american history

I guess we didn’t have US history in high school. Funny because we had that Illinois constitutional, or whatever it was, test, where you had to memorize a bunch of really boring facts which you forgot as soon as you spat the answers out at the test. There was that course you could take to get college credit by Mr Parker, which was certainly not critical of the US, but it was pretty neutral, and I remember being impressed by it. Mr Parker lived in Hyde Park and took a bunch of us out to hear a bluegrass band (at the time I was bored silly because it all sounded the same), but anyway I realized later that Mr Parker was a liberal. Imagine that, a liberal at Gage Park. I remember that Mrs Arvin was a big fan of FDR but I don’t know if her political opinions went further than that.

Once we fought off the British, we were pretty much home free because we were so far away from anybody. I believe there was a sizable contingent in parliament that was for our independence and I keep meaning to read up more on them, but I still haven’t. I believe WW I was when we became recognized as a world power. Woodrow Wilson went over there to straighten them out in dividing up Europe and made a fool of himself, and then when he came home his own people dumped his league of nations.

I think the main reason we got a leg up on our southern brethren is that our settlers were somewhat educated European types whereas down continent they had those unsavory Spaniards.

I don’t know if 250 years is that long for the history of a nation, and then if you consider, most of those South American countries have been around about that long, and most of them are not that much to speak of.

When I was thinking of our bewigged feather-writing founding fathers I was thinking what if we had a parliamentary system like most of the world has. I’m guessing we would have libertarians, tea partiers, establishment republicans, conservative dems, liberal dems, socialists, and a few commies, probably a green party too. Our leader would be the head of one of the parties and not the fresh faces that we have to have because we hate career politicians.

Speaking of career politicians, I think Hilary might be in big trouble. It’s not that the emails are that big a deal, but there is this after that, and there is her annoying coyness about whether or not she is running (of course she is), and just now I read that she is going to make a statement, ‘sometime within the next few days,’ is that what a person with nothing to hide says? We don’t have much in the wings, but that’s because they’ve all been afraid of Hilary, once the queen is gored they may be coming out.

We’ve had three days of nice weather, but tomorrow the winds are going to be coming out of the east which is no problem for the Gage Park neighborhood, but those of us on the lake are like twenty degrees colder. But even with that, it’s better than it has been.