Because a Poop Sandwich Tastes Better!
Americans have always been in love with euphemisms and watered down history.
I wish George Carlin was still alive. He had a great bit on euphemisms and the softening of language, the error being that if we soften the language, or change the name of the condition, then the bad thing goes away…
False teeth became dental appliances. The dump became a landfill. Psyches destroyed by shell shock after WWI became battle fatigue by WWII, operational exhaustion by Korea and by Vietnam, the perfected, multi-syllable post-traumatic stress disorder was all the rage. Incidentally, almost every profession now has sufferers of PTSD, so when it’s attributed to soldiers, it loses its punch. It almost sounds like carpal tunnel syndrome. In any war over the last 30 years, Americans don’t really kill anyone. Civilian massacres are now collateral damage, which sounds like a term an insurance adjuster would use after a tornado.
Right now, there are 37 states working to either abolish Critical Race Theory or soften it altogether. The point of CRT is to teach what actually happened in the past and how it has affected our present. Slavery is an actual thing and destroyed tens of thousands of humans. The knee jerk response of “well, I didn’t own slaves,” is lost on those who are against mythology. The point is not to make the present responsible for the past. The point is to teach us all what happened so that history doesn’t repeat itself. Germans teach what the Nazis did in school every day. Hopefully, it sticks this time so we’ll see…
The attempt to paint the U.S. in a “national identity” is not new, but very stupid. Just compare great grand parent notes, for example. Rarely, if ever, are U.S. war atrocities discussed in grades k-12. In Texas, the State Board of Education wants to change the word slavery to involuntary relocation. To add an idiotic insult to a deceptive injury, many states regard a frank discussion of slavery as “divisive.” I’m guessing they don’t mean divisive like ripping families apart, with children being sold into sexual slavery, separated from their parents, sold into forced labor.
But we have had a love affair with not only euphemisms but the idea of banning words and entire cultures altogether. Under the watchful eye of Woodrow Wilson, sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” during WWI. Beethoven and Bach were banned from most U.S. symphony orchestras where we demonized the German as the “other,”with some German Americans being lynched.
Learning nothing, George W. Bush dubbed French Fries, “freedom fries,” when the French refused to back the U.S. play in Iraq in 2003. Recently, referencing a jingoist, cretinous history, many American orchestras banned Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky from being played and changed Russian dressing into something else (and I’m too annoyed to look it up). This was in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. Of course, Americans could not be bothered to see that the U.S. also bombed Yemen and Somalia, while its Israeli allies bombed Syria again on the same day. Bring that up in typical corporate news fed, so called liberal circles and you’ll be called a Trumper. Charming.
At the end of all the fancy dancing, whether it’s banning Critical Race Theory or knocking down statues, Americans love cosmetics more than change itself because that would be like hard, and stuff… It’s the best game running to conceal the sins of a nation. As Carlin famously said, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
As I usually recommend in these tender moments, read more…
Abe Abdelhadi hosts the Bitter Truth with Abe Abdelhadi on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, etc.