Comments by "Sam Aronow" (@SamAronow) on "Otto von Bismarck - Lies - Extra History" video.

  1. The whole mess we're in can be traced back to Australopithecus.
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  2. Further than that, even. What Lawrence realized (and Mark Twain saw some fifty years earlier) was that the concept of an Arab "nation" was fundamentally vacuous and rooted in Eurocentric ideas of sedentary temperate and subtropical societies. Arabia was nomadic/tribal and identity in the Levant was driven foremost by one's city. The rise in Arab nationalism on the eve of war was driven by the Young Turks' reforms, which shifted the position of the Ottoman Sultan from a religious leader to a secular, more nationalistic one, alienating the empire's many, many minority groups of which Arabs were the largest– and Arab Nationalists were overwhelmingly Christian. Perhaps a Middle East under Faisal could have been peaceful between neighboring states, but just as likely his Greater Syria would have been plagued by hyper-local insurrections.
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  3. Yeah, that sounds like Mercantilism, which we definitely don't have anymore.
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