I pit DrDeth

[Gyrate]

I just want to go on the record as saying that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a beautiful masterpiece of cinematic design but my god the script is so fucking stupid I just can’t deal with it. And that’s before we get to the necromancy at the end.

(Also - Giovanni Ribisi is great.)

[Jackmannii]

@DETXL

@Jackmannii

DD, while undoubtedly a clueless dickhead, above all gets off on being a contrarian. The consensus, no matter how evidence-based, must always be wrong and he’s got the book to prove it, even when he hasn’t read it.

The problem with being a… I don’t even know what to call it, a dogmatic iconoclast? The problem is, if you start from the premise that “heterodoxy alone is proof,” there are no guardrails to keep you from being forced into a more and more absurd corner.

You see this a lot with contrarians on social media, especially those who’ve monetized their platforms. Their audience gets bored with the same old nonsense, so they have to adopt ever more extreme positions to keep the clicks and $$ coming.

Bret Weinstein and Joe Rogan are examples.

If DD ever figures out how to monetize his nuttery he’ll have to go a lot further than his current brain-dead heterodoxy. But even if he morphs into full-blown “Hitler wuz right!” ravings, there’s plenty of competition in the field already.

[Great_Antibob]

I see a circle jerk of ‘iconoclasts’ or whatever competing with each other and DD decides to one-up them all by coming back around to reality to show them who’s top dog

[Czarcasm]

@TroutMan

So what, you’re fine with him ruining all the alternate reality / multiverse threads?

Only if he posts in threads that are currently in said alternate realities/multiverses.

[MrDibble]

Does Deth seriously think no-one in that German aggression thread can see how blatantly he’s stalling?

[Princhester]

Do you guys ever stop into a long running thread not because the topic interests you as such but because you are curious about how the heck dopers are still talking about something?

That.

[ASL_v2.0]

@DETXL

Maybe I just don’t like Jude Law enuf.

I really like Gattaca.

[Gyrate]

I’m finding the WWI thread fascinating as there are a lot of tiny details about the political situation in the run-up to the war I am learning for the first time.

And apparently so is DD.

[Great_Antibob]

Yeah, to the extent there is a silver lining, it’s that for all these topics, there are a lot of knowledgeable posters who have provided a ton of intelligently summarized information and analysis for everybody else to digest and enjoy.

[Atamasama]

@Gyrate

And apparently so is DD.

There’s sometimes a difference between receiving information and learning.

[Dissonance]

@Atamasama

There’s sometimes a difference between receiving information and learning.

This. With the caveat that I haven’t read and am not going to read that thread which was created for DrDeez to troll and shit in, given his history I very highly doubt he’s hearing anything for the first time. “Germany didn’t start WWI” is one of those topics that DrDeez has been bludgeoned with mountains of evidence proving how completely full of shit he is repeatedly but is pathologically incapable of not bringing the topic up again and repeating the same debunked lies and bullshit he said the last time around.

[Jackmannii]

If a book, or just an article was written about his posting on the subject, it could be called “Sleepwalking Through History”;

[Mighty_Mouse]

The good doctor’s contribution to the McConnell thread is so incredibly on brand, that if he wasn’t so self oblivious, I would think he was trolling.

[Kron]

I’m becoming less and less convinced he ISN’T trolling. How can you be so wrong about literally ANY subject? He’s like a bizarro-world Renaissance man.

[colinfred]

By now his orthography has been confirmed as a deliberate attempt to annoy, why not his opinions?

[DETXL]

…Well, I did not foresee the “Germany was the aggressor against France in WW1” thread ending with the bold gambit of: “Wait, you can read books? That’s actually totally unfair? That’s, like, racist? But against people who can’t read?” I also think that last post puts the nail in the coffin of whether or not he is actually trolling the board.

This seems as good a place as any to note the irony that:

1. For all DrDeth is obsessed with the idea that Germany was forced to declare war because of the Russians, we never got around to discussing how it transpires that documents unearthed in the German archives reveal the general staff (obligated to start fighting as early as possible because their secret plan involved taking Liège immediately) and the chancellery had already agreed to mobilize, although they were certainly pleased at news from Russia that could be used to provide cover for this. I feel if I was, say, a contrarian idiot, I could come up with some phrasing about how “Annika Mombauer proved that the Germans lied about the Russians mobilizing first,” except that
2. Nobody cares. Germany’s contribution to the war, and Germany’s decision to start it no matter what happened, is uncontroversial, and this agreement between Moltke and Bethmann Hollweg is—though technically new information—not a bombshell, because it is simply more evidence for what everyone already knew.

I ought to be a little miffed at having wasted my time on someone who is surprised and upset to learn that serious history takes place in books and journal articles, but I kinda guessed that going in. If people are interested in the outbreak of World War 1, for whatever reason, and don’t trust me not to have fabricated quotes from the authors, a stack-ranked list for your next beach trip:

• David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer: Who started the Great War in 1914? (2007) is very accessible if you like the idea of The Guns of August but find Tuchman a bit dry
• Dan van der Vat’s The Dardanelles Disaster: Winston Churchill’s Greatest Failure (2010) is also quite readable and I enjoyed it a great deal. It’s mostly focused elsewhere but does cover the chaos that prevailed in the Mediterranean in the week before and after the outbreak of war.
• Decisions for War, 1914 (1995) edited by Keith Wilson and War Planning, 1914 (2010) edited by Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig are good collections of perspectives and not too dense. That said, they also read like college texts rather than books designed for a general audience, so be forewarned.
• That’s even more true of Hamilton and Herwig’s other collection, The Origins of World War I (2003). In general, if a survey is what you’re after, you could stick with Wilson’s book. The exception is that I think Herwig’s own contribution does a good job of refuting the idea that the march to war was determined principally by the military, and also rejecting Fischer’s thesis that it should be understood as a “bid for world power.”
• Annika Mombauer is an exceptional scholar, but her 2001 biography Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (based on her doctoral thesis) is… not written for reading, let’s say. However: in the specific scenario that you really want a behind-the-scenes look at the Motlke-Bethmann Hollweg-Falkenhayn dynamic in the last week of July, her access to German archives and her thoroughness make it invaluable.

Mombauer’s 2002 Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus is, like Gordon Craig’s Germany 1866-1945 (1978) pretty dry but if you really want the full “taking a bunch of 4000-level classes on German history because you don’t realize you aren’t going to finish that degree” experience, stop by the student union and see if those two are in stock.

Christopher Clark does not make this list, alas. Also missing is Terrence Zuber, whom the rest of you will be spared from encountering because of course DrDeth does not read the Pit and therefore does not know to salivate over the prospect of name-dropping an even more outré revisionist.

@Dissonance

With the caveat that I haven’t read and am not going to read that thread which was created for DrDeez to troll and shit in, given his history I very highly doubt he’s hearing anything for the first time.

This was a good choice, it turns out

[puzzlegal]

@DETXL

• David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer: Who started the Great War in 1914? (2007) is very accessible if you like the idea of The Guns of August but find Tuchman a bit dry

I read The Guns of August a million years ago. I don’t remember any of the content, but i don’t remember finding it especially difficult to read at the time.

[What_Exit]

I thought The Guns of August was a good read. But also a long time ago for me. So details are gone.

[Stanislaus]

@DETXL

I ought to be a little miffed at having wasted my time on someone who is surprised and upset to learn that serious history takes place in books and journal articles, but I kinda guessed that going in.

Not entirely wasted - I really appreciated your posts, and learned a lot.

[ASL_v2.0]

@DETXL

…Well, I did not foresee the “Germany was the aggressor against France in WW1” thread ending with the bold gambit of: “Wait, you can read books? That’s actually totally unfair? That’s, like, racist? But against people who can’t read?” I also think that last post puts the nail in the coffin of whether or not he is actually trolling the board.

Your posts in that thread were very informative and I really enjoyed them.