The school board in Texas reminded me of a part of something George Carlin said.
It's amazing to me that the social conservatives who are supporting this change in textbooks can say what they are saying with a straight face.
They want the term "slave trade" to be changed to "Atlantic Triangle Trade" or something like that.
Unfortunately, they are serious. This reminded me of something George Carlin said...
I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms.
Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that.
There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to it's absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.
In the first world war, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.
That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the second world war came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock! Battle fatigue.
Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.
Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll betcha. I'll betcha.
The social conservatives want to do the same thing to the words "slave trade" and others like it. Those words are too harsh, a bit too dramatic.
Never mind the fact that in this "triangle trade" millions of Africans died through a variety of methods, including murder.
This is their real goal. If the history is not as harsh, then the remedy should not be as harsh. Let's get rid of affirmative action, do we really need it anymore? The Atlantic Triangle Trade wasn't that bad, was it?
The next step will be getting rid of the idea that women should not be equal. Since Eve came from Adam's rib, it means that they should be subservient, right? That's straight out of Judeo-Christian doctrine.
What's after that? The Holocaust shouldn't really be called the Holocaust because there really is no way that the Nazi's could kill that many people. Let's call it "The European Disappearance". Maybe aliens took them away. Perhaps it was a pre-Rapture thing.
Don't put it past them, this book also shows Senator Joseph McCarthy in a more positive light. It seems that social conservatives want him to be seen that way.
Remember him? The guy who said that the had a list of Communists in his hand when all it was really was a grocery list? Years of Congressional terror followed. It was called the Blacklist.
Now, they will probably call it "The Group from the Left".