Good morning, Blogosphere, Today is Monday, January 10th, 2o11. We are officially in the second decade of the 21st century and as such we need to go about ruining it for everyone, just like those pesky 1811-ers and 1911-ers did for us. If we don't, what will children read about in history books in 80-100 years? Are they going to read the same crap that bored us into submission?
Let us look at some of the 'highlights' of 1811:
Jan 2nd - US Sen Thomas Pickering is 1st senator censured (revealed confidential documents communicated by the president of the US). At his censure hearing, he is heard to repeat "I'm #1" over and over again while headbanging and waving his hand in the air.
Feb 11th - Pres Madison prohibits trade with Britain for 3rd time in 4 years. The flow of dental product to the U.K. devastates to population which is still not fully recovered.
Feb 20th - Austria declares bankruptcy after Vienna sausages found to be high in nitrates and cholesterol.
Mar 1st - Egyptian king Muhammad Ali Pasha oversees ceremonial murder of 500 which earns him amateur status on the middle eastern stage.
Mar 25th - Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism. There is nothing funny about this.
Apr 12th - 1st US colonists on Pacific coast arrive at the aptly named Cape Disappointment, WA
Jul 11th - Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro publishes his memoir about molecular content of gases. Avogadro's number, or 'Mole' will go on to torture 9th graders for all recorded history.
Sep 18th - English expeditionary army conquerors Dutch Indies by painting their homes with vivid paint colors and teaching the locals to 'chill out'.
Oct 6th - French emperor Napoleon visits Utrecht, leave immediately upon seeing how tall the podium is at the high school where he was scheduled to speak.
Oct 11th - The Juliana, 1st steam-powered ferryboat, begins operation. It is powered by slaves.
Nov 2nd - Battle of Tippecanoe: Gen Jackson vs indians. General Jackson 5, Indians 2.
Nov 7th - Battle of Tippecanoe, gave Harrison a presidential slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" which meant nothing then and still means nothing now.
Dec 26th - A theater fire in Richmond, Virginia kills the Governor of Virginia George William Smith and the president of the First National Bank of Virginia Abraham B. Venable. It is said there are so many casualties because it had been made illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre.
BORING! I didn't know any of that stuff. Well, Pickering I did and Tippecanoe, but that could have happened in 1965 for all I remembered. See, we can't keep exposing our future children and grandchildren to this crap. We should, nay, we must band together and start the wheels in motion for something epic, something just nearly cataclysmic! Let's refer back to 1911 and see if we can find some inspiration.
Ok, nope, bad example. Nothing happened in 1911. There were a lot of labor movements and factory fires and things like that. Personal tragedies, yes, but nothing that, say, predicted the upcoming great war, or indicated the end of days. Well, except the Ottawa Senators took the Stanley Cup... that's a sure sign of armageddon.
But if you look at the early 1900's in general you have all sorts of things that set the stage for the advancements we made in the late 20th century. For instance, all those people bitching about their 14 hour work days and deplorable conditions and the lack of child labor laws gave rise to the unions, which in turn started the mass exodus of manufacturing to other countries. Now there are millions of unemployed children in this country, their jobs having been exported to China and Singapore, whose children enjoy earning power unmatched by our American standards.
The seeds of war were being sewn as well. I seem to remember World War 1 started when the king of Spain and a then little known mid-level government official, Winston Churchill got drunk and made fun of Kaiser Wilhelm's hat. Talk about a war! Nobody was actually shot by anybody since they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with the old timey guns they had. Every single death in the war was attributed to bad cooking, and something called "Trench Toe". The Germans called it Saurfootenunternail-funkenshmelling. Such a beautiful language. Anyway, famine and disease is what killed to soldiers and when the last unit was standing it was because they had robbed a convenience store and picked up a bunch of beef jerky and tube socks to sustain them.
World War 1 should have taught us that war is always a worthless effort. It is not worth the lives, the money, the suffering to accomplish so little... or in this case, anything. But it didn't. Instead, the lesson we took from World War 1 was how to apply all our energy into more effectively killing our enemies so that we would be ready for World War 2. This turned out to be a good thing, because we didn't know that somewhere there was a 28 year old man filled with anger that his mustache wouldn't fill out no matter what he did and for that he would make millions of people pay.
I am referring of course to Charlie Chaplin who would foist upon us the worst cinematic dreck ever seen up to that point. At least until Ben Stiller came along. We had to go to war just so their would be a ration on cellulose so this guy could stop making movies! Yeah, we get it, your life is hard. Seen it.
World War 2, often considered the only justifiable war of the 20th century, gave us hope in history class. It gave us something to read about that didn't seem like it happened on an episode of the Waltons. It gave us fast airplanes and big powerful ships and computers and RADAR and medical technology that we can't imagine life without. It gave us Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin with that amazing porn-stache the likes of which wouldn't be seen again until Freddy Mercury of Queen graced the stage. Finally, something worth reading about. Where would the History Channel be without World War 2? And if there were no documentaries about things, how would teachers teach, or children learn?
After World War 2 a lot of nothing happened, meaning history texts will be like 1811 and 1911 all over again if we don't do something about it. Sure, we had 9/11 and a dozen never-ending skirmishes in the desert with no discernible benefit, but in 50 years that will be boring to read about. We need to start needling China. We need to call our other Asian friends South Korea and Japan and start screwing with China. Hell, we can even call India... Just don't tell Pakistan. You know how Pakistan gets. They'll get all pissy and the next thing you know we'll stop getting poor quality child-slave made goods that can be sold at the Wal*Mart price causing the immediate economic meltdown of the western world.
We need to drag this whole sunofabitch into war. You want your lasers and flying cars and jet packs and implanted chip cerebral processors and mood rings that actually work? All these things come from war. If man has proven anything it is that he is never so inventive as when he is trying to kill something, or save it life after someone else tried to kill it. It is our natural god complex. So, John Lennon, you're out, and Vladimir Lenin, you're in. War is the answer. It is the anathema to the boring history text. We must do these stupid horrendous things now so our young people can grow up to be this century's greatest generation.
This is a call to action, people. I hear a lot of talk about trying to fix the world before it collapses and before we lose our preeminence in the world. I say, it's the next generation's problem. And to make sure we fully test steel their resolve and make sure it requires their best full effort, stop trying. Just let the place go for awhile! Then, sit back and watch the lasers fly.
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