Mean kids

        Once upon a time there was a man named Spiro. His parents were Greek immigrants who came to America, worked hard, and helped send  their son to college. Eventually, Spiro worked so hard that he became the political boss of a strange and wonderful place called Maryland. In 1967, a man named Richard wanted to be political boss of the whole country, and he needed an easterner to do what is known as "balancing the ticket" as a Vice President.  Being an easterner and relatively unknown outside Maryland, Spiro seemed like a great choice. What Richard wouldn't know until later was that while Spiro was unknown to most Americans, he was very well known to certain contractors in Maryland and had taken bribes from them.

        Richard won the election based largely on a "secret plan" to end a war in a faraway place called Vietnam. His secret plan was to quit and come home, and many Americans were ready to do just that . Some people, called Democrats, didn't like Richard much, especially after he blamed some college students for their own deaths and bombed countries America wasn't even fighting. Rather than go himself and speak badly of these persons, Richard sent Spiro, armed with mean speeches by men named Patrick and William. These were nasty speeches, using strange words  like "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "effete corps of impudent snobs," so Spiro had to study very hard. As good as he was at being mean, Spiro had to leave his job with Richard and go home to answer for those old bribes.

        Richard's next  Vice President was a nice man named Gerald, who loved his dog and fell down a lot, Gerald's Vice president was named Rocky, and he died later when his secretary fell on him. Neither Gerald or Rocky made mean speeches. 

     After a while, a man named Ronald became President and he had a Vice President named George Bush. Both were nice men, generally, but there was an evil man in the Congress named Newt and a radio guy named Rush who took over the mean speech department.  Rush also took drugs, but before they caught him he was made an "honorary" member of the Congress. Newt and Rush talked nasty about Big Bird, and Bert and Ernie, the whole time Ronald was President, even when he began to forget who they were. After Ronald left, George took over for four years after he beat another Greek  guy, named Michael, for President. He won by showing pictures of a large mean  Black man named Willie Horton and telling the country that Michael would send otheer Black men to your house if you didn't vote for him (George). Newt was still around as the mean speech guy too, and he had a buddy named Lee who helped him with the meanest stuff..

       In 1992, a strange thing happened. As much as the mean speech guys spoke against him, and as relatively unknown as he was, a man named Bill became the President. He was a smart man, but had trouble with his fly, sometimes. When he was President, there were many persons called Republicans who hated him, but more persons called Americans who liked him  a lot. While he was President, lots of things got better, and the Government actually had enough money to pay its bills. Mr. Bill was President for eight years, even though some mean persons in the Congress tried to fire him, but all they did was make most Americans mad for wasting time and money. Early during Bill's time, people began to like Newt less and less, till he quit.

        After eight years, Bill had to leave and his Vice President, Albert, tried to be President. The election was close, actually settled by one vote - in the biggest court of the land. The winner was also named George, and he was the son of the earlier President George. He looked a bit like Alfred E. Newman, but wasn't that smart.  He didn't speak English good, didn't read much, and wasn't sure if our children was learning.  When he won, he started to plan a war. His war was with Iraq, and he said it would only last a year or so, since those people would love us for getting rid of their government. The man who told him to do this was the same man who told his father not to do it , nine years earlier, which confused some of us Americans.  

       In September of  2001, several very bad men flew several airplanes into big buildings and hurt a lot of people. George blamed the leader of Iraq, even though there was no real reason to believe they did it. Then he started his war. He had mean speech makers, too, named Dick and Donald. The war was very expensive, and the extra money Bill had planned for turned into much, much, more debt, instead. After seven years of George,  some more bad things happened. First, the war continued, second, some people in the money business realized that promises to pay weren't really the same as money. 

     In the last year of George's second term, many Americans lost their jobs, Many person's savings were lost, as were their houses. He promised Iraq that in 2011, American forces would leave Iraq , and he tried to help the money people with a "bail out," because he said they were "too big to fail." George still had many mean speech makers, but they usually were mean about policy, not personal things.

        In November 2007, something strange happened. A man became President who wasn't white. His name was Barack. He was far smarter than George, his daughters weren't slutty drunks, and he was a Democrat, like Bill had been. When he took over, things in America were pretty bad; the economy was slow, many were unemployed, and many couldn't even afford healthcare. Some people, like Rush, Sean, Glenn and a whole TV network, made mean speeches against Barack. Even some women, like Sarah and Michele  said all sorts of nasty things against him. These mean thing were personal. When he did things that all the Presidents before him had done, they still picked on him.  Some Americans believed it wasn't because of his job , but because of the color of his skin. After he won a second term, these mean persons almost went crazy, inventing all; sorts of foolish mean things to say against him.   

        Republicans were so busy making up mean lies about President Barack that  they didn't notice that the economy had gotten much  better than it was when he was elected, and that many more people had jobs. They didn't notice that the government was doing much better at paying its bills than when George was president.  They screamed about the President's effort to provide health care for more Americans, then, when it worked far better and cost less than expected, they became quiet. They blamed Barack for leaving Iraq, even though George had signed an agreement to do it! After doing nothing about America's immigration problem, they screamed when the President acted.

        Now  that President Obama is in the late part of his term, there are people speaking mean about him again. Many of  these people want to be president. One wants even to be another President Bush. Most of them are trying to get attention by making mean speeches against the president. One who is different, is a guy named Rudy. Rudy was a mayor of New York. Some liked him, some didn't, but what Rudy really, really wanted to be was  President! In 2008, he tried, but his own party told him no, so now, this bitter little man realizing he'll never be President has become the  new Spiro, making mean speeches calling the President all sorts of things. He will be joined by Scott, Rand, Joni and others who have nothing of their own which is positive to talk about, so they, like Rudy and Spiro, will go on doing what losers do. Meanwhile, George's little brother, Jebbie , says he has no problem with President Barack personally, he just hates his "catastrophic policies."  It's amazing how much Jebbie has forgotten about 2000-2008, and how little he apparently  understands about the economy, health care and other things as they are now. Maybe he's talking about the situation in  the Middle East - you remember, the region brother George destabilized with his adventure in Iraq?

     

  

Animal Farm, revisited

        So....Far rightist legislators in various states are all farklempt because of what they say are "leftist" or more aptly "revisionist" ideas in the AP US History "Exam", by which I am pretty sure they mean course description, since the exam is a closely held secret until administration,  and even then it's about 4 years before they release copies of the exam for instructors.  

    All that aside, even, the exam is multiple choice questions and thesis statements for essays, each type of endeavor constituting half of the exam.  I suppose you could write "revisionist" multiple choice questions,  but I'm not sure how to do it and make the questions usable. Of course , unlike the state legislators, I actually have degree(s) in the field and taught the subject for a number of years. I have also had several colleagues, not liberal, who successfully taught the subject, also using the College Board's course outline.

       It would seem that the problem starts with ignorant people being given power by their electorate to inflict their ignorance in such a way as to perpetuate it.  In fact, all history is "revisionist."  History is unique  among disciplines in that factual events which may seem to have some particular portent at the time, may, as seen through the lens of time and distance from events, have other significance that originally recorded, orally transmitted, or  otherwise registered.  Two examples, related to US history in the 20th century  would be historians' analysis of two Presidents - Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman -a Republican and a Democrat.

        Some historians of the generation  after Hoover were less than kind in their analysis of his efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the Great Depression. Some considered him mean spirited, others cowardly, and some  simply believed him ineffectual. As time elapsed into the  1960s and later, there began to be reexamination of Hoover on several fronts, including what Congress  allowed him to do, what his views of the role of government  allowed  him to do and some other considerations, including his religious background and feelings regarding self reliance and responsibility. Additionally, historians looked deeper at Hoover's true understanding of conditions in the rest of the nation. What  emerged was a far gentler and more humane treatment of Herbert Hoover in the hands of historians, many of whom were relatively liberal.      

        Harry Truman, as the accidental successor to FDR was equally reviled by far rightists, simply because he was yet "another damned Democrat", and piled on, because, unlike  FDR, he was hardly the father figure who led us through t the War. He was accused by McCarthy and others as being "soft on Communism,"  too easy on labor, and just a hick from Missouri - the accidental President. By the mid 1980s, Truman's rehabilitation  was well underway, as his performance at the time was reevaluated in the light of subsequent events. In other words, some historians revised their views of Truman, not because of what he did, but because of later developments related to things he did.

       In this way, essentially all historical writing is revisionist in nature, so the issue is, what bothers these legislators about the current AP US History course and subject material? Considering the Civil Rights movement and resistances to it,  newer  history books tend to treat the incidents and issues more even handedly, mentioning things left out of the texts of the legislators generations; things such as the Topeka, Kansas, race riots (1921),  the Ocoee Florida lynchings (1920),  and the Rosewood Fl. massacre (1923). Also unmentioned in most texts was the government's open hostility to Dr King,  evidenced in the person of J. Edgar Hoover, himself, lionized in the 1950s, and exposed in the 1990s.  As these matters become released to public scrutiny, it is only natural to reevaluate previous positions.

        As to the charges of "leftist" negativism, it may (must) be assumed that the legislators who are so offended are culturally illiterate to the point of only knowing what their parents , their church, or their government tell them.  One of the issues cited by these naifs is revisionist thought on that godlike icon of all things Right , Ronald Reagan.  Of course these persons grew up, probably in homes where the gipper's named was invoked at mealtimes, believing that Ronald Reagan saved the economy, won the Cold War and changed American society for the better.

       Real re-analysis of Reagan, which had begun to happen by the mid 1990s and continues, shows a man who was, in his own son's  words, "in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease half way through his second term". This by the way, Ron Reagan's version, has been confirmed  by Leslie Stahl , although vociferously denied by adopted son  Michael. In like Manner, Nancy -"Just say no" Reagan has been identified by daughter Patti as a child abuser, who struck her in the face from age nine on.  Contrary to second and third hand information, these are primary source data, as are the memos and personal recounting of meetings  regarding the exchange of missiles for hostages and the illegal funding thereof, where both Reagan and George H.W,. Bush were there.  

     Sometimes revisionism is simply getting the facts straight, as in realizing that Reagan didn't "win" the Cold War, the Soviet government and system collapsed under its own weight and inefficiency, aided by Mikhail Gorbachev. Further analysis of Reagan's fanatic adherence to "supply side " economics has shown it to be, as Bush called it, "VooDoo economics."  Further proof  of the correctness of this position can be seen in the struggling economies of Kansas and Wisconsin. Revisionism is simply another term for "further evaluation."  The fact that this further evaluation shows a picture one doesn't like as a well as previously held illusion only means historians are doing their job.

        

     Another phrase heard in this debate is the accusation that these materials might "encourage dissidence."  Yet another is that course materials don't teach "American Exceptionalism" - the concept that the USA is better than anyone else has ever been. Ever. Forever. Just like mythical Lake Woebegone, all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

Attempting to remove texts and scour curricula of any ideas a particular group doesn't like is just a step away from book burning. Then again, perhaps this is what these imbeciles would really like to do. Custer was just misunderstood and The KKK were patriots.......you get the picture.  

Onward Christian Soldiers

      Apparently,  Mike  Huckabee, the  entire Fox News staff and a significant number of Republican talking heads in and out of congress either failed history, or more correctly are trying to rewrite it. The recent reaction to the President remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast (WHY? Why not a national ping pong breakfast?)  reminding the attendees, correctly, I might add that Christians need to be mindful of their own history as a religious movement before rolling all Muslims into one group and associating all Islam with ISIS.  

        This seems to me to be a reasonable statement of the situation, but heads exploded,  Huckabee  said "  “Everything he does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the radical Muslim community or the more moderate Muslim community.”  If that seems a bit extreme, it is. I have seen this president do nothing "against the Christians, except express his concern that some religious groups were intent on forcing their doctrinal belief on the body politic, co-religionists and dissenters alike. Of course this is constitutional, but I fear Huckabee can't read much of that document, except perhaps the second Amendment, which he misinterprets, in my opinion.

        Faux news was worse, several statements on their propaganda broadcasts actually stating that Christians might have killed in the name of God ("might have?"  they painted friggin' crosses on their shields) during the Crusades, but that was a long time ago and it was really a war to "liberate" the "Holy land," apparently from the Muslims who had lived there for about the previous 600 years. But other than that..... nada, zip, zero, all Christians had been blameless in the following 800 or so years, and no more deaths in the name of God had occurred. Really?  

        As  a history teacher, it makes me want to puke for two reasons. First, these are the assholes who would "sanitize" history texts so that our kids would grow up being exposed to a sort of  "Lake Woebegone" history where  " all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average" and,  by the way, everything America has ever done at home and in the world has been perfect and Christianity is the reason because all the founding fathers were really ministers.  

        To these ravings that Christians haven't killed in the name of  their religion consider the following:

Bosnia: During the Bosnian War, at least 97,207 people were killed. The vast majority were Bosnian Muslims, the victims of religiously motivated "ethnic cleansing" at the hands of both Croatian Catholics and Yugoslav  Orthodox.

Crusades: Christian military excursions against the Muslim Conquests killed at a lower estimate,  1.7 million. Although styled as holy war , and preached as one by the Pope, it was even worse, as it rapidly degenerated into empire building in the name of "Christian kingdoms" in the eastern Mediterranean.  

French Wars of Religion: In France, during the last half of the 16th century wars between French Catholics and (Protestant) Huguenots  caused the death of  2.8  million souls, again in the name of the same god (different uniform)Holocaust 8.1 million

The Thirty Years' War:  Fought between parts of Germany and other outside forces pitted Protestant against Catholic again, both convinced God was on their side, as Protestant princes rebelled against the Holy Roman Empire . During the first half of the 17th century at least  5.9 million died in the name of one or the other version of Christianity.

Spanish Inquisition:  Once again, Roman Catholics killed those who did not believe as they did. between 1493 and about 1530, burnings killed at least 1,000, but the real tragedy was the belief that God had , via the Pope, granted all of the Americas to Spain, ergo, if native persons did not follow God's will (give up the gold and be slaves) they could be killed, all in the Caribbean basin eventually would be.

Irish Civil War:   at least 2,000 died over God's word in the Irish Civil War

Worthy of special mention is the fact that Germany considered itself a Christian nation as it pursued the "final solution".  Of course this was not the first time Jews in Germany had been persecuted, since Teutonic Knights on their way to the holy land burned synagogues with the congregations locked inside. This , then is just a partial listing of the real story about the clean hands of Christianity. The Huckabees and Faux news shills don't want you to know this, of course because then you could contextualize  the president's remarks. 

Vaccine Wars

        I'm just about over this ridiculous posturing by Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Jenny McCarthy et al. No sane, informed parent in their right mind could come to a conclusion that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders. The problem is in the word "informed."  If your definition of "informed" consists of some talk show bimbo stating falsehood as fact, or some politician or pundit posturing to solicit votes, you are the victim, and your child may well become one without any recourse to common sense.

        I find it ludicrous that the same parents who will lobby their school board for "peanut free" cafeterias will, in turn, place the same child they believe they are protecting from the dreaded goober at equivalent or greater risk by eschewing vaccination against measles.  These persons are reacting to anecdotal and thoroughly disproved urban myths with their child's real physical welfare as the ante. Consider the "no vaccine " mom whose child contracts measles/rubella  while mom is incubating an unborn child. The birth defects which may eventuate are horrific. As bad as Autism spectrum disorder can be, (and it isn't caused by vaccines) , congenital Rubella syndrome is a nightmare, with effects that include blindness, microencephalopathy, and  all sorts of internal organ related pathological implications, just to name a few. Worse yet, the unvaccinated infected child may well be  asymptomatic but contagious for as much as 4 days.  Place this child in contact with another  who cannot be vaccinated for other health reasons and you may as well name him "Typhoid Harry!"

        The anti-vaccine Chicken Littles have absolutely no real medical evidence on which to base their indictment. The sole origin of this urban myth seems to be a study done in England by a  former doctor named Wakefield. I said former because when the real nature of his "study" and the damage done was realized, The Lancet retracted the  study and issued an apology, characterizing it (the study) as one of the "great medical frauds in history". Wakefield's license was revoked, but the damage had been done. So what exactly was the study, and what did it claim? Moreover, why has it been so thoroughly discredited? Finally, what have been the results in the UK, where it was published?

        First:  In 1998, an esteemed British medical journal (The Lancet, UK equivalent to the Journal of the AMA) published a paper with a startling conclusion: that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) — administered to millions of children across the globe each year — could cause autism. This study, led by the discredited physician-researcher Andrew Wakefield, is where the current vaccine-autism debate started. It has since been thoroughly eviscerated: The Lancet retracted the paper, investigators have described the research as an "elaborate fraud," and Wakefield has lost his medical license. Public-health experts say that Wakefield's false data and erroneous conclusions, while resoundingly rejected in the academic world, still drive some parents' current worries about the MMR shot.   

       To begin with, Wakefield's association between the MMR vaccine and autism was based on a case report involving only 12 children. That's right just 12! remember that number when we cite later valid studies! "Case reports" are detailed stories about particular patients' medical histories. And, because they basically just stories — they are considered among weakest kinds of medical studies.

       In this case, many children have autism and nearly all take the MMR vaccine. Finding, among a group of a dozen children, that most of them happen to have both is not at all surprising and in no way proves that the MMR vaccine causes autism. (Wakefield also proposed a link between the vaccine and a new inflammatory bowel syndrome, which has since been called "autistic enterocolitis" and also discredited.)

        Don't stop with the retracted study. The totality of the evidence opposes this vaccine-autism theory. Large-scale studies involving thousands of participants in several countries (Japan, Finland, USA and others) have failed to establish a link between the MMR vaccine and  mental developmental disorder. As one of the most thorough studies to date showed, nearly half a million kids who got the vaccine were compared to some 100,000 who didn't, and there were no differences in the autism rates between the two groups.  Note - not 12, but groups of about half a million and 100,000  "This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism," the authors wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. Studies published in The Lancet, The Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, PLoS One, and — among others — The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders have also found no association between the vaccine and autism.  

        A British investigative journalist, Brian Deer, rather just look at the numbers,  followed up with the families of each of the 12 kids in the study. He concluded, "No case was free of misreporting or alteration." In other words, Andrew Wakefield, lead author of the original report, manipulated his data. In The British Medical Journal, Deer spelled out exactly what he found, and it's mind blowing in light of his findings  that this study was ever published in the first place. You learn that the parents of many of the kids deny the conclusions in the study; some of the kids who Wakefield suggested were diagnosed with autism actually weren't; others who Wakefield suggested were "previously normal"  actually had pre-existing developmental issues before getting their shots.  Had The Lancet had access to this information, the study would never have seen the light of day.

       So, one might ask, what could possibly have been Wakefield's motivation to fudge the data and start all this brouhaha?   To start with, he  had financial conflicts of interest. While he was discrediting the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, and suggesting parents should give their children single shots over a longer period of time, he was conveniently filing patents for single-disease vaccines. "For the vast majority of children, the MMR vaccine is fine," he said, "but I believe there are sufficient anxieties for a case to be made to administer the three vaccinations separately."

        Brian Deer's investigation further showed,  that, in June 1997, he (Wakefield) had filed a patent for a supposedly "safer" single measles vaccine. Deer writes, ".... his proposed shot, and a network of companies intended to raise venture capital for purported inventions — including 'a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines', commercial testing kits and what he claimed to be a possible 'complete cure' for autism — were set out in confidential documents." Follow the money! Wakefield has steadfastly refused to even attempt to replicate his research, styling himself as a martyr.

        Since the bogus study was published until 2013, incidence of measles in the UK has increased by a factor of 18. This year, for the first time MMR vaccination rates are again rising, as it becomes obvious that  Wakefield's scam has had vastly negative results. Meanwhile, here at home,  eye doctor Rand Paul,  pizza expert Chris Christie, talking head McCarthy (whose "autistic" child actually has something other than autism, it turns out) use their bully pulpits  to further the spread of anti-vaccine bullshit.

        The greatest generation once trumpeted the great scientific advancements of the post war era, today  science deniers and spreaders of urban myths symbolize regression to rumor and innuendo.  Oh, and as an added possibility, MMR means (as previously noted)  Measles, Mumps, Rubella. Let some unvaccinated dads contract mumps from their unvaccinated kids and lets' see how their attitudes change. 

Misused and overused

Overused words and phrases

1. Empowerment - Used to denote the acquisition of self determination and sense of worth, "empowerment " is a great word. Unfortunately, it has been hijacked by essentially every  purveyor of  software because, like "chocolate",   it sounds good. The percentages of users who feel "empowered " by Microsoft, is almost certainly dwarfed by the number of users who would truly feel "empowered" by chucking their monitor through the nearest window when Windows freezes.

2. "That's why there's..."    This phrase seems to manifest itself toward the beginning of just about every "new"  drug hype these days, as in "That's why there's ....Xarelto, Zeljanz, Spiriva, etc."  The implication seems to be that these drugs have always existed and in a rare evolutionary event, the malady developed to give the drug some  sense of purpose. Truth in advertising would run more like..."These ailments, which have always existed, offer us a new, and extremely lucrative  market for treatment modalities, even if the list of side effects is longer than the Dallas phone book."  Now, "Thats' why there's........"!!

3. The word "technology" about 90% of the time.  In the post WWII age, the world rapidly became a more technical place. The word technology describes the application of  higher, technical/scientific  principles to development of those things which, in some cases actually merit the use of the term.  Radar technology, for example, helps avoid mid air collisions between planes, warns us of bad weather, etc. Using the word "technology"  to describe the way a dusting mop works seems a bit gratuitous. Damned near every commercial these days trumpets the application of  "..... technology."  It's usually irrelevant and overblown. it's also invariably touted as "beneficial" (you know, like fracking?) How long until  the makers of a plastic pooper scooper advertise it as the "paradigm of fecal relocation  technology?"  Perhaps an improved hammer using "Metallic impact determinance technology?"  The late George Carlin said, " If you nail together two things that no one has ever nailed together before, some schmuck'll buy it!"  He was right, of course, and Dorman's corrollary is that "If you nail these two things together and describe them as  "new technology", many schmucks will buy it."

4. "Reality."  You might  think such a simple word would retain its simple meaning and, in truth,  it has- except in the world of television, where "reality shows" have been all the rage for the past ten years or so.  Webster's defines reality thus: " The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. In real life, in the world as it actually exists, "housewives" don't live in mansions and actually have hard jobs involving a myriad of domestic tasks on a daily basis. In the real world, moms don't generally urge their voluptuous but mentally  marginal daughters to make porno films to gain popularity. In the real world, most people of conscience and/or taste would eschew any sort of contact with an inbred clan of racist, homophobic, hillbilly  duck call makers. Reality can be harsh enough, and kids are constantly challenged to just grow up to become functional adults. what sort of message do we send by citing as "reality"  a Honey Boo Boo,  Dance Moms, Life with the Kardashians, ad infinitum, ad nauseum?