Re:What it's like take a train across America, a visual diary
by encomiast on Saturday August 31, 2024 @04:53PM
(#41411864)
I guess it just depends on your point of view. I would have found a sentence lauding the railroads and the mechanized opening of the West to be pretty 'cringe' if they had not mentioned this.
Re:What it's like take a train across America, a visual diary
by timr on Saturday August 31, 2024 @04:56PM
(#41411906)
I submit that you could cut the entire sentence out of the piece and not lose anything other than a vague sense of judgment from the author.
But hey, I also don't think observing the basic fact that the railroads led to the "opening of the west" would qualify as "lauding" that fact, any more than observing that "George Washington was the first US president" would be "lauding" George Washington. For that matter, I can also enjoy a train ride without feeling the urge to "acknowledge" that Cornelius Vanderbilt did some bad things.
(...though I sadly acknowledge that we're well 'round that bend as a society)
(To be as charitable as possible to your point, I did say "cringe", but I didn't mean it in the way that you're interpreting it. I just meant "cringe", in the same way that I cringe when I see someone who boldly expresses an opinion about anything that is factually incorrect, or perhaps, when a stranger starts selling you on their multi-level-marketing scheme in the bathroom. More like "oh god, we're going to do this now, are we?", than a "I reject basic facts of history that the average US high school student should know, including the approximate order of major historical events" sort of thing.)