When we take car trips, and when the kids are watching DVDs, my wife and I listen to tapes from 'The Teaching Company'. On this trip we're listening to James Senton lecturing in 1996 on American history from the 1870s (Florida throws the presidential election to a crook, de facto slavery is reinstated, the genocide of the Plains Indians is implemented) to the 1920s.
Post-civil war America, by the way, is brutal. It's as though whatever meager nobility we had died with Lincoln.
During our imperial heyday, America conquers Cuba, Mexico and the Pillipines. Cuba was invaded, we are told, because God told President McKinley He wanted Cuba. McKinley seems to stumble into the Phillipines. War there kills 5,000 Americans (generally forgotten on Memorial day) and 500,000 Phillipinos (presumably not forgotten over there). You do remember being taught about this war in your history classes, don't you?
It was in the Phillipines that the US adopted the Spanish "Reconcentration" anti-guerilla methods, which were later rediscovered in Vietnam.
Any similarities to our era, and our adventures in Iraq, are purely coincidental (573,000 hits).
McKinley, by the way, was the creation of a 19th century version of Karl Rove.
Bush will rule for 3.5 more years. At least. We need Teddy Roosevelt the IInd.
No comments:
Post a Comment