As many of you with at least high school diplomas, obtained by satisfactory-to-exceptional test scores and grades in biology class, and as those of you with under-grad degrees who perhaps had college-level biology, cytology, epidemiology, or virology as part of your coursework know… we are once again being forced urged by our health professionals—as a communal courtesy—to return to necessary public health & safety measures and mandates because of sharply rising new COVID-19 cases. Why?
The Great Seal of the United States
It’s quite simple. Four major reasons: 1) our public health systems are going through yet another mass surge in new COVID-19 cases with the Delta and now Omicron variants causing the spike because of 2) a dismal public percentage rate of fully vaccinated teenagers and adults across the nation, and this is caused by 3) a large percentage of defiant anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who do not know or…
A set of complimentary interlocking myths comprises the History of the United States, these are parroted through classrooms from one generation to the next. Everyone remembers the same glorious tales with the same soundbites and the same illustrations. A parent who is helping their child get ready for an upcoming test need only recall the same familiar soundbites, familiar pictures from classroom history books
Catchy mnemonics convey the same rhyme from Columbus onward. Queen Isabella needed some cash flow and the brave Christopher was ready to go and eager to serve. How many ships? Name them. What color was the ocean? Columbus Day comes and goes every year in October from century to century, but the ocean is still the same color blue. To question a sacred holiday is an act of tyranny committed by traitors. Name at traitor, it will be on the test. Hint: enedictBay arnoldHey.
George Washington Carver invented a peanut processing technology, thereby proving that blacks played a significant role in US History, single-handedly dispelling the myth of systemic racism and connecting his race to the first POTUS at the same time. American ingenuity makes a favorite white-bread peanut-based staple that children bring to school for lunch coast-to-coast. It will probably be on the test.
“Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.” This one probably appeared in a word-search handout passed out by a substitute teacher. Word search activities are no substitution for the teaching of actual history, nor do Friday movies on a completely ahistorical topic.
“Remember the Alamo”, but do not ask why so very many cities in the Southwest US have Spanish names. No worries, it will not be on the test. Why do so many towns in the US of A begin with the word “Fort”? The town I live in for one. The Indigenous Peoples did not have anything equivalent, so you may safely forget that little toss-away fact.
All these falsehoods have contributed to the need for Critical Race Theory. However, the opponents won’t even get past the title. Here is how those three words impact those who find that title offensive. Let’s say that CRT was disproven when GW Carver secured Patent No. 1,632,365. Conflate this achievement by implying that the invention proves that we have an equal playing field now. The letters CRT contain fighting words. The word
CRITICAL
seems to question established American values, a way of life. The preferred word might be AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, something that had never existed before, something that gives us a reason to overthrow governments worldwide and to install a puppet authority figure who toes the line.
RACE
“Race” doesn’t exist, there is no such thing because the Declaration of Independence clearly states that all males … erm … men are created equal. This may also be on the test. What will? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you crack eggs of varying shell color into a frying pan, the yolk is yellow and the albumen is white for each egg — QED.
THEORY
implies that it might be proven incorrect, such as the so-called Theory of Evolution — an impossible notion that would require a computer bigger than the known universe to solve. Computers have been known to make mistakes. Google “Steal the Vote” for irrefutable evidence on how many ballots were destroyed in 2020 to discover. Patriots we’re following the American Way when searching for Democrats to lynch. The traitor Mike Pence was one person that those tourists sought.
Mark Twain will probably be on the test. Remember the titles Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. If you are asked to name a black who does not have the name George Washington Carver, you can likely get credit for a character in one of those novels (hint: Huckleberry Finn) — Jim. You can also mention the language Twain uses (the N-word for one) as an example of how “political correctness” has destroyed free speech. This may be on the essay part of the test.
Just so that you do not waste your studying time on topics that will definitely *not* be on the test, you need not concern yourself with what Mark Twain knew about the 600 US kills of the Moros in the Philippine Islands
At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States moved to expand its formal empire, annexing lands in Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Samoa, and the Philippines following the end of the Spanish-American War. But this expansionism produced political opposition at home. The anti-imperialist movement counted among its members leading writers and intellectuals, including the satirist Samuel Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain. Twain is remembered for his novels Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Far less well known are his scathing writings against the expansion of the U.S. empire. Moved to public opposition against the bloody invasion and occupation of the Philippines in 1899—which President George W. Bush cited in 2003 as a “model” for the occupation of Iraq— Twain returned after ten years of living abroad to become the vice president of the recently formed Anti-Imperialist League in 1900. Upon his return, he declared “1 am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” Here is part of his bitter essay1 about a massacre of some six hundred Moros in the Philippines.
From Voices of A People’s History, edited by Zinn and Arnove
The lynching of blacks is as well documented as it is unknown among US history students. The massacre of blacks in Tulsa in 1921 is a topic I covered on this blog two years ago, it is another major event that does not exist in the collective memory of US history students, nor has it existed since Washington cut down that apocryphal cherry tree.
Ambiguoid is a word I have coined to identify ambiguous creatures who inhabit some territory in my imagination. Curiously, that word had not yet appeared in the Google universe, so I am happy to own it for these guys and gals. They might otherwise go homeless, and no one wants to be out on the street at Christmas time.
You might also want to call them “ambigs.” However, do not confuse these with a place that sells sweaters and hoodies on the internet. Each ambig begins its life on a blank sheet of drawing paper, standing apart there or combined with others who inhabit the space available.
Some of them link together for some reason, starting where the graphite, a Blackwing 602 meets the paper. A twist of the wrist is all it takes.
Once the wrist twists, the game is on. So, I am giving you a mark-by-mark description of my recent sketch “Snor vs. GREMLIN.” I do not yet know why gremlin is capitalized because I am actually making this stuff up as I type. Your interpretation is as meaningful as mine.
Snor and GREMLIN are in the upper-righthand corner
The individual at the center of the page is comprised of swirls within an oval, it has morphed away from that unwinged aircraft. Perhaps he or she had jumped out of that orange-tinted window. The plane appears to have at least two humanoid creatures at a large window near the front of the craft. That apparently soon-to-crash tube appears to separate the six beings outside that aircraft. Snor might be a superhero or a dastardly villain, GREMLIN, a froggish sort with enormous eyes, possesses a single pair of appendages. Snor has his hand around the unfortunate GREMLIN’s neck, Snor’s second arm is to the left. I do not know why. Hopefully, GREMLIN is a neer-do-well and we are all better off. IDK. This author has forgotten to color one of Snor’s appendages, you might want to color it yourself. Well, everything is always in flux and appendages may be evolving as we wait. That tadpole fellow appears to eclipse an orb that may be a sun, planet, or balloon. It might even be a magnifying glass. The landbound critters stand on their own, a ground-based pair. The one on the left appears to be a rabbit of some kind or a variety of potted plant. I am guessing that this rabbit/plant likes the being to the right. That creature is clearly an ambiguoid pair, they are sharing an eye. It also appears to be glancing at those yellow eyes of the shared eyeball, I’m calling it a green ovoid with a curious mouth. This is an introduction for my readers, I hope you enjoy the show.
Thanks for reading and thanks as well for viewing.
I would appreciate your thoughts on these gals and guys.
Late-stage capitalism hardly describes the present state of the US political economy. There are no mechanisms to limit hegemonic Capitalist ownership of all the means of production or alternative political-economic thought.
The egalitarians among us know that society taxes the working poor far more severely than our bloated billionaire caste. Late-stage egalitarianism is the term I would use. The existence of billionaires, and now the presence of a trillionaire in the person of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, informs us that inequality depends upon the maintenance of a series of lower castes to fill the god-awful jobs that no one wants. Only the desperate man the kill stations at a slaughterhouse, undocumented persons either take those jobs or they starve. Yet, our electorate accepts the straw-man fallacy that identifies “illegals” as grave economic threats. The current pandemic is an unexpected but welcome cash cow for the captains of industry. How long must the captains wait until they become quadrillionaires? How many homeless people does it take to create a single quadrillionaire, the logical wealth-management schemes?
Civics classes have long disappeared from US educational institutions, replaced with corporate-sponsored groupthink. The town square as the bulwark of democracy has been replaced with extrajudicial arrangements that remove checks and balances in any form.
Media puppets parrot the pap that substitutes for critical thinking and independent action. In their place is a perpetual unending special relationship with a political economy that feeds the “needs” of corporate hunger for direct access to the rare-earth metals that power electronic chips. Meanwhile, orthodox rightwing true believers rally behind leaders who believe themselves saviors of the American sense of manifest destiny. These true believers believe in a concocted set of histories that seek to explain this destiny as proof of the scoundrel’s generosity: the ones who get assigned key positions in every administration. Where lies the justice in absconding the resources of independent countries. The requirements of the war machine are not partisan, it is loyally supported by Democrats as well as Republicans. The two-party system serves the billionaires and trillionaires who benefit from the spirit of a historical destiny deigned by a god that considers hegemony to be a sign of peace on planet Earth. The creation of alternative political parties might threaten the two-party system that keeps injustice system thriving. Access to the game is thwarted at every possibility.
All societal systems occur over a spectrum, so there is plenty of room from one end of the other. Hard extremists at either extreme can quickly become hegemonies. Fair play is my watchword, there are enough prisoners in this country’s injustice system to explain the over-incarceration, particularly of those who are victims of systemic racism. A topic I plan to cover in another blog entry: Critical Race Theory: another misunderstood reality.
billziegler1947 
