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Diana Frank's avatar

I posted this on my fb page today because, the remark of the parent supporting the banning of books dealing with race stuck in my head. I shared an article recently about a PA school district that is banning books about the historical experiences of black and other “minority” groups in American history. One of the fathers of a child at the school was quoted as saying that he didn’t want his daughter to be “ashamed of being white.” This controversy over studying and evaluating our past reminded me of the one regarding the planned exhibit on aerial warfare commemorating the 50th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians that was planned and subsequent scrapped. Here’s a quote from “Hiroshima in America” by Robert J Lifton and Greg Mitchell. “From the time of Hiroshima, Americans have assigned themselves the task of finding virtue in the first use of the most murderous device ever created. We have found the need to avoid at any cost a sense of moral culpability for this act. These efforts have taken us to the far reaches of moral argument, to the extent of creating something close to an Orwellian reversal. And there has been a cost, one much greater than we wish to recognize.” A small recent example of that cost is the drone attack that killed 10 people in Kabul when water jugs were mistaken for bombs, but the wanton destruction of countries, of human beings both American and the victims of foreign policy with the most brutal weapons ever invented that began with Hiroshima has never ended. Any attempt to confront the dominant myth of American “freedom and equality” domestically or internationally has been blocked. As a result, our country is divided and crumbling. There’s a hole in Uncle Sam’s arm where all the money goes. The “defense” budget devours the wealth while we Americans fight among ourselves for crumbs, for human rights: decent housing, education, healthcare, clean air, water, self determination. According to the ACLU, “Since 1970, our incarcerated population has increased by 700% – 2.3 million people in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime. One out of every three Black boys born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino boys—compared to one of every 17 white boys. How can you talk about slavery in the past and not talk about incarceration today? You can’t. Most Americans of any ethnicity do not benefit from this forced ignorance. We cannot make a better world until we understand how this one came to be. We have more in common with each other than with the powers that only see $$$ in every living thing. Studying history can help us to acknowledge that.

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KELTIK_WARRIOR (VINCE T 🦁 )'s avatar

I recall standing in stark horror as I watched the news about Kent State. I had been out of the U.S. Air Force a mere four years at that point. The shock that gripped me then is not gone entirely. The claim was "a car backfired, triggering an instant reaction"; Or, "the soldiers were not to have live ammo".

But the greatest failure: One does not fire their weapon until that command is given, especially where their is no enemy; worse, the guns were pointing at the UNARMED. Oh, I suspect Nixon got his jollies off. He hated demonstrators. The crooked man with the crooked smile.

I had a knot of shame in my gut, that day. My brain recoiled in disbelief. Not my country! Please God, not my country! But, yes, this was and IS my country. We are all the worse off for our sins of killing and outright murder. The trail of blood of the innocents runs thick across the land. But, we will never learn. We will never learn.

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