Showerthoughts

30701 readers

717 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

Rules

All posts must be showerthoughts
The entire showerthought must be in the title
No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
Posts must be original/unique
Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

vatlark

forkball

Thekingoflorda

216

In the class warfare of America, there seem to be an awful lot of parallels between typical Republican voters and Uncle Tom, a negro who was exceedingly subservient to his slave masters. (self.showerthoughts)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by hohoho to c/showerthoughts

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] yesman 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Everyone assumes that Uncle Tom was a character like Sam Jackson's Stephen from "Django Unchained" or Uncle Ruckus from "Boondocks". The character in the book is nothing like this. In fact, Uncle Tom is an admirable character. How this man's name became a slur is more complicated than it first appears.

The weird part about reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is that its advocacy literature, and most of us don't need much convincing that slavery is bad. But we need this context to understand that Uncle Tom was created by a white woman to appeal to a white audience because it's his tragedy that is supposed to persuade the reader. Uncle Tom didn't fashion himself to please some master like Calvin Candy, he was created whole-cloth as a device to awaken empathy of white audience. It's not his character, it's his raison d'être.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

This guy reads.