American brain washing

Rebirth of a Realist

HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE?
A friend of mine lifted his beer, looked at me and asked, “How the hell could anyone vote for Goopya doopya to be president? How did we get here?”
There is an answer. Shortly after the 1996 elections in Russia, students there were all given new textbooks that re-wrote the country’s history and projected a wonderful new life under a free market system. Today they suffer the same brain numbness that many Americans suffer from.
My friend’s question made me think back to the end of the euphoria enjoyed by all of us after WW2
At a symposium in Cambridge Massachusetts, Harvard Economics professor Dr. Seymor E. Harris said on March 24,1947, “Ruling out the rebound that came with the war economy both England and New England are again suffering from a severe economic slump and unemployment.” On April 11, 1947 Brent Spence the ranking member of the House Banking committee complained, “Prices have gotten out of control.”
The train had jumped to a new track and was speeding in the wrong direction. No one has stopped it yet.
At that time, my parents were stressing the fact that I should forget sports and stay in school and study because hard times are ahead. My father was always critical of the fact that I was “Propagandized in high school” He was always giving me books and magazines to read so I, “will learn the truth.”
Remembering how my politics as a youth were formulated, I checked recently at the local high-school to see what kind of history teen aged students were being taught in this new century.
I found that a book titled “The History Of The United States” was being used in the classroom. I obtained a copy and on Page 629 under the heading of “A Growing Economy,” the writer states that from the end of World War II until 1970, the nation enjoyed its longest period of prosperity. It goes on to describe the many automobiles and the highways to accommodate them that were built in those years and while mentioning,“ Brief recessions” it lists the following facts: “Gross national product grew from $335.2 billion in 1945 to $722.5 billion in 1970.
In the same period per capita income before taxes increased (in 1958 dollars) from $1,870 to $3,050. Americans prospered as they shared the highest per capita income in the world.”
The book also adds that there was “A price that Americans had to pay and that was the inflation of the l960s.”All of this, and the unabashed propaganda of the entire book is to make young chests swell with pride in the American system and to instill the idea that if it were not for the “Commies” we would have continued to be a true peace loving democracy with the best economic system in the wor1d.
I shall always be grateful to my parents who saved me from the brain washing that most young American students are fed. The kind of brain washing that creates the blind-faith mentality that racism, nationalism, and fascism thrives on. No where does this propaganda book mention the fact that the international oil companies like Aramco were, during that same period, selling oil to France at 95 cents a barrel and to other countries for a dollar or less, but was selling the same oil to the United States Navy for $1.23 and therefore getting rich on the backs of the American taxpayer. (Still riding the runaway train today’s price is $70.00 a barrel) That same taxpayer saw his taxes continue to diminish his economic gains. Nor does the book mention the real cost of the so-called prosperity.
While the military industrial complex, that President Eisenhower later identified, made huge profits supplying the ominous and world-threatening web of air and sea bases in Europe and Africa and the country that we had “saved,” Turkey, American men were shipped overseas to man those bases. (To protect American interests) The biggest price of all that the high school text book fails to mention under “A Growing Economy” is the 33,686 Young Americans killed in action fighting the North Koreans, or the over two and a half million Chinese and Korean lives spent to use up the expensive military equipment that was so profitable. Asians and Europeans watched the American living standard become the highest in the world. They knew why. Americans did not.
No mention is made in the high school textbook of 58,000 American deaths and 365,000 American wounded and the two million Vietnamese lives that were cashed in for the same purpose. It would do well for the publishers of the textbook to explain to the helpless students that ‘‘Per Capita’’ means, for each person of the population. (Random House) It does not mean that the Navaho Americans or the Black Americans or millions of the white working poor in those years enjoyed the “unprecedented prosperity.”
During a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, I was called a Communist traitor by a group of hecklers for saying that middle class and upper income Americans must realize that their dollars are tainted with the blood of those who needlessly gave their lives in Korea and Vietnam.
It seems that in the 60s many Americans, including a young draft dodger named Clinton, were almost willing to accept the fact that the domino theory was a plot for profits, but they were unwilling to let go of the media propaganda blitz that shaped their thinking vis-à-vis Korea.
I had one advantage over most of my liberal friends. I had no fear of being called a Communist. Indeed, I had become conditioned to it. I heard it when I was just a pre-teen carrying a sign to stop fascism in Spain or when my mother took me to the docks in New York to demonstrate against the shipping of oil and scrap metal to the Japanese. I often wondered if any of those hecklers died in the war against Japan.
The brain washing of young children in our public schools is a major contributing factor to the bleak future of the next generation, Yet it seems to go unchallenged.