Why we need to teach real US history

I have written multiple times before how US history is taught in schools in a completely sanitized form that distorts and erases what truly happened. People are given a rose-tinted view of the past, especially when it comes to the brutality that was inflicted on black people during the time of slavery and all the way to the present. This is why there is such reluctance by some to accept that the confederacy was actually a very bad thing and should not be honored in any way. The same holds true for the treatment of Native Americans.

In another excellent program, John Oliver looks at all the problems with the way US history is taught and offers suggestions for how it should be taught,

The US should follow New Zealand’s lead for dealing with the pandemic

Yesterday brought some encouraging news of a survey that shows that most Americans do not believe Trump’s assertions that the US is doing a better job of dealing with the pandemic than other countries, and they are looking for the government to issue aggressive national plan to fight the epidemic and are willing to wear masks and accept other restrictions.
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Trump draws a massive crowd of maybe, uh, 30 people?

On his way to a fundraiser in Florida yesterday, Trump spoke to an absolutely YUGE overflow crowd on the airport tarmac in Tampa.

Needless to say, the wags on Twitter had a field day, with one commenting that this was “Like an aging rock star who can’t draw a crowd at the county fair.”

Trump’s manifest insecurity about his cognitive abilities

Most people do not even think about whether they are cognitively impaired or not. It is only those who fear that there is a problem who may obsess about it. Seth Meyers looks at the way that Trump keeps boasting about the results of his ‘cognitive test’, a test that is not used to test how smart you are, as Trump seems to think, but to see if you are showing signs of dementia. (Note that he took this test back in 2018 and it was administered by his then White House personal physician Ronny Jackson who subsequently resigned amid allegations of misconduct and is now running for a Texas congressional seat on an ardently pro-Trump platform.)

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