Old Jules, what were some of the social, political, and religious aspects of the 1940’s and 1950’s?
Socially everyone got together and played canasta or dominos while the kids ran around finding ways to get into trouble without being noticed while they did it. No such event ever happened without one father or another taking off his belt and giving his kid a strapping on the behind.
Politically, most people supported the government, worried about Communism, hated Harry Truman, Ike, and Keefaufer with his coonskin hat. The UnAmerican Activities Committee filled the radios daytimes, and the investigations of the US prisoners from Korea who were accused of collaborating with the enemy. The ‘cheerleaders’, white housewives, went out every day in Arkansas to yell insults and harass eleven black children who were being integrated into ‘white’ schools, accompanied by US Marshalls to protect them from the cheerleaders and the Arkansas National Guard placed there by Governor Orville Faubus to keep them from attending.
Religious, most people were Christians. The more they hated blacks the more Christian they were. They also hated Mormons, in most areas, Catholics, Hispanics, and whatever ethnic groups and religious denominations they weren’t members of.
As a youngster I witnessed heated, vicious debates between Church of Christ kids and Baptist kids about which of them were doomed to hell and which would be going to heaven. The favorite putdown for days afterward:
“I won’t be seeing YOU there!”
Old Jules, what can you tell me about open range ranching in the 1800s?
It still exists in a lot of states. The person owning the livestock isn’t responsible for fencing them in. Instead, anyone who doesn’t want them grazing and damaging his property has to fence them out. Cattle graze across public highways and if someone hits one he’s responsible for the damages, both to the animal and to his own vehicle (if the road had a sign on it showing a cow on a yellow background).
It’s a holdover from the wild west days when ranchers developed a tradition of running roughshod over anyone who got in their way, and they still do it and the cattleman organizations are powerful enough to keep it that way.
Old Jules, what are some of the disadvantages of war and advantages of peace?
The disadvantage of wars is that usually both sides begin them with the expectation of winning and one or the other side eventually is proven to be wrong. This fact becomes established at the cost of large reductions in the size of the gene pool on both sides among men of reproductive age.
As a rule, wars breed physical and moral cowardice, overall reductions in character and intelligence, and reduced incentives in succeeding generations because of this gene pool phenomenon.
The advantage of peace is that it’s cheap, easy, and the patriots can’t get their claws into the aftermath, make money from the exercise, and gain power so thoroughly and rapidly.
Old Jules, why should I study history?
Nobody who quotes the cliche can go a step further and show where any mistake in history was avoided by knowing history. The opposite is true.
You are required to study and memorize something called history to indoctrinate you to the views your elders and government believe you should be indoctrinated to in order for you to hold the viewpoints they wish you to hold. You need to know the names of forgotten, obscure females of the past so’s to give modern females a feeling of worth and an idea they, themselves might possibly accomplish something in life (implying they couldn’t do so if there weren’t obscure females in history who did something worth memorizing).
You are required to memorize facts about oppressed peoples and slavery so you will feel sorry about it and will conclude those people of the past who experienced hardship represent an explanation for their descendants who didn’t experience it to have reason for resentment and frequently an excuse for resisting becoming educated so’s they have a chance to amount to something.
There are solid reasons you are required to study history, though nobody cares whether you actually learn it, but those reasons don’t include anything akin to history.
So Far From Heaven 