At least in my Texas history class, we weren't taught that the Alamo was a battle of strategic importance. And obviously, the Texans lost, so it didn't help us in that way. It was though an important cultural moment that became a rallying cry and unifying force (ie 'those evil Mexican bastards massacred us at the Alamo, we need revenge!').
And its hard to argue with the result the Texans got.
The writer of this article in Texas Monthly, Bryan Burrough, co-authored a recent book about the Alamo: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (2021)
As the title indicates, the book demolishes one of the biggest myths in American history: the legend of the Alamo. The author follows the trail of hagiographic heroism from 1836, the year of the iconic battle led by William Barret Travis, a man whose own memoirs show that he was a syphilitic womanizer. Like many of the slave traders and land speculators who illegally crossed into the Mexican province of Tejas, Travis was a failed businessman, crushed by debt, who abandoned his wife and children in Alabama to play soldier of fortune on the frontier. Worse, this incompetent officer disobeyed direct orders from Sam Houston to evacuate the old Spanish mission at the Alamo, which was understood by virtually everyone to be impossible to defend against the Mexican army. The predictable result was total defeat and slaughter. After that, myth-makers began re-writing the history to turn the Alamo into a heroic tale of military glory. The mission itself was mismanaged for more than a century, large sections of the original structure were allowed to fall into disrepair, and the iconic shape of the Alamo building - the bell-shaped facade on the front wall of the chapel - was added many years after the battle of 1836. Today the battle over the Alamo continues in the form of struggles by the community to recover the authentic history of the place, while hard-line conservatives insist on maintaining the fiction of the fake past.
When you go to any Western state, you see this romanticization of cowboy mythology everywhere. People genuinely believe it, and it’s been several generations since the actual cowboy era, so facts about the period are scarce.
The part that ends up being truly harmful is state legislatures passing laws based on perceived views of 'The Old West'
> People genuinely believe it [....] passing laws based on perceived views
The factual accuracy doesn't actually matter though. The laws are being passed based on the current generation's values. And that seems fine with regard to values. "Genuine belief" is kinda what makes a thought a value.
Texas didn't do it - Hollywood did! And for a good reason - to make money!
And so what? We got, and get, a lot of entertainment out of this mythologizing. As a child I knew that much in the movies about the Alamo was BS. No damage was done. We still played cowboys, indians, Mexicans and Texians. The good guys (usually) win!
Its the same for war movies (in fact, for all movies) with over-the-top, word-of-mouth stories depicted as reality. Its a story for God's sake!
Might as well be complaining about Aesop's Fables.
This is a good reminder that the mythologized "Code of the West" wasn't some noble cowboy ethic—it was born out of postwar resentment, racial violence, and frontier lawlessness. It's easy to forget that much of what's now framed as rugged individualism was originally just unchecked aggression from people who couldn't handle losing a war. The romanticization of this period by early 20th-century writers smoothed over a lot of ugly history.
My great grandfather wrote down some stories of his life in Southern Kansas at the time, and I was always struck by how less exciting it was than you’d think.
He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him.
He also talks about going to see the Dalton gang just after their famous shootout, and mentions how it was weird to see the bodies just laid out and people cutting scraps of clothing off them as souvenirs. He said it wasn’t romantic at all, just depressing.
> He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him.
The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago.
> The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago.
I thought America has a serious gun problem. Or is it so exaggerated that it is irrational to be afraid of a city that's in or around the top 10 highest rates of gun homicides in the country?
If you look at the numbers, in 2023 Chicago there were 23.3 murders/ homicides per 100,000 population, about 0.02% of the population, which is a statistic that totally ignores if there's specific patterns to these homicides.
For perspective, in 2022 42,514 people in the US died in car accidents, which works out to about 0.01% of the population, so about half that rate. Would you say the fear of Chicago is more or less than twice the fear of driving?
Totally fair point. I thought about calling it out specifically when I was writing, but I assumed that calling out it in the previous paragraph would also imply it with driving - high mileage or unsafe drivers are going to be more likely to be killed. Does it distract from my overall point, and if so, how does that change things knowing that I'm aware of and conceding the point?
Lol having lived in Chicago and Cleveland let me explain how it works.
They're not probably going to kill you. They're going to just take your shit, maybe beat the shit out of you or knock you out if you resist. In my case, I managed to call their bluff and they did not pull the trigger, I punched them and then managed to narrowly get away.
If you live in these rough neighborhoods are you going to call the police, have their jacked up corrupt policeman show up, basically releasing a wild hyena in your home with access to secret torture sites[0]? Just to hear "sorry for your luck, we can write a report and then do nothing about it, but maybe open an investigation on you."
No, you're going to buy a gun/knife, spend some time at the range, be ready for next time, and go on with your life. This shit doesn't show up in the statistics like it would for podunk town.
The violent crime rate for Chicago seems to be 639.7 / 100,000[1]. The united states seems to be 380.7 / 100,000[2], so it's not even double the average. This also makes Chicago safer than DC, and the entire states of New Mexico, Alaska, and Arkansas[2]. How many people are scared of going to Alaska due to all the violent crime?
Well, there are ~2.4 million people in Chicago. In the last 12 months there were ~2600 shootings. In a given week, ignoring all other factors your odds of being shot are 1 in 48000. As a visitor you are unlikely to be in higher crime areas where shootings are more likely as well. In short, no, it is probably not something to overly worry about.
Yes, it's irrational. There are rough neighborhoods in any large city, but they're not the sort of area you go touristing in. The shootings that occur there are largely people with existing grudges against each other.
You are far more likely to die in a car accident driving through.
> There are rough neighborhoods in any large city, but they're not the sort of area you go touristing in
I think this is underselling the issue a bit. I lived in Hyde Park and heard shootings on a monthly basis, had a friend shot in an attempted robbery, and in general had a visceral sense of ongoing gun violence around me that I've never had in NYC, SF, Dallas, Austin, Seattle, or any other major American city where I've spent a lot of time.
Sure, Hyde Park is a bit of an anomaly in terms of being both highly violent and having things worth touristing for, but 'any large city has neighborhoods like that' doesn't ring true for me.
> Sure, Hyde Park is a bit of an anomaly in terms of being both highly violent and having things worth touristing for, but 'any large city has neighborhoods like that' doesn't ring true for me.
I live near a ~100k person city and a local legislator (from a very rural district) claimed they wouldn't go into the area without an armored car, to much mockery. My wife, at the meantime, was doing visiting nursing in the same neighborhoods. The worst interaction she had out on the streets was a family laughing (justifiably) at her parallel parking.
> My wife, at the meantime, was doing visiting nursing in the same neighborhoods
This is how they got to me.
I was working in a hospital in a 'meh' business area surrounded by a high-crime predominantly black neighborhoods. Sure you are generally fine at the hospital, or during day in the surrounding business district, but then you have to drive past that. The population we served noticed when I got a flat tire, because I was the only white face around at ~3am when my shift ended, and they moved in on their prey.
And that's how it works out. The tourist might be ok. The locals have to drive through bad areas sooner or later to work, get something they need, and when their vehicle fails they strike.
I've lived in Hyde Park and Woodlawn for over 20 years and have never heard a gun shot. I've also never had a friend injured in a violent crime in Hyde Park. I don't feel like there is ongoing gun violence happening around me, and I _have_ felt that way in other places I've been.
Everyones lived experience is different and perception of risk is deeply personal. But statistically if Hyde Park is too dangerous for you then no place in Chicago is safe enough.
I commented on those statistics here[1], but to summarize, three entire states, not cities within those states, the states themselves, have more violent crime than Chicago.
The vast majority of gun crime in America is between impoverished people who know each other. If you don’t spend time with people who shoot other people, you’re unlikely to get shot.
Chicago isn't in the top ten. You'd think it was the absolute worst the way conservatives talk about it. How many people terrified of Chicago don't have the same feelings about St Louis or Cleveland or Kansas City or Philadelphia all which are examples of cities with higher murder rates than Chicago?
Why is a century-old piece of technology you can manufacture in your home workshop (mills and 3D printers aren't regulated yet) in China, Germany, wherever the "problem?"
> Globally, the U.S. ranks at the 93rd percentile for overall firearm mortality, 92nd percentile for children and teens, and 96th percentile for women.
Funny how you're doing this on a thread about how murder rates are not something to be afraid of. Which one is it? Should we be afraid of Chicago or not?
* The US has a lot more guns than most other developed countries.
* The US has a lot more murders than most other developed countries.
* Places like Chicago are, statistically, not all that different in this regard from elsewhere in the US.
The US has a murder/firearm problem at a population level. The chances of any randomly selected individual being part of it remains fairly low. We simultaneously should be ashamed of our clear violence problem, and recognize that "and then I started blasting" is not a great response to it.
Focus on "urban" people in Chicago is a misdirection by folks who'd rather not deal with the national-level concerns.
The same people who want you to think Chicago's ~26.9/100k homicide rate is terrifyingly scary want you to think COVID's ~279/100k was not.
Chicago's guns come from outside Chicago; it's surrounded by very permissive jurisdictions. (Trump supporters like to call this sort of issue "open borders".)
Your county's seemingly "low" rate is 5x that of China (0.5/100k), 3x that of Germany (0.8/100k), double the city of London (1.4/100k). It's abberantly high still, by international standards.
Despite emphasizing “city of London”, the stats you are citing seem to be those of Metropolitan London (for which stats are relatively easily locatable), not the City of London (for which this particular stat is harder to find, but overall has much lower crime than Metropolitan London.)
The city of London is Metropolitan London. The Big-C City of London is the little bit mostly fascinating to those of us who go down Wikipedia rabbit holes. I didn't capitalize it for a reason; I emphasize its being a city because it's useful in the "well that's because the stats are for entire countries" aspect of things.
Big cities in Europe are largely safer statistically than even the low-crime areas of the US.
> Why don't you compare the US to Nigeria, Brazil, or Pakistan?
Because we are in the developed world, and "at least we're better than Pakistan" is probably not the highest of bars we should aspire to as a country?
> Those are more in-line with US population size than Germany, London, or China
The EU, if you prefer - similar size, population, state+federal(ish) makeup, developed world, mix of wealthy and poorer jurisdictions, etc. - has a 0.86/100k rate.
It's likely that population size/density can't be abstracted away by normalizing figures since those are actually factors leading to population violence/governance.
No idea, but look at the homicide rate or Wyoming (590k, 2.6/100k) vs that of any similarly-populated US city: Baltimore (576k, 58/100k), Albuquerque (562k, 21/100k), Fresno (544k, 13/100k).
Yes, it is widely known that population density increases the homicide rate. However your first comment in this thread asserted that it is illogical or improper to compare (the homicide rate in) the US to Germany or China on the grounds that the one has a much smaller total population than the US and that the other has a much larger total population, and you have added nothing that supports those 2 assertions.
If every country in the world had the same area as every other country, then you could draw a line from total population to population density, but of course that is not the case.
One time this happened to me. But then when they came I used aikido to disarm them whole flipping the gun out of their hands (all of them at the same time). They were so impressed they made me the leader of their primitive tribe and I started collecting resources and completing mini-missions until I became a high enough level to walk through the sewers until I found the final boss and hit the right combo to kill him.
I mean sure but if that doesn't work I have literally taken the el to an industrial district and slept on top of a warehouse, rather than getting picked over by people on the street.
Did you manage to pick up any apples or full-sized rotisserie chickens off the ground to boost your HP? Sometimes they're hidden in trash cans; you have to kick them to find out.
And what is the reason the joke is about Chicago and not Boston? Gallows humor needs something to work with and it seems that Chicago delivers on that.
That joke would be funnier if Chicago was even in the top 10 for violent crime, but it's mostly a joke about how "Chicago" and "Boston" are two of the 4 cities every American can name.
People's perception of violence is exponential in both per capita and geographic density. And Chicago has the blessing of being both being big, dense and violent enough to easily climb the mindshare ladder.
That's really interesting in its own way (ie, non-exciting vs stories maybe, but really fascinating.) Have you thought of digitising it and putting it online?
I did indeed transcribe them all digitally to preserve them. Most of them probably would only be interesting to the family. The only other one that has general interest was his time as a water fetcher and firewood collector during the gathering before the Oklahoma Land Rush.
When you go see renaissance cultural stuff romanticizing the ancient romans and greeks do you crap all over it on the basis that the societies they're romanticizing had spicy takes on women or that their economies were comparatively primitive? Are you going to complain that they didn't have running water and electricity in the old west while you're at it?
The past was generally rife with problems that hadn't yet been solved. Some of those were technical and some of them social. But dismissing it all as racism or whatever is misleading at best. People (generally, I'm sure there's a few exceptions) aren't romanticizing the racism or the violence or the outhouses or the lack of antibiotics or any other negatives that have since been solved or improved upon, when they romanticize these periods of history.
The Romans are 'ancient history' and not directly connected to current events in the US. Sure, we have some cultural inheritance from them, but they're many, many generations removed from us, whereas some of this 'western lore' stuff is not, really. I have a photo of my own great grandfather on a horse with a rifle in Montana. He was a ranger with the Forest Service.
And I talked with my great grandmother about her family providing meals to visiting tribes on their farm in Iowa, and how there was some sort of marker indicating that they were a welcoming farm for traveling tribes. The majority of people in the frontier were northerners/immigrants looking to create a better life, not ex-Confederates looking to take out their being complete losers on the frontier. These were people often rejected by their own society for having the wrong religion (my family were German/Irish Catholics who were literally driven out, the Irish part arriving as orphans because their families died on the boats over), living in very rugged/primitive situations, dependant entirely on their individual ability to survive. There was very much an individualism yet a 'look out for others' ethic among these people whom had had no one look out for them (to the point their home countries had left them to die) and a very strong appreciation of America having providing them a place where they could go.
The Fascists did romanticize (a distorted version of) the Roman Empire.
There's a similar and misplaced admiration of Sparta, which is wrong headed since Sparta wasn't even all that good at military matters, and, compared to other city states of the time, a failure at everything else.
What. Sparta, in its heyday, had one of the mightiest infantries in Greece, and that's saying something. One does not simply defeat Athens in a thirty years war without having serious military capabilities.
They were fascist assholes who murdered slaves as a rite of passage, but they were also good soldiers. No reason to deny that.
I'm basing my opinion in this analysis of ACOUP (Brett Deveraux), who's a military historian and specializes in dismantling this kind of pop culture myths.
While the Spartans weren't a disaster, and in some respects they were marginally better (but in others, worse), the statistics don't lie: they had an average track record, certainly not on par with their current reputation. They didn't excel at any particular strategy, they were just hoplites like every Greek at the time. Their track record is disappointingly average:
> We get 12 victories, 11.5 defeats and 0.5 draws
Hardly impressive, right? And this is excluding naval battles, if we include them the Spartans do slightly worse.
> Sparta had a formidable military reputation, but their actual battlefield performance hardly backed it up. During the fifth and fourth centuries, Sparta lost as often as it won. Spartan battlefield tactics were a bit better than other Greek poleis, but this is damning with faint praise. The spartiates themselves were mostly like every other group of wealthy Greek hoplites. But the Spartan military reputation was extremely valuable – the loss of that reputation during the Peloponnesian War does much to explain the rough decades Sparta would experience following its end.
He also explains Sparta was also a self-defeating, ever-shrinking society, which ultimately proved to be its demise. But you're not disputing this, so this is just a side note.
>> We get 12 victories, 11.5 defeats and 0.5 draws
Without the context of the relevant battles those numbers mean nothing. E.g. Thermopylae was one of the losses but it would be hard to interpret it as evidence of the Spartans' average military capabilities. War is not football, to keep score. Rome lost more battles to Hannibal than they won, but they erased Carthage from the face of the earth.
As to Bret Deveraux, my opinion is that he's a fucking idiot. You say he "specializes in dismantling this kind of pop culture myths". What he really specialises in, with respect to Sparta, is trying to troll nenoazis and other idiots who are the Spartans' biggest fans, by pointing out what fucking losers they were (the Spartans; but also by extension the neonazis). That's an easy win.
Nobody thinks Sparta was some great beacon of civilisation, except perhaps for people who take all their history from watching 300. It was Athens that was a beacon of civilisation, Athens who went down in history for its contributions to science and culture, Athens whose glorious ruins are visited today by millions every year, when Sparta is lost forever, not even its location known. And good riddance to those fascist assholes.
Anyway Deveraux is writing a blog and you shouldn't mistake blogs for sources of historical truth.
Don't worry about the downvotes, they seem to be drive-by style.
I agree with your comment, and also agree it's not exactly the same situation. The romanticization of the Old West is much closer to the current political climate in the US. There's also the baggage of the "Lost Cause" that still permeates their politics, sadly.
It was mostly a nitpick, I just wanted to point out this kind of misguided fascination for old history has also impacted the Roman Empire, Sparta (which I mentioned because there's a kind of rightwing admiration for "Spartan values", which is hogwash), etc.
Texas is a little bit closer to home, if you will. There are still people alive today who believe that aspects of it -- mythical or real -- are fundamental to our culture, or a model for contemporary society.
It's not crapping all over history. If it was engaged with in a rigorous manner, nobody would have a problem with it.
The problem is that they romanticize it, paint an inaccurate picture of it, and also try to draw conclusions about modern life based on these misconceptions.
It's not about mocking them because of the outhouses.
I will push back on people who romanticize and emulate those societies,
and in the US in the 21st century there are plenty of folks who would like to see the country return to when times were supposedly "great".
I’m glad that the status quo works for you, but it doesn’t work for most people which is why there is so much upheaval right now. It’s screwed up that our society makes raising children so hard. It’s screwed up that our society is so low trust. Those are two things that were much better when we were setting the west and it’s worth exploring how we can return somewhat to those times.
By the way, I don’t think anyone wants to return fully to those times. The question is, on what ways can we return and get the maximum benefit for our people? That is a conversation worth having.
You are engaging in romanticism right now. You’ve made a bunch of qualitative statements that are based on a history that likely isn’t real. In what ways do you think it was easier to raise children when the west was settled, why do you believe that trust levels were higher? Why do you think the status quo is worse for more people now?
You need to make some of that quantitative to even have a reasonable discussion about it or we are just talking about mental images, whether that be little house on the prairie or the artful dodger.
No, this discussion doesn't have to be qualitative. You dismiss Little House on the Prairie, which is ironic because Laura Wilder quite literally wrote an exact biography that had some details (like the death of her brother) that were left out in the child-friendly books. I'm so thankful that she wrote both kinds of books so that folks can't honestly dismiss the "bad old days" as objectively worse than the present.
Your chronological snobbery reminds me of a similar blindness that modernity has for the "women and children first" policy when the Titanic was sinking. When they made the movie, the director deliberately altered the story because he believed nobody would believe the truth. Yet the truth is, women and children were a whole lot more likely to survive than men, indicating that policy must have taken place[1].
The reality is, if you read first-hand accounts of the west, you see an incredible optimism, an incredible amount of sacrifice and an incredible amount of shared community on the west. That is so alien to our modern culture, where most people know a prophet of doom and gloom, people think that "community" is something you can purchase with a membership or find online, and conspiracy theories (real and imagined!) are a constant hot topic.
The Little House on the Prairie books? Today they are categorized as autobiographical fiction or Roman à clef. Try reading Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser[1]. Wilder's books negatively portray Native Americans, and gloss over her family's illegal occupation of land what was then still Osage Nation's territory.
You can read about optimism, sacrifice and shared community now. You can experience it even…
It’s interesting that you’re accusing me of snobbery when I’ve made no quality arguments at all. Yet you have very specific descriptions of now that villainize it in as broad strokes as you praised the past.
> When you go see renaissance cultural stuff romanticizing the ancient romans and greeks do you crap all over it on the basis that the societies they're romanticizing had spicy takes on women or that their economies were comparatively primitive?
So, pointing out ethical failures accurately is "crapping all over it"?
> Are you going to complain that they didn't have running water and electricity in the old west while you're at it?
I'm going to suggest that objecting to enslavement, and objecting to having a well with a bucket, are not anywhere on the same spectrum.
You seem to be arguing from a truly dishonest, and fundamentally immoral, basis.
> On November 18, 2019, Noem released a meth awareness campaign named "Meth. We're on It". The campaign was widely mocked and Noem was criticized for spending $449,000 of public funds while hiring an out-of-state advertising agency from Minnesota to lead the project. She defended the campaign as successful in raising awareness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and...