Texas should not rewrite U.S. history to suit their delusions

The board proposal includes the removal of Thomas Jefferson and Seneca Falls Convention while ‘pretending Hispanics don’t exist’

By Greg Zeman
The Guardsman

Texas has seceded from the United States of sanity.

I know I’m not supposed to “mess” with Texas, but enough is enough. I apologize in advance if my vitriol boils-over here, but I’m not going to tiptoe around the feelings of the cowboy dumbasses who let JFK get shot and invented Tex-Mex — a bastardization of Mexican cuisine so awful it borders on racist.

The Texas Board of Education is trying to rewrite U.S. history to read like a fascist-evangelical fairy tale. They’ve proposed removing from textbooks any mention of the Seneca Falls Convention, which kick-started the women’s equality movement in America, and the Double-V campaign, black WWII veterans’ demand for full equality. So, let’s just say, Texas isn’t big on the whole “full equality” thing.

The Double V campaign was an unprecedented, self-generated campaign created by the black press during WWII to promote the interests of the U.S. at war and the freedom and equality of returning black veterans. It should come as no surprise that Texas, a place with an abundance
of suspected “sundown towns” – towns where blacks are not allowed after sunset – would reject the campaign’s historical significance.

Also, their SeaWorld sucks —especially when compared to the one in San Diego.

When board member Mary Helen Berlanga tried repeatedly to have Latino historical figures added to the curriculum, she was obstructed by the 15-to-10 Republican majority every time.Exasperated, Berlanga finally walked out of the hearings because the board was “pretending Hispanics don’t exist.”

It is one thing to add something to a textbook; we progressives have made additions to include neglected chapters of history — those not performed by white men — and the country is better for it. It is altogether different to remove something.

The board has also proposed removing Thomas Jefferson from the list of individuals whose writings and ideas inspired the U.S. revolution. That isn’t a typo. Thomas Jefferson — the third President of the U.S., the guy on the nickel, the guy who purchased Louisiana and — oh yeah — the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence — he’s off the list.

So who will take Jefferson’s place? A few gentleman you may have heard of, namely John Calvin and St. Thomas Aquinas, who are thinkers of the 13th and 16th century, respectively. So, why didn’t they just add these thinkers?

Because the stone-age, hocus-pocus theories of Calvin and Aquinas generally wither like so many fig leaves when exposed to the enlightened glow of Jeffersonian philosophy.

And herein lies the key to all of this — Texas, as a shining beacon of “American conservatism”
(Read: faith-based Fascism) has a case of ideological inadequacy way too massive to hide under 10 ten-gallon hats.

So Texas can shuffle the deck all it wants. They can even take out a few kings and queens and replace them with their favorite jokers. But the end result is all hat and no cattle.

And the next time a person says that Austin is the “Berkeley of Texas,” I will feel an overwhelming urge to spit in their mouth, but I won’t be able to because I’ll be too busy vomiting into my own.