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Thanksgiving,another American myth
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Nov 26, 2013 00:41:55   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
jonhatfield wrote:
And those "Eurotrash" created the greatest nation on earth and the hope of world civilization. Remarkable history and indeed quite different and more wonderful than the history books tell us. Of course "Lies My Teacher Told Me" itself is trash history, perhaps interesting to read but trash history.

Did you know that the Pilgrims formed their own organized church? Do you know what denomination that is and what denomination branched off from it? The Congregationalists and the Unitarians, perhaps the most "liberal" of all denominations.

If you know old history, perhaps you have heard of Louis XIV's Edict of Nantes that exiled Hugonots (the French Protestants) from France. Did you know the French, like the Brits, quite welcomed their dissidents in their colonies--not quite deportation but anyway they could to get a foot in the new world. You won't find that in the history books and to what extent French Canada and Mississippi settlement involved Hugonots I don't know--just that the son of French Hugonots who lived in exile in Switzerland was one of the earliest fur traders in Wisconsin and Illinois then-wilderness for his maternal uncle fur merchant in Montreal, financed the George Rogers Clark expedition during the American Revolution that won the Northwest (current Midwest), hosted George's brother, first Gov of Louisiana Territory, at his home in St. Louis (had married Catholic sister of French brothers who founded St.L., children raised Catholic but one married Presby daughter of the sergeant who accompanied Nathan Hale on his spy mission during the Revolution & their children were raised Protestant) where American flag first raised in Territory from front porch balcony, negotiated with his two brothers-in-law the 1804 treaty with the Sauk and Fox Indians that was Jefferson's first instruction to Gov. Clark to get done--whose son did the first American settlement in Wisconsin in 1826/27 & helped get a more fair treaty with the Winnebago Indians in 1829 & who went to Washington in 1835 to request official permission for the Rock River Winnebago band he was sub-agent for that was subject to the 1804 treaty to return across the Mississippi to hunt which was had been the incident for the Blackhawk Fox Indian War in 1832 3 years earlier, died on way home with Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney a deathbed visitor, Indians still 35 and 40 years later coming to and camping at the homestead in southwest Wisconsin (where his son lived who invented the milling process for hard wheat, the basis of the Minneapolis-St.Paul flour mills, largest owner brother of his sister's husband & Wis.'s richest Gov) and the home of daughter in Galena as told by son-in-law presenting portrait of his father-in-law to Wis. Historical Society in 1870s, which son-in-law was Grant's Congressional sponsor in Civil War and political sponsor and campaign manager for Pres. and whose son (grandson & great grandson of precedings) was mayor of Chicago and creator of the 1893 Columbian Exposition--yeah, ordinary and extraordinary people like all Americans & the parts they played in early Midwest history known to me by accident of buying & researching history of the abandoned rock house Henry Gratiot built in 1835 just before going to Washington for his Indian clients. Oh, and he was also visiting his brother, a West Point graduate, later superintendent there, first head of the Corps of Engineers--pretty good achievement for son of French "Eurotrash"-- who, by the way was dismissed from the military in a financial scandal. See, ordinary Eurotrash people for sure after all. A county and a fort in Michigan named after him. Two towns in Wisconsin named after younger brother Henry. Younger brother Jean Bugnion Gratiot married to daughter of a Napoleon minister in exile in New Orleans, pioneer prospector for gold in Southwest a generation before the Gold Rush, though the term "prospector" originated in his and his brother's lead rush Wisconsin settlement in the late 1820s. (If you want to see Henry's rock house, google The Gratiot House site where the new owners post their progress in "restoring" the Gratiot house--very nice people by the way.

My point? America is as extraordinary as these people. It is also as ordinary and everyday as these people, and that is what makes America great. We cannot emphasize enough that John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Barack Hussein Obama, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffet, Joan and Ray Kroc and any other American we spotlight are just ordinary people in America, the product of Irish, African, and Euro miscellaneous trash accidentally thrown into the new world where there was space to become American, Irish American, African American, native American, Mexican American, Italian American, and all the other extraordinary ordinary American varieties we are together. Wish I could post Frances Brundage's c.1893 Columbian Expo image of America (don't have copier)--five smiling girls holding hands or arms around shoulders...pugnacious Irish girl in rags left hand on hip, holding hand of black girl also in rags, whose other hand is held by white girl in fine clothes with arm around shoulder of dignified Asian girl in Kimono with somewhat sad looking native American girl standing beside her. This was the image chosen by a Cincinnati merchant 120 years ago to hand out as his Christmas greeting to customers. That was Frances Brundage's vision of America then with all its parts of equal worth despite differences in appearance and social status and it is still the vision of America that is the example to the world and the hope of future civilization for mankind.

Now I realize you extremists of left and right and wingnuts-all (parallels to the historical and hysterical Know Nothings) are also part of the American pie (the rotten apple part), but please stop making all these ugly faces at the camera...it doesn't make a pretty picture. You, too, inyourface, put down that hand with clenched fist and middle finger up. If you wish, all of you mischievous brats, we can make a separate cute picture of all the naughty face-making American children to put in the national picture album, but please behave for the official national picture for the history books.
And those "Eurotrash" created the greate... (show quote)


Wow! :thumbup:

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Nov 26, 2013 00:49:44   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
Hungry Freaks wrote:
There's a reason why the issue of former black slaves was called "White Man's Burden." Africans were brought he in chains, not as humans, but as property. Their diets were fatty and protein poor. they were bred like horses or other animals rather than allowed to choose their own spouses and live with their families. Black women were routinely raped by White owners. They had their names, cultural identity and languages taken from them.

African Americans were essential to the building of what America is today-they were the labor in the growing of cotton, sugar cane (in the Islands) and tobacco crops, the three commodities that made the America's rich. Although African Americans were "freed" after the Civil War, they lived in virtual slavery (at least in the Deep South ) until 40 or 50 years ago.

Many of the problems that plague African Americans are now-community-based-problems of black on black crime, the "gansta" ethos that gives a social stigma, at least among his peers, for an African American male to achieve scholastically.

Instead of giving African Americans an equal chance, most were bought of by Great Society programs that offered a pittance of financial support rather than an even chance to achieve a steady job, education, etc.

Worst of all, desegregation allowed the Upper and Middle Class African Americans to leave their communities, resulting in ghettos of lower class African Americans that now populate many inner-city neighborhoods.

The answer-I have no idea. But African Americans are a special group that has given us much of our culture, including jazz, the blues, rock and roll, all that have been exported to Britain and Europe for cultural consumption. As Sonny Boy Williamson, a Black bluesman who moved to England in the 1960s, said: "these British boys want to play the blues so badly...and they do." The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and a host of other British rock legends owe a measure of their success to American bluesmen who never saw a fraction of the financial rewards that Mick and the boys received. It seems to be a re-ocurring theme in the history of African Americans.
There's a reason why the issue of former black sla... (show quote)


I've never seen a post that had so much right and so much wrong in it at the same time! :?

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Nov 26, 2013 00:52:22   #
Loki Loc: Georgia
 
jonhatfield wrote:
Perhaps she is not as nice and polite as she pretends. Her attitude toward black circumstances is an abomination.


Your attitude toward any who have the temerity to disagree with you is condescending. How did we manage before the advent of jonhatfield to reveal our shortcomings? We are doubtless ingrates of the first order. I have signed up for snide lessons, the better to emulate your example.

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Nov 26, 2013 00:54:19   #
rhomin57 Loc: Far Northern CA.
 
lol
banjojack wrote:
Your attitude toward any who have the temerity to disagree with you is condescending. How did we manage before the advent of jonhatfield to reveal our shortcomings? We are doubtless ingrates of the first order. I have signed up for snide lessons, the better to emulate your example.

Reply
Nov 26, 2013 00:55:02   #
slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas
 
jonhatfield wrote:
And those "Eurotrash" created the greatest nation on earth and the hope of world civilization. Remarkable history and indeed quite different and more wonderful than the history books tell us. Of course "Lies My Teacher Told Me" itself is trash history, perhaps interesting to read but trash history.

Did you know that the Pilgrims formed their own organized church? Do you know what denomination that is and what denomination branched off from it? The Congregationalists and the Unitarians, perhaps the most "liberal" of all denominations.

If you know old history, perhaps you have heard of Louis XIV's Edict of Nantes that exiled Hugonots (the French Protestants) from France. Did you know the French, like the Brits, quite welcomed their dissidents in their colonies--not quite deportation but anyway they could to get a foot in the new world. You won't find that in the history books and to what extent French Canada and Mississippi settlement involved Hugonots I don't know--just that the son of French Hugonots who lived in exile in Switzerland was one of the earliest fur traders in Wisconsin and Illinois then-wilderness for his maternal uncle fur merchant in Montreal, financed the George Rogers Clark expedition during the American Revolution that won the Northwest (current Midwest), hosted George's brother, first Gov of Louisiana Territory, at his home in St. Louis (had married Catholic sister of French brothers who founded St.L., children raised Catholic but one married Presby daughter of the sergeant who accompanied Nathan Hale on his spy mission during the Revolution & their children were raised Protestant) where American flag first raised in Territory from front porch balcony, negotiated with his two brothers-in-law the 1804 treaty with the Sauk and Fox Indians that was Jefferson's first instruction to Gov. Clark to get done--whose son did the first American settlement in Wisconsin in 1826/27 & helped get a more fair treaty with the Winnebago Indians in 1829 & who went to Washington in 1835 to request official permission for the Rock River Winnebago band he was sub-agent for that was subject to the 1804 treaty to return across the Mississippi to hunt which was had been the incident for the Blackhawk Fox Indian War in 1832 3 years earlier, died on way home with Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney a deathbed visitor, Indians still 35 and 40 years later coming to and camping at the homestead in southwest Wisconsin (where his son lived who invented the milling process for hard wheat, the basis of the Minneapolis-St.Paul flour mills, largest owner brother of his sister's husband & Wis.'s richest Gov) and the home of daughter in Galena as told by son-in-law presenting portrait of his father-in-law to Wis. Historical Society in 1870s, which son-in-law was Grant's Congressional sponsor in Civil War and political sponsor and campaign manager for Pres. and whose son (grandson & great grandson of precedings) was mayor of Chicago and creator of the 1893 Columbian Exposition--yeah, ordinary and extraordinary people like all Americans & the parts they played in early Midwest history known to me by accident of buying & researching history of the abandoned rock house Henry Gratiot built in 1835 just before going to Washington for his Indian clients. Oh, and he was also visiting his brother, a West Point graduate, later superintendent there, first head of the Corps of Engineers--pretty good achievement for son of French "Eurotrash"-- who, by the way was dismissed from the military in a financial scandal. See, ordinary Eurotrash people for sure after all. A county and a fort in Michigan named after him. Two towns in Wisconsin named after younger brother Henry. Younger brother Jean Bugnion Gratiot married to daughter of a Napoleon minister in exile in New Orleans, pioneer prospector for gold in Southwest a generation before the Gold Rush, though the term "prospector" originated in his and his brother's lead rush Wisconsin settlement in the late 1820s. (If you want to see Henry's rock house, google The Gratiot House site where the new owners post their progress in "restoring" the Gratiot house--very nice people by the way.

My point? America is as extraordinary as these people. It is also as ordinary and everyday as these people, and that is what makes America great. We cannot emphasize enough that John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Barack Hussein Obama, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffet, Joan and Ray Kroc and any other American we spotlight are just ordinary people in America, the product of Irish, African, and Euro miscellaneous trash accidentally thrown into the new world where there was space to become American, Irish American, African American, native American, Mexican American, Italian American, and all the other extraordinary ordinary American varieties we are together. Wish I could post Frances Brundage's c.1893 Columbian Expo image of America (don't have copier)--five smiling girls holding hands or arms around shoulders...pugnacious Irish girl in rags left hand on hip, holding hand of black girl also in rags, whose other hand is held by white girl in fine clothes with arm around shoulder of dignified Asian girl in Kimono with somewhat sad looking native American girl standing beside her. This was the image chosen by a Cincinnati merchant 120 years ago to hand out as his Christmas greeting to customers. That was Frances Brundage's vision of America then with all its parts of equal worth despite differences in appearance and social status and it is still the vision of America that is the example to the world and the hope of future civilization for mankind.

Now I realize you extremists of left and right and wingnuts-all (parallels to the historical and hysterical Know Nothings) are also part of the American pie (the rotten apple part), but please stop making all these ugly faces at the camera...it doesn't make a pretty picture. You, too, inyourface, put down that hand with clenched fist and middle finger up. If you wish, all of you mischievous brats, we can make a separate cute picture of all the naughty face-making American children to put in the national picture album, but please behave for the official national picture for the history books.
And those "Eurotrash" created the greate... (show quote)


:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :mrgreen:
This post impresses me to no end! I need not check or verify anything...the jist of it is sufficient for me!

Reply
Nov 26, 2013 00:57:42   #
rhomin57 Loc: Far Northern CA.
 
The Mayflower brought over Puritans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Jews, Free Blacks, and non-believers. Most of the Forefathers that signed the declaration of Independence were Presbyterians.
BigMike wrote:
Wow! :thumbup:

Reply
Nov 26, 2013 00:59:59   #
jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI
 
banjojack wrote:
Your attitude toward any who have the temerity to disagree with you is condescending. How did we manage before the advent of jonhatfield to reveal our shortcomings? We are doubtless ingrates of the first order. I have signed up for snide lessons, the better to emulate your example.


It's you who have an attitude toward any opinion not conforming to the tune you play on your banjo, Jack. I confess to snide mocking bird postings to balance my idealist overly serious ones.

Reply
 
 
Nov 26, 2013 01:01:45   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
RetNavyCWO wrote:
I don't disagree with anything you have written, ginny. I would like to add, though, that we white people don't really know what it is like to grow up in a community in which many people of our skin color are discriminated against for no other reason. It most definitely still goes on. Even many black women don't to marry and have families with black men. I knew a black woman years ago who wanted to date me. Being as lily white as they come, I asked her why she didn't want to date a black man. Her answer, "They're all in jail."

Why are they all in jail? (They're not ALL in jail, of course, but I think the rate of black men who have been incarcerated is something like 70%.) In large part, I think it is because of our onerous drug war. Growing up in the despair of poverty, they turn to drugs to self-medicate their despair away and end up in jail due to dealing drugs or committing drug-related violence. They turned to the only thing their environment provided them to escape the despair, ruining their chances at very young ages of making something of themselves. The rare few have strong, single mothers who manage to keep them in line, encouraging them to study and get a good education, but like I said, they're relatively rare. Others have single mothers who are themselves addicted to drugs and dependent on welfare. What role models do they have?

I'm just sayin: I don't think it's as simple as one might think. I doubt that many white people have those kinds of conversations with black people.
I don't disagree with anything you have written, g... (show quote)


Yours is a thoughtful post, and as a person who grew up with addict/alcoholic parents and became one myself, I saw the condition that that has created a whole sub-culture of people who's lives revolve around addiction and prison. I know, because I went there twice myself. Any of you who know anything about prison will know it's institutionalized racism. The ONLY friend I made while locked up this last time is a black man - a big no no! I put myself in serious danger for our friendship, but it didn't matter. God used him to keep me sane. After all these years he and I are still friends. Even though we both have grown up in less than ideal conditions, we made the decision to take responsibility upon ourselves to make the best of our lives. Everyone is a victim of one thing or another. It's up to them to rise above it.

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Nov 26, 2013 01:13:05   #
Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone
 
BigMike wrote:
Yours is a thoughtful post, and as a person who grew up with addict/alcoholic parents and became one myself, I saw the condition that that has created a whole sub-culture of people who's lives revolve around addiction and prison. I know, because I went there twice myself. Any of you who know anything about prison will know it's institutionalized racism. The ONLY friend I made while locked up this last time is a black man - a big no no! I put myself in serious danger for our friendship, but it didn't matter. God used him to keep me sane. After all these years he and I are still friends. Even though we both have grown up in less than ideal conditions, we made the decision to take responsibility upon ourselves to make the best of our lives. Everyone is a victim of one thing or another. It's up to them to rise above it.
Yours is a thoughtful post, and as a person who gr... (show quote)


Although I am deeply sorry that your childhood was less than desirable (to put it mildly), I am so glad that you made a decision to put your life together! We do not always know the reason(s) for what happens in our lives, sometimes we just have to trust that G*D has a purpose. :thumbup: :thumbup: Many times he brings people together to help each other through our most difficult of times. I have often thought of those people as G*d's angels.

Reply
Nov 26, 2013 01:16:26   #
jonhatfield Loc: Green Bay, WI
 
BigMike wrote:
Yours is a thoughtful post, and as a person who grew up with addict/alcoholic parents and became one myself, I saw the condition that that has created a whole sub-culture of people who's lives revolve around addiction and prison. I know, because I went there twice myself. Any of you who know anything about prison will know it's institutionalized racism. The ONLY friend I made while locked up this last time is a black man - a big no no! I put myself in serious danger for our friendship, but it didn't matter. God used him to keep me sane. After all these years he and I are still friends. Even though we both have grown up in less than ideal conditions, we made the decision to take responsibility upon ourselves to make the best of our lives. Everyone is a victim of one thing or another. It's up to them to rise above it.
Yours is a thoughtful post, and as a person who gr... (show quote)


:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: the truth

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Nov 26, 2013 01:32:41   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
Hungry Freaks wrote:
You try and equate the discrimination given to Jews in the US compared to the long history of African Americans in the Americas, a faulty apples to oranges analogy. Jews were not brought here in chains and didn't suffer the same crushing discrimination African Americans suffered for the first four centuries of European colonization of the Americas. Jews didn't have their heritage or religion stripped from them, they weren't considered property nor denied the right to reproduce with whom they chose or live in families with their children. They didn't live in de facto slavery until 40 or 50 years ago and didn't live in a society where their rights were considered to be something less than human.

Yes, Europe abused the Jews for centuries and the attempted extermination of the Jews was among the world's all-time genocides, about the same as King Leopold killed in the Congo during Belgium rule of that nation.

The difference? Despite the fact that the US didn't participate in the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, our nation has given Israel an open check to support a Jewish state in the former Palestine, much to the detriment of the non-Jewish Palestinians who lived there for centuries and whom never took part in the European persecution of Jews. Today, about 1/4 of all US foreign aid, military and civilian, goes to Israel. Israel weighs in on sanction against Iran for the Persian nation's nuclear program despite the fact that Israel has the world's fifth (or perhaps fourth) largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. Israel refuses to abide by any international inspection or even acknowledgment of that arsenal yet, in a world-class example of chutzpah, claims the US should tailor it's foreign policy to limiting Iran's nuclear ambitions.

due to the influence of APIA, the combined arsenal of Jewish American lobbying money, politicians of both parties bend over backwards to see who is more pro-israel. American Jews are allowed to serve in the Israel military, something explicitly prohibited by US law (look at your passport-the last page.) American Jews vote for politicians not for whom will best serve this nation, but on what benefit israel will get from that politician. As Chuck Hagel said, much to the distress of AIPAC, "I'm not the senator from Israel." He almost lost his nomination as defense secretary for this momentary lapse of the truth.

And yet such talk of black nationalism from the nation of Islam is derided as racist (which it is) while the pro-Israel stance of American Jews is considered enlightened self-interest.

If we spent as much on supporting the nationalistic rights of African Americans as we do in supporting the pro-Israel stance of American Jews, we'd have paid reparations already.

there's a huge difference between the plight of African Americans and perhaps every other racial minority in the US, with the exception of Native Americans. Any comparison is fatally flawed. All one has to do is look at the influence of Jewish Americans, a small percentage of the US population, and African Americans, one of the largest of racial minorities in the US, a group whose sweat has build the US to what it is today and a group that has largely been left out of the rewards that comes from building this great nation.
You try and equate the discrimination given to Jew... (show quote)



"If we spent as much on supporting the nationalistic rights of African Americans as we do in supporting the pro-Israel stance of American Jews, we'd have paid reparations already."

?????!

Reply
 
 
Nov 26, 2013 01:43:34   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
ginnyt wrote:
Again, and for the edification to all because I grow weary of repeating myself, I HAVE NO DISLIKE, HATRED, DISTAIN, OR ANIMOSITY for any race of people. In my comments I addressed the blacks because they were the ones brought up in discussion. I do not care if you are black, green, purple, white, orange, tan, beige, red, blue, or any other color....if you are wallowing in self pity, living on and for history, are lazy or otherwise a waste of human sperm, then you just need to stop. I do not know of any group of people that has not had problems and issues; no one is immune. It is simple, do something with your life you can be proud of; find a community, city, town, or even a country where you can feel at home and take pride and depart post haste because I worry about your not being comfortable and are mistreated; whatever you choose to do, do not waste what the Father has given you. Everyone, bar none is a good creation with potential; it only matter what you do with yourself. I can not and would not try to tell you how to run your life; likewise, do not try to tell me how to run mine. Deal?. And, I was not one of the few that was enslaved in Egypt nor did I wonder in the desert. I lived through other trials and have come out healthy and happy. I see a future; yes, I look at history so I will not repeat mistakes and never to judge anyone else. What has happened, happened and there is nothing I can do about the past. But, I can go forward, learn something new each day, smile at a stranger, and offer help to someone in need.

I understand that you think that I am pompous and full of myself; that is okay because I respect your right to have an opinion. You may say whatever you wish about and to me, you will not anger me nor will I return name calling or act less than civil toward you. Again, I wish you well and a great holiday.
Again, and for the edification to all because I gr... (show quote)


I understood you. I also know all too well how making excuses for one's self can keep one from making progress! I did it for years! I made friends with a black man while I was in prison. After these many years we are still friends and both of us are doing well. What made the difference? No longer accepting our own excuses, turning around and going in the right direction. We took responsibility for our own lives and ceased to be victims.

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Nov 26, 2013 01:49:19   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
ginnyt wrote:
Although I am deeply sorry that your childhood was less than desirable (to put it mildly), I am so glad that you made a decision to put your life together! We do not always know the reason(s) for what happens in our lives, sometimes we just have to trust that G*D has a purpose. :thumbup: :thumbup: Many times he brings people together to help each other through our most difficult of times. I have often thought of those people as G*d's angels.


My experience has make me a better person. Not to say I couldn't have been otherwise, but ALL experience is valuable to someone who wishes to use it to benefit someone else.

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Nov 26, 2013 01:54:58   #
BigMike Loc: yerington nv
 
jonhatfield wrote:
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: the truth


It is the truth, and sadly to say, all those uneducated young men, whose futures almost assuredly do not include employment, paying taxes, savings, retirement and all the other things that are part of the ordinary productive life, still have a purpose to fulfill - the security and well-being of those employed by the prison/industrial complex. Social cannibalism at its finest.

Reply
Nov 26, 2013 01:56:21   #
Ghost Loc: The 1st state to ever secede
 
Searching wrote:
Well, I wouldn't jump to conclusions as to which side he's on, because I consider myself part of the left and I don't agree with him on this issue. However, lumping all of us together as "mindfucks" is not exactly a way of endearing yourself and your message to others.


You're kinda moderate for someone on the left, which is fine I can live with those on the moderate left versus the far-left.

At the least the moderate left can be reasoned with.

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