dictate the terms at that point and still agreed to pay any debts owed to US citizens by the Mexican government plus the $15 million.

        • Montagge
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          47 months ago

          I think you’re underestimating just how land horny the US was at that time.

          • @mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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            27 months ago

            I mean… can you blame them for wanting those lands? There’s Hollywood, Disneyland, Las Vegas, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge they got out of that deal! Hell of a steal.

            Honestly though, the natural beauty of the states they took/stole/bought/acquired was worth it alone. Basically all of the good national parks in one go. Plus the resource rich nature of that land.

  • Jo Miran
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    7 months ago

    To those that read the article: Somebody is quoted saying that, from its inception, every inch of US territorywill was taken. That’s not correct, which is ironic given the context. Alaska and the Louisiana purchase, which includes the largest land grab for the US, were not taken by force, they were purchased. Now, the land was taken from the indigenous people, but not originally by the US.

    Just pointing that out before the inaccurate statement grows legs and takes off.

    • Kbin_space_program
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      7 months ago

      Louisiana purchase was taken. The price was dictated by the US government.

      Edit: important note not mentioned above is that a lot of the land in said purchase was only technically belonging to the French and was really native controlled and inhabited.

      • Jo Miran
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        87 months ago

        That’s really stretching the meaning of “taken”, isn’t it? Regardless, it’s all plays on words because ultimately it wasn’t the French’s land to sell. The point is that we didn’t “take” the land through force from the French. We did ethnically cleanse the fuck out of it though.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    117 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Representative Kevin McCarthy was fact-checked about American history after saying the United States “never asked for land” after winning wars in a social media post.

    In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterward—except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom," McCarthy, the Republican who was ousted as speaker of the House last month, posted to X, formerly Twitter, Sunday night.

    Historian Joshua Zeitz wrote on X, “This guy represents California in Congress — one of 9 current states whose territory the US won in part or whole during the Mexican War of 1848.”

    “These guys spent so much time erasing American history that they forgot to read it,” wrote BET host Marc Lamont Hill.

    “I haven’t talked about him much since he became irrelevant but in case you forgot, Kevin McCarthy is still a blathering idiot who knows nothing of our nation’s history and loves nothing more than the sound of his own voice,” Representative Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, posted on X.

    Kevin McCarthy is showing here that he’s either a liar or an idiot, and either way, people shouldn’t be listening to a word he has to say," high school teacher Matt Grover wrote.


    The original article contains 450 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!