Remember that sarcastic insult–born too soon, smart too late, or something along those lines? I think I plead guilty.
I took the usual number of American history courses in high school and college, and thought I was at least superficially acquainted with the arc of American experience. But over the years, I began to realize that my knowledge of history was more superficial than informed. Visits to museums added uncomfortable details to the story of how European “settlers” and their progeny dispossessed Native Americans, and how administration after administration refused to honor treaties. Perhaps it’s the faulty memory of an older woman, but I don’t remember ever being taught about the Trail of Tears.
I was already teaching at the university level before I learned about the deliberate American housing policies that are largely responsible for the continuing disparities between White and Black household wealth. I was serving on the dissertation committee of a social work student who was researching housing policy, and I was appalled to learn that redlining was official FHA policy for more years than we might imagine, effectively preventing Black Americans from building equity and security.
A recent book by Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law examines the local, state and federal housing policies that didn’t just allow, but actually mandated segregation. The Federal Housing Administration not only refused to insure mortgages in (or even near) African-American neighborhoods, it subsidized builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions–if those builders would ensure that none of the homes would be sold to African-Americans.
For the past several years, I, along with my Yale colleague Michael W. Kraus and our students, have been examining perceptions of racial economic inequality—its extent and persistence, decade by decade. In a 2019 study, using a dozen specific moments between 1963 and 2016, we compared perceptions of racial wealth inequality over time with actual data on racial wealth inequality. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the respondents in our study significantly overestimated the wealth of Black families relative to that of white families. In 1963, the median Black family had about 5 percent as much wealth as the median white family. Respondents said close to 50 percent. For 2016, the respondents estimated Black wealth to be 90 percent that of whites. The correct answer for that year was about 10 percent.
Trump’s recent tweets warning suburban dwellers that Biden and Harris will “wage war on the suburbs” is rooted in that history of American housing policy. As Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times,
Now, as the Trump campaign desperately searches for political avenues of attack, we’re hearing a lot about the “war on the suburbs.”
It’s probably not a line that will play well outside the G.O.P.’s hard-core base; Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t exactly come across as rabble-rousers who will lead raging antifa hordes as they pillage America’s subdivisions.
Yet it is true that a Biden-Harris administration would resume and probably expand on Obama-era efforts to finally make the Fair Housing Act of 1968 effective, seeking in particular to redress some of the injustices created by America’s ugly history of using political power to create and reinforce racial inequality.
Fred Trump was one of the developers who profited from the segregationist policies of the FHA and VA, and his son Donald clearly believes that the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream is basically a walled village that the government built for whites, whose gates were slammed shut when others tried to enter.”
If facing these and other previously. unrecognized aspects of American history wasn’t unsettling enough, the pandemic quarantine has given me time to read. From Jill Lepore’s magisterial These Truths to Ron Chernow’s turgid Hamilton to Isabel Wilkerson’s lyrical and unsettling Caste, my last few months have been eye-opening, to say the least.
I remember when Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States was dismissed as “anti-American.” But genuine patriotism needs to be based on an accurate understanding of our country’s flaws as well as its strengths. If we are ever going to create the America I used to think I inhabited, we need to know what we need to know.
But I am drinking a lot more these days….
Greetings Mrs Kennedy. Madison Heights Social Studies teachers must not have done their job.
🙂 🙂 🙂 Irvin
For a truly screwed up education in history you should have attended Catholic schools during the 1950’s. We were taught that all of the great explorers were Catholic. The best new settlers were from Ireland. The Native Americans were pagans in need of baptism. The Marines won the Second World War for us because they are all Catholic. Al Smith would have made a great president. California was “won” and settled by Catholics, “Why just look at all those “Catholic” names for cities”.
I’ve had to spend decades getting a real education on my own, and I too am still learning.
I believed I was a history buff and knew the truth about America and the world only to find out that nobody writing the books I was reading was telling the stocking truth about what really happened from deceased blanked to native Americans, if assigning them to barren lands until oil was discovered then cheating them out of it or to the complete destruction of Black Communities that we’re building wealth and education.
I believe the real stories the real facts and yes all the horrible truths should be told and thought in schools and colleges.
Theresa, my Catholic educational experience was identical to yours. Also, let’s not forget that just a few short years ago we had a governor in Mitch Daniels who tried to ban the use of Zinn’s book in Indiana public schools, a patently racist act. And now he’s the president of one of America’s great land grant universities.
We were not taught American history. We were taught American Exceptionalism.
thanks, good write,the people,who are margialized are also white ,yellow,brown,black and red to. down south if you run the back roads thru mississippi,alabama,georgia,the hills of the carolinas, be ashamed those back roads still house in technicolor the grandure of poverty. pushed and made real because a few decided that they needed all the spoils.,and someone to kick..ever date a black woman in alabama,and take her to the best dinning in troy? Christy and me, (whitey)and i enjoyed my evening,looking at the ones who decided..it wasnt spite,it was a evening to remember,and church in the morning,listening to the choir.i dont mince words,and your overlook at history,well,i got a first hand look,as a young kid,in those converstions sitting with elders who, told,the stories. better than history books, a person who told you how it was,and why..i enjoy life,and i do pick out the bigots,and the nay sayers who demand i,look,the other way to… my use of superlitives,well, they are not for someone who cant cope. until you break bread with people who have lived,and are still living unequal in any aspect of the so called American dream of whitey,by choice of the few who decide. i am white,irish,dutch/german pol. and i grew up listening and learning from those who live it everyday..to bad many just write about it,and draw lines and conclusions, try sitting down at the table,and enjoy some real life experiences,take a drive down that back road,get out and go into the local store,grab a coke,some conversation, and enjoy it live, in technicolor…
Theresa,
my aunt was a nun in the school across town,i didnt get away with much, all hell broke loose when i showed up with the rise and fall of the third reich. the nun who was my teacher,grabbed that book and decided it was not proper for me to read it.. she called my aunt who explained,i was already very aware of the whys and hows of world war two,and my aunt sought to keep me informed,give direction for information.plus and i worked as a kid in the library down the street sorting books and doing odd jobs.,she told my teach,be lucky he picked that subject on his own,and wants to read… that nun, was gracious when she gave it back to me, witha little nudge,read it at home please…
I went to Catholic school as well. I had lots of disagreements with the sisters, but more with the priests who were brought in to teach religion. We were at least taught the basics of the Constitution, even memorizing the Preamble.
Yes, we were fed a lot of pablum by the sisters, some of whom weren’t exactly the brightest stars on the horizon. The best of them feared that we wouldn’t be able to contextualize what we read if we got too far out front. I think the best of them were right. What I see from so many people, both left and right, is an inability to accept that people are different in different times. We not only need to teach history, but we need to accept history as being what it is, the past. It should inform us, not rule us.
Napoleon once said, “What is history, but a fable agreed upon?” “By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”
The great Howard Zinn gave us a People’s version of American History, Thank God. Unfortunately, so many do not even know it exists.
As Jack Smith stated, if one REALLY is interested and wants to know…breaking bread with “the others” is the best way by far. Nothing comes close.
Thanks, Sheila, for your story and your posting as usual. Cheers.
Greetings. This bit of info only applies to public schools and I’m not sure it applies today. Textbooks in public schools were renewed every 5 years. And every year two or three texts were up for renewal. I was a History teacher in Indiana. Every five years all the history teachers in a system reviewed the various texts offered by the many publishers and those who fed us best won the contract for the next five years. 🙂 And that is how is was done for many years.
Irvin retired history teacher Korean War Vet. GI Bill = college
Of course, income is a rate measure, per year typically, so the real measure of personal progress is the accumulation of wealth. A life financially well lived would be when your work leads to enough wealth to live comfortably off of without working for about half as many years as you worked, with a good cushion for the unplanned surprises along the way.
Of course the fact of the difficulty in doing that brought about the involuntary savings of Medicare and Social Security. For many people it’s only those programs that allow them to get through those last years.
That’s why a measure of how the current administration is the government for the wealthy and not all Americans are threats against both “entitlement” programs.
Clearly the GOP both believes and acts on the notion that in America now the rich are not rich enough and the poor are not poor enough so things must be done to cure those discrepancies.
What were we thinking when we let such blindness into our government to continue default slavery pretending that it’s prudent to?
In my novel, “Meadows and Minefields” I write passages about these very aspects of our history. Jack is totally correct. The back roads of anywhere show that poverty is the common denominator for human misery. Billionaires and millionaires who exploit the law and the politics for their own enrichment are truly the gutter scum of capitalism as they haven’t learned from their disastrous mistakes generated by their greed. Most of them are Republicans, so…
Jon Sorg has read my book and probably found the roots of those passages from Howard Zinn.
When I wrote that book, I tried to include things I WISHED had happened… like a history teacher who drilled down into the unknown facts. It was painful to write, but those history lessons were good for my character development.
David writes, “We were not taught American history. We were taught American Exceptionalism.”
Exactly!
Sheila shouldn’t feel bad because we were all taught that nonsense in school. After all, the publishers were in charge of telling the faux story of exceptionalism. As the old expression goes, “winners get to write the history.” Swap winners for oppressors.
As several have mentioned, Zinn wrote his history through the lens of the oppressed, not the oppressors.
In our little community of Muncie, Indiana, home of Ball State University, many history classes have gone through this university. The Ball family trust fund managers decided to fund a “definitive study their relations to African-Americans.” It was complete bullshit.
After doing some digging, one of the sons of the original five Ball brothers drafted neighborhood association documents preventing “Negroes, Chinese, and Jews” from occupying any of the primary residences. These documents were prevalent until the 2000s.
Even when given a chance to own and repair the damage done, they used their money to whitewash or gloss over their actions. And because of their money, everyone in the community becomes sycophants. This mentality permeates our society at the top.
The old quotation about “My Country, right or wrong” is only half of what Carl Schurz said. The rest of it is something like “Our Country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right”. 50+ years ago a gave a speech at an American Legion speech contest saying that sunshine patriots who didn’t question their governments actions weren’t true patriots at all. One must be able to look at what is wrong in the country and work to put it right. That didn’t go over well…
I have heard that some politicians call much of what I am reading now “revisionist history”, even threatening to withhold funding for school systems that teach from the 1619 Project (Tom Cotton). I say that this may be “revisioning” history in the sense that we are now seeing a more complete history, and that it is important. I grew up in Oklahoma, near Tulsa, and did know about the Trail of Tears, but had not heard about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 until recently, or the similar event that had occurred a few years before that in Dewey, Oklahoma, which is 4 miles from my childhood home. We need to know all of our history, the ugly parts as well as the good. You must sometimes lance a boil for it to heal.
Yes, I would suggest Vernon’s book, it is very good! 17.99 on Amazon, LOL!
He is actually one of the authors I follow on Amazon, but don’t tell him that!
Getting to the crux of the matter, American history has never been in favor of the truth. Because American history tries to obfuscate one of its biggest drivers early on, American Manifest Destiny! And then of course it’s siblings, American exceptionalism and American romanticism. If anybody is familiar with these things, you would know the true American history.
American history was designed for White, property owning, politically connected to the other white property owning wealth mongers! History was not designed for the mongrels, i.e. Native Americans, nor, the slaves, i.e. African-Americans. A fairly significant portion of those African slaves were Abrahamists, i.e. Islamic or Muslim. Many of these African/Muslim slaves had a large part in building the White House! Islam has been a religion in the United States for hundreds of years, longer than many Christian religions!
Judaism has been here sense the beginning of this country, this is brought out in the 1790 letter to the Hebrew synagogue congregation in Newport Rhode Island, from George Washington, quite an interesting read! Suffice it to say, Islam was probably here before Judaism.
So, what paradoxical moment have we reached? Where did this country acquire this huge epiphany? An epiphany where we would hate our history and change it? Judging by Sheila’s thread here, obviously, there has been none!
Certain individuals on this thread claim that they live in the 21st century, and not the past. And, my claim/answer to that, then you’re no different than the one in the White House because he conducts himself as a white man, one that is no different now than when they 1st came to this country! One that has the same ideas, the same privilege, the same social standing, the same superior stance concerning all that he surveys!
I used to listen to my great uncles talking about the history when they were kids, or my great grandfather, who talked about how his brother and nephews died on a train taking them to the colored man’s hospital after a mine accident!
Humanity, when it comes to the different ethnicities in this world, will never be unified! They will never be unified until that separation is ended! And what I mean, that genetic desire for superiority is eliminated. That’s a flaw in humanity that will never be eliminated by humans!
One doesn’t have to read the actual truthful history of the world to know what that history is! Because that history doesn’t tell the truth about the United States, or Brazil, or Argentina, or Canada, or South Africa, or Australia, or New Zealand, just a few of where the white man annihilated the natives/1st ones in all of those countries!
Below is Rudyard Kipling’s epiphany which seemed to been agreed upon by the British queen!
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead !
Take up the White Man’s burden —
And reap his old reward,
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly !) towards the light: —
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night ?”
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Have done with childish days —
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgement of your peers.
Anybody who is interested in Alexis de Tocqueville, he completely missed the boat on American exceptionalism, even though he witnessed man’s inhumanity to man, those brown people and black people weren’t considered human anyway, only 3/5 human!
History? Y’all better do some research!
Another great book is the Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond.
For a number of years, I was at a law firm that represented apartment developers and management. It had a significant part of its practice in evictions. It was an ethical firm that did not engage in the many questionable practices I saw in small claims courts. It was not my practice area, but occasionally I did cover hearings in small claims for other lawyers. I saw enough of that practice to see how the system was set up against those in poverty.
It is said by many in 12 step recovery that the truth will piss us off before it sets us free.
The American history I was taught was, so to speak, “white washed”. Since then I have watched documentaries that clearly demonstrate that the history of this country is littered with severe injustice. I see what happened to Native Americans as genocidal. And, I know that we continue to disenfrancise thousands of people of color. I know that we still struggle with sexism and homophobia. And of course now we have Islamophobia.
Our existential fear of the “other” continues to plague us and to create systems of racism, sexism etc. And I do not doubt that our fear of scarcity further contributes to this. Some people believe that fear is the devil’s most effective tool. When I look at the widening gap of wealth, the continued bigotry, I suspect that what those people believe gives me pause.
Our country is far from perfect. We must continue to move the moral arc of justice forward. Vote blue!!
Enough of complaining about a problem so evident as the nose on your face. Let’s move to pragmatic ideas for fixing. Check out: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/opinion/sunday/blm-residential-segregation.html
As a Boomer in school we studied world history with it bent to the European outlook, especially Western Europe. It made sense in a way the history of Western Europe would determine American history. The attempted invasions by the Mongols of Japan were not mentioned, in contrast the attempted invasions of Persia into ancient Greece were covered.
I did not know the “real” history of the wars with Native Americans until I read the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee after High School. It was the Steroid Capitalism of it’s day called Manifest Destiny which provided the veneer of justification to have these non stop wars against Native Americans.
Zinn’s book was also a wake up for me. The Boomer History I had lightly touched on the struggle to Unionize workers, it was presented as a peaceful transition. Zinn’s book that efforts to unionize were anything but peaceful. The 1% of the day did all in power to crush the unions, including using the police powers of the state, plus private security forces (hired guns) which had a free rein to do what the 1% wanted.
The “Lost Cause” history attempted to show the Civil War was about Northern Big Government trying to crush the Southern States, that represented “states rights”. The states right’s the Confederacy fought for was the preservation of slavery. The Neo-Confederates of today have to deny the primary reason the southern states rebelled was the perpetuation of slavery.
ML writes, “The 1% of the day did all in power to crush the unions, including using the police powers of the state, plus private security forces (hired guns) which had a free rein to do what the 1% wanted.”
Not much has changed…
I can never get the smug smirk on the face of Bill Barr when during an interview he answered a question about his place in history. He said, looking ever so much like Jabba the Hutt, that history is written by the winners.
I wish I could rub his loss come November in his grotesque face!
There is history that is taught, and then there is history that our lazy, privileged, ass-for-brains CHOOSE to remember.
Winners write the history books…a goddamned lie, especially when “the” is a definitive article, as if the history books written by winners are the only history books! Consider: Germany lost two major wars, but Germans, even Nazi German nationals, still write history books. The South lost the Civil War, but southerners and Rebel sympathizers still write a lot of history books, maybe more than the rest of us and often better than the rest. The peaceniks and the coward leadership in the US lost the Vietnam war, but American authors still spew forth with history books about the Vietnam war. How can you look at what is actually happening in life and letters and still buy into the basest of false cliches when you talk about it? How can you then accuse Trump’s deplorables of rejecting reality? How can you complain that you were not taught something when you were being schooled; maybe you didn’t pay attention then, either.
They didn’t teach us that when I was in school…another goddamned lie!
At Walnut Grove School outside Strawtown, Indiana on SR 213, a mere 300 students in twelve grades, I learned about Crispus Attucks, the Friends Church efforts to help escaped slaves, the KKK in Indiana, the Trail of Tears, Henry Ford’s support of Hitler, etc., so those things were taught, but I can’t vouch for other students recall or acceptance of what they were taught. Most people, I think, only recall that which was EMPHASIZED in class, providing their parents and/or their previous conditioning didn’t prohibit remembering it.
History classes at Pan American College in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the late 1950s (sixty years ago) tried to teach me much of the history that modern historians only now claim is “new”. New, my ass! Bullshit! Professors also assigned us reading lists for other historical viewpoints, but I doubt that many students bothered to read much of it.
Later, when I taught at Windfall, Indiana, Tipton, Indiana, Edinburg and Mission, Texas, Escalon and Bridgeville, California, I examined the approved history books the history teachers were using and found hundreds of topics those books covered that so many of you claim was never taught. What the hell? Did none of you ever read the frigging books?
There is history that is taught, and then there is history that our lazy, privileged, ass-for-brains CHOOSE to remember.
At coffee, a friend of mine said, “I never once heard my history teacher mention that (the Royalists, colonists who worked against independence and sided with England), not once.” My question to him was, “Did you ever read the assignments in the book?” I also asked him if he recalled me mentioning a certain thing last week when we talked about this. His answer was, “No, I don’t listen to everything someone tells me.” There you go.
Regarding the Trail of Tears – there is a play, an outdoor drama for which the Mountainside Theatre, in Cherokee, North Carolina, was built. This production, Unto These Hills, has run for 60 years. It deals with Cherokee history. Somehow, my sister and I were fortunate enough to see this production with our dad in the 1950s on a road trip around Western North Carolina.
Wikipedia has a short article about this production. Apparently, there are several other long playing outdoor dramas about American history around the country.
Sheila, your comments today brought this memory back, thank you.
Regarding religious education, I had the priviledge and good fortune to be sent to a Quaker boarding school where we did not learn that Quakers were present at every turning point in history, though that might have made a positive difference…
One of the wonderful aspects of this blog is that it always presents its readers with opportunities to learn. That is quite a gift – thank you, Sheila!
I attended both public and parochial schools through 8th grade into the late 1950s. I never learned about much history at all in parochial schools except Church history which had a definite narrow focus. In high school, I had religion classes every year with a decided concentration on Church history. My World History teacher was a Bostonian so the emphasis was on the Revolutionary War. Civics was taught by an older and slightly eccentric nun who in hindsight tried her best but seldom had any active support from anyone, students, parents or administration. I learned most of my history of not only the country but the region and the world from independent reading as I still do today. The atrocities of history are most frequently obscured, dismissed as anomalies or omitted altogether, or glorified as justified defense against the “other” evils of the world.
Distance can sometimes provide a more accurate lens to view and understand the bigger picture. Personal accounts tell us how that big picture affected the daily lives of those who often were of little import to the powers in conflict.
It seems that we are in the midst of an event that likely will change the futures of all of us in ways to be written about not just by those living the daily lives affected, but by those who will view from a distant, but profoundly impacted, future. I hope they are clear-eyed and even-handed.
I try not be too naive. It is no wiser nor more virtuous to see others as better than us as it is to see them as less than us.
I’ve travelled the US and attended a small share of Native American “Pow-wows”, outdoor dramas, discussion groups, and museums. The most interesting thing I learned was the clever way that Indians designed wigwams to circulate air. One thing those “history” lessons (so-called real truth) NEVER covered was the attrocities that Native Americans sometimes committed against each other and against white settlers.
When my white great, great, great grandmother eloped in North Carolina with a Cherokee Indian, his Indian family and her white family shunned them “forever”. The vices and virtues that underlaid that behavior was present on both sides, more or less equally. And probably still are.
The proclivity for many of us to accept violent reactions (vengeance) when it was meted against whites by Native Americans seems to reveal a nod in favor of ends justifying means. But the same people condemn the practice of justifying means when vengeance is applied by whites. If it is wrong for whites to massacre Indians in retaliation to an Indian massacre of whites, it is also wrong for Indians.
My objection is to the tendency to display weakness and submission (like a submissive dog displaying its belly) in a misguided effort to show that one is embracing minorities and oppressed peoples. I object almost as much to the inconsistency that is so apparent, a thing I usually associate with republicans.
I’m going to quote me here.
“The harder one tries to be consistent the closer one is forced into being principled.” And the opposite is true: “The harder one resists being consistent, the easier it becomes to be unprincipled.”
I had heard about the Trail of Tears during a High School class, I can’t recall if it was government or history, but it certainly was the only mention of what white government did to people who got in the way. What I hadn’t learned was the discrimination required by Government for building all those homes. What was just as terrible an inhumane, was that black soldiers were ineligible for GI bill benefits after WW2. Many black soldiers gave up somewhat safer roles in the rear and took reductions is rank to serve in combat roles. To deny these men ( and women I assume) the same benefits as their white counterparts is also part of the reason many whites flourished after the war and many black men were left about where they started. The more I read about government excluding minorities the more I understand the desire for reparations.
Sorg? Huh !!!
Larry – Thanks for the shout out to Walnut Grove, our little rural, all white school which provided us an excellent education. The most valuable lessons were never to stop learning and that learning meant exploring information outside our own experience.
Thank you Walnut Grove educators.
Irvin @ 4:10;
Comprehension? They taught that in school! I guess atheists don’t like history either, LOL!
Larry @ 3:24;
Life is tough isn’t it! I wonder if you walked around and displayed your native American heritage proudly! of course I’m rather sure you don’t look native American, so you could get away with being a minut portion considering it was your great-great-grandfather.
Powwows are one thing, toting your Winchester to the Canadian border and fighting with your brothers in blood is a completely other situation. I was 17 then! was it smart? Probably not, could have been killed, could have went to prison for a long long time. But, in my mind, at that time, it was the right thing to do because my native brethren were correct during and about that time.
Once again, you fail in your moral self aggrandizement, with more than a pinch of moral obfuscation! It would be nice if you would consider standing for something compassionately rather than being aggregate about nothing. You are all over the map, and, basically your opinions are rather useless. too bad Marv isn’t around anymore because he got tired of dealing with certain coffee clutches that tell stories but have no courage.
Reading your opines on a regular basis kind of gives the feeling of the looking Glass, with a view of the rabbit hole. One thing I would have to say though, you tend to be extremely Petty! And that really is a shame, because, if you have to be Petty to initialize insults on someone. Really, you should just keep your mouth shut! Or your fingers off the keyboard whatever you prefer. I’ve dealt with snide bullies like you who feel entitled and Superior, but, you need this to be complete! the only reason I’m here, is to offer a different perspective from someone who lives on turmoils edge daily. And to show that there are other ways,
I’m sure Sheila is going to be mad when she sees this, and Sheila I’m sorry, but it needed to be said!
By the way, Marv says hi, and myself, I’m going to be driving down to Jacksonville and hang out with him for a while.
Oh, and Larry; you really should just come clean and be who you are, and quit faking It on This thread, you really do keep embarrassing yourself for some of us who know the real deal.
From an extensive list of Labor Quotes, catalogued by topic, with separate pages for Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, and Joe Hill; “The real patriot is the person who is not afraid to criticize the defective policies of the country which he loves.”
Joseph J. Fahey
Robert @ 10:33;
Right on brother ✊?
I still consider myself patriotic, but its not the blind faith that it once was. We have an ethical mandate to form our opinions about historic facts. I miss facts, but I look forward to their resurgence. The disinformation and misinformation flying about today make fact-checking a full-time job. It also undermines any hope of having a political conversation.