Alan: What is coming to a head in America is the realization -- long kept at bay by bone-deep denial -- that The Official Story is bullshit - at home and abroad.
In fact, the genocidal theft of the United States land mass from Native People; the implementation of slavery; bloody Civil War to prolong slavery, corrupt Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era; the Ku Klux Klan; segregation; separate-but-equal "apartheid"; and deadly racist policing to keep black-and-brown people in their place -- coupled with mass incarceration of dark-skinned people (including Uncle Sam's border cages) to maintain White Supremacy and/or White Privilege -- comprise the many facets of our twin Original Sins against Native Americans and black people.
As pressure builds to weaken America's many walls of denial, Trump and his equally deluded supporters "double down" on benightedness, calling for "Patriotic Education," a bald-faced, Orwellian attempt to pretend that systemic oppression against dark-skinned people is not prolongation of the persistent strategy to abuse, injure, murder and exploit in order to sustain the Founding Fathers' well-structured socio-economic and political advantage whereby people who are not like them are kept in bondage, debt peonage or some other disadvantaged form of dominance-submission hierarchy so that, no matter how many dark-skinned people meet metrics of socio-economic advancement, a white knee is always on the neck of oppressed people to ensure that America's built-in, socio-economic disparities are still structured to be untenable, and that fundamental untenability maintains disparities whose intrinsic tension has always been - and continues to be - explosive. And every time the "provoked pot" boils over, the oppressors can again point their finger at the malfeasant upstarts, which in turn "justifies" new doses of oppression to subdue "the savages."
If white people were being beaten down by this same stick, their rebellious reaction would be at least as violent, destructive and destabilizing as the rebelliousness of people whose skin is dark.
Judging from the militia madness Trump Cult, the reaction would be more violent, more destructive and more destabilizing.
"Patriotic Education" in support of platitudinous American values inspiring chauvinism, jingoism and xenophobia (both across borders and within the borders of the United States) represents brazen, Orwellian indoctrination whose purpose is to validate and inflame white people whose race-biased reflexes derive from nonsensical sound bites cherished since they were Middle School underperformers.
Here is what Americans need to know about honest, probing, richly-contextualized education.
In the absence of an educational system that imparts fair and balanced knowledge, Trump Cult's militia-mentality will continue its forced march back to the (presumed) "Golden Age" of Manifest Destiny. And thus mangled by their procrustean bed of skewed partiality-and-bias, they validate the brazen theft of confiscatory, land-hungry pioneers; the self-righteous Manichean view of unimpeachable "white hat" cowboys subduing Indians; and now - in its most visible form - the reverent impulse that genuflects at the altar of law enforcement, no matter how outrageous the abuse, mayhem and murder perped by "the thin blue line."
Unless this Trump-driven "patriotic" initiative to bolster "white privilege" and "white presumption" in the nation's schools is rejected as fundamentally false, we will find ourselves trying to turn back the clock - at least to The Wild West where, it is mistakenly assumed that everyone can have a "home on the range where the deer and the antelope play, and seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day."
Even if we admit extenuating circumstances and arguable justifications-rationalizations all along the lily white historical trajectory, the intractable fact is that public instruction will enshrine the white European passion for taking what it want -- aka "grabbing pussy" because you can -- while leaving the dregs for America's dark-skinned underbelly.
If we dive headlong into that shallow pool of race-based bias and gelded factuality, we will break our collective neck and end up paralyzed - socially, politically and culturally.
When Uneducated Populists Marginalize Educated Elites, Democracy Itself Wanes
Education Or Catastrophe (With Special Emphasis On The Teaching Of History)
"Thanksgiving": One Person's Justification For Thieving Genocide Is Another Person's Rage At Being Ripped Off And Mass Murdered
https://newsfrombarbaria.
Journalists Should Be In "Emergency" Mode: Journalistic Method Needs To Be Redefined To Deal With Trump's Re-Definition Of Bullshit As Normalcy
https://www.wnycstudios.org/
SUPERB INTERVIEW With Boston College History Professor, Heather Cox Richardson: Bill Moyers Discusses What Trump Will Do Next As Biden's Victory Drives Him "Barking Mad"
Lincoln's Observation On America's Suicide
"The Decisive Distinction Between People Who Can Think And Those Who Can't"
"A Confession: I'm Starting To Write Off Stupid People As Incorrigible"
"Federalists And Anti-Federalists Explained" (History As It Should Be Taught: A Mother Lode Of Superb, Dialectical Discussion At FactMyth.com)
Hunter S. Thompson: Trusting Liberals Will Get Stomped To Shit If They Don't Realize That Most American Conservatives Will Do Any Goddamn Thing To Stomp Shit Out Of Them
My Post To Elodie's Facebook: On The Indispensable Need For Fluctuation Between Right-Wing And Left-Wing Parties Who Must Alternate Control Of Government In Order To Guarantee Democracy's Survival
Earlier Today, I Heard A Trump Supporter Say: "You Don't Know What To Believe." Once Trump Gets You To Throw Up Your Hands, You Won't Be Able To Determine What's True. Instead, You'll Be More Willing To Accept Lies As Truth. This Is Why Trump Lies So Much And Says "Who Knows? We'll See" So Often. Hannah Arendt Has The Details
How Trump Trashes The Underpinnings Of Truth-And-Faith-In-Shared-
Why "Absolutists" Prefer To See "Relativists" Dead... Whereas "Relativists" Prefer That "Absolutists" Just Mind Their Own Business
Trump cultists see liberals dead liberals want to see trump cultists mind their own business left alone leave alone
In Their Heart Of Hearts, Trump Cultists Want Liberals Dead. On The Other Side Of The Aisle, Liberals Want Conservatives To Just Leave Them Alone (And To Leave Religion Out Of Policy- Making)
In Their Heart Of Hearts, Trump Cultists Want Liberals Dead. On The Other Side Of The Aisle, Liberals Want Conservatives To Just Leave Them Alone (And To Leave Religion Out Of Policy- Making)
Racism, The Division Of The United States Into Two Separate Polities, And The Sudden Collapse Of The Soviet Union
Updating My Proposal Concerning Possible Division Of The "United" States Into Two Separate Nations
What Would Happen If, "Miraculously," Trump's Electoral Victory Were Validated By Swing States Who Suddenly Admitted That Their Vote Tallies Had Been Manipulated... And The Supreme Court Agreed?
Let Rudy Giuliani Make Your Day (... Starting With Two Uplifting News Items)
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