Fools must be rejected not by arguments but by facts.
-Flavius Josephus (Judean General; 37-105 A.D.)
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters can not be trusted with important matters.
-Albert Einstein
If I was a superstitious person I might believe that America has been cursed (for its historical wrong doings most likely). How else to explain the last 10 years? It feels like one night we all went to sleep near the end of the millennium and woke up in some bizarrely retarded alternate universe. We stand at the beginning of the 21st century armed with finest communication technology with the ability to gather information at light speed. You would think this would be leading us into an age of unprecedented enlightenment. You would think the world would be revolutionized in the way that it was when the printing press was invented which brought literacy and a voice to the masses which directly resulted in religious, economical, political, and cultural revolutions.
Yet we stand here today with the likes of Michele Bachmann. I am sure you are all aware of what she said in Iowa yesterday prior to her rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address. What I want to focus on is her statements of the United States beginning as a country where everyone was equal and that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery. Taking into account that she was addressing her faithful, why would she say something she has to know is a complete falsehood (straight up lie)? She is an educated woman. If she truly believed what she was saying I would have to believe she was mentally ill. But she is not mentally ill. She knows her constituents and what motivates them so she designed a speech to appeal to their...to their...intellect (can't use the word intelligent as that would assume they actually have some).
Yes, I am being harsh on her constituency and that's because nobody there challenged her. They just all applauded. They can't all be as dumb (or uninformed) as turnips, yet nobody present challenged her with the truth. A truth that is not only undeniable in its truthiness (they tell me that is an actual word now), but readily available from an uncountable number of sources. You could take someone who knows nothing about U.S. history, sit them in front of a computer with internet access, and within 10 minutes they would have enough information to rebut her statements. Can you imagine being a constituent in the room and knowing what you are hearing is bullshit? Do you take the risk to call her out? Do you risk the wrath of your fellow constituents? Would you at all think about getting Jeremy Loughnered? But then again, if you are a constituent and you are hardcore enough to actually be there in person listening, the chances are your are just loving every minute of it.
If this wasn't so sad it would be comical. The GOP had nothing to say about Iowa but they are very upset because CNN aired Bachmann's State of the Union rebuttal. It was only supposed to be heard by constituents. The GOP is accusing CNN of trying to undermine their message. What!? Undermine? All CNN did was put it on the air. The official rebuttal we all know was from Paul Ryan. You would think that after Christine McDonnell that this particular sector of politics would have no credibility but they just keep on chugging along like the Energizer Bunny with their idiocracy, grabbing major headlines on a daily basis.
Being of African heritage and descended from slaves and having gone through the school system in the U.S. I am familiar with the "white washing" of history. Much of the historical detail that is necessary to understand the convergence of time, people, and events, is omitted from standard U.S education. I have learned more about Black History from reading books as an adult than I did in school. Yeah, we know Lincoln was of the Republican Party and that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation but do we know that Lincoln's Republican Party was directly descended from the Whig Party or that the Abolitionists lobbied Lincoln heavily (with the aid of Fredrick Douglas) for the Emancipation Proclamation and the only reason he signed it was because the Union Army was in danger of losing the war and they needed more soldiers , a lot more soldiers? You may know some of this if you watched the movie Glory. Do you even remember at all being taught about the Abolitionist movement? Were you taught about John Brown, or the Beecher-Stowes, the Bellamy's, or William Lloyd Garrison and his abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator?
These are the people who actually worked tirelessly, and in John Brown's case, gave his life, to end slavery. Why didn't Bachmann give these folks a shout out? It's because her point was not to give credit where it is due or to be truthful. It was the propaganda of the "way things used to be" and much of their platform is about "taking back America" from the liberals and taking us back to those good ole days when white meant might and everybody else was in the backseat just along for the ride.
I wonder what Bachmann's opinions are on the history of lynching. There was a time when "white" meant specifically Anglo-Saxon protestant. Jews, Greeks, Italians, Poles, Germans, the Irish, even the Dutch did not have rights equal to Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They were lynched just like black people were (although nowhere near in the same number), same with gays, socialists, and communists. Why don't these details of history ever appear in any modern political speech? Perhaps it is because the truth can sometimes be very ugly. It is hard to make claim to being the best nation ever when our historical foundation has parts rotted to the core. Sometimes in order for modern propaganda to be effective in today's world history must be reinvented, reshaped, retold, and repackaged. That's how the lying game works, you just keep adding more lies, on the front end and the back end and you keep doing it until people start to believe it is actual truth. That's why we will be here again very soon, if not with Bachmann it will be another from that political sector.
The run up to the 2012 election is on so the players are at home sharpening their knives and forked tongues with unsatiated hunger. They are going to feed on our politically unsophisticated electorate who offer themselves up for the easy taking. The truth at times can be difficult to handle but it in the end it is the only method that leads to true resolution. Lies and untruths perpetuate myths and fallacies and in the end that might be the whole point for the likes of Bachmann.
