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Okay since this is about the 1000th time i see this picture or a version of it: who is this (not Eli, the guy on the picture)
It's an old Norman Rockwell painting titled (I shit you not) "American Freedom"
Its actually got an even cringier name: "Freedom of Speech" and the subject is a real guy who was opposed to...building a new school in his town
Hot dang, my art history teacher was a liar
opposed to...building a new school in his town
Was it because of racism?
Goddamn we're cynical
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen's announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down,[9] was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol.[10] Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease
Something to keep in mind was this was still essentially the depression, so a farmer saying "I can't afford the taxes to build a new school" might actually be true
It probably wasn't racism cuz let's be real, Vermont on 1940 was 99.9% white. I'm not making that up, I just checked the census records
During FDR's presidency in the lead up to WWII, he made the "Four Freedoms" speech, which the artist Norman Rockwell illustrated in four different paintings. This one, "freedom of speech" is the most well known/reproduced.
Source: I was a high school us history teacher
There's no propaganda in America, though.
It's wild how American's fetishize freedom of speech when the only thing speech is good for is influencing power, and
definitely does not do that.The nicest practical aspect of free speech is you mostly don't have to self-censor every communication, mostly.
Is me