Reconstruction to Present Day
In Accordance with Texas Law
4) a teacher, administrator, or other employee of a … state agency, school district, or open-enrollment charter school may not: …(B) require or make part of a course the concept that: …
(vi)an individual, by virtue of the individuals’ race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
Texas House Bill 3879 – AN ACT relating to the social studies curriculum in public schools.
Americans dream of gypsies, I have found
And gypsy knives and gypsy thighs
That pound and pound and pound and pound
And African appendages that almost reach the ground
And little boys playing baseball in the rain
America, America
Step out into the light
You’re the best dream man has ever dreamed
And may all your Christmases be white
Randy Newman – Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Albert Einstein in America
Introduction
We at Dogge & Poni Publishing Inc would like to thank The Texas School Board of Education for adopting The New, Revised History of the United States, Vol 1 textbook for use in Texas secondary schools. Because of the considerable market for textbooks in the great state of Texas, it has been adopted in most states in the United States. We now proudly submit Volume 2 – From Reconstruction to Present. In it, you will find the same excellent history students experienced in Volume 1, with revisions necessary to come into compliance with the state’s latest requirements. This paper demonstrates how we have adapted the textbook to meet the requirements for selected episodes in our history in a manner that nobody ever need feel bad about it.
Reconstruction
After Robert E. Lee, dressed in splendid martial regalia rode in on a gallant white steed to Appomattox, Virginia and surrendered his sword to a drunken, cigar-chomping, slovenly Ulysses S. Grant, the business of reconstructing the Union began.
Sadly, before the war had officially ended, John Wilkes Booth mistakenly killed Abraham Lincoln at a theater and swung across the stage on a rope, yelling “I made a mistake! I’m sorry!” and ran away. Reconstruction began under his Vice President Andrew Johnson, a courtly gentleman whose policy was, what the heck, just let the southern states back in without a hassle.
Reconstruction continued under his successor, drunken, cigar-chomping, slovenly Ulysses S. Grant with a few conditions, such as Southern states approving three new constitutional amendments meant for the rest of the world to follow the American way. The 13th Amendment ended slavery wherever it still existed; the 14th ensured equal protection and due process of law for those who could afford it; and the 15th Amendment proclaimed that no citizen shall be denied the vote on the basis of sexual orientation. Southerners passed all amendments with dispatch and aplomb.
The Southerner’s cotton-based economy had been ravaged. Millions of Negroes lost their jobs, but each received forty acres and a mule. They worked the land and prospered, building self-sufficient communities with businesses like real estate, insurance, banking, and funeral homes.
In 1877, Reconstruction ended and there were no issues left unresolved. The North and South have had amicable relations ever since.
Manifest Destiny
“…in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions ….”
The journalist John L. Sullivan wrote the above in 1845 to justify the annexation of Texas to the United States and to provide the pretext for the Mexican War of 1848 as a land grab to expand the United States’ borders from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean because that is what God wanted.
The fulfillment of Manifest Destiny had to be put on hold for the minor diversion of The War Between the States. Once that was settled, the task of overspreading the continent picked up in earnest. Indians and buffalo stood in the way, though. Buffaloes were dispatched quickly enough by killing them in the hundreds of thousands, preserving just a few for the viewing pleasure of tourists later on.
The removal of Indians from the path of progress took a little longer, as they were continually moved by the benevolent federal government from more to less desirable land called “reservations.” where they were well taken care of. Indians cheerfully acquiesced since they had experience prior to the Civil War of being removed from the prime land of the Southeastern states to west of the Mississippi (see The Trail of Laughter from Volume 1). Their population mysteriously dwindled to around 250,000 by the end of the 19th century.
The Gilded Age
The United States had always been a prosperous country and became preposterously so toward the end of the 19th century. Wealthy white men built powerful financial institutions for the benefit of other wealthy white men who in turn provided opportunity and employment for millions of poor men, women and children so they could enjoy a life of penury. They learned the lessons of demanding work in close-quartered factories and garment districts protected from outside air for 10 to 16 hours a day, six days a week with Sundays off to praise the Lord for their benefactors.
Jim Crow
The term Jim Crow had two distinct meanings in the latter 19th century.
Although originating in 1830s with a white actor performing in blackface as
“Jim Crow,” minstrel shows became increasingly popular throughout the second half of the 19th century. White performers showed their appreciation for Negro culture by dressing up in outrageous costumes and covering their faces in burnt cork and greasepaint while playing ignorant fools. The danced and made jokes in an exaggerated imitation of what they took to be Negro dialect. Linguists believe this is where the phrase “Sho ‘Nuff” originated. Negroes felt honored by this appropriation of their folkways. Such appropriation of black culture by whites would last well into the 20th century.
The other meaning of Jim Crow applied to benevolent laws passed in Southern states for the protection of Negroes by segregating them so that they could be among their own kind, while also preserving the purity of their race and coincidentally preserving the purity of the white race with certain exceptions such as The Octaroon Balls of New Orleans.
The Roaring Twenties
The hard work and considerable sacrifice of the masses throughout the latter 19th century finally resulted in a more prosperous economy for more white people, especially after World War I when the United States had to bail out silly Europeans from yet another one of their continental wars. Because of their small, round, pudgy and pale physiques, America soldiers came to be known as the Pillsbury “Doughboys.” They quickly put an end to all the foolishness “over there, over there” after the “Yankee Doodle Dandies” landed. They won the war by digging long trenches.
The rapid build-up of manufacturing and logistics of war-making machinery provided an incredible boost to the economy, prompting the United States to engage in numerous overt and covert wars from then on.
People were exuberant with the prosperity of “The Roaring Twenties,” prompting one writer to dub it “The Jazz Age.” Jazz was a new distinctly American art form created in New Orleans by Negroes from a heady mixture of Creole, blues, gospel, and ragtime music genres. Whites quickly appropriated it and tamed it down with “Big Band” ensembles.
Because of the growing economy, people brought stocks in ever-growing numbers because the value of stocks always goes up and never goes down.
The So-Called Great Depression
The Roaring Twenties ended when the economy hit a bump in the road in 1929. Though large numbers of people lost their jobs, they responded with typical American resolve and ingenuity by building “Hoovervilles” in honor of President Herbert Hoover. Hoovervilles were temporary communities built out of cardboard boxes, scrap lumber, tin, and whatever else happened to be lying around.
Elected in 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt alleviated the economic downturn somewhat by creating scores of new federal agencies to the everlasting gratitude of the American people.
Fortunately, the Europeans got themselves into another massive world war which the United States joined after being bombed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor which may not sound like it makes sense, but it does. The United States built up a massive war-making economy that ended the so-called depression.
World War II
President Harry S. Truman wisely ended World War II by dropping nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Cold War
With the end of World War II, the pressing issue became how to sustain a prosperous economy without war? Fortunately, the Soviet Union (formerly Russia) provided the answer. Despite being allies in World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became ideological enemies.
The United States represented truth, justice the American Way, and capitalism while the Soviet Union represented authoritarianism, oppression, pure evil, and godless Communism. Thus, the United States determined to maintain a “standing army” in so-called peacetime. Giant corporations mastered the art of lobbying Congress for ever greater defense spending in the congressional representatives’ home districts, creating a feedback loop in perpetuity. President Dwight D. Eisenhower perfectly described this engine of prosperity as the “military-industrial complex.”
In prior times, this massive escalation of national weaponry might have led to another deadly world war had the Soviet Union not stolen the secret of building nuclear weapons. Both sides built arsenals of deadly nuclear weapons to the point that both sides realized it would be ridiculous to actually use them as it would mean the end of civilization as we know it. This came to be known as “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD).
They kept building more and more nuclear weapons anyway to sustain their respective economies.
Morning in America
Elected President in 1980, Ronald Reagan declared “government is not the solution, government is the problem,” except when it came to the military-industrial complex which got ever more government funding. Under his leadership, the Republican Congress enacted steep tax cuts for the wealthy on the theory that this would unleash so much economic growth that government revenues would significantly increase. The federal deficit quadrupled during his time in office.
The economy underwent fundamental changes as a result, ushering in a new Gilded Age. Under the banner of “free trade,” corporations realized that overseas labor was even cheaper than domestic labor. The economy began shifting from a manufacturing to the “service economy.” People who lost their manufacturing jobs found slightly less remunerative but nonetheless fulfilling employment making and selling hamburgers to each other.
Financial services took on an ever-growing role in the economy. The best and brightest college graduates became “financial engineers” creating new and clever ways of making money off of making money without having to bother with producing anything of tangible value. These engineers created or improved on financial “instruments” like hedge funds that “short” stocks by betting on them to fall quickly in value – in other words, getting rich on other people’s misfortunes. Other financial services included creating “shell” corporations that did nothing but hide money and other assets from taxation in “offshore tax havens,” enabling corporations to buy back their own stocks and the wealthy to buy more yachts, homes, and even their own islands.
The End of the Cold War
The Soviet Union simply collapsed in 1989, going out with a whimper instead of a nuclear bang. This posed yet another challenge to the military industrial complex, which military planners and corporate lobbyists solved by imagining having to fight two wars simultaneously. Thus, the United States would be prepared should, say, Mexico and Canada declare war on us at the same time.
Congressional representatives eagerly adopted this strategy by increasing defense spending back in their home districts.
9/11
In the Middle East, a terrorist organization named Al-Queda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden plotted to rid Islam of the corrupting influences of the United States and Europe, aka “The West.” Terrorists flew planes into the heart of the United States financial power, demolishing the Twin Towers of New York City and killing 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden found safe haven in Afghanistan under the rule of another terrorist organization, the Taliban. In retaliation, the United States bombed Afghanistan into the Stone Age, ending terrorism once and for all and the Taliban was never heard from again. For good measure, the troops plowed straight ahead to Iraq to rid it of weapons of mass destruction that it did not have.
What Does the Future Hold?
First appearing in World War II, computers made astonishing gains, doubling in processing power every 18 months to the point that they now are capable of Artificial Intelligence (AI), competing with and in some cases surpassing human intelligence. Businesses are realizing that computer hardware and software are much cheaper than human labor and far less trouble too. AI will soon abolish the need for human labor. People will occupy themselves by playing with themselves in the “Metaverse.” People can create avatars for themselves and engage in interaction with other avatars in all manner of ways without having to deal with each other face-to-face, thus avoiding embarrassing behaviors in public such as sneezing and farting.
Summary
We trust the State Board of Education finds our new, revised history volume II of the United States satisfactory and that no one will find it objectionable except for terrorists who are all dead anyway, and whose children have all converted to Christianity. Enclosed is an undisclosed amount of cash for your further consideration.
Short Shorts 