I awoke this July 4th morning with a very vivid dream on my mind. It was a travel dream, with ships and planes providing the setting. When the old wooden sailing ship I was on landed, I found out that it was not continuing on to where I expected, and so I decided to travel by plane. [Much complication and detail omitted.]
What was odd was a new airline passenger screening process. Before being allowed to board the plane, passengers were first required to say the United States Pledge of Allegiance. That was easy, but the second requirement was a problem. Everyone had to answer 4 American government/citizenship questions. In the dream I just couldn’t quite comprehend the questions. The first question seemed to be about details of the vote in Congress passing the law that created the new passenger screening process. Of course, I had been on a ship right before, and knew nothing about the new legislation.
It was a complicated mess, as dreams can be, and was not resolved before I woke up, much to my relief.
Happy Independence Day.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
– George Santayana
Take the Impossible ‘Literacy’ Test Louisiana Gave Black Voters in the 1960s:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html
In most of my dreams I can’t quite seem to finish whatever I’m doing, either.
They also usually involve planes and/or trains, too.
Very true…and Karl Marx also pointed out that “History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/travel/214276491.html
Battle of Gettysburg, Take 2: 10,000-plus history buffs expected at 2nd re-enactment in Pa.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The Battle of Gettysburg is underway for the second time in a week and tourists are converging in droves even if the outcome of the Civil War’s pivotal encounter has been known for 150 years.
Soldiers back in 1863 never experienced conditions like the ones re-enactors had Thursday.
Big city-like traffic snarled two-lane rural roads. Green grandstands used at the U.S. Open golf tournament last month outside Philadelphia lined the battlefield, packed with visitors. A narrator recounted the moves of Union and Confederates over two loudspeakers, as if doing play-by-play and color commentary for a football game.
Somebody should be taking bets on the outcome of this battle
Yeah, this re-enactment has its farcical tones, but its achieves a greater good — it brings history to life, and makes it real, not a painting, a black-and-white photograph, or a story. Americans slaughtered each other in vast numbers in that war. It was real. No joke.
Or the birther version:
“Those who cannot locate an imaginary past are condemned to manufacturer one.”
All hard-right wingers have this idiotic nostalgia for a past that never existed. There NEVER was a “good old days.”
Read newspapers from any era, and you’ll find all kinds of galactic crises and horrors being reported. Read the quotes, and you’ll find politicians warning that if they are not re-elected, the country is doomed to continue its slide into destruction. Read the “letters-to-the-editor,” and the whiners are complaining that things are not as good as they used to be. Even the ancient Babylonians whined about the “good old days.”
I defy anybody to tell me that the days of my youth, the 1970s, were the “good old days.” We had Vietnam, Watergate, the 1973 Mid-East War, the energy crisis, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, the Entebbe hijacking, the Iran hostage crisis, the Son of Sam, New York going broke, the 1977 blackout and looting, Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American “malaise,” the disco revolution, Saturday Night Fever and Sunday Morning Social Diseases, polyester suits, big hair, and such classic songs as “Disco Duck.”
The big cause of my era was “Disco Demolition Night” at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which cost the White Sox a forfeit in the second game of a doubleheader.
Nobody can tell me that those were the “good old days.” Yet Hall of Famer Rich Gossage has the nerve to tell people that in his day (the 1970s), ballplayers played for the “love of the game” and not for huge salaries. Gee, I didn’t see Goose complaining when the Yankees and then the Padres threw vast sums of money at him (by the standards of the day) for his services.
And when Goose was pitching, Dick Young was screeching in the Daily News (and then the Post, to where he jumped for more money) that ballplayers were way overpaid compared to the 1950s.
Such arrant nonsense…the past always looks better in the rear-view mirror. It wasn’t, and that’s what these hard-right guys refuse to admit. Why? Because they’re getting old, and they resent the loss of the energy of their past youth and the arrogance and energy of the current youth.
“passengers were first required to say the United States Pledge of Allegiance”
Would that have been the original 1892 pledge? Or the 1954 version when “under God” was added?
An Open Letter to the Founding Fathers and Mothers
July 2, 1776: On this day — America’s true Independence Day — with the British fleet and army storming into New York harbor to set straight King George III’s 13 errant Colonies, the Continental Congress declared independence from British rule.
As John Adams, delegate from the Province of Massachusetts Bay, wrote to his wife, Abigail Adams:
The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
We’ll give Adams his due on July 4th, the anniversary of the Declaration’s adoption and its first printing. But, today’s singular milestone in the making of America gives us cause for reflection — and pause for a few questions.
Hence, this Open Letter:
Dear Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers,
What were you thinking?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janus-adams/an-open-letter-to-the-founding-fathers-and-mothers_b_3534995.html
Nostalgia: Looking at the past through rose colored glasses. No polio vaccine until 1955. The Cold War, and air raid drills. The Communist witch hunts, which destroyed careers and drove some to suicide.
I’ve written this before: Klaus Fuchs was more deeply involved than the Rosenbergs. He was sentenced to 14 years, and served 9, and died at home.
His father was a Lutheran pastor.
Yes, but Vietnam caused me to join the Unitarian church, which was the anti-war epicenter.
I can assure you that was the best move ever for my sex life. The girls were wild. Plus, inter-racial dating was accepted and ordinary among Unitarians.
In the days of my youth
I was told what it means to be a man
Now I’ve reached that age
I’ve tried to do all those things the best I can
No matter how I try
I find my way into the same old jam
Good Times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share
Well, my woman left home for a brown-eyed man
but I still don’t seem to care
Sixteen, I fell in love with a girl as sweet as could be
It only took a couple of days ’till she was rid of me
She swore that she would be all mine and love me ’till the end
but when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oh
Good Times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share
Well, my woman left home for a brown-eyed man
but I still don’t seem to care
Good Times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share
Well, my woman left home for a brown-eyed man
but I still don’t seem to care
I know what it means to be alone
I sure do wish I was at home
I don’t care what the neighbors say
I’m gonna love you each and every day
You can feel the beat within my heart
Realize, sweet babe, we ain’t ever gonna part
I feel good when I look at you mama
(as performed by Led Zeppelin – music John Paul Jones, words ???)
Only to people who have no future. I hope that when I’m old, I won’t join that choir.
Music is a good example. Those who claim that techno is “just loud noise” forget their parents said the same when they listened to the Stones. Those who claim that everything is “over-sexualized” forget their parents said the same when Elvis hit the stage.
I had it especially bad, my mother was 41 and my father 47 when I was born, so I was technically raised by my “grandparents” who grew up in a time when people addressed their parents as “Sir” (or in German with the formal “Sie” instead of the informal “Du”). When girls called me on the phone, my mother basically said that only sluts would run after a boy. Then I knew that I could never have lived in those “good old days”.
Another advantage was that my parents grew up during the Nazi regime which precluded them from talking too much about “good old days” anyway. Whenever one of them said “in my time, we didn’t…”, I replied “yup, in your time they put people in ovens”.
Historically and philosophically, I disagree with the notion that there weren’t any “good old days”.
Societies do experience ups and downs, and generally there are better periods than others. I’ll leave to historians to decide whay “better” means, but you can’t deny the existence of cycles.
To use a rather outré example, if you lived in Europe when the black plague started, last year was the good old days.
Also, such notions are by nature very subjective, depending on who and where you were. Someone who was in Nam in 1970 probably doesn’t think of that year as the good old days, but another person parting in Haight Ashbury may. Both viewpoints are perfectly valid and don’t cancel each other out.
It’s interesting to note that I had always believed that the US had fairly sustained economic growth and low unemployment from the end of World War II until the presidency of Ronald Reagan when the boom and bust cycle started.
So I just looked that up, and it’s total bull. We had over 10% unemployment in 1982 under Reagan, we also had 9% in 1975. GDP has been all over the place and we had double-digit inflation in the 1970s So it’s all really selective memory.
Well, you know what they say– things ain’t what they used to be, and they never were.
A preacher friend of mine used to thunder from the pulpit: “The only ‘good’ thing about the ‘good ol’ days’ is that they’re GONE!”
Actually my comment about denying or condemn the past and being forced to manufacture your own” was a direct reply to birth certificates, not history vs false memories.
However I wholeheartedly agree with your take on that.
A RWNJ has never dug their own wells for water, had to prime them each time and sometimes travel hundreds of feet for access.
They had diseases then that rampantly took out entire communities.
There’s so many advances made in just the last 100 years medically that I think if we took your average RWNJ and gave him an abscessed tooth, he’d quickly cry for modern medicine.
I guess it’s nice to have fantasies, but please keep yours to yourselves, guys. If I want consumption, I’ll visit an all-you-can-eat salad bar. Thanks.
Or drink unpasteurized milk. Raw milk has suddenly become fashionable. An all-you-can-eat salad bar is usually associated with hepatitis.
Raw milk is the best way to contract TB. Literature is better now, too. No more stories about a poor orphan girl dying of consumption. Blame it on pasteurized milk.
I wouldn’r say “selective memory” (although that can certainly be true in some cases) but simply subjective experience. Cf. my Viet-Nam vs Haight-Ashbury example.