Sometimes we think the advancement in technology also advances the core of what makes humanity what it is. Often we can learn from the past that our language may change, our daily routines may change, but our advancement toward a more caring and civilized species takes a lot longer than we may want to believe.
A little background. I’ve always been a science/technical person, and have spent most of my reading time reading books and magazines dealing in the scientific and technological advancement of our society. A few years ago my significant other gave me a biography of John Adams. Parts of the book just jumped out at me at how similar the events and reactions of the people were to events and actions of today. This got my somewhat addictive personality hooked on presidential biographies. Since then I’ve read biographies of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and now Ulysses S. Grant. And in each, some of the similarities between the problems back then and what we face today are striking.
Ulysses S. Grant was an amazing person. According to the book “Grant”, he was so extremely trusting of people, it made him naive and did not serve him well during his administration. But he also fought constantly during reconstruction to try and stop the KKK and other white supremacists from engaging in their rebellious war of terror on freed African Americans and the white people trying to restore the rule of law in the south.
The education, from the Civil War and his presidency, Grant got about humanity and the things we are capable of doing must have been brutal. Towards the end of his presidency, after he announced he would not seek a 3rd term, he gave a speech in front of a reunion of the Army of Tennessee.
“The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation”.
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“the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixons but between patriotism, and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
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“Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school… leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church and the private school supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the church and state forever separate.”
How many times have we asked ourselves why the Republican voters vote against their own interests? How many times have we talked about the Republican bubble? How many times have we seen the pictures of Trump supporters holding signs that made no sense or watched them contradict themselves in the same sentence? How many times have we heard Republicans deny science and reality itself?
Later in his annual message to congress he emphasized again the importance of an educated public in order to resist;
“tyranny and oppression… whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft.”
So strong was Grant’s belief that our very democracy depended on an educated and informed citizenry that he proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would require each state:
“to establish and forever maintain free public schools adequate to the education of all the children… irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions: forbidding the teaching in said schools of religious, atheistic, or pagan tenets: and prohibiting the granting of any school-funds, or school-taxes… in aid… of any religious sect of denomination.”
It’s not the ignorance that is the direct threat to our democracy, but rather the manipulation of the ignorant by the fascists and demagogues that have the power to build vast propaganda networks, and by the Republicans who run their entire campaigns on lies and fear so they can misinform the uninformed.
Our country’s division may not be so much by red state and blue state, but rather by why red states are red and blue states are blue.
RESIST!
Nov. 6 isn’t just election day, it’s judgment day!