#and like yeah having a support sytem and all that but how the fuck do i jist say hey i feel like shit and want to hurt myself now you have

[gunpowder-tim]

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[victoriousscarf]

Can I ask about the path you took toward working in public history? I'm in grad school at the moment. (I also have a complicated family situation and the world is kind of a mess so I'm not necessarily expecting an answer that gives some kind of set path I can follow, I'm just curious.)

Ok... So ...

Like I think it's always hard to be in the public history field and be like yeah! You're totally gonna get something! Because of my like cohort when I started grad school I think... 3...no 4 of us have stable employment in the field. One I know of is field adjacent. One left to become an artist, one has never held a job in the field at all, and a lot have either struggled with work or been underemployed. So it's rough and I think the pandemic has made library/museum/archives jobs way harder.

But.

I went to school specifically in a program for archives and records management. That program no longer exists, and most archives jobs want an MLIS anyway. (I've gotten some shady looks from hiring managers not in the field because they're like... It's not an MLIS and I'm like no? Because it was way more specialized?? Like I am super qualified okay I promise). This was... Not a great idea. The more specialized you are, the harder to switch tracks it is. I've been considering going back for a museum degree just for more flexibility because that's honestly the only way to survive in this field. Right now I'm seeing more museum jobs than archives, but my curator friend was insisting it was the other way when she was applying so it's also just luck of the draw.

So I have super specialized education. Pros and cons.

I then took an internship as an interpretive ranger at a national park site. And that was the best thing I ever did for myself. There are several programs that do internships with the NPS, but a lot of them are age specific. The one I did was for 26 and below, so it wouldn't be useful for older folks going back to school but! There's also federal jobs that are either for people still in school (I think it was called pathways back then?) Or some jobs are only open for recent grads. It was paid and they provided housing. A lot of internships don't do that and it's awful and there's been a slow but steady reckoning in the field that unpaid internships are bad and exclusionary to people who don't have any support sytem backing them.

Working for the NPS opened up a lot of doors for me. The federal government is very difficult to break into. It doesn't really matter what the job posting says, if you don't have experience, you probably aren't getting through the questionnaire. (And yes. There are questionnaires. So. Many. Questionnaires). But if you luck into an internship, you learn about the system and you get experience and no matter where you go after that, it's good to have in your pocket in case you need it again.

After that I also lucked out with a partnership program through my old grad program. It is definitely worth checking to see what sort of connections the program might have. Because I got something like 9 months of work that was paid for by my grad program to work in an entirely different state to finish a project for them. Look around, connections really matter in the public history field. If you have the chance to go to a conference, yeet yourself toward it. It's hard to like meet people, but the nice thing is most folks in the field are fucking nerds who are probably socially awkward too. Archives potlucks are hailrious because 89% of the folks have got social anxiety. They all wanna bring a book and sit and read quietly. But the more people you meet, the more connections you make, the better (also Archivists looooove twitter. Ugh. And there's a lot of really good archives/library/museum groups on facebook. I'd recommend them).

The more weird shit you can put on your resume, the better. Saying which parks I worked at (sometimes very famous ones) made me stand out. I also ran a day long academic conference in grad school and was president of a student chapter of a professional organization. It almost killed me, but it stood out in people's minds. One of my co workers did field work in Eygpt, and our supervisor mentions seeing that on her resume all the time. Like that was part of what drew him to it. Again, money is an issue for most people and this is hard to pull off, but weird shit helps you stand out. Emphasis anything cool you've ever done in your whole life. I also did national history day in high school. That meant I was our education specialists favorite person when it came time to help high schoolers on their project. Even if it's too late for you to do that in high school, see if you have a regional competition nearby. Or state even. Volunteer. That's also something that stands out (plus helping wee history nerds can be a treat... When you're not being reminded why high school was so terrible lol).

I also moved to 6 states in... 5 years. And I don't mean neighboring states either I mean I started on the west coast and flung myself all the way to the western side of the Mississippi River. And then North. And then South. And then West again. This is not possible for a lot of people because a) money and b) family. Even with all that moving I was unemployed for 6 or so months in the middle of it. It is hard to be looking for work so constantly and then packing up your life and yeeting yourself to another state /again./

I also have a chronic condition with regularly scheduled flare ups. Moving away from my family for work has sucked, being in pain and having to explain to a new boss I'll have to take some time off every year to like, lay on the floor in pain, sucks. So like. It can be done even WITH stuff like that too.

But I have been incredibly lucky. Because I got a few breaks when I needed one. Because I was in a position to go for what I could take. I also missed certain chances I should have been able to take. That's never a good feeling but it doesn't mean one missed chance or fuck up is the end of the road.

So yeah, as you said, every circumstance is different, every road is different, but I do think hearing a) it can be done and b) different approaches to how it can be done, can really help. Like even if you can't do the same stuff, maybe there's something in there that can help out. Some spark of an idea of something to try.

(I'm also making this public in case it helps anyone else ... I hope that's okay).

(this got long lol. But I was trying to think of like any advice that could help. There's a lot of pathways to get into the field, but volunteering, weird shit on that resume, being willing to go the extra bit, those are probably the most basic take aways anyone could try).

[evilelitest2]

Debunking Stupid Christopher Hitchen’s Quote

     I don’t think this is going to be like a reoccuring thing, but may be every so often I should take a statement made by somebody and just delve into how wrong it is.  Today’s offering comes from @datablossom in defense of Christopher Hitchens.  Only context you need, I was saying that reductionist views towards your opposition leads to extremely stupid decision making, like Christoper self describing himself as a single issue voter in regards to the War on Terror and how dumb it is, and this quote is suppose to debunk my claim.  Now for a bit of context. Christopher Hitchens was an atheist Philosphy of the “New Atheist” movement, one of the supposed Four Horsemen, and cards on the table I just can’t stand the New Atheist philosophy at all, I find it trite, smug, and extremely intellectually vapid, its Voltaire without the humor. But beyond that, I find it very much like the Free Speech Warriors, where they start out as a group using questionable methods to oppose an actual right wing evil force (The Religious Right and the Fox News culture Warriors) only to immediately ally with those exact same people and support their world view in a moment’s notices.  Its like a LOTRS thing, they use the methods of the Enemy and almost instantly become the enemy.  Cause remember, Christophen Hitchen started out as an opponent to Fundamentalist Christianity, and then once you introduce Islam into the mix, he quickly winds up supporting those same people 

So here is the quote, as well as the commentary of @datablossom which will be marked in Italics 

Here’s Hitchens’ actual words, not some truncated quote that explains nothing, it’ll just boil my guts if I don’t bring them to the forefront:

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It’s important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the “anti-war” movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist “insurgency” to the American Founding Fathers.”

Ok right off the back, we have Hitchens utterly failing at his supposed goal to be rational and engaging in the type of hyperbole simplistic thinking that he himself smugly mocks in his other books (I had the misfortune of raeding Hitch 22.  Lets break this down 

1) Ok so firstly, Hitchen is doing a really classically stupid thing of buying into simplistic black and white paradigm created by the duplicity  and believed by their ignorant, because in case you haven't noticed, the War on Terror isn’t a war with a single force.  Jihadists and Totalitarianism aren’t like...singular things.  Hell they are actually two very different entities and it is really evident that Hitchens hasn’t read Arendt.  The War on Terror isn’t with a singular opponent, that is why it is such a clusterfuck.  Here let me use an example of a normal war as a contrast.      WWII was a battle against the Axis powers, who were three countries and their associated Vassal States.  They had capital cities, heads of states, armies, forms of goverment and a physical location that they occupied.  Nazi German controlled this land mass 

So if you send an army in and take over the territory in red, guess what, you’ve won, you have eliminated Nazism.  Which we you know...did.  There is a clear war end with a clear victory condition.      But Terror isn’t like...a nation.  There is no Terrorstan with its capital city of terovania ruled by the King of Terrorism who we can go in and kill, because this isn’t a conventional war.  Like what is the end goal of the War on Teror, how do we win?  Are we fighting to eliminate Bin Laden and Al-Quedi?  Well in that case, then why invade Iraq, because if anybody actually understood anything about the period they would know the two men detested each other and opposed each other politically.  Is the goal to wipe out islam?  Well that means that you are talking about the largest genocide in all of human history.  Is it to try to eliminate Fundamentalist militant Islam? Well then the best way to do that historically has never been through war which only strengthens Islamic extremism (you know how since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq we have seen Islamic fundamentalist get only more powerful?)  The thing about the War on Terror and the War on Drugs is that they are these huge international utterly mismanaged fuck ups which not only cost an inordinate amount of blood and treasure, but also can’t really be won because they are by their nature unwinnable, how do you fight a fucking concept? And Hitchens is just sort of accepting this premise that the War on Terror is like a thing, he is just kinda unquestioningly going ‘Well this paradigm totally exists and lets run with it”  Terms like “The Enemy” or “The other side”.  What is the Other Side Exxactly?   2) I mean going off the mindless Assumptions that HItchens is making, who are we fighting exactly?  LIke ok, if you aren’t 4 years old, you should know that the Middle East isn’t a singular faction of unified peoples who all agree on stuff.  I mean lets do a quick list of factions in the middle east The Saudi Royal Family The Saudi Wahhabist Clerics The Pakistani Goverment The Pakistani Military Saadamn Hussein’s Iraq (at the time of this writing) Al-Queda Hamas Hezbollah The Theocracy of Iran The Goverment of Turkey The Kudishistan Fighters The Government in Egypt The Muslim Brotherhood The Dictatorship of Syria The Goverment of Lebenon The Monarchy of Jordon The Palestinian Leadership The nation of Israel (with all of the factions contained there in) The various sub states that make up the UAE The goverment of Qutar The Dictatorship of Kuwait The Dictatorship of Libya The Dictatorship of Tunisia The Dictatorship of Yemen The Dictatorship of Oman The Governments of the US, France, Britain, Russia, India, and their Allies The various exiles and rebels from all of those countries And that is just a short list.  None of those groups are unified with the others, they might be allies or share common interest, but they aren’t the same thing, I mean the Sunni Shia division is just one big part of this.   Again its one of those things that if you are you know....stupid it seems simple but the moment you try to understand the details, the whole thing falls apart, and as evident from this and other writings by him, Chris really doesn’t actually know anything about middle eastern politics like...at all.   3)  Speaking of unquestioning assumptions HItchens is oh so fond off, even if we are going to fight against radical Islam, he just kinda accepts that direct military intervention is going to work, because...look its gonna work ok, it just is.  And this is one of those things that if you actually you know...studied the history of the region and the politics or just occupation in general, you’d immediately know how stupid that is, but again, Hitchens is basically going with military approach because it feels emotionally correct, but because it feels emotionally correct and seems simple.  ‘argg, goes guys are bad, lets send troops in and stop them’ which of course...no, that doesn’t work.  Because when you bomb somebody’s house, they aren’t inclined to listen to you, and imposing democracy at Gun point doesn’t have a history of working.  LIke if he knew anything about the history of the region he could have studied the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan or the fall of the Ottoman Empire and maybe conclude ‘oh wait, just going in their guns blazing just doesn’t work”   4) Now mr. Rational here supported the Iraq War, and thought that was a capital idea, only for it to fail disastrously.  And his argument was “Well its a Muslim dictatorship, lets get ride of it”  And no where in his article does he go “Oh lets also invade Saudi Arabia, you know, the Muslim Theocracy which provides most of the funding for Islamic fundamentalism?”  But again, that just goes unquestioned cause you know...he doesn’t actually know anything about the region beyond some vague stereotypes 5) Also Jihadism and Totalitarianism are different concepts, Christopher you fucking idiot.  If we are fighting against Totalitarianism, then we should be invading China, Russia, North Korea, Totalitarianism is a sytem of goverment, Jihaadism is a militant practice, they are sometimes linked but they aren’t always the same thing.   6) So when Hitchen says “Oh the Left wants the Other Side” to win, what does he even mean? Again, this isn’t a two sided conflict, is like...39 sided conflict and some of them keep switching sides.  So which “other side” does the left want to win?  Do his think that Moore wants Bin Laden to create a new caliphate because you know...that never happened.  or does he mean like leftists wanting Palestine to get its own state, because yeah, a lot of leftists do want that. but he doesn’t really argue how that helps “The Enemy” or how the one state situation helps weaken Islamic fundamentalism.  But no, this is just the same Red Scare bullshit of “Oh if we don’t even try to understand why people are trying to kill us, that means we win the war right?” bullshit that didn’t work then, and isn’t working now.  For example, if Hitchen understood like...anything about the region he’d know about the 1953 Iranian Coup and how that didn’t weaken Muslim extremism but only made it worse.   7) Also, I hate defending Michael Moore of all people, but no, he didn’t say he wants Muslim extremism to win, he said that the war is immoral, unjust and doesn’t work, creating more problems than it solved.  The point of the founding father’s comparison is that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and to the Iraqis the insurgents, they are trying to get foreign invaders out of their country.

Ok next quote 

“To many of these people, any “anti-globalization” movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it’s easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it’s a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won’t go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?…….” 

Lets switch to letters for this one 

A) Yes it is true there is a racist America First anti War Right wing element, but...the left never really embraced them.  In contrast, it was the right who really came to love them and then elected one of these Lindberghians president, good job 

B) Evidently it is really rational to assume that there are only a few sides in very argument, it doesn’t seem to occur to Hitchens that you might oppose Islamic fundamentalism and also not think that invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 are both wrong because nuanced thinking is rejected by the new atheists evidently.  You see why I am never impressed  by the so called New Atheist Rationalists, because they are really shitty about being rational, they take the rhetoric and shallow trappings of rationalism and use it to cover opinions that are coming from anti intellectual reductionist bigoted places and say “look its rational”...actually very similar to how muslim fundamentalists acts towards Islam.    

Reading Hitch 22 for me was a lot like watching Citizens Kane but without awareness, because every single thing he condemned he inevitably wound up doing himself.  

C) Also if you are talking about getting into bed with people they should oppose, lets talk about the fact that Hitch here became a surrogate for a Right Wing movement led by a Fundamentalist Christian who opposed Stem Cell Research, denied Global Warming and has a mixed record on evolution...and Hitch gets into bed with them.  And for all of his talk of Human rights, democracy, and feminism, he winds up working with people who hate feminism, who violate human rights regularly (you know...torture), and who support dictatorships abroad.  Again, the only way the rationality of Hitchens seems remotely consistent is if you are...stupid and don’t know any of the details.

This is why the New Atheist almost always wind up working with the religious Right, and why the people who opposed Republican attempts to demonize video games winded up part of the Right Wing machine, because if your core intellectual methodology is simplistic, then you are going to always be attracted to simplistic people.  

“………And this is the religion that exhibits the horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness and self-pity. I am talking about militant Islam. Globally it’s a gigantic power. It controls an enormous amount of oil wealth, several large countries and states, with an enormous fortune it’s pumping the ideologies of wahhabism and salafism around the world, poisoning societies where it goes, ruining the minds of children, stultifying the young in its madrassas, training people in violence, making a cult of death and suicide and murder. That’s what it does globally, it’s quite strong. In our societies it poses as a cringing minority, whose faith you might offend, who deserves all the protection that a small and vulnerable group might need. Now, it makes quite large claims for itself, doesn’t it? It says it’s the Final Revelation.”

Lets go Roman Nummerials this time 

I) Globally its a giantaic power, I love this bit, because Hitch just spilled his hand and revealed to the world that he honestly thinks the Muslim powers are all one thing.  Cause....no....no they aren’t.  Three of the largest oil producing countries are Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and guess what, they all hate each other.  Iran is Shia, Iraq was secular, and Saudi Arabia was a Sunni Fundamentalist State.  

II) OK he is talking about the mass funding of madrassases with Whahabism and yeah, thats a problem...How is invading Iraq solving that problem Hitch? Cause while Saadam Hussein was an evil terrible person, he wasn’t really big with Muslim fundamentalism, he was more secular, and into nation building.  Wouldn’t Hitch want to like, invade Saudi Arabia instead?  It honestly feels like he doesn’t know the difference between Iraq and Saudi Arabia 

III) Which makes his alliance with the Bush administration all the more ironic because you know who has massive ties to Saudi Arabia?  Oh right, the oil industry which is in bed with the Bushes and the Republicans party

IV) So you are just kinda left with a man who will abandon all of his principles (again he voted for Bush) if they appeal to his single issue

“I'm a single-issue voter, to get straight to the point. I'm really only interested in the candidate who's toughest and least apologetic when it comes to the confrontation with Islamic Jihadism.”

So you know...a moron 

Hitchens’ single issue was the fight against totality. Whether it comes from the madmen of jihad, the brutal fascist conservative windbags of the world, or the stilted leftist wignuts that pretend video games turn normal boys and girls into women hating sociopaths.

It seems like Hitchen’s point is “I don’t actually understand these issues, but I am going to rely upon broad generalizations to make it seem like my opinion on the matter actually is important.”  And that is generally what you get from Hitchen’s work, self important preening and fertilization of intellectual standards that he will never hold and will abandon in an instant if something appeals to his bigotry or xenophobia.  But I see why he is so popular with teenage boys, because the childish inflated sense of self worth is very telling, and I still think he hasn’t actually read Orwell.

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

Good Advice, would be nice if the man actually followed it for once.