The story of Sun Sil Kim, aka Hee Young. I arrived at the Osan air base in Korea February of 1977. I was quarantined for 3 days, 2 of those days were spent on nothing but v-d education and related consequences. One day nothing but info on Korean culture and behaviors. I had been assigned to a combat support company as a 4.2-inch mortar track commander. The 2nd infantry division was spread all up and down the DMZ. My unit was stationed at Camp Casey, a fenced compound and the subsequent Korean village of Tong Du Chon that completely surrounded the compound was custom designed to separate cash from soldiers. TDC was about 10 miles from the DMZ. I am not going to be able to tell about Sun in 500 words like I have been doing my others stories. So I am going to split this into 2 or 3. I don' no, I never know what I am going to rite when I set down and open word and set the font. Ill talk about my army first. After learning everything I could from the cavalry, I felt if I was ever going to find someplace test my skills it was Korea. In the cav. my vehicle and weapons triage, communication and navigation skills, earned me a job as staff duty driver, following some officer with a shovel, I could make a colonial shit his shorts.. I didn't tell the 2nd D I knew how to drive a jeep or my secondary mos as a track and wheel mechanic, no wait, they knew, they gave it to me. I took a gamble when I put in for Korea, the job I landed there was cool with me. I was only responsible for five bodies counting mine. A four- deuce mortar track with my 50caliber machine-gun and column of four ducks for a crew. Not bad for nineteen. In country, we absolutely had each others backs. Our mission was one month on the DMZ, and one off., my combat support unit tended to come early and stay late. We had permanent gun emplacements as well as our mobile tracks, other support included working with the united nations command(assholes) at panmoonjon which was within out area of operation as well as security for the tactical operations command and debriefing and staging tents. As soon as set my stuff down on my bunk in a Quonset hut I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore, but this here building might survive being blown there. TDC had strip of bars that catered to the G I, each bar was owned or operated by a "mama son", mama son acquired young women to work the bars, prostitution is legal, obviously. If the girls were not trying to sell you beer they were made to dance with each other many looked most unhappy. I remember one girl that was being severely chastised in Korean and sounded most unflattering. She brought me my beer in tears, Hee Young is what mama son called her. Back then I didn't know anything about sexual slavery but I didn't like what was going on. There were literally hundreds of these girls on the streets, the clubs had the "clean" ones, some desperate. The Baptist gave me a social conscience that I can't shake. I am the guy that would rent a hooker just to talk. I never really was into sex without feelings first. I could see the tension drain from her when she realized I wasn't going to make a move on her. That whole week I rented her, I liked where her hooch was, I never tried anything she was confused and suspicious. I could pass out there when I got over night passes, only ten bucks a day. She liked it because I just told her to be herself. We did this for a while till Mama son and me worked out a deal that if I paid her a 100 bucks a month Hee Young belong only to me even when I am on the D. Other wise her quota was ten bucks a day with any one. Mama son said she would sell Hee Young to me for twelve hundred dollars. After all ,mama son, She's just turned 17 and getting too old for the business. I said deal. I found out if I sent sun sil home to her parents they would likely sell her again. They sell her for the equivalent of 600 dollars u. s. The average Korean made fifty dollars a month then. Man this bothered me that I could not keep her away from that lifestyle, one she hated. Great I just bought me a dependent, ill never forget the day I told her. She wanted me to buy her best friend miss Ming too. Will see, Genuine smiles, said that she would make the best yobow I ever had, but I don't want a yobow? What's a yobow? Silly g I yobow is girlfriend. Oh , now you are my girlfriend and the melancholy club girl Hee Young is dead. She absolutely blossomed like a lotus. And just for the record she eventually made the first move on me.
Meet Sun Sil.
…………………………….Kosmicdebris
Liberty
Category: Blogging
History and those that participated are a past-time passion of mine. I rarely read fiction, although some I like. One of my favorite things to do is pick a person or event and learn all I can about him or her. I believe biographies, especially auto-bios, tend to give a more accurate account of historical events than some historian twenty years to a hundred from now. I am still way too curious to clog my mind with fiction. I have read about some of histories most colorful and cruel characters and in my imagination I was there. The French revolution, la' miserable, Robespierre, and Marot, Guie'tine shipped his head chopper all over the world. Few know or care that the Americans borrowed liberty from the French, as America struggled against the English, American liberty was a French concept first. The peasants finally rebelled against royal bureaucratic oppression and looted the local armory and prison, the Bastille. Now, I might have to say something too, about not being able to keep my own crop I just raised, trading my grain for gruel, work and grow hungrier perk. You know, I don't think anyone set Marie Antoinette down and told her about the head chopping clause in the pre-nups. The French did a deep house cleaning. Everyone that had profited, from the kings taxing enterprise, or helped, heads lopped off. All sales final, they even put the show on the road, a wagon mounted cranial cleaver, much more efficient than a rope. Kangaroo court would show up in remote villages. Village peasants had no reservation about calling out the tax reaper or anyone else we don't like. I would have been borderline and probable get my head chopped off for being an asshole in general, all it took was one accuser. The royalty that survived, humbled as only a Guie'tine can do, fled with their extremely scared, chicken shit asses and highly prized fat necks to all the surrounding kingdoms like cockroaches. The peasants sent spies with a 'stick them where they stood' policy outside jurisdictions, women too, different stick.(they are the French after all.) A monarchical and political genocidal mania, consumed with retribution, laid in like a thick fog. Eventually the temperance union settled all outstanding royal paybacks. The justice league began to turn the chopper on each other in a power grab, so much so, that the leaders of the revolution never saw the end. Uneasy lies the head of liberty. The peasants armed with the power of the people started to flourish under a republic. The French peasants stood a top thousands of severed heads, and 500 years oppression. They where never going back. We may have gotten liberty from the French, but the French got the idea for revolution from Americans.
………………………………..............Kosmicdebris
image
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Indigent Royality
Here are some points to ponder, the year is 2050 and the headlines from your daily news hologram are as follows.
Official - fraud and waist in the Federal government now exceeds the Federal budget. (this may happen sooner than 2050)
Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia formally known as California. Anglo minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language, behind Spanish and Ebonics.
Global Freezing confirmed as a scientific fact.
Lesser Spotted Long Eared Owl plague threatens North Western United States crops and livestock.
Baby conceived naturally - scientists stumped.
Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.
Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iraq)/irafgan/Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Librans……….Babylonian .)
Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 100 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels. (what’s the half life of nothing?)
France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.
President Chelsea Clinton has banned all silicone due to leaching of ground water after burial. (the presertivetives we eat will inhibit natural decomp, smelly either way
George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2056.
U.S. postal service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to alternate Wednesdays.
85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.
Average weight of Americans below 250 lbs.
Japanese scientists create camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph an American politician with mouth shut.
Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.
High Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.
Average height of basket ball players now nine feet, seven inches.
All nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by end January.
Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing sex with congressman.
Oklahoma IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.
Florida voters having trouble with voting machines instituted mandatory relocation of all democrats to fema concentration camps for republicization.
……………………Kosmicdebris
summer reading, this stuff is the first thing i blogged on myspace back in 05.07
Universal truth, I had troubling spelling one time, spell checker just wasn't doin' it . Fifty words 9 mistakes, unacceptable..… So I changed my default language to English-great Britton and wrote a piece, the same piece, with zero errors. (I am finally finding time to really learn ms-word amazingly easy limit your focus thought, some times leading people away from truth for imagined empty options , blows my mind)
. Turns out I have been reading a lot of philosophy from proper English institutions alumni, I thought that must be it. But then I remembered I had also read some Shakespeare, merchant of Venice , couple others, some sonnets. Anyway, merchant is my favorite, I' ve read many times. I was doing some research about arguing a position . The Kosmic spin……… shush…. courts starting..
Portia shows up at legal proceedings, a men only deal , disguised manly, with the ridicules wig and gown of a barrister representing the defense of the beleaguered pound forfeiter, directly from his majesty a member of his personal bar . Tough spot to be in for the indigent royalty (hardly ever see those two words together indigent royalty)…………… until this man , being a kosher butcher select type deal……..calls for the marker post haste. ( would have paid a few dollars more for the, take it out of my ass clause, I've got a few other angles , inherent risk for one. ) However……… our broke protagonist and slim shylock got history and that may just exponentially limit his future reproductive opportunities, if the court so decree. The absolute worst spot any man could be in : whack his peepee, the gallery implored to deafening crescendos. When It was Portia’s turn to speak in his defense she did these things…………
As a officer of the court. Took total control of the courtroom…… stared down the bench, opposing counsel, then eyed the gallery into silence with just His presence alone, not once uttering a single word. And, as if every word she uttered belonged to the king . She spoke with authority commanding respect for her position in the profession. Insisted that procedure and protocol be followed precisely (puts the judge on record) she did her homework and gave the entire attending legal profession a tutorial in jurisprudence . The man was acquitted, his debts where forgiven and the accuser forfeited his house/estate to the defendant per damages. Man, you gotta love her. Other wise, shylock would have bestboy slave get the sharpest knife he could find, wouldn't want use a dull one and risk cruelty charges, and cut exactly 16 ounces of flesh from anywhere his master chooses from the living body of the defaulted barrower .
Bestboy turns out was English, some kind of queer socio-economic salve issue thing going on and couldn't ginsue the dude. (Another discussion another time) Illegal for slaves to kill owners or future owners, potential owners…….huh….hello………so the shyster has to do the slicing and dicing himself , no problem he says lets go. Just gotta love history…….seems back in the 16th century Venice Jews where not allowed to cut, puncture, scuff the bark off any crown subject under the united kingdoms watch……. about like today really…….. that's the argument. The kings rule no blood can be spilled, not one drop, when you cut him to get your pound of flesh, Jew. Because we see blood or a pennyweight extra you will be immediately led to the gallows( speedy trial, ah.. the good olde days).
Gallows 20 minutes on two…………..break. Unless you were fat, in which case Saturdays good, people like to watch hefty ones swing because their heads also pop off kindda' like a two for one special. Shylock, somewhat portly indeed. The loan shark decided that calling in the marker wasn't worth the risk, lost all ,but his breathe. …………good mouthpiece, good read, from three different points of view, but to get to second you must read again……and this caused a third read for the third view, I was surprised at what I missed the first time, and second,
masterwordsmithe3,
shakes….also is into , bunch of romantic dithering , gaudiness, crown kissing, mother raping, father stabbing of the period social study; but for people-issues, motives, (some say this is the real origin of the of Count of Cherokee county) the depth of his characters , raw passion ..all good timeless lessons. Universal truth.
……………………………Kosmicdebris
I guess politics importance grows with age. I seldom thought about state leadership when I was younger. Now I am concerned, like most, about decisions the president along with democrats and republicans make for me. One thing that concerns me is that when they have to start hiring image consultants to change public perception. The republicans were caught red handed with a television correspondent in the their pocket. My thinking is that if you are that worried about your image you must be hiding something, like lying about a lot of some things. The media is trying to focus our attention elsewhere, I don't care if Condoleezza rice has learned to piss standing-up to impress the Russians, but she better grow some nuts because the Arabs are after ours. Tom Delay was not some minor Washington vulture hiding behind his faith, he was at the top. Corruption does not start at the top, It just metastasizes there . I am always suspicious and curious by nature, I do not feel I am getting the best government we could have. Nobody really pays that much attention. The peoples business is for sale, ethics are optional, stone throwing and mud slinging encouraged. The people demand playing together for the greater good of all. Petty selfish agendas bring down great empires, history time and again says so. It is a shame that the latest senator to get thrown off the hill and out of the closet with his homosexual pants down could be bought with a boy.
That show already played in Rome. Its scary, what else don't we know? Cold war days, believe me, this would have been exploited and may have been sometime somewhere. I am inclined to believe leadership knew or should have known about this particular senator as well as any other anomaly about. Leadership needs to step down either way they were wrong. When pages started stepping forward as far back as 5 years, saying they did indeed tell, even ask for reassignment. Spell cover-up, ignore, never happened. Things need to change votes do count. ……………………………….............Kosmicdebris
POW/MIA
Category: Blogging
I want to tell some of my army stories but feel I need to discuss why I joined, what schools and training I had. Growing up in the 60s ww2 was still fresh in everyone's psyche and only then beginning to realize 'what just happened 20 just before, and spawned a new generation of realistic war epics plastered on the tube, at the movies, in print, everywhere. Conventional combat, intelligence gathering(spy), airborne gorilla, air, support/defense,…….navel engagements and on and on lots of stuff, these where the soil for fertile minds to plow, available at the time. All of my childhood TV shows like combat and rat patrol , had to do with fighting and guns, war, death . Killing was all we had and we liked it . Westerns same way paladin, erp bros, rifleman . I didn't want a damn G.I. Joe doll!!. I wanted to be the f'n b, sob.
Let me at them, ill get them bastards for treading on me, the som'bitche's. (what's treading mean?). Viet nam was my generations first reality tv show, and they picked you by lottery to join the show survivor 68 nam, most of those guys didn't want to be there but I did. The draft ended in 1974, I believe. (a/t). I could not get to the fight fast enough. I tried to lie when I was 15 to get in. Both my cousins, my uncles boys. they had no no choice and I aint no better.. And I wanted to be just like them and our dads, grandpa type man, role models. I bet the recruiters got a chuckle. I told them in the civil war 12 years; 14 year olds were used in tight spaces for special operations. You guys need me. Exact words "we got grown dinks shorter than you, kid' There went my opportunity to be a tunnel rat. Three months after my 17 birth day I enlisted in the army. Today I look at it like, my junior year I quit the team sr76, after I was drafted by the pros. The army told me I had to be a truck driver after I was in but not on active duty yet.. But I want to shoot big guns and blow-up shit and camp out a lot, ( I want to kill, I want to kill, blood and gutz and veins in my teeth I want to kill). Said I had to be a high school grad. to do the fun stuff, however you can take a test ,a ged test, and if you pass you can pick anything and we will even give you a cash bonus, paid on completion of tanning. I may puff here. Ninth grade was the highest grade I had finished successfully, school was boring, the only thing I learned useful in H S was how to key board on a clanky Royal manual type-writer.( thanks, Mrs. Mary L, Gately)
I took the test and I passed. Today I see all the pressure, then I couldn't. I got my bonus, scored so high that I got to choose any specialty in combat arms. I chose to be an advanced infantry scout…. They got to do every thing , we were called 11deltas, I chose ft hood as my duty station. The First Cavalry Division w/the Black-jack Brigade was re-deployed after Nam. My training experiences could fill a book easily. To get in, you have to earn and the best way is to qualify high in critical areas of training. Specialized weapons systems, small arms, tactics, map-reading/ navigation, proper placement, detection, disarming of high explosives; crowd control both foreign on both sovereign land, lighting decisions maske social change fast, mine(d)s, that's what I learned in High School. That's me I am all in. after basic training, everone was packing up to go., the guys in the guard were going home, the rest to their respective military occupational schools, some to artillery school at ft sill, some to tank school in Kentucky, others airborne at benning Ga, my buddy from NY was going to fort drum for signal school. We were at fort Polk, La. I moved two blocks down the street for another more intense survival round of jungle/swamp trial by fire. I earned all my physical and weapons qualifications, nomenclature is too wordy but I qualified with a variety muzzle bores, 5.56 m-16,7.62-m60 machine gun and riffle, 50 caliber and bar, mortars 60 mm; 81mm, 4.2 inch. 155mm rifle recoilless and breach load, Wire guided TOW tank offensive weapen, m72 LAW light anti-tank weapen , m 203; m72 grenade launchers, redeye heat-seeking surface to air missiles. Along with my blue infantry rope and baby blue scarf and brass aura, I am ready kill . Expert infantry-man badge was next. All I Needed was to get in the scout platoon of the blackjack brigade so I could do all that out of a chopper when they needed the first cavalry divisions elite. The First squadron of President Fords Ninth cavalry. Air mobile, not airborne, I didn't want to jump out of plains the risk/benefit, to me, was unacceptable, that I might get shot down/ in the air for me, my fear was that I wouldn't make it to the fight.
I made it . I was a scout in the United States cavalry. I was in Charley Troop 1/9cav. I should have made my goals a little loftier. I achieved my life-long goal , at that time, by the time I was eighteen. We used to smoke off landing zones, drop high explosives to flatten the ground cover like crop circles, put smoke down they could take off and land and strike, stuff like that. On the ground, a then modern cavalry platoon had 3 Sheridan tanks that where armed with shelieghli missiles, and main gun the fired 155 shells, I think, the t c had a 50 cal., a crew of 3, I went on a mission in a tank "once" once and never set foot inside one again. A 4.2 in. mortar armored personal carrier crew of five. Love this gun dearly. Another apc with a a crew of 11 infantry strikers . We had five jeep ¼ ton, utility, all of these my toys to play with. In in my dress blues, as a private, I got respect from officers that never would that 17 year old long-haired flower child , just one year before, because of uniform decorations. Was not used to that. Every infantry soldier remembers turning blue, sets you apart in someway, changes you, when you realize responsibility for this body of knowledge and the business of killing. Military call it indoctrination, a rite of passage. My favorite show when I was a kid was kung-fu and the opening Cain faced all the trials of becoming a master. I was crushed when I found David caradine was an asshole and all the Chinese wisdom was bullshit. One thing just 5 years before I watched the first cav on cbs news and general Westmorland in Viet nam and I wanted to be there, for me it wasn't lack of trying. Congress closed the book on Viet nam may 5 , 1975 . I started active duty may 4, I am a Viet nam veteran by I day. Then Carter got elected and canceled all our playdates. Grounded us. This became our creed
...............'We, the willing, led by unknowning............... are doing the impossible for the ungreatful....we have worked so hard, for so long, with so little.............. we can now do anything with nothing.
..................................................................kosmicdebris
But You Didnt
Category: Blogging
Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and returned with a cigar burn in the seat.?
Thought you would kill me, but you didn't .
And remember when you dragged me to the out door flea market in search of a rare poster of Blacky.*
You said it wouldn't rain, but it did. I had fun.
You thought I would say 'I told you so,' but I didn't .
You remember the time I flirted with all your girlfriends at your slumber party?
Your were mad enough to blow a cerebral artery, but you didn't.
Do you remember the time I spilled strawberry soda on your velvet sofa to show you that sometimes red and yellow don't make green?
I thought it would come out, but it didn't.
Remember when you took me to an all day concert and I took car keys and wouldn't give them back until you pass my field sobriety test?
You said you would never speak to me again and that you really meant it this time, but you didn't .
Do you recall me relieving you of a 22cal. pistol and why.
You said you were leaving and nothing I could do to stop you. So I didn't.
Yes Tammy Jean there are lot of things you didn't do .
But you put up with me and you loved me, and you protected me. There were lots of things I was going to make up to you when you got back from Florida……………………..but you didn't.
…………………..Kosmicdebris………………………………......
*blacky was john stamos persona on general hospital
She gave me a St. Christopher medallion necklace May 1, 1975, when I left for the army at17. Said the saint was just a loner, to take care of it and the wants it back later. She knew I wanted the necklace and likely she'd never see Chris again. I had harassed her ever since she got it from St Vincent's boarding school for boy- crazy tweens. Three years worth of brother bother equity built-up. I didn't know about saints, much less this one. I was all about cool, I got me a wizard necklace. I took that thing and just fixed to my dog-tags and together we saw the world. The places ole Chris and me went . Safe to say, literally around the globe by the time I was 21. Over the years Chris has witnessed more important events in my life than myself, eventually the top wore away and in my pocket for awhile till good and polished . Was going to drill a hole in him once, but didn't know how God would react . Finally Chris ended up in a shoebox and forgotten for twenty -five years . Found again and professionally repaired and back around my neck a couple years. St. Chris gave me a sense of serenity and security……a binky Just knowing
That at least one would cry at my funeral…I gave Chris back to Tammy, not long ago, as I cried at hers.
………………………Kosmicdebris
ethnocentrism
Joseph Campbell the coolest dude, a scholar and authority on ancient, primitive mythology , he literally wrote the book(s) whole body of knowledge on the subject, he is a very interesting man. If he were here today, he would probably say ………nothing because he is, by this time, in an absolute putrid mass of decay, somewhere. Joe, However he left us words, words of ancient cultures social order , how they lived and what motivated them. He was a scientist first, but I believe, a very spiritual man. I learned the term ethnocentrism from this one, well, not the term as much as the concept by listening to this man. Judging another culture based on the judge's own standard of perfection and subjective environmental imprints. Objectivity, he taught me, was the prime directive………. That my minds eye is separate from my personal feelings, I center self and then go look at others as if I was one of them. The test of a first -rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. ( Now I think I really learned that in the army to maintain my personal skin integrity, either reload, retreat, or repent.) Joseph Campbell knew more about what man believes and why, than any one Theology or philosopher stuck on just one idea. Every God and mans relationship with creation. Joe told from a scientific point of view, recreate in simple terms………………….that would captivate your spirit forcing self examination . He built a bridge between science and metaphysics, translates: supernatural possibilities . Jung once said man created religion as a roadblock to true spirituality. All belief systems search for the source, successful ones share more. In the life of the traditional Cherokee there is only one inevitable duty--the duty for prayer ---the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal . He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, since all days are Gods. I resist the urge to preach here, I will say, I just wonder what the Cherokee thought when colonist tore down his place of worship, to make their own church? I think I already know To the Lakota Sioux the black hills are holy, just as sacred as the Vatican or Solomon's temple to judiao-Christians . To go and blast president faces in on one side of a holy place, was like putting a sixty foot fat Buddha in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church, to them and me, that's ethnocentrism.
………………………………................................Kosmicdebris
words
Category: Blogging
Words are free. Words, I do not own any word. But when I speak, those words are mine. When I write, mine. I do not to like using name/labels on others……… dubbed, dunked or dominated . Label me, you negate me…said soren kierkegaard ( soren got a cool name I don' no how to put those two dots above the Es and slash the Os ) ……….. I do not cite, by name, the origin, the man, because I want to focus on ……"the message not the media"……….. who said that? A source close to the whiTe house, maybe? . Buddha? via dahli - lahma? Krishna via Vishnu? God via Jesus? Allah via Mohammad , L ron Hubbard via Tom Cruse ? Bill o whiney via Fox, who? (God, I symbolize only as O, I call my source sometimes, my concept of O is just too big to disrespect with just three letters, O is no name every name, another discussion/time I got some rants) Someone mistook menu for message……. Confucius , Buddha.? Krishna got extra arms, comes in handy when you also got the Kama Sutra…………I am a flower child, my core values are of tolerance. I do not steal these words, I have previously cited Malcolm x . some would, if honest, dismiss the quote had they known ," if you don't stand for something, You will fall for anything" riot inciter, was his All ,words spoken ………..scribed words belong to every one. This is the device 'O" gave us to bridge thought into action, action through symbols, symbols into reality . However I assembled /disassembled words may or may not be original but I hope sincere. I don't know how to spell , names are most tricky . Puffery and name dropping is another reason I do not cite sources. All paths, Bible, ..Joyce, Milton, Blake, bhaggavhad ghita & other eastern divinities, Siggy Freud said………..Words are majik ……….and one time the same……………Yeah, him and ever skewered priest and crisp witch between here and the equator . I have a good argument for original thought. I do not think there is any , everything that is said/written/ thought/can think /was and will/ now and later/ has all ready been done . Why ?…… Our Source said' in the Beginning there was the Word And the word was made flesh …..and seems pissed at the Jews, cut them off Jesus , pork, and foreskin. Oh , and the Nazi-method of birth control. Me and the Jewish are good, but the Source……….. Implications of an end exaggerated but eminent. ……. so……. got the spiritual pov issue out, on to matters of state…………The first amendment guarantees the right to free speech . The internet is scrubbed using flag- word combinations , what if I mistype a word?……. ali hawk alu- gi perhaps? Are The 'thought-police/homeland security' ready to urgently scramble a team of laptops eager to control a beehive of drone model air-plane probes, to probe my probe? Armed w/sidewinders wtf?, I could go on. Orwell and his big brother was more right than wrong, there is a camera everywhere in the name of security. Compulsory video indoctrination is labeled entertainment and submission voluntary. Slow subliminal brainwashing. Sun Tzu would be proud…….. Most work places have the spy equipment , both known and unknown to see everything articulated remotely. Orwell talks about 'new-speak' ………. today we just call it "politically correct". Many more , too many government intrusions for my comfort level. 1984, I am afraid , was just a primer for what's really going to happen . I take from the banquet of humanity my muse al a carte'. So who said, the media is the message or vise versa? My pal from the revolution days Abby Houffman circa 68.……steal this book pages 1-84.….. Bibliographies take up too much space, I do not want to be selfish and claim ownership of words, but I will shamelessly commandeer words to fit my utility . Now who said…………Life is a buffet and most damn people are starving to death?
……………………………….........Kosmicdebris
indigent royalty (episode II )
Official - fraud and waist in the Federal government now exceeds the Federal budget. (this may happen sooner than 2050)
Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia formally known as California. Anglo minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia's third language, behind Spanish and Ebonics.
Global Freezing confirmed as a scientific fact.
Lesser Spotted Long Eared Owl plague threatens North Western United States crops and livestock.
Baby conceived naturally - scientists stumped.
Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.
Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iraq)/irafgan/Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Librans……….Babylonian .)
Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 100 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels. (what’s the half life of nothing?)
France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.
President Chelsea Clinton has banned all silicone due to leaching of ground water after burial. (the presertivetives we eat will inhibit natural decomp, smelly either way
George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2056.
U.S. postal service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to alternate Wednesdays.
85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.
Average weight of Americans below 250 lbs.
Japanese scientists create camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph an American politician with mouth shut.
Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.
High Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.
Average height of basket ball players now nine feet, seven inches.
All nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by end January.
Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing sex with congressman.
Oklahoma IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.
Florida voters having trouble with voting machines instituted mandatory relocation of all democrats to fema concentration camps for republicization.
……………………Kosmicdebris
summer reading, this stuff is the first thing i blogged on myspace back in 05.07
Universal truth, I had troubling spelling one time, spell checker just wasn't doin' it . Fifty words 9 mistakes, unacceptable..… So I changed my default language to English-great Britton and wrote a piece, the same piece, with zero errors. (I am finally finding time to really learn ms-word amazingly easy limit your focus thought, some times leading people away from truth for imagined empty options , blows my mind)
. Turns out I have been reading a lot of philosophy from proper English institutions alumni, I thought that must be it. But then I remembered I had also read some Shakespeare, merchant of Venice , couple others, some sonnets. Anyway, merchant is my favorite, I' ve read many times. I was doing some research about arguing a position . The Kosmic spin……… shush…. courts starting..
Portia shows up at legal proceedings, a men only deal , disguised manly, with the ridicules wig and gown of a barrister representing the defense of the beleaguered pound forfeiter, directly from his majesty a member of his personal bar . Tough spot to be in for the indigent royalty (hardly ever see those two words together indigent royalty)…………… until this man , being a kosher butcher select type deal……..calls for the marker post haste. ( would have paid a few dollars more for the, take it out of my ass clause, I've got a few other angles , inherent risk for one. ) However……… our broke protagonist and slim shylock got history and that may just exponentially limit his future reproductive opportunities, if the court so decree. The absolute worst spot any man could be in : whack his peepee, the gallery implored to deafening crescendos. When It was Portia’s turn to speak in his defense she did these things…………
As a officer of the court. Took total control of the courtroom…… stared down the bench, opposing counsel, then eyed the gallery into silence with just His presence alone, not once uttering a single word. And, as if every word she uttered belonged to the king . She spoke with authority commanding respect for her position in the profession. Insisted that procedure and protocol be followed precisely (puts the judge on record) she did her homework and gave the entire attending legal profession a tutorial in jurisprudence . The man was acquitted, his debts where forgiven and the accuser forfeited his house/estate to the defendant per damages. Man, you gotta love her. Other wise, shylock would have bestboy slave get the sharpest knife he could find, wouldn't want use a dull one and risk cruelty charges, and cut exactly 16 ounces of flesh from anywhere his master chooses from the living body of the defaulted barrower .
Bestboy turns out was English, some kind of queer socio-economic salve issue thing going on and couldn't ginsue the dude. (Another discussion another time) Illegal for slaves to kill owners or future owners, potential owners…….huh….hello………so the shyster has to do the slicing and dicing himself , no problem he says lets go. Just gotta love history…….seems back in the 16th century Venice Jews where not allowed to cut, puncture, scuff the bark off any crown subject under the united kingdoms watch……. about like today really…….. that's the argument. The kings rule no blood can be spilled, not one drop, when you cut him to get your pound of flesh, Jew. Because we see blood or a pennyweight extra you will be immediately led to the gallows( speedy trial, ah.. the good olde days).
Gallows 20 minutes on two…………..break. Unless you were fat, in which case Saturdays good, people like to watch hefty ones swing because their heads also pop off kindda' like a two for one special. Shylock, somewhat portly indeed. The loan shark decided that calling in the marker wasn't worth the risk, lost all ,but his breathe. …………good mouthpiece, good read, from three different points of view, but to get to second you must read again……and this caused a third read for the third view, I was surprised at what I missed the first time, and second,
masterwordsmithe3,
shakes….also is into , bunch of romantic dithering , gaudiness, crown kissing, mother raping, father stabbing of the period social study; but for people-issues, motives, (some say this is the real origin of the of Count of Cherokee county) the depth of his characters , raw passion ..all good timeless lessons. Universal truth.
……………………………Kosmicdebris
I guess politics importance grows with age. I seldom thought about state leadership when I was younger. Now I am concerned, like most, about decisions the president along with democrats and republicans make for me. One thing that concerns me is that when they have to start hiring image consultants to change public perception. The republicans were caught red handed with a television correspondent in the their pocket. My thinking is that if you are that worried about your image you must be hiding something, like lying about a lot of some things. The media is trying to focus our attention elsewhere, I don't care if Condoleezza rice has learned to piss standing-up to impress the Russians, but she better grow some nuts because the Arabs are after ours. Tom Delay was not some minor Washington vulture hiding behind his faith, he was at the top. Corruption does not start at the top, It just metastasizes there . I am always suspicious and curious by nature, I do not feel I am getting the best government we could have. Nobody really pays that much attention. The peoples business is for sale, ethics are optional, stone throwing and mud slinging encouraged. The people demand playing together for the greater good of all. Petty selfish agendas bring down great empires, history time and again says so. It is a shame that the latest senator to get thrown off the hill and out of the closet with his homosexual pants down could be bought with a boy.
That show already played in Rome. Its scary, what else don't we know? Cold war days, believe me, this would have been exploited and may have been sometime somewhere. I am inclined to believe leadership knew or should have known about this particular senator as well as any other anomaly about. Leadership needs to step down either way they were wrong. When pages started stepping forward as far back as 5 years, saying they did indeed tell, even ask for reassignment. Spell cover-up, ignore, never happened. Things need to change votes do count. ……………………………….............Kosmicdebris
POW/MIA
Category: Blogging
I want to tell some of my army stories but feel I need to discuss why I joined, what schools and training I had. Growing up in the 60s ww2 was still fresh in everyone's psyche and only then beginning to realize 'what just happened 20 just before, and spawned a new generation of realistic war epics plastered on the tube, at the movies, in print, everywhere. Conventional combat, intelligence gathering(spy), airborne gorilla, air, support/defense,…….navel engagements and on and on lots of stuff, these where the soil for fertile minds to plow, available at the time. All of my childhood TV shows like combat and rat patrol , had to do with fighting and guns, war, death . Killing was all we had and we liked it . Westerns same way paladin, erp bros, rifleman . I didn't want a damn G.I. Joe doll!!. I wanted to be the f'n b, sob.
Let me at them, ill get them bastards for treading on me, the som'bitche's. (what's treading mean?). Viet nam was my generations first reality tv show, and they picked you by lottery to join the show survivor 68 nam, most of those guys didn't want to be there but I did. The draft ended in 1974, I believe. (a/t). I could not get to the fight fast enough. I tried to lie when I was 15 to get in. Both my cousins, my uncles boys. they had no no choice and I aint no better.. And I wanted to be just like them and our dads, grandpa type man, role models. I bet the recruiters got a chuckle. I told them in the civil war 12 years; 14 year olds were used in tight spaces for special operations. You guys need me. Exact words "we got grown dinks shorter than you, kid' There went my opportunity to be a tunnel rat. Three months after my 17 birth day I enlisted in the army. Today I look at it like, my junior year I quit the team sr76, after I was drafted by the pros. The army told me I had to be a truck driver after I was in but not on active duty yet.. But I want to shoot big guns and blow-up shit and camp out a lot, ( I want to kill, I want to kill, blood and gutz and veins in my teeth I want to kill). Said I had to be a high school grad. to do the fun stuff, however you can take a test ,a ged test, and if you pass you can pick anything and we will even give you a cash bonus, paid on completion of tanning. I may puff here. Ninth grade was the highest grade I had finished successfully, school was boring, the only thing I learned useful in H S was how to key board on a clanky Royal manual type-writer.( thanks, Mrs. Mary L, Gately)
I took the test and I passed. Today I see all the pressure, then I couldn't. I got my bonus, scored so high that I got to choose any specialty in combat arms. I chose to be an advanced infantry scout…. They got to do every thing , we were called 11deltas, I chose ft hood as my duty station. The First Cavalry Division w/the Black-jack Brigade was re-deployed after Nam. My training experiences could fill a book easily. To get in, you have to earn and the best way is to qualify high in critical areas of training. Specialized weapons systems, small arms, tactics, map-reading/ navigation, proper placement, detection, disarming of high explosives; crowd control both foreign on both sovereign land, lighting decisions maske social change fast, mine(d)s, that's what I learned in High School. That's me I am all in. after basic training, everone was packing up to go., the guys in the guard were going home, the rest to their respective military occupational schools, some to artillery school at ft sill, some to tank school in Kentucky, others airborne at benning Ga, my buddy from NY was going to fort drum for signal school. We were at fort Polk, La. I moved two blocks down the street for another more intense survival round of jungle/swamp trial by fire. I earned all my physical and weapons qualifications, nomenclature is too wordy but I qualified with a variety muzzle bores, 5.56 m-16,7.62-m60 machine gun and riffle, 50 caliber and bar, mortars 60 mm; 81mm, 4.2 inch. 155mm rifle recoilless and breach load, Wire guided TOW tank offensive weapen, m72 LAW light anti-tank weapen , m 203; m72 grenade launchers, redeye heat-seeking surface to air missiles. Along with my blue infantry rope and baby blue scarf and brass aura, I am ready kill . Expert infantry-man badge was next. All I Needed was to get in the scout platoon of the blackjack brigade so I could do all that out of a chopper when they needed the first cavalry divisions elite. The First squadron of President Fords Ninth cavalry. Air mobile, not airborne, I didn't want to jump out of plains the risk/benefit, to me, was unacceptable, that I might get shot down/ in the air for me, my fear was that I wouldn't make it to the fight.
I made it . I was a scout in the United States cavalry. I was in Charley Troop 1/9cav. I should have made my goals a little loftier. I achieved my life-long goal , at that time, by the time I was eighteen. We used to smoke off landing zones, drop high explosives to flatten the ground cover like crop circles, put smoke down they could take off and land and strike, stuff like that. On the ground, a then modern cavalry platoon had 3 Sheridan tanks that where armed with shelieghli missiles, and main gun the fired 155 shells, I think, the t c had a 50 cal., a crew of 3, I went on a mission in a tank "once" once and never set foot inside one again. A 4.2 in. mortar armored personal carrier crew of five. Love this gun dearly. Another apc with a a crew of 11 infantry strikers . We had five jeep ¼ ton, utility, all of these my toys to play with. In in my dress blues, as a private, I got respect from officers that never would that 17 year old long-haired flower child , just one year before, because of uniform decorations. Was not used to that. Every infantry soldier remembers turning blue, sets you apart in someway, changes you, when you realize responsibility for this body of knowledge and the business of killing. Military call it indoctrination, a rite of passage. My favorite show when I was a kid was kung-fu and the opening Cain faced all the trials of becoming a master. I was crushed when I found David caradine was an asshole and all the Chinese wisdom was bullshit. One thing just 5 years before I watched the first cav on cbs news and general Westmorland in Viet nam and I wanted to be there, for me it wasn't lack of trying. Congress closed the book on Viet nam may 5 , 1975 . I started active duty may 4, I am a Viet nam veteran by I day. Then Carter got elected and canceled all our playdates. Grounded us. This became our creed
...............'We, the willing, led by unknowning............... are doing the impossible for the ungreatful....we have worked so hard, for so long, with so little.............. we can now do anything with nothing.
..................................................................kosmicdebris
But You Didnt
Category: Blogging
Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and returned with a cigar burn in the seat.?
Thought you would kill me, but you didn't .
And remember when you dragged me to the out door flea market in search of a rare poster of Blacky.*
You said it wouldn't rain, but it did. I had fun.
You thought I would say 'I told you so,' but I didn't .
You remember the time I flirted with all your girlfriends at your slumber party?
Your were mad enough to blow a cerebral artery, but you didn't.
Do you remember the time I spilled strawberry soda on your velvet sofa to show you that sometimes red and yellow don't make green?
I thought it would come out, but it didn't.
Remember when you took me to an all day concert and I took car keys and wouldn't give them back until you pass my field sobriety test?
You said you would never speak to me again and that you really meant it this time, but you didn't .
Do you recall me relieving you of a 22cal. pistol and why.
You said you were leaving and nothing I could do to stop you. So I didn't.
Yes Tammy Jean there are lot of things you didn't do .
But you put up with me and you loved me, and you protected me. There were lots of things I was going to make up to you when you got back from Florida……………………..but you didn't.
…………………..Kosmicdebris………………………………......
*blacky was john stamos persona on general hospital
She gave me a St. Christopher medallion necklace May 1, 1975, when I left for the army at17. Said the saint was just a loner, to take care of it and the wants it back later. She knew I wanted the necklace and likely she'd never see Chris again. I had harassed her ever since she got it from St Vincent's boarding school for boy- crazy tweens. Three years worth of brother bother equity built-up. I didn't know about saints, much less this one. I was all about cool, I got me a wizard necklace. I took that thing and just fixed to my dog-tags and together we saw the world. The places ole Chris and me went . Safe to say, literally around the globe by the time I was 21. Over the years Chris has witnessed more important events in my life than myself, eventually the top wore away and in my pocket for awhile till good and polished . Was going to drill a hole in him once, but didn't know how God would react . Finally Chris ended up in a shoebox and forgotten for twenty -five years . Found again and professionally repaired and back around my neck a couple years. St. Chris gave me a sense of serenity and security……a binky Just knowing
That at least one would cry at my funeral…I gave Chris back to Tammy, not long ago, as I cried at hers.
………………………Kosmicdebris
ethnocentrism
Joseph Campbell the coolest dude, a scholar and authority on ancient, primitive mythology , he literally wrote the book(s) whole body of knowledge on the subject, he is a very interesting man. If he were here today, he would probably say ………nothing because he is, by this time, in an absolute putrid mass of decay, somewhere. Joe, However he left us words, words of ancient cultures social order , how they lived and what motivated them. He was a scientist first, but I believe, a very spiritual man. I learned the term ethnocentrism from this one, well, not the term as much as the concept by listening to this man. Judging another culture based on the judge's own standard of perfection and subjective environmental imprints. Objectivity, he taught me, was the prime directive………. That my minds eye is separate from my personal feelings, I center self and then go look at others as if I was one of them. The test of a first -rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. ( Now I think I really learned that in the army to maintain my personal skin integrity, either reload, retreat, or repent.) Joseph Campbell knew more about what man believes and why, than any one Theology or philosopher stuck on just one idea. Every God and mans relationship with creation. Joe told from a scientific point of view, recreate in simple terms………………….that would captivate your spirit forcing self examination . He built a bridge between science and metaphysics, translates: supernatural possibilities . Jung once said man created religion as a roadblock to true spirituality. All belief systems search for the source, successful ones share more. In the life of the traditional Cherokee there is only one inevitable duty--the duty for prayer ---the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal . He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, since all days are Gods. I resist the urge to preach here, I will say, I just wonder what the Cherokee thought when colonist tore down his place of worship, to make their own church? I think I already know To the Lakota Sioux the black hills are holy, just as sacred as the Vatican or Solomon's temple to judiao-Christians . To go and blast president faces in on one side of a holy place, was like putting a sixty foot fat Buddha in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church, to them and me, that's ethnocentrism.
………………………………................................Kosmicdebris
words
Category: Blogging
Words are free. Words, I do not own any word. But when I speak, those words are mine. When I write, mine. I do not to like using name/labels on others……… dubbed, dunked or dominated . Label me, you negate me…said soren kierkegaard ( soren got a cool name I don' no how to put those two dots above the Es and slash the Os ) ……….. I do not cite, by name, the origin, the man, because I want to focus on ……"the message not the media"……….. who said that? A source close to the whiTe house, maybe? . Buddha? via dahli - lahma? Krishna via Vishnu? God via Jesus? Allah via Mohammad , L ron Hubbard via Tom Cruse ? Bill o whiney via Fox, who? (God, I symbolize only as O, I call my source sometimes, my concept of O is just too big to disrespect with just three letters, O is no name every name, another discussion/time I got some rants) Someone mistook menu for message……. Confucius , Buddha.? Krishna got extra arms, comes in handy when you also got the Kama Sutra…………I am a flower child, my core values are of tolerance. I do not steal these words, I have previously cited Malcolm x . some would, if honest, dismiss the quote had they known ," if you don't stand for something, You will fall for anything" riot inciter, was his All ,words spoken ………..scribed words belong to every one. This is the device 'O" gave us to bridge thought into action, action through symbols, symbols into reality . However I assembled /disassembled words may or may not be original but I hope sincere. I don't know how to spell , names are most tricky . Puffery and name dropping is another reason I do not cite sources. All paths, Bible, ..Joyce, Milton, Blake, bhaggavhad ghita & other eastern divinities, Siggy Freud said………..Words are majik ……….and one time the same……………Yeah, him and ever skewered priest and crisp witch between here and the equator . I have a good argument for original thought. I do not think there is any , everything that is said/written/ thought/can think /was and will/ now and later/ has all ready been done . Why ?…… Our Source said' in the Beginning there was the Word And the word was made flesh …..and seems pissed at the Jews, cut them off Jesus , pork, and foreskin. Oh , and the Nazi-method of birth control. Me and the Jewish are good, but the Source……….. Implications of an end exaggerated but eminent. ……. so……. got the spiritual pov issue out, on to matters of state…………The first amendment guarantees the right to free speech . The internet is scrubbed using flag- word combinations , what if I mistype a word?……. ali hawk alu- gi perhaps? Are The 'thought-police/homeland security' ready to urgently scramble a team of laptops eager to control a beehive of drone model air-plane probes, to probe my probe? Armed w/sidewinders wtf?, I could go on. Orwell and his big brother was more right than wrong, there is a camera everywhere in the name of security. Compulsory video indoctrination is labeled entertainment and submission voluntary. Slow subliminal brainwashing. Sun Tzu would be proud…….. Most work places have the spy equipment , both known and unknown to see everything articulated remotely. Orwell talks about 'new-speak' ………. today we just call it "politically correct". Many more , too many government intrusions for my comfort level. 1984, I am afraid , was just a primer for what's really going to happen . I take from the banquet of humanity my muse al a carte'. So who said, the media is the message or vise versa? My pal from the revolution days Abby Houffman circa 68.……steal this book pages 1-84.….. Bibliographies take up too much space, I do not want to be selfish and claim ownership of words, but I will shamelessly commandeer words to fit my utility . Now who said…………Life is a buffet and most damn people are starving to death?
……………………………….........Kosmicdebris
indigent royalty (episode II )
Friday, June 29, 2012
espos'e the folly
Over the course of our adult lives:
We watched in shock and horror as
the country turned to a Hollywood washout, who was literally a national
joke candidate five years earlier, and made him president, following him
down every path of joyful self-destruction and absurd deceit.
Our jaws dropped in the 1990s at
the visage of New Gingrich, the most overtly petulant and destructive
piece of self-loathing to ever occupy a human body, as he was elevated
to the highest position in the United States Congress, and pioneered the
basest politics and the shattering of our government that remains our
inheritance today. As if that weren’t shameful enough, at the same time
Gingrich’s buddy down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue was
destroying the meaning of the Democratic Party, aping the Republican
sell-out to corporate thieves and the abandonment of the public interest
– especially the poor, the first to be thrown under the bus.
And, despite the fact Bill Clinton
deserves to rot in hell for the damage he did in exchange for his
personal joyride in the White House, we were nevertheless forced to
watch in horror the relentless and destructive lunacy of the president’s
impeachment for the high crime of lying about a blow-job.
We had to endure the travesty of
Bush versus Gore, one of the most egregious tramplings of democratic
practice imaginable, then watch the sickening product of that judicial
rape: the swaggering wars based on lies, the torture, the doubling of
the national debt, the environmental depredations, the economic
melt-down, and the raison-d’etre for it all: the radical shifting of
wealth from the 300 million of us to the one-tenth of one percent who
own everything in sight.
Perhaps most emotionally
devastating of all – Et tu, Brute? – we’ve suffered the betrayal these
last years of another Democratic sell-out, a supposedly
liberal-if-not-socialist president actually so conservative and so
sold-out that he couldn’t even bear to pursue his own personal interest
sufficiently to produce a successful presidency, but has rather
continued and amplified the worst characteristics of the open sore that
was the Bush presidency, even in the midst of crisis opportunities not
seen since the 1930s.
So, no, by this time, my heart was
not really broken when my former home-state, Wisconsin, voted
emphatically to commit suicide this week. But only because there’s so
little of that heart left to break. Shards here and there were crushed
and extinguished, to be sure, but I am becoming rapidly beyond caring
about the country I live in, a place and a people so determined to get
it wrong at every juncture imaginable. At some point, don’t you just
have to stop trying and let the substance-abuser finish the job on their
own?
This country is dying, let’s be
clear. It may live yet. It may survive for decades in slow decline.
It may find a way in utter crisis to throw off, before it is too late,
the fat slimy boa which is squeezing every last cent of value out of it.
Its political class may invent a devastating foreign crisis with
massively grim consequences in order to deflect public attention from
its manifest failings. Maybe it will even be some combination of all of
the above.
Who knows? What we can be sure
of, however, is that what was once a great and promising idea as much as
a nation is now decrepit to the core, and rapidly rotting away, and
that these wounds are entirely self-inflicted. That, for me, is the
kicker. The Soviets didn’t invade and take us over. We didn’t succumb
to some raging virus like the Black Plague. A meteor didn’t blast a
hole in the middle of North America.
We just killed the goose ourselves, through a toxic mix of greed, laziness and stupidity.
Imagine the conversation to be
heard if nations like America were to go to the Pearly Gates when they
die, seeking forgiveness, and anxiously awaiting their dispensation for
the rest of eternity:
St. Peter: So, the Big Guy wants to know what the hell (get it?) you’re doing here.
America: Um, well, we’re dead.
Peter: Yeah, we get that. Even
if we did create the Catholic Church, we’re not complete idiots up here,
you know. What he means is, how did a country like you, with all the
tremendous advantages you were given, wind up so dead, so fast?
America: Well, uh, we made some bad choices, I guess.
Peter: Do you mean like when you traded George McGovern for Karl Rove, for example?
America: Well, I suppose. But McGovern...
Peter: Shut up, you insolent
little turd. Do you mean like when you traded Franklin Roosevelt for
Barack Obama or George Bush – sorry, I always get those two confused –
is that what you mean?
America: Yeah, that was prolly not the smartest deal.
Peter: Or could it be when you swapped the First Amendment to get Citizens United instead?
America: Golly, you mean corporations really aren’t people, after all?
Peter: It’s really not looking too good for you lot, I’m afraid.
America: Listen, do you have to
go to Hell for just being stupid, or is something worse like wholesale
venality or mass murder required?
Peter: Dude, you’re America! Isn’t that question kinda moot?
America: What does moot mean? And what happened to the pearls that are supposed to be on the gates?
Peter: Koch Brothers got ‘em.
America: Really?!
Peter: Jesus Christ, you’re dumb.
Maybe an exception could be made for you, come to think of it. After
all, we don’t send microbes or amoeba to Hell either, even when they’re
very bad.
America: Oh, thank you, Mr. Peter. You’re very kind. Say, where do we sign-up for our choice of cable packages?
Thursday, June 28, 2012
>>,,,,,somebody coment...i mean judjement
realy? you may have already met Jesus and failed to recognize opportunity. wake the fuck up...............................keep fighting the good fight, with a sober mind!!............as another weapon.
.........kosmicdebris..................
Unjust Antonin Scalia
Time for Congress to Impeach Justice Antonin Scalia
After today's historic decision by the chief justice John Roberts...... the people are watching!!
I suppose, when you think you're untouchable... means above the law...equates People do not matter, only power .Find out who the folks making the decisions for us stand whatever the political party: Man or Mammon
Now is time to push for article V while the momentum is shifting, break the gridlock that the majority demands..............score one for the social justice lobby today. We got them running, let's keep up pressure!!
...
........................keep fighting the good fight, with rational minds as weapons!!
I've said this before, the robes these judges wear should have patches on them like NASCAR drivers. But instead of 'Goodyear' or 'Pennzoil' emblems, their's would be 'Bank of America' and 'CitiBank'. Plus big soft drink and fast food chain banners should be hung from the ceiling inside the Supreme Court. A joke they are, but not very funny.
.................................kosmicdebris.........................................
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Tesla the Yugo dynamo
Two of the greatest geeks that ever lived! And while you are at it, research Wilhelm Reich below, both he and Nikoli are still the most censored men on the planet!
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
renewable energy has been around for some time now.......just not profitable for the status quo....qua pasa?
This has caused psychological,social,spiritual paralysis on a global scale.........keep fighting the good fight, with these in your minds as weapons!! this info will be redacted sooner or lator...remember the names and the ideas of these men, who chose humanity over money. Spread it, share it, if you try and sell it they will come for you. Like the native indigenous say: When all the trees are chopped down, all the fish caught, all fresh water polluted.They will realize they cannot eat green paper wealth.
.....kosmicdebris.........................
Genetically Modified Grass Kills
Cattle By Producing Warfare Chemical Cyanide: Shockingly (and quite
disturbingly), the GM grass actually produced toxic cyanide and sent the cattle
into a life-ending fit that included painful bellowing and convulsions. The
deaths have led to a federal investigation centered in Central Texas, where the
cattle had resided. http://is.gd/uSPxnr
Glad I tested vegin-ism, not that bad, most all our food has been GM.......for decades now. Just leave beer alone! been surviving on the bubbly. Crap, that means i cannot even eat my neighbors...........mom always told me...........THEY can kill you . but they can't eat you......think she was right!!
.........................................fight the good fight, with your minds as weapons!!............
..............kosmicdebris...........
http://storyofstuff.com/Monday, June 25, 2012
Attack Iran Before the U.S. Elections in November
"Netanyahu has Decided to Attack Iran Before the U.S. Elections in November"
By Michael
Carmichael
Netanyahu's agenda is much broader than
knocking out Iranian nuclear installations for his aim is to reshape the
political landscape in the USA and Israel shifting everything to the far, far
right in order to create a new comfort zone for religious fundamentalists.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31695.htm
I have a template!, this i posted five years ago, just change some of the names of the key players and most intelligent folks can see where I am coming from......... bush, Obama (insert the power elite here) who the fuck ever the puppet/cowards is at this time...shit going down now....I have already been trained to treat the lost post war........... if any are left, remember war decides NOTHING, not who is right, only who is left. The elite are going down by their own hands. I would snicker, however, I do have a dog in this fight, a bloody grudge, 300 years in the making. As karma works towards social justice, those few will suffer, not by my hand , but the universes time of infinite justice.
Framing the issues…. The 'particulate matters'. I know how this guy feels, every segment of society is crying out for justice, we had no one watching the watchman…..the free press. That is why as an American citizen I will take responsibility and frame the issues while I still can. Everything I write personally is free, not for profit personal perspective that belongs to me until I share it and once I share it, it belongs to everyone, past, present, future. Steal my stuff…..please so that my soul may shine greatly for God‘s children. The roman senate has lost touch with us plebs, boycotts worked then, will still work now. We are running up against limits, environmental and natural resource limits, intolerance and schadenfreude of the elite.
I had money bet I could predict the next time Ben laden spoke before he did. I won today. It is not prophecy, maybe someone trying to insult my intelligence and assault my senses with stupidity, how many deaths has a sunroof latch caused in Pakistan still attached to the vehicle last year? Right…. got cha, seems the ‘institute of faulty latches’ has confirmed the latch injuries are rare still attached to the vehicle, flying projectile lever deaths unknown, and underreported. Anytime someone creditable new and alive steps up saying ben laden is dead. I timed it right today……six hours. The Whitehouse press corps was told to go to lunch early this morning and when you get back we will have something new to deny for you this afternoon.
Tah-dah…ben laden speaks. The Neocons are looking mighty foolish, if even I can figure it out. Come on really, I lost twenty percent of my brain cells back in the eighties, dude and I know?
You’re Damn Right I’m Angry. Why Isn’t Everybody? By David Michael Green, green says if you are not outraged you are not paying attention.
12/29/07.…..I write articles each week with titles like “Everything I Need to Know About the Regressive Right I Learned In Junior High“, or “Conservatism Is Politics For Kindergartners“, or “Schadenfreude Is My Middle Name“.
I regret doing so very much. Believe it or not, I really don’t like spewing venom, sarcasm and rage all over my computer keyboard.
I particularly don’t like it because I have friends who are conservative, and it’s not my nature to trash-talk anybody, let alone friends.
Indeed, none of this is in my nature. I don’t start fights and I don’t go looking for them. I’m not an angry, bitter or mean-spirited person. But I can understand how I might be seen as such in the absence of the appropriate context, and it truly chagrins me that I might be so misperceived, and so negatively.
But I don’t intend to change, and I don’t intend to stop making the arguments contained in my rants. I’m angry for a very good set of reasons, and I’m angry because I care about my country just the way conservatives claim to. I’m angry, in short, because I’m a patriot and defender of the ideas that America is supposed to stand for. And what I really want to know is why those on the right aren’t equally outraged?
I was a teenager when Nixon was being Nixon, destroying democracy at home, napalming civilians in Vietnam, conducting secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, employing racism to win elections. At that age I knew enough to dislike what I saw (and what I learned of what Nixon and McCarthy had done to innocent Americans even earlier, before I was born, in order to serve their political ambitions), but I didn’t know enough yet to feel genuine rage at what regressives were doing to my country and to the world.
I began to experience those feelings in my twenties, first as truly sociopathically insane gun laws in this country helped to claim the life of John Lennon, and then as Ronald Reagan began to systematically turn his back on the poor and the middle-class in order to further enrich the country’s already wealthy economic elites. I also felt deep shame and outrage that America - the country that had supported if not literally created every two-bit dictator in Latin America, ‘our backyard’, (and well beyond) for a century - began to murder Nicaraguan peasants in order to halt their struggle to free themselves from the economic and political tyranny of one of those Washington-run caudillo clients, the sickening Somoza regime.
Then I watched in disgust as Newt Gingrich and his merry band of infantile hypocrites impeached a president for lying about a consensual sexual affair, while they were themselves all doing worse, like dumping a wife while she was lying in her hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery, or fathering children with a mistress, or carrying on many years-long affairs.
All of this was truly noxious. Nothing to that point had prepared me, however, for the regressive politics of our time. And they have turned me very angry indeed.
Regressives like to call people like me Bush-haters, and so it is important to address that claim before proceeding, because the entire intent of hurling that label at the president’s critics is to undermine their credibility. If you simply hate the man, they imply, you’re not rational, and your critiques can be dismissed. But it isn’t that simple - not by a long shot. First, it should be noted that the regressive right is far wider a phenomenon than just one person. It currently includes an entire executive branch administration, almost (and, just a year ago, more than) half of Congress, a majority of the Supreme Court and probably a majority of the lower federal courts, a biased-to-the-point-of-being-a-joke mainstream media, and tons of lobbyists, think tanks and profitable industries.
But as to George W. Bush, himself, I suspect it’s quite fair to say that most Americans and even most progressives did not originally despise or loathe him. I didn’t. I certainly didn’t admire the guy, nor did I think he was remotely prepared to be president of the United States. (Nor, by the way, was I particularly impressed with Al Gore in 2000.) Bush campaigned as a center-right pragmatist (a “compassionate conservative”, in his words), much as his father had been, and I expected that’s how he would govern if elected. You know, more embarrassing most of the time than truly destructive.
I mention all this because it is important to note what has - and what has not - been responsible for my/our anger, and to make clear that attempts to dismiss that anger as some Bush-hating bias or predisposition are false, a ploy to destroy the messenger when one doesn’t care for the message he’s carrying. If Bush had governed like he campaigned I’m sure I would have disliked him, but neither hated him nor his policies, nor experienced the rage that I feel about what he’s done to the country and the world. Frankly, my feelings toward another center-right Bush presidency would have likely been largely the same as my feelings toward the center-right Clinton presidency which preceded it.
But he hasn’t governed anywhere near to how he campaigned, and he wasn’t even elected properly, and I do in fact feel huge anger at the damage done. Moreover, I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone - even conservatives - could feel differently. Even the wealthy, to whose interests this presidency is so wholly devoted, have to sleep at night. Even they have children who will inherit a broken country existing in an environmentally and politically hostile world, though no doubt they figure that big enough fences, mean enough private armies, and loads of central air conditioning will insulate them from the damage.
I don’t mind that the Bush campaign fought hard to win the 2000 election. That was certainly a legitimate goal for them to pursue. But it nauseates me beyond belief that their agents in the Florida government disenfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans in order to keep them from voting Democratic. And it sickens me that they gathered up a bunch of congressional staffers pretending to be an angry local mob and stormed election canvassers, using pure Gestapo techniques to shut down the most fundamental act of democracy, counting the votes.
I don’t mind that the Bush campaign took the election to the Supreme Court, even though they were simultaneously accusing the Gore folks of being litigious. What disgusts me beyond words is that a regressive majority of the Court anointed Bush president in a sheer act of partisan politics. And that they were so anxious to achieve that end that they repudiated all their own judicial politics previously espoused in case after case - from states’ rights, to equal protection, to judicial restraint. And that they were so conscious of what they were actually doing that they took the unprecedented step of stating that no lasting principles were involved in the matter, that their decision would forever apply to this case and this case only.
Once in office, there was still the possibility that the administration would govern as it had campaigned, as a rather centrist, status quo-style government, perhaps especially tempered from arrogance and overstretch by the knowledge that the country was deeply divided and that Bush had in fact actually lost the popular vote. In fact, though, they did precisely the opposite.
The first order of business, certainly the top priority for the administration, and arguably the only thing they were ever completely seriously about, was their tax restructuring program. It was grim enough that the tax cuts, as under Reagan, where dramatically tilted in favor of the wealthy. But what made them especially disgusting was that - again, as under Reagan - these wholesale revenue reductions were not only not accompanied by expenditure cuts, but in fact were coupled with increased spending. Can you say “voodoo economics”? Bush’s father once had, before he treasonously changed his tune to win the vice presidency (leading to the presidency) for himself. But he was right the first time, before he put personal ambition and transparent insecurity ahead of the national interest. And thus we’ve witnessed the only possible result of the combination of massive revenue cuts and continuing spending increases: astronomical debt, now well over nine trillion dollars in total, and rapidly growing. What I want to know is how can we - especially so-called family-oriented, so-called fiscal conservatives - not be outraged, not be scandalized, not be boiling with anger at the debt we have transferred to our own children, all so that we could avoid paying our own way, like every generation before us has?
I am outraged as well at how the administration polarized the country in the wake of one of the greatest traumas it had ever experienced. Let us leave aside the ample evidence demonstrating that the Bush team was asleep at the wheel before 9/11 - or perhaps far, far worse - a set of facts which is noteworthy in part because progressives did not use them to attack the president and score cheap but easy political points. But the administration did precisely that. It is disgusting - and it fills me with anger - how they used a national security crisis to win partisan political contests. How they scheduled a vote on the Iraq war resolution right before the midterm elections of 2002, thus politicizing the gravest decision a country can make by forcing Democrats to choose between voting their conscience and campaign accusations of being soft on national security.
It boils my blood that these chickenhawks - almost none of whom showed up for duty in Vietnam when it was their turn - could dare to accuse Max Cleland of being weak on national security, a guy who gave three of his four limbs to that very cause on the battlefields of Southeast Asia. How could they run ads morphing his face into Saddam’s or bin Laden’s, when his opponent - of course - took Vietnam deferments, just like Cheney and Ashcroft and the rest? And how could they accuse him of being weak on national defense because he opposed the bureaucratic reshuffling to create the Homeland Security Department, when Bush himself had also opposed it? That is, before Rove politicized it by inserting union-busting language applying to tens of thousands of civil servants covered by the act.
It nauseates me beyond words that this president could use the tragedy of 9/11 to justify invading a country which had nothing to do with that attack whatsoever. It enrages me that those who had the courage to oppose this policy so transparently deceitful (and it truly was - from the proof of the Downing Street Memos, to Colin Powell’s charade at the UN, to the assurances that the US knew where the WMD were, to the rejection of the weapons inspectors’ request to have two more months to finish the job) were labeled as traitors and worse for telling the truth. And that 4,000 Americans and over a million Iraqis have died for these lies.
And speaking of treason, what sort of looking glass have we all fallen through when the government of the United States exposes its own CIA undercover agent in order to punish her spouse for revealing administration lies about the war? When did that cease to be a cause of outrage, especially among our super-patriotic friends on the right?
How is it possible not to be angry looking at the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the bungled response of the government before, during and after that tragedy? Indeed, even journalists who had spent so many years licking government boots that their tongues had long ago turned black were moved to outrage at the magnitude of that failure, with the president meanwhile on a stage in San Diego pretending to play guitar at a Republican fundraiser.
I am outraged, as well, by one of the most insane and avoidable tragedies of all human history, the slow-motion holocaust of global warming. How can anyone not be angry at a political movement and a government that puts the short-term profits of one or two industries ahead of the viability of the entire planet? How can anyone not be mortified as we one-twentieth of the world’s population, who generate one-fourth of the greenhouse gases causing the problem, not only do nothing about the problem, but actively block the rest of the world from saving all of us from this folly?
I’m furious because the Bush administration and its ideological allies have shredded the Constitution at every turn, destroying the institutional gift of those they pretend to revere (but only when it’s convenient to upholding their own depredations). This president, who has gotten virtually everything he has ever wanted throughout his life and his presidency, once privately exclaimed in frustration at not getting something he wanted when he wanted it, “It’s just a dam piece of paper!”, and that is precisely how he has treated America’s founding document. His signing statements - probably over a thousand in count now - completely obliterate the checks and balances principle of the Constitution, its most central idea. His admitted spying on Americans without warrant smashes the Fourth Amendment. His fiasco in Guantánamo and beyond mocks due process and habeas corpus guarantees. His invasion of Iraq against the international law codified in the UN Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, violates the Constitutional requirement to hold such treaties as the highest law of the land. Altogether, Americans have never seen a presidency with such imperial ambitions, and anyone who cares about the Constitution should be furious. A year from now, it is quite possible that Hillary Clinton will be president of the United States (ugh). Would our conservative friends silently countenance, let alone viciously support, such a monarchy in the White House if it belonged to Queen Hillary rather than King George? I think not.
We could go on and on from here. This administration and the movement it fronts at least gets high marks for consistency. Everything they touch turns to stone. There’s Pat Tillman and Terri Schiavo. There’s the politicization of the US Attorneys and the corruption of DeLay and Abramoff. There’s North Korea, Pakistan and the Middle East. There’s the shame of torture and rendition. There’s the wrecking of the American military and of the country’s reputation abroad. There’s Afghanistan and the failure to capture bin Laden. And much, much more. But above all, and driving all, there’s the kleptocracy - the doing of everything in every way to facilitate the looting of the national fisc.
What an unbelievable record of deceit, destruction, hypocrisy, incompetence, treason and greed. What a tragic tale of debt, lost wars, stolen elections, environmental crises, Constitution shredding, national shame and diminished security.
All done by the very most pious amongst us, of course. Merry Christmas, eh? I guess those are our presents, all carefully wrapped in spin, contempt, and preemptive attacks on any of us impertinent enough to say “No thanks, Santa”.
So, yeah, you’re dam right I’m angry about what’s been done to my country, and what’s been done by my country in my name.
How could anyone who claims to care about America not be?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net
.......................we will always fight the good fight, with rational minds as weapons..............lovingly to life..............kosmicdebris.................
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31695.htm
I have a template!, this i posted five years ago, just change some of the names of the key players and most intelligent folks can see where I am coming from......... bush, Obama (insert the power elite here) who the fuck ever the puppet/cowards is at this time...shit going down now....I have already been trained to treat the lost post war........... if any are left, remember war decides NOTHING, not who is right, only who is left. The elite are going down by their own hands. I would snicker, however, I do have a dog in this fight, a bloody grudge, 300 years in the making. As karma works towards social justice, those few will suffer, not by my hand , but the universes time of infinite justice.
Framing the issues…. The 'particulate matters'. I know how this guy feels, every segment of society is crying out for justice, we had no one watching the watchman…..the free press. That is why as an American citizen I will take responsibility and frame the issues while I still can. Everything I write personally is free, not for profit personal perspective that belongs to me until I share it and once I share it, it belongs to everyone, past, present, future. Steal my stuff…..please so that my soul may shine greatly for God‘s children. The roman senate has lost touch with us plebs, boycotts worked then, will still work now. We are running up against limits, environmental and natural resource limits, intolerance and schadenfreude of the elite.
I had money bet I could predict the next time Ben laden spoke before he did. I won today. It is not prophecy, maybe someone trying to insult my intelligence and assault my senses with stupidity, how many deaths has a sunroof latch caused in Pakistan still attached to the vehicle last year? Right…. got cha, seems the ‘institute of faulty latches’ has confirmed the latch injuries are rare still attached to the vehicle, flying projectile lever deaths unknown, and underreported. Anytime someone creditable new and alive steps up saying ben laden is dead. I timed it right today……six hours. The Whitehouse press corps was told to go to lunch early this morning and when you get back we will have something new to deny for you this afternoon.
Tah-dah…ben laden speaks. The Neocons are looking mighty foolish, if even I can figure it out. Come on really, I lost twenty percent of my brain cells back in the eighties, dude and I know?
You’re Damn Right I’m Angry. Why Isn’t Everybody? By David Michael Green, green says if you are not outraged you are not paying attention.
12/29/07.…..I write articles each week with titles like “Everything I Need to Know About the Regressive Right I Learned In Junior High“, or “Conservatism Is Politics For Kindergartners“, or “Schadenfreude Is My Middle Name“.
I regret doing so very much. Believe it or not, I really don’t like spewing venom, sarcasm and rage all over my computer keyboard.
I particularly don’t like it because I have friends who are conservative, and it’s not my nature to trash-talk anybody, let alone friends.
Indeed, none of this is in my nature. I don’t start fights and I don’t go looking for them. I’m not an angry, bitter or mean-spirited person. But I can understand how I might be seen as such in the absence of the appropriate context, and it truly chagrins me that I might be so misperceived, and so negatively.
But I don’t intend to change, and I don’t intend to stop making the arguments contained in my rants. I’m angry for a very good set of reasons, and I’m angry because I care about my country just the way conservatives claim to. I’m angry, in short, because I’m a patriot and defender of the ideas that America is supposed to stand for. And what I really want to know is why those on the right aren’t equally outraged?
I was a teenager when Nixon was being Nixon, destroying democracy at home, napalming civilians in Vietnam, conducting secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, employing racism to win elections. At that age I knew enough to dislike what I saw (and what I learned of what Nixon and McCarthy had done to innocent Americans even earlier, before I was born, in order to serve their political ambitions), but I didn’t know enough yet to feel genuine rage at what regressives were doing to my country and to the world.
I began to experience those feelings in my twenties, first as truly sociopathically insane gun laws in this country helped to claim the life of John Lennon, and then as Ronald Reagan began to systematically turn his back on the poor and the middle-class in order to further enrich the country’s already wealthy economic elites. I also felt deep shame and outrage that America - the country that had supported if not literally created every two-bit dictator in Latin America, ‘our backyard’, (and well beyond) for a century - began to murder Nicaraguan peasants in order to halt their struggle to free themselves from the economic and political tyranny of one of those Washington-run caudillo clients, the sickening Somoza regime.
Then I watched in disgust as Newt Gingrich and his merry band of infantile hypocrites impeached a president for lying about a consensual sexual affair, while they were themselves all doing worse, like dumping a wife while she was lying in her hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery, or fathering children with a mistress, or carrying on many years-long affairs.
All of this was truly noxious. Nothing to that point had prepared me, however, for the regressive politics of our time. And they have turned me very angry indeed.
Regressives like to call people like me Bush-haters, and so it is important to address that claim before proceeding, because the entire intent of hurling that label at the president’s critics is to undermine their credibility. If you simply hate the man, they imply, you’re not rational, and your critiques can be dismissed. But it isn’t that simple - not by a long shot. First, it should be noted that the regressive right is far wider a phenomenon than just one person. It currently includes an entire executive branch administration, almost (and, just a year ago, more than) half of Congress, a majority of the Supreme Court and probably a majority of the lower federal courts, a biased-to-the-point-of-being-a-joke mainstream media, and tons of lobbyists, think tanks and profitable industries.
But as to George W. Bush, himself, I suspect it’s quite fair to say that most Americans and even most progressives did not originally despise or loathe him. I didn’t. I certainly didn’t admire the guy, nor did I think he was remotely prepared to be president of the United States. (Nor, by the way, was I particularly impressed with Al Gore in 2000.) Bush campaigned as a center-right pragmatist (a “compassionate conservative”, in his words), much as his father had been, and I expected that’s how he would govern if elected. You know, more embarrassing most of the time than truly destructive.
I mention all this because it is important to note what has - and what has not - been responsible for my/our anger, and to make clear that attempts to dismiss that anger as some Bush-hating bias or predisposition are false, a ploy to destroy the messenger when one doesn’t care for the message he’s carrying. If Bush had governed like he campaigned I’m sure I would have disliked him, but neither hated him nor his policies, nor experienced the rage that I feel about what he’s done to the country and the world. Frankly, my feelings toward another center-right Bush presidency would have likely been largely the same as my feelings toward the center-right Clinton presidency which preceded it.
But he hasn’t governed anywhere near to how he campaigned, and he wasn’t even elected properly, and I do in fact feel huge anger at the damage done. Moreover, I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone - even conservatives - could feel differently. Even the wealthy, to whose interests this presidency is so wholly devoted, have to sleep at night. Even they have children who will inherit a broken country existing in an environmentally and politically hostile world, though no doubt they figure that big enough fences, mean enough private armies, and loads of central air conditioning will insulate them from the damage.
I don’t mind that the Bush campaign fought hard to win the 2000 election. That was certainly a legitimate goal for them to pursue. But it nauseates me beyond belief that their agents in the Florida government disenfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans in order to keep them from voting Democratic. And it sickens me that they gathered up a bunch of congressional staffers pretending to be an angry local mob and stormed election canvassers, using pure Gestapo techniques to shut down the most fundamental act of democracy, counting the votes.
I don’t mind that the Bush campaign took the election to the Supreme Court, even though they were simultaneously accusing the Gore folks of being litigious. What disgusts me beyond words is that a regressive majority of the Court anointed Bush president in a sheer act of partisan politics. And that they were so anxious to achieve that end that they repudiated all their own judicial politics previously espoused in case after case - from states’ rights, to equal protection, to judicial restraint. And that they were so conscious of what they were actually doing that they took the unprecedented step of stating that no lasting principles were involved in the matter, that their decision would forever apply to this case and this case only.
Once in office, there was still the possibility that the administration would govern as it had campaigned, as a rather centrist, status quo-style government, perhaps especially tempered from arrogance and overstretch by the knowledge that the country was deeply divided and that Bush had in fact actually lost the popular vote. In fact, though, they did precisely the opposite.
The first order of business, certainly the top priority for the administration, and arguably the only thing they were ever completely seriously about, was their tax restructuring program. It was grim enough that the tax cuts, as under Reagan, where dramatically tilted in favor of the wealthy. But what made them especially disgusting was that - again, as under Reagan - these wholesale revenue reductions were not only not accompanied by expenditure cuts, but in fact were coupled with increased spending. Can you say “voodoo economics”? Bush’s father once had, before he treasonously changed his tune to win the vice presidency (leading to the presidency) for himself. But he was right the first time, before he put personal ambition and transparent insecurity ahead of the national interest. And thus we’ve witnessed the only possible result of the combination of massive revenue cuts and continuing spending increases: astronomical debt, now well over nine trillion dollars in total, and rapidly growing. What I want to know is how can we - especially so-called family-oriented, so-called fiscal conservatives - not be outraged, not be scandalized, not be boiling with anger at the debt we have transferred to our own children, all so that we could avoid paying our own way, like every generation before us has?
I am outraged as well at how the administration polarized the country in the wake of one of the greatest traumas it had ever experienced. Let us leave aside the ample evidence demonstrating that the Bush team was asleep at the wheel before 9/11 - or perhaps far, far worse - a set of facts which is noteworthy in part because progressives did not use them to attack the president and score cheap but easy political points. But the administration did precisely that. It is disgusting - and it fills me with anger - how they used a national security crisis to win partisan political contests. How they scheduled a vote on the Iraq war resolution right before the midterm elections of 2002, thus politicizing the gravest decision a country can make by forcing Democrats to choose between voting their conscience and campaign accusations of being soft on national security.
It boils my blood that these chickenhawks - almost none of whom showed up for duty in Vietnam when it was their turn - could dare to accuse Max Cleland of being weak on national security, a guy who gave three of his four limbs to that very cause on the battlefields of Southeast Asia. How could they run ads morphing his face into Saddam’s or bin Laden’s, when his opponent - of course - took Vietnam deferments, just like Cheney and Ashcroft and the rest? And how could they accuse him of being weak on national defense because he opposed the bureaucratic reshuffling to create the Homeland Security Department, when Bush himself had also opposed it? That is, before Rove politicized it by inserting union-busting language applying to tens of thousands of civil servants covered by the act.
It nauseates me beyond words that this president could use the tragedy of 9/11 to justify invading a country which had nothing to do with that attack whatsoever. It enrages me that those who had the courage to oppose this policy so transparently deceitful (and it truly was - from the proof of the Downing Street Memos, to Colin Powell’s charade at the UN, to the assurances that the US knew where the WMD were, to the rejection of the weapons inspectors’ request to have two more months to finish the job) were labeled as traitors and worse for telling the truth. And that 4,000 Americans and over a million Iraqis have died for these lies.
And speaking of treason, what sort of looking glass have we all fallen through when the government of the United States exposes its own CIA undercover agent in order to punish her spouse for revealing administration lies about the war? When did that cease to be a cause of outrage, especially among our super-patriotic friends on the right?
How is it possible not to be angry looking at the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the bungled response of the government before, during and after that tragedy? Indeed, even journalists who had spent so many years licking government boots that their tongues had long ago turned black were moved to outrage at the magnitude of that failure, with the president meanwhile on a stage in San Diego pretending to play guitar at a Republican fundraiser.
I am outraged, as well, by one of the most insane and avoidable tragedies of all human history, the slow-motion holocaust of global warming. How can anyone not be angry at a political movement and a government that puts the short-term profits of one or two industries ahead of the viability of the entire planet? How can anyone not be mortified as we one-twentieth of the world’s population, who generate one-fourth of the greenhouse gases causing the problem, not only do nothing about the problem, but actively block the rest of the world from saving all of us from this folly?
I’m furious because the Bush administration and its ideological allies have shredded the Constitution at every turn, destroying the institutional gift of those they pretend to revere (but only when it’s convenient to upholding their own depredations). This president, who has gotten virtually everything he has ever wanted throughout his life and his presidency, once privately exclaimed in frustration at not getting something he wanted when he wanted it, “It’s just a dam piece of paper!”, and that is precisely how he has treated America’s founding document. His signing statements - probably over a thousand in count now - completely obliterate the checks and balances principle of the Constitution, its most central idea. His admitted spying on Americans without warrant smashes the Fourth Amendment. His fiasco in Guantánamo and beyond mocks due process and habeas corpus guarantees. His invasion of Iraq against the international law codified in the UN Charter, to which the United States is a signatory, violates the Constitutional requirement to hold such treaties as the highest law of the land. Altogether, Americans have never seen a presidency with such imperial ambitions, and anyone who cares about the Constitution should be furious. A year from now, it is quite possible that Hillary Clinton will be president of the United States (ugh). Would our conservative friends silently countenance, let alone viciously support, such a monarchy in the White House if it belonged to Queen Hillary rather than King George? I think not.
We could go on and on from here. This administration and the movement it fronts at least gets high marks for consistency. Everything they touch turns to stone. There’s Pat Tillman and Terri Schiavo. There’s the politicization of the US Attorneys and the corruption of DeLay and Abramoff. There’s North Korea, Pakistan and the Middle East. There’s the shame of torture and rendition. There’s the wrecking of the American military and of the country’s reputation abroad. There’s Afghanistan and the failure to capture bin Laden. And much, much more. But above all, and driving all, there’s the kleptocracy - the doing of everything in every way to facilitate the looting of the national fisc.
What an unbelievable record of deceit, destruction, hypocrisy, incompetence, treason and greed. What a tragic tale of debt, lost wars, stolen elections, environmental crises, Constitution shredding, national shame and diminished security.
All done by the very most pious amongst us, of course. Merry Christmas, eh? I guess those are our presents, all carefully wrapped in spin, contempt, and preemptive attacks on any of us impertinent enough to say “No thanks, Santa”.
So, yeah, you’re dam right I’m angry about what’s been done to my country, and what’s been done by my country in my name.
How could anyone who claims to care about America not be?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net
Sunday, June 24, 2012
You have met, or have met this person before, in this life or before. I shall yeld myspace and make it hers. Carolynbaker
Politics and Truth
You are not as stupid as you think you are; not as dumb as you have been told. I cannot speak as freely as i should or have been told.. Get this. America.... yess, WAS BORN IN INSURRECTION, your America, my America. although things were going just fine. "BEfore" white elitest settlement. Disgust......as think about it... I have no idea as how to wake up the slumbering masses, infomation/intelligence..........some is getting through, pity those that lead, for they are the ones that what popular majority think are fools, if they do an act, everything seems to be done for them. The intellect is currently being filtered., why i say this !? Attention: using sell-checker limits your focus away from those things that are important for survival. ie. "The things we all should know are being filtered. Orwellian blackwhite* thinking changes the conventional thinking , sometimes forever..do not let a spellchecker think for you. If you are mad do not find a witty image, Think for yourself!! sheeple ......mimes only work when the image or message minimizes visual clutter and jams the transmission of popular culture's corporate propaganda machine....satire and ridicule work best.
*blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever "truth" the party puts out, no matter how absurd it may be. Orwell described it as "...loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary."
"Americans no longer talk to each other, they
entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do
not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and
comercials." - Neil Postman, Amusing
Ourselves to Death:
"When a population becomes distracted by
trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments,
when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a
people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a
nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility." -
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
"Give the people a choice between freedom and sandwiches, and they'll take the sandwiches," - Lord Boyd Orr
We are powerless or are we?
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/03/we-are-powerless-or-are-we.html
The problem is that we have allowed those with agendas in government and the media and organized religion to CONVINCE us that we’re powerless. They've confused us, belittled us, distracted us and made us feel like we barely have the power to get out of bed in the morning, let alone challenge those with the biggest arms, megaphones, or pulpits.
The truth is that EVERY one of us has tremendous untapped strength, intelligence and resources hard-wired into us.
The truth -- shown by millions of examples throughout history -- is that people can thrive in the worst imaginable circumstances. Individuals can dig deep and get creative and think of ways to turn things around even when all seems lost. People can succeed against overwhelming odds if they are committed.
The human spirit is powerful, flexible, creative, intelligent and resourceful. It is there within each of us . . . lying dormant. Wake up your inner hero, your inner genius, your inner leader. It is there . . . just under the surface.
And the truth is that, when we come together to talk about what is really happening, and what we want, and how to obtain it, we create a very powerful dynamic and we set powerful forces in motion.
The truth is that, together, we are unstoppable.
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.
- Howard Zinn, historian read more...................
now onto Shame,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,shame
now onto Speaking truth to power
now onto......////////////////////////....................me
please check out these sites...........they will not me keep giving these links long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
like Green Day?..........................this is the end as we know it. ////////////////////////
sorry folks, have to find my window. they do not let me spread myrhedric shit, too long. As long as breath is in my body, I WILL SPEAK TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please read these subtle links. Tired of cencusarship, niggarzzds..........................another hack for the corp- infortainment idustry
Bite me!!!!!!!!!!!!! I gleaned this shit today.... anybody can be citizen journalist or critic or asleep, please stop giving me "sound bite fed opinions by embedded functionaries" you have no opinions that do not belong to someone that told you. As if you believe that those of us awake know where that idea came from. Think independently for yourself, do not let somebody tell you what you should think. Go look for yourself! (subversive actions ...follow George's through for direct contact, save link, cause they are trying to shut this point off, follow me by me tags as I write under a many pseudonyms..K .....................kosmicdebris.............
.....................................keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons!!
.............................kosmicdebris.....................
(Click Here for Part 2)
Monday, March 03, 2008
We are Powerless . . Or Are We?
The problem isn’t that we’re powerless.The problem is that we have allowed those with agendas in government and the media and organized religion to CONVINCE us that we’re powerless. They've confused us, belittled us, distracted us and made us feel like we barely have the power to get out of bed in the morning, let alone challenge those with the biggest arms, megaphones, or pulpits.
The truth is that EVERY one of us has tremendous untapped strength, intelligence and resources hard-wired into us.
The truth -- shown by millions of examples throughout history -- is that people can thrive in the worst imaginable circumstances. Individuals can dig deep and get creative and think of ways to turn things around even when all seems lost. People can succeed against overwhelming odds if they are committed.
The human spirit is powerful, flexible, creative, intelligent and resourceful. It is there within each of us . . . lying dormant. Wake up your inner hero, your inner genius, your inner leader. It is there . . . just under the surface.
And the truth is that, when we come together to talk about what is really happening, and what we want, and how to obtain it, we create a very powerful dynamic and we set powerful forces in motion.
The truth is that, together, we are unstoppable.
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.
- Howard Zinn, historian read more...................
Although the surface of Arianna's career is marked by well-publicized "conversions," a closer look reveals consistent patterns of labor exploitation, strategic plagiarism, deception and hucksterism—all of which became important elements in the Huffington Post's lucrative business model. The Huffington Post has done some excellent investigative journalism, but violates basic journalism ethics by allowing corporate propaganda, lobbyists for dictators, bankers and quacks to share the same space with reporters. The Guardian called it the "grand master" of "blurring the line between advertising and editorial."
i call this 'media ju jet su' Huffingtonton and ton....tons'of shit....had your # long time age ago
now onto Shame,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,shame
now onto Speaking truth to power
now onto......////////////////////////....................me
please check out these sites...........they will not me keep giving these links long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
like Green Day?..........................this is the end as we know it. ////////////////////////
sorry folks, have to find my window. they do not let me spread my
.....................................keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons!!
.............................kosmicdebris.....................
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
This is how Ron Paul rolls!!
When Will We
Attack Syria?
By Rep. Ron
Paul
We are about to
engage in military action against Syria and at the same time irresponsibly
reactivate the Cold War with Russia. We're now engaged in a game of "chicken"
with Russia which presents a much greater threat to our security than does
Syria.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31657.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31657.htm
Because of apathy, ignorance, arrogance, indifference, greed, selfishness.
You do not have to be a profit to know what happens next: The involuntary surrender of the American way of life. I am ready to get this thing over with so who or whatever is left, if any, can start over. Just like Einstein said, The next will be with sticks and stones. Americans are the cannibalistic zombies the rest of the world is suffering from. Will the real patriot please stand up!!
....................................keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons................
........kosmicdebris..
Friday, June 15, 2012
It’s hard to say at this point just how many times the world has
ended. We’ve killed it off so often, it’s hard to keep up. Certainly, we
have been predicting its demise since we’ve been around.
Depending on whom you believe, it’s apocalypse now, then or tomorrow.
These days, the doomsayers tend to be environmentalists as well as religious cranks. Although one can dismiss the latter, not so the former.
The truth is that to deny global warming in 2012 no longer makes sense. The evidence is everywhere around us, like it or not. The effects are already catastrophic. But does that mean the end of life as we know it?
“We’re destroying the planet,” declared journalist, author and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler. In Toronto to address the 13th annual Ideacity conference, he painted a bleak picture of the Earth’s condition. Running through a checklist, he made it clear we’re in bad shape.
“We’re destroying real wealth — forests, rivers, oceans, biodiversity — for fake wealth,” Weyler argued. “Every organism, including Earth, has its capacity. We’re consuming resources 50 per cent faster than they can be replenished.”
Forget Peak Oil, he said, “We’re at Peak Everything.”
“You can’t cheat nature,” continued Weyler, who calls Prime Minister Stephen Harper “a mad man controlled by the oil industry.”
“There’s very little good news on the environment,” he noted. “We have to learn to live below capacity.”
Author and former Bay Street economist Jeff Rubin agreed. His most recent book, The End of Growth, was published last month.
As he pointed out, the issue isn’t the availability of oil, but the cost of burning it.
“Prices are the message here,” he said. “Prices are the neurotransmitters of the market. Triple-digit oil prices will ration economic activity. If oil prices had stayed at $40 a barrel, all those good folks in Phoenix and Denver would still be living in their sub-prime mortgaged homes. The speed limit of the economy has changed. Yesterday’s bailouts are tomorrow’s cutbacks.”
Rubin also had a few words for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. “He says the war on the car is over; I say the war on the car has only started. We’re gonna have to adapt to driving less. If you want to see the future of North American cities, look at what European cities have done in the last 10 years. They drive smaller cars, they drive less often and they take public transit more often.”
And, Rubin pointed out, we can forget about the good old days of three per cent annual growth rates. He said we’ll be lucky to hit two per cent.
“Circumstances will compel us to adapt, not by burning more fossil fuels,” he said, “but by burning less. This will lead to a greener economy and solve our greenhouse gas emissions.”
But if that’s the silver lining of the environmental crisis, conference attendee Patrick Luciani was having none of it.
“Economic growth has given us more education, better health and made us wealthier than we have ever been,” said the author and senior Massey College resident. “Without wealth there is no art. It’s the height of arrogance when we privilege current generations over future generations, tell them what they can and can’t have. In 20 years, global warming as an issue will be passé. We will adapt to global warming. Environmentalism has become the new religion, the new Marxism.”
By contrast, Rubin tells us, “The key is to change our expectations.”
Regardless of who’s right, we will soon discover whether less really is more.
Ideacity continues at the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall Thursday and Friday.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Depending on whom you believe, it’s apocalypse now, then or tomorrow.
These days, the doomsayers tend to be environmentalists as well as religious cranks. Although one can dismiss the latter, not so the former.
The truth is that to deny global warming in 2012 no longer makes sense. The evidence is everywhere around us, like it or not. The effects are already catastrophic. But does that mean the end of life as we know it?
“We’re destroying the planet,” declared journalist, author and Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler. In Toronto to address the 13th annual Ideacity conference, he painted a bleak picture of the Earth’s condition. Running through a checklist, he made it clear we’re in bad shape.
“We’re destroying real wealth — forests, rivers, oceans, biodiversity — for fake wealth,” Weyler argued. “Every organism, including Earth, has its capacity. We’re consuming resources 50 per cent faster than they can be replenished.”
Forget Peak Oil, he said, “We’re at Peak Everything.”
“You can’t cheat nature,” continued Weyler, who calls Prime Minister Stephen Harper “a mad man controlled by the oil industry.”
“There’s very little good news on the environment,” he noted. “We have to learn to live below capacity.”
Author and former Bay Street economist Jeff Rubin agreed. His most recent book, The End of Growth, was published last month.
As he pointed out, the issue isn’t the availability of oil, but the cost of burning it.
“Prices are the message here,” he said. “Prices are the neurotransmitters of the market. Triple-digit oil prices will ration economic activity. If oil prices had stayed at $40 a barrel, all those good folks in Phoenix and Denver would still be living in their sub-prime mortgaged homes. The speed limit of the economy has changed. Yesterday’s bailouts are tomorrow’s cutbacks.”
Rubin also had a few words for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. “He says the war on the car is over; I say the war on the car has only started. We’re gonna have to adapt to driving less. If you want to see the future of North American cities, look at what European cities have done in the last 10 years. They drive smaller cars, they drive less often and they take public transit more often.”
And, Rubin pointed out, we can forget about the good old days of three per cent annual growth rates. He said we’ll be lucky to hit two per cent.
“Circumstances will compel us to adapt, not by burning more fossil fuels,” he said, “but by burning less. This will lead to a greener economy and solve our greenhouse gas emissions.”
But if that’s the silver lining of the environmental crisis, conference attendee Patrick Luciani was having none of it.
“Economic growth has given us more education, better health and made us wealthier than we have ever been,” said the author and senior Massey College resident. “Without wealth there is no art. It’s the height of arrogance when we privilege current generations over future generations, tell them what they can and can’t have. In 20 years, global warming as an issue will be passé. We will adapt to global warming. Environmentalism has become the new religion, the new Marxism.”
By contrast, Rubin tells us, “The key is to change our expectations.”
Regardless of who’s right, we will soon discover whether less really is more.
Ideacity continues at the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall Thursday and Friday.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
"What is at the heart of this case is whether or not the US government can or will hold corporate killers accountable for their crimes. The supreme court decision keeps the possibility of justice open
in this notorious case.
"It is a devastating statement on the lack of accountability for criminal contractors that the men who did the shooting have not been successfully prosecuted. This was not an isolated incident, unfortunately. I believe that [Blackwater founder] Erik Prince and other top – now former – Blackwater executives should be brought up on charges for all of the murder and mayhem their forces unleashed on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Short of shutting down the mercenary industry completely, that would be the strongest deterrent we would have to future massacres by US government-funded and supported mercenaries."
After the shooting and other controversies, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services and then to Academi.
"It is a devastating statement on the lack of accountability for criminal contractors that the men who did the shooting have not been successfully prosecuted. This was not an isolated incident, unfortunately. I believe that [Blackwater founder] Erik Prince and other top – now former – Blackwater executives should be brought up on charges for all of the murder and mayhem their forces unleashed on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Short of shutting down the mercenary industry completely, that would be the strongest deterrent we would have to future massacres by US government-funded and supported mercenaries."
After the shooting and other controversies, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services and then to Academi.
Cherokee Nation
"They took the whole Cherokee Nation
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
They took the whole Indian Nation
Locked us on this reservation
Though I wear a shirt and tie
I'm still part red man deep inside
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
But maybe someday when they've learned
Cherokee Nation will return
Will return...
Will return...
Will return...
Will return."
John D. Loudermilk
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
They took the whole Indian Nation
Locked us on this reservation
Though I wear a shirt and tie
I'm still part red man deep inside
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die
But maybe someday when they've learned
Cherokee Nation will return
Will return...
Will return...
Will return...
Will return."
John D. Loudermilk
Lies My Teacher Told Me
Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen. Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Note: The following are notes from the above book. I found the book seminal, eye-opening, life-changing. I recommend that you buy and read the entire book. Only by reading the entire book will you get the whole picture. The following quotes, I hope, will whet your appetite. --Colby Glass
"..the teaching of history, more than any other discipline, is dominated by textbooks... the books are boring... [they] exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character" (13).
"..Wilson's interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas.." (24).
"He was an outspoken white supremacist--his wife was even worse--and told "darky" stories in cabinet meetings" (27).
"Spurred by Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia reestablished the Ku Klux Klan. The racism seeping down from the White House encouraged this klan.." (28).
"Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called "hyphenated Americans"" (29).
"To oppose America's participation in World War I, or even to be pessimistic about it, was dangerous. The Creel Committee... After World War I, the Wilson administration's attacks on civil liberties increased, now with anticommunism as the excuse. Neither before nor since these campaigns has the United States come closer to being a police state" (30).
"Because heroification prevents textbooks from showing Wilson's shortcomings, textbooks are hard pressed to explain the results of the 1920 election. James Cox, the Democratic candidate who was Wilson's would-be successor, was crushed by the nonentity Warren G. Harding, who never even campaigned. [It was] the biggest landslide in the history of American presidential politics" (31).
"Even if Columbus had never sailed, other Europeans would have soon reached the Americas... Columbus's voyage.. was epoch-making because of the way in which Europe responded" (39).
"The changes in Europe not only prompted Columbus's voyage.. they also paved the way for Europe's domination of the world for the next five hundred years. Except for the invention of agriculture, this was probably the most consequential development in human history" (41-2).
"..new and more deadly forms of smallpox and bubonic plague had arisen in Europe.. Passed on to those the Europeans met, these diseases helped Europe conquer the Americas and, later, the islands of the Pacific" (44).
"Columbus claimed everything he saw right off the boat. When textbooks celebrate this process, they imply that taking the land and dominating the indians was inevitable if not natural" (44).
"Most important, [Columbus's] prupose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale. If textbooks included these facts, they might induce students to think intelligently about why the West dominates the world today" (45).
Washington Irving created the lie that people thought the earth was flat until Columbus proved that it was round (57).
What is the real significance of Columbus's reaching the Americas? What made his trip different than the fifteen discoverers who preceded him?
"Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass" (60).
"When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton--whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose" (61).
"..attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war... For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart" (61).
"Columbus.. initiated a great slave raid. They rounded up 1,500 Arawaks, then selected the 500 best specimines (of whom 200 would die en route to Spain. Another 500 were chosen as slaves for the Spaniards staying on the island" (62).
"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system... The Indians all promised to pay tribute.. every three months... With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold... the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands" (62).
"Columbus installed the encomienda system, in which he granted or "commended" entire Indian villages to individual colonists or groups of colonists... On Haiti the colonists made the Indians mine gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even carry them everywhere they went" (63). An Spanish observer wrote that "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured [under this virtual slavery], the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth... Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery"" (63).
"Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people... a census of Indian adults in 1496.. came up with 1,100,000... "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone" (63).
".. one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history" (64).
"Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves--about five thousand--than any other individual... other nations rushed to emulate Columbus" (64).
"As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, "... it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand"" (65).
"Columbus is not a hero in Mexico... Why not? Because Mexico is also much more Indian than the United States, and Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European. "No sensible Indian person," wrote George P. Horse Capture, "can celebrate the arrival of Columbus." Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history" (70).
"The worshipful biographical vignettes of Columbus in our textbooks serve to indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of colonialism... the Columbus myth allows us to accept the contemporary division of the world into developed and underdeveloped spheres as natural and given, rather than a historical product issuing from a process that began with Columbus's first voyage" (70).
What the Pilgrims found were settled farms, with the crops already planted and growing, deserted by Indians fleeing the plague. The Pilgrims "found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "Miraculous"" (81).
"These epidemcs probably constituted the most important geopolitical event of the early seventeenth century. Their net result was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Indian challenge" (81).
The plagues "continued west, racing in advance of the line of culture contact... Disease played the same crucial role in Mexico and Peru as it did in Massachusetts... When the Spanish marched into Tenochtitlan [now Mexico City], there were so many bodies [dead from the plague] that they had to walk on them" (82-3).
"..the population of the Americas [was] one hundred million in 1492.. Europe had only about seventy million people when Columbus set forth. The Europeans' advantages in military and social technology might have enabled them to dominate the Americas.. but not to "settle" the hemisphere. For that, the plague was required" (83).
".. the land was, in reality, not a virgin wilderness, but recently widowed" (84).
We also tend, in favor of the Pilgrims, to ignore Jamestown which was settled first. "Historians could hardly tout Virginia... The Virginians' relations with the Indians were particularly unsavory...the early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth, even cannibalism. They spent their early days digging random holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops. Soon they were starving and digging up putrid Indian corpses to eat or renting themselves out to Indian families as servants" (89-90).
"..the Pilgrims hardly "started from scratch" in a "wilderness." Throughout southern New England, Native Americans had repeatedly burned the underbrush, creating a parklike environment... They chose Plymouth because of its beautiful cleared fields, recently planted in corn, and its useful harbor and "brook of fresh water." It was a lovely site for a town. Indeed, until the plaque, it had been a town.." (90). One of the first things the Pilgrims did was go through the town, looting the possessions of the Indians. "..the Pilgrims continued to rob graves for years" (91).
"More than any other celebration.. Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism... God on our side, civilization wrested from wilderness, order from disorder, through hard work and good Pilgrim character traits" (93).
"..textbooks cannot resist contrasting "primitive" Americans with modern Europeans" (102).
"In what ways do we prefer the civilized Third Reich to the more primitive Arawak nation that Columbus encountered? If we refuse to label the Third Reich civilized, are we not using the term to imply a certain comity? If so, we must consider the Arawaks civilized, and we must also consider Columbus and his Spaniards primitive is not savage" (102).
"Europeans persuaded Natives to specialize in the fur and slave trades. Native Americans were better hunters and trappers than Europeans, and with the guns the Europeans sold them, they became better still. Other Native skills began to atrophy" (103).
"..because whites "demanded institutions reflective of their own with which to relate," many Native groups strengthened their tribal governments... New confederations and nations developed.. The tribes also became more male- dominated, in imitation of Europeans.. [there was] an escalation of Indian warfare... [the slave trade helped] to deagriculturize Native Americans. To avoid being targets for capture, Indians abandoned their cornfields and their villages" (105-6).
"Europeans did not "civilize" or "settle" roaming Indians, but had the opposite impact" (107).
"..from the start in Virginia.. settlers fled to Indian villages rather than endure the rigors of life among the autocratic English. Indeed, many white and black newcomers chose to live an Indian lifestyle... some Natives chose to live among whites.. The migration was mostly the other way, however.. Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando De Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies... right up to the end of independent Indian nationahood in 1890, whites continued to defect, and whites who lived an Indian lifestyle, such as Daniel Boone, became cultural heroes in white society" (109).
"Not one American history textbook mentions the attraction of Native societies to European Americans and African Americans" (109).
"According to Benjamin Franklin, "All their government is by Counsel of the Sages. There is no Force; there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment." Probably foremost, the lack of hierarchy in the Native socieites in the eastern United States attracted the admiration of European observers. Frontiersmen were taken with the extent to which Native Americans enjoyed freedom as individuals. Women were also accorded more status and power.. than in white societies of the time" (109-110).
Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden of New York in 1727 said, "Here we see the natural Origin of all Power and Authority among a free People" (110).
"Indeed, Native American ideas may be partly responsible for our democratic
institutions. We have seen how Native ideas of liberty, fraternity, and
equality found their way to Europe to influence social philosophers such
as Thomas More, Locke, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau... Through
150 years of colonial contact, the Iroquois League stood before the colonies
as an object lesson in how to govern a large domain democratically" (111).
"Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention referred openly to Iroquois ideas and imagery... As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League... John Mohawk has argued that American Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, free speech, democracy, and "all those things which got attached to the Bill of Rights." Without the Native example, "do you really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among a people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of intolerance of questions of religion?"" (111-112).
"For a hundred years after our Revolution, Americans credited Native Americans as a source of their democratic institutions... When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party.. they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty" (112).
"Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the entire federal budget during George Washington's administration and dogged his successors for a century as a major issue and expense... [in many cases] the settlers were Native American, the scalpers white" (116).
"All the textbooks tell how Jefferson "doubled the size of the United States by buying Louisiana from France." Not one points out that it was not France's land to sell--it was Indian land... Indeed, France did not really sell Louisiana for $15,000,000. France merely sold its claim to the territory... Equally Eurocentric are the maps textbooks use to show the Lewis and Clark expedition. They make Native American invisible, implying that the United States bought vacant land from the French... [Textbooks imply that the Indians were naive about land ownership, but] the problem lay in whites' not abiding by accepted concepts of land ownership" (123).
"The most important cause of the War of 1812.. was land-- Indian land... The United States fought five of the seven major land battles of the War of 1812 primarily against Native Americans... [a] result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close... until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans... Carleton Beals has written that "our acquiescence in Indian dispossession has molded the American character." ... destroyed our national idealism. From 1815 on, instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy. Gradually we sought American hegemony over Mexico, the Philippines, much of the Caribbean basin, and, indirectly, over other nations... We also have to admit that Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for Indians in the west "and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies" (123-126).
Yet we "still stereotype Native Americans as roaming primitive hunting folk, unfortunate victims of progress" (132).
For more on this topic, read Helen Hunt Jackson's famous indictment of Native American policies, A Century of Dishonor.
Also, see her fictional account of the racism Mexicans and Indians both endured at the hands of White and Mexican settlers, Ramona.
Invisibility of Racism
"Americans seem perpetually startled at slavery. Children are shocked to learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves... Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free.. The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.. Wall Street was the marketplace where owners could hire out their slaves by the day or week" (142).
"Textbooks canonize Patrick Henry for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. Not one tells us that eight months after delivering the speech he ordered "diligent patrols" to keep Virginia slaves from accepting the British offer of freedom to those who would join their side" (146).
"..slavery and its concomitant ideas, which legitimated hierarchy and dominance, saped our Revolutionary idealism. Most textbooks never hint at this clash of ideas, let alone at its impact on our foreign policy" (149).
"For our first seventy years as a nation.. slavery made our foreign policy more sympathetic with imperialism than with self-determination" (152).
"Slavery was also perhaps the key factor in the Texas War (1835-36). The freedom for which Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and the rest fought for at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves!" (151).
Racism became dominant in the United States between 1890 and 1920 "when African Americans were again put back into second-class citizenship... In the 1880s and 1890s minstrel shows featuring bumbling, mislocuting whites in blackface grew wildly popular from New England to California. By presenting heavily caricatured images of African Americans who were happy on the plantation and lost and incompetent off it, these shows demeaned black ability" (160-164).
"In politics, the white electorate had become so racist by 1892 that the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the White House partly by tarring Republicans with their attempts to guarantee civil rights to African Americans" (164).
"Aided by Birth of a Nation, which opened in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan rose to its zenith, boasting over a million members. The KKK openly dominated the state government of Indiana for a time, and it proudly inducted Pres. Warren G. Harding as a member in a White House ceremony... the 1921 riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which whites dropped dynamite from an airplane onto a black ghetto, killing more than 75 people and destroying more than 1,100 homes.. Some small communities in the Midwest and West became "sundown" towns, informally threatening African Americans with death if they remained overnight" (165). [I got an email from Rachel Chinnock, who wished to clarify the facts about the Tulsa riots. Here is what she said: "I lived in Tulsa and did a bit of research on this tragic event and wish to make only one correction to your current text. The area upon which white supremacists and KKK members dropped dynamite was not a “black ghetto” but rather one of the most sophisticated black areas at that time (and, arguably, the most sophisticated community in the state of Oklahoma at that time) known as “Black Wall Street” or now the “Greenwood District.” Here, they were well-dressed, highly-educated, wealthy, and mannerly. Business flourished, with black-owned stores, cinemas, pharmacies, airport, banks, libraries, schools, etc."]
"..race relations in the United States systematically worsened for almost half a century." Most textbooks state that "Jackie Robinson was "the first black baseball player ever allowed in the major leagues."" But he wasn't. Students are given "the unmistakable [impression] of generally uninterrupted progress to the present" (167).
"The notion of progress suffuses textbook treatments of black-white relations, implying that race relations have somehow steadily improved on their own. This cheery optimism only compounds the problem, because whites can infer that racism is over" (169).
Last updated on: 09/18/2006 12:54:38
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen. Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Note: The following are notes from the above book. I found the book seminal, eye-opening, life-changing. I recommend that you buy and read the entire book. Only by reading the entire book will you get the whole picture. The following quotes, I hope, will whet your appetite. --Colby Glass
"..the teaching of history, more than any other discipline, is dominated by textbooks... the books are boring... [they] exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character" (13).
Helen Keller
"Keller.. never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change.. she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union to fight for the free speech of others. She sent $100 to the NAACP with a letter of support... She supported Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate, in each of his campaigns for the presidency.. "One may not agree with Helen Keller's positions. her praise of the USSR now seems naive, embarrasing, to some even treasonous. But she was a radical--a fact few Americans know.." (22).Woodrow Wilson
".. two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military interventions in foreign countries" (23). "Under Wilson, the United States intervened in Latin America more often than at any other time in our history.. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson.. started sending secret monetary aid to the "White" side of the Russian civil war... This aggression fueled the suspicions that motivated the Soviets during the Cold War..." (23-4)."..Wilson's interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas.." (24).
"He was an outspoken white supremacist--his wife was even worse--and told "darky" stories in cabinet meetings" (27).
"Spurred by Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia reestablished the Ku Klux Klan. The racism seeping down from the White House encouraged this klan.." (28).
"Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called "hyphenated Americans"" (29).
"To oppose America's participation in World War I, or even to be pessimistic about it, was dangerous. The Creel Committee... After World War I, the Wilson administration's attacks on civil liberties increased, now with anticommunism as the excuse. Neither before nor since these campaigns has the United States come closer to being a police state" (30).
"Because heroification prevents textbooks from showing Wilson's shortcomings, textbooks are hard pressed to explain the results of the 1920 election. James Cox, the Democratic candidate who was Wilson's would-be successor, was crushed by the nonentity Warren G. Harding, who never even campaigned. [It was] the biggest landslide in the history of American presidential politics" (31).
| "Could it be that we don't want to think badly
of Woodrow Wilson... We don't want complicated icons. "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out. "Conclusions are not always pleasant"" (35). |
Christopher Columbus
Columbus discovered America and proved that the earth was not flat... Right? We tend to "underplay previous explorers" (39). There were probably 15 or more individuals and groups that "discovered" and settled America before Columbus."Even if Columbus had never sailed, other Europeans would have soon reached the Americas... Columbus's voyage.. was epoch-making because of the way in which Europe responded" (39).
"The changes in Europe not only prompted Columbus's voyage.. they also paved the way for Europe's domination of the world for the next five hundred years. Except for the invention of agriculture, this was probably the most consequential development in human history" (41-2).
"..new and more deadly forms of smallpox and bubonic plague had arisen in Europe.. Passed on to those the Europeans met, these diseases helped Europe conquer the Americas and, later, the islands of the Pacific" (44).
"Columbus claimed everything he saw right off the boat. When textbooks celebrate this process, they imply that taking the land and dominating the indians was inevitable if not natural" (44).
"Most important, [Columbus's] prupose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale. If textbooks included these facts, they might induce students to think intelligently about why the West dominates the world today" (45).
Washington Irving created the lie that people thought the earth was flat until Columbus proved that it was round (57).
What is the real significance of Columbus's reaching the Americas? What made his trip different than the fifteen discoverers who preceded him?
"Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass" (60).
"When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton--whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose" (61).
"..attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war... For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart" (61).
"Columbus.. initiated a great slave raid. They rounded up 1,500 Arawaks, then selected the 500 best specimines (of whom 200 would die en route to Spain. Another 500 were chosen as slaves for the Spaniards staying on the island" (62).
"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system... The Indians all promised to pay tribute.. every three months... With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold... the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands" (62).
"Columbus installed the encomienda system, in which he granted or "commended" entire Indian villages to individual colonists or groups of colonists... On Haiti the colonists made the Indians mine gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even carry them everywhere they went" (63). An Spanish observer wrote that "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured [under this virtual slavery], the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth... Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery"" (63).
"Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people... a census of Indian adults in 1496.. came up with 1,100,000... "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone" (63).
".. one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history" (64).
"Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves--about five thousand--than any other individual... other nations rushed to emulate Columbus" (64).
"As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, "... it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand"" (65).
"Columbus is not a hero in Mexico... Why not? Because Mexico is also much more Indian than the United States, and Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European. "No sensible Indian person," wrote George P. Horse Capture, "can celebrate the arrival of Columbus." Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history" (70).
"The worshipful biographical vignettes of Columbus in our textbooks serve to indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of colonialism... the Columbus myth allows us to accept the contemporary division of the world into developed and underdeveloped spheres as natural and given, rather than a historical product issuing from a process that began with Columbus's first voyage" (70).
Thanksgiving
The Thanksgiving myth is that the Pilgrims settled the United States in 1620. They had to fight off indians repeatedly. "Few Americans know that one-third of the United States, from San Francisco to Arkansas to Natchez to Florida, has been Spanish longer than it has been "American," and that Hispanic Americans lived here before the first ancestor of the Daughters of the American Revolution ever left England" (77). British and French fisherman, landing in Massachusetts for fresh water and supplies in 1617, brought the plague to the American indians. "Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England... Unable to cope with so many corpses, the survivors abandoned their villages" (81).What the Pilgrims found were settled farms, with the crops already planted and growing, deserted by Indians fleeing the plague. The Pilgrims "found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "Miraculous"" (81).
"These epidemcs probably constituted the most important geopolitical event of the early seventeenth century. Their net result was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Indian challenge" (81).
The plagues "continued west, racing in advance of the line of culture contact... Disease played the same crucial role in Mexico and Peru as it did in Massachusetts... When the Spanish marched into Tenochtitlan [now Mexico City], there were so many bodies [dead from the plague] that they had to walk on them" (82-3).
"..the population of the Americas [was] one hundred million in 1492.. Europe had only about seventy million people when Columbus set forth. The Europeans' advantages in military and social technology might have enabled them to dominate the Americas.. but not to "settle" the hemisphere. For that, the plague was required" (83).
".. the land was, in reality, not a virgin wilderness, but recently widowed" (84).
We also tend, in favor of the Pilgrims, to ignore Jamestown which was settled first. "Historians could hardly tout Virginia... The Virginians' relations with the Indians were particularly unsavory...the early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth, even cannibalism. They spent their early days digging random holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops. Soon they were starving and digging up putrid Indian corpses to eat or renting themselves out to Indian families as servants" (89-90).
"..the Pilgrims hardly "started from scratch" in a "wilderness." Throughout southern New England, Native Americans had repeatedly burned the underbrush, creating a parklike environment... They chose Plymouth because of its beautiful cleared fields, recently planted in corn, and its useful harbor and "brook of fresh water." It was a lovely site for a town. Indeed, until the plaque, it had been a town.." (90). One of the first things the Pilgrims did was go through the town, looting the possessions of the Indians. "..the Pilgrims continued to rob graves for years" (91).
"More than any other celebration.. Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism... God on our side, civilization wrested from wilderness, order from disorder, through hard work and good Pilgrim character traits" (93).
Native Americans
"Historically, American Indians have been the most lied-about subset of our population" (99). Did Europeans "civilize" the Americas? Actually, anthropologists tell us that "hunters and gatherers were relatively peaceful, compared to agriculturalists, and that modern societies were more warlike still. Thus violence increases with civilization" (101-2)."..textbooks cannot resist contrasting "primitive" Americans with modern Europeans" (102).
"In what ways do we prefer the civilized Third Reich to the more primitive Arawak nation that Columbus encountered? If we refuse to label the Third Reich civilized, are we not using the term to imply a certain comity? If so, we must consider the Arawaks civilized, and we must also consider Columbus and his Spaniards primitive is not savage" (102).
"Europeans persuaded Natives to specialize in the fur and slave trades. Native Americans were better hunters and trappers than Europeans, and with the guns the Europeans sold them, they became better still. Other Native skills began to atrophy" (103).
"..because whites "demanded institutions reflective of their own with which to relate," many Native groups strengthened their tribal governments... New confederations and nations developed.. The tribes also became more male- dominated, in imitation of Europeans.. [there was] an escalation of Indian warfare... [the slave trade helped] to deagriculturize Native Americans. To avoid being targets for capture, Indians abandoned their cornfields and their villages" (105-6).
"Europeans did not "civilize" or "settle" roaming Indians, but had the opposite impact" (107).
"..from the start in Virginia.. settlers fled to Indian villages rather than endure the rigors of life among the autocratic English. Indeed, many white and black newcomers chose to live an Indian lifestyle... some Natives chose to live among whites.. The migration was mostly the other way, however.. Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando De Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies... right up to the end of independent Indian nationahood in 1890, whites continued to defect, and whites who lived an Indian lifestyle, such as Daniel Boone, became cultural heroes in white society" (109).
"Not one American history textbook mentions the attraction of Native societies to European Americans and African Americans" (109).
"According to Benjamin Franklin, "All their government is by Counsel of the Sages. There is no Force; there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment." Probably foremost, the lack of hierarchy in the Native socieites in the eastern United States attracted the admiration of European observers. Frontiersmen were taken with the extent to which Native Americans enjoyed freedom as individuals. Women were also accorded more status and power.. than in white societies of the time" (109-110).
Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden of New York in 1727 said, "Here we see the natural Origin of all Power and Authority among a free People" (110).
| "After Col. Henry Bouquet defeated the Ohio Indians at Bushy Run in 1763, he demanded the release of all white captives. Most of them, especially the children, had to be "bound hand and foot" and forcibly returned to white society" (110). |
"Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention referred openly to Iroquois ideas and imagery... As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League... John Mohawk has argued that American Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, free speech, democracy, and "all those things which got attached to the Bill of Rights." Without the Native example, "do you really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among a people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of intolerance of questions of religion?"" (111-112).
"For a hundred years after our Revolution, Americans credited Native Americans as a source of their democratic institutions... When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party.. they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty" (112).
"Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the entire federal budget during George Washington's administration and dogged his successors for a century as a major issue and expense... [in many cases] the settlers were Native American, the scalpers white" (116).
"All the textbooks tell how Jefferson "doubled the size of the United States by buying Louisiana from France." Not one points out that it was not France's land to sell--it was Indian land... Indeed, France did not really sell Louisiana for $15,000,000. France merely sold its claim to the territory... Equally Eurocentric are the maps textbooks use to show the Lewis and Clark expedition. They make Native American invisible, implying that the United States bought vacant land from the French... [Textbooks imply that the Indians were naive about land ownership, but] the problem lay in whites' not abiding by accepted concepts of land ownership" (123).
"The most important cause of the War of 1812.. was land-- Indian land... The United States fought five of the seven major land battles of the War of 1812 primarily against Native Americans... [a] result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close... until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans... Carleton Beals has written that "our acquiescence in Indian dispossession has molded the American character." ... destroyed our national idealism. From 1815 on, instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy. Gradually we sought American hegemony over Mexico, the Philippines, much of the Caribbean basin, and, indirectly, over other nations... We also have to admit that Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for Indians in the west "and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies" (123-126).
Yet we "still stereotype Native Americans as roaming primitive hunting folk, unfortunate victims of progress" (132).
For more on this topic, read Helen Hunt Jackson's famous indictment of Native American policies, A Century of Dishonor.
Also, see her fictional account of the racism Mexicans and Indians both endured at the hands of White and Mexican settlers, Ramona.
Invisibility of Racism
"Americans seem perpetually startled at slavery. Children are shocked to learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves... Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free.. The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.. Wall Street was the marketplace where owners could hire out their slaves by the day or week" (142).
"Textbooks canonize Patrick Henry for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. Not one tells us that eight months after delivering the speech he ordered "diligent patrols" to keep Virginia slaves from accepting the British offer of freedom to those who would join their side" (146).
"..slavery and its concomitant ideas, which legitimated hierarchy and dominance, saped our Revolutionary idealism. Most textbooks never hint at this clash of ideas, let alone at its impact on our foreign policy" (149).
"For our first seventy years as a nation.. slavery made our foreign policy more sympathetic with imperialism than with self-determination" (152).
"Slavery was also perhaps the key factor in the Texas War (1835-36). The freedom for which Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and the rest fought for at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves!" (151).
Racism became dominant in the United States between 1890 and 1920 "when African Americans were again put back into second-class citizenship... In the 1880s and 1890s minstrel shows featuring bumbling, mislocuting whites in blackface grew wildly popular from New England to California. By presenting heavily caricatured images of African Americans who were happy on the plantation and lost and incompetent off it, these shows demeaned black ability" (160-164).
"In politics, the white electorate had become so racist by 1892 that the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the White House partly by tarring Republicans with their attempts to guarantee civil rights to African Americans" (164).
"Aided by Birth of a Nation, which opened in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan rose to its zenith, boasting over a million members. The KKK openly dominated the state government of Indiana for a time, and it proudly inducted Pres. Warren G. Harding as a member in a White House ceremony... the 1921 riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which whites dropped dynamite from an airplane onto a black ghetto, killing more than 75 people and destroying more than 1,100 homes.. Some small communities in the Midwest and West became "sundown" towns, informally threatening African Americans with death if they remained overnight" (165). [I got an email from Rachel Chinnock, who wished to clarify the facts about the Tulsa riots. Here is what she said: "I lived in Tulsa and did a bit of research on this tragic event and wish to make only one correction to your current text. The area upon which white supremacists and KKK members dropped dynamite was not a “black ghetto” but rather one of the most sophisticated black areas at that time (and, arguably, the most sophisticated community in the state of Oklahoma at that time) known as “Black Wall Street” or now the “Greenwood District.” Here, they were well-dressed, highly-educated, wealthy, and mannerly. Business flourished, with black-owned stores, cinemas, pharmacies, airport, banks, libraries, schools, etc."]
"..race relations in the United States systematically worsened for almost half a century." Most textbooks state that "Jackie Robinson was "the first black baseball player ever allowed in the major leagues."" But he wasn't. Students are given "the unmistakable [impression] of generally uninterrupted progress to the present" (167).
"The notion of progress suffuses textbook treatments of black-white relations, implying that race relations have somehow steadily improved on their own. This cheery optimism only compounds the problem, because whites can infer that racism is over" (169).
Last updated on: 09/18/2006 12:54:38
by Colby Glass, MLIS.
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