Letters From Home

At the end of last year, I wrote a series called “Ten ways to take a stand against ignorance.” Many of the suggestions there are especially important during election years.  An informed electorate is the best defense against political claptrap of all kinds.

After seeing some of the idiotic finger-pointing and “yes you did, no I didn’t” carryings-on from this current United States presidential election campaign, I offer the following suggestions (in conjunction with the other ten) for anyone who wants to become a better informed voter.

1.  Do not rely on one source for most, or all, of your news.

It is essential to pay attention to multiple viewpoints, because no one source has a lock on the facts.  If you see a comment that intrigues or annoys you, go see what some other news source (preferably one that leans toward “the other side”) has to say on the matter.  There’s guaranteed to be more to it than any one news source offers.

2.  Do not take one side’s word for what the other side thinks or does.

If you didn’t see the original, make it your business to find out what it was, before you form an opinion.  Filtering all your information through someone else’s biases leaves you no option but to think like they do.  Make up your own mind.

3.  As an adjunct to items 1 and 2, become a fact checker.

There are many web sites available to help you, such as snopes.com and factcheck.org.   Don’t just nod at things that sound plausible.  The people we agree with can slip hogwash past us faster than anything.

4.  Pay attention to what the candidates actually say.

Do not try to explain away or excuse statements that make no sense.  If you can find transcripts of interviews and debates, read them.  What might sound good while a candidate is saying it may turn into gibberish when you see it written down.

5.  Do not be too quick to condemn “flip-flopping.”

Intelligent people change their views if new information makes it feasible.  People who stubbornly cling to the same old views regardless of how the situation changes are living proof that Emerson was right:  A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  The person who’s willing to keep learning and willing to change his or her opinion is light-years ahead of the person who says “I know all I need to know” or “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Help yourself, help your country

It helps to have a working knowledge of recent history, but that’s not something that is accomplished overnight.  Too many of us were bored silly in history classes in school.  Too many of our classes had to slog through ancient history for too long and never got close to the present day.

Call your local public library and ask to speak to a librarian.  Ask for a good book on 20th century history.  Make sure your preferences are clear.  Not too long?  Not too technical?  Not too focused on single issues?  Whatever will appeal to you–ask for it and listen to the recommendations.  Then, of course, read the book.  Once you have a feel for what happened in the 20th century, you can better appreciate what makes sense in the 21st.

Above all, regardless of your choice of candidate, make it a point to go and vote on Election Day.  In many states it’s not too late to register if you haven’t already.  If you think it’s too difficult for you to get to the polls, request an absentee ballot.  It’s not too late for that, either.  Let’s stop putting dimwits in office, by not being dimwits ourselves.

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Everyone seems to be having a field day skewering the McCain/Palin ticket these days. There is, after all, such a wealth of material to choose from. David Letterman’s having a field day. But then again, the Republican candidates seem to be skewering themselves as well, as any number of clips from that infamous Katie Couric interview will attest.

I often wonder where all the good politicians have gone.  Did we ever actually have any?  How many presidents in the 20th century had no slimy dealings in their political lifetimes?  They weren’t all as bad as Lyndon Johnnson and Richard Nixon, but they weren’t all that much better, either.  They associated with crooks, got involved in shady deals, cheated on their wives, tried to use the power of the presidency to form imperial fiefdoms for themselves, were obsessed with other countries who were no real threat…   the list of idiocies is a long one.

The biggest problem today is that so many people have fallen for the anti-intellectual world view, in which any kind of higher learning is suspicious in and of itself, and there’s no point in knowing anything about any history farther back than yesterday.  (George Wallace would be proud to see what he hath wrought.)  “The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know,” said Harry Truman.  I think if ol’ Harry could see We The People today he’d be sick.

Too many people get all their information second hand from broadcast blowhards.  They don’t read (and undoubtedly can understand why Sarah Palin doesn’t either).  They don’t check facts.  They agree with anything that sounds logical and rings true with their biases.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the media blowhards could be compelled to defend their positions against people who do know what they’re talking about?  Live on national TV.  No rehearsals, no commercial breaks, no “lifelines.”  Let’s put Vincent Bugliosi up against Rush Limbaugh and Gore Vidal against Bill O’Reilly.  No, it wouldn’t be “fair and balanced” because the windbags couldn’t stack the deck.

Katie Couric was a softball interviewer and Sarah Palin still fell right off her spike heels and onto her face.   Isn’t it time someone took on the ignorant right-wing blowhards and knocked them off their wingtips as well?
photo credit: GregPC

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One of the tech blogs I read on a regular basis mocked a gizmo today. The gizmo (a cuckoo clock that dispenses chocolate balls once an hour) deserves to be mocked. But the writer included a comment to the effect that eating too much chocolate could make a person diabetic.

It doesn’t work that way.

Obesity is one of the major triggers for Type 2 diabetes, and that’s undoubtedly the main reason why more and more people are diabetic. We’re all fatter. But diabetes isn’t caused by eating too much sugar. It’s caused by eating too much, period. Put a layer of fat around your middle and you might just be seeing your doctor for more than you bargained for.

I know this because I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes ten years ago. I’d had my suspicions for a while before that, but every time my doctor tested my blood sugar levels, it was done while I was fasting and my readings were in the normal range. It wasn’t till I had an appointment after lunch (that included a can of Pepsi) that I got an accurate reading–and the bad news.

What it’s really like

Diabetes is a progressive, pernicious disease. In the beginning, if the diagnosis is made early enough before the person’s blood sugar gets so high it requires major medical intervention, it is often possible to keep one’s blood sugar readings under control by a combination of diet and exercise, without medication. That’s the way it was for me for a few years (despite the best efforts of my boss to remain ignorant on the subject and buy party food that was mostly grease and sugar). Eventually I had to start taking medication that pushed my body to produce more insulin.

Of course, insulin can be considered a growth hormone and many people who get started on that kind of medication gain weight. I did. But my blood sugar was under control, at least for a while. Eventually that medication didn’t do the job and a second one was prescribed. That combination held the line for me until late last year.

Testing, testing

There’s a test called A1c that measures how high your blood sugar levels have been over about the last three months. The average reading is about 6%, give or take a few percentage points. Diabetics can go a little higher and still be considered within proper limits. My A1c was 8.4%. This was bad news indeed. But it didn’t come as much of a surprise because I had had increasing difficulty with way-too-high readings.

So, two months ago, I started injecting insulin. I know a lot of Type 2 diabetics see that as a treatment of last resort, and if they have to start on insulin they have somehow failed. I thought that way myself for quite a while. Now I know better.

The needles are not much thicker than a human hair, and less than half an inch long. The injections are about as close to completely painless as one could imagine. And best of all, the dosage is infinitely adjustable. With pills, you just don’t have that level of control. Besides, if you’re pushing your body to prodiuce more and more insulin, eventually your pancreas may just give up.

Insulin through history

Insulin was discovered early in the 20th century, and until recent years it was a byproduct of the slaughterhouse, refined from beef and pork pancreases. But drug manufacturers have since discovered how to make human insulin using genetically modified bacteria, and that was first marketed in 1982. The insulins we have today, produced by recombinant DNA, are nearly identical to what the human pancreas creates–they’re just modified a bit to allow for different times of effectiveness. The human insulins, not surprisingly, work better for most people and cause fewer problems. But there are some people for whom the animal based insulins are the best choice, and they are still available, but only under conditions where they are medically necessary. All insulin sold in the USA today is bio-engineered human.

Changes

I’m having to learn a few new things and think ahead. Originally I was just doing one injection at bedtime, but it wasn’t working quite well enough. Now I do one injection before breakfast and one before dinner (different insulin formulation than what I started with). I’ll have to be prepared to take a filled syringe with me when we go out to eat (ordered some cases from the Insulin Case Shoppe yesterday). I have to check my blood sugar more often while I’m making the adjustments in the dose. C’est la vie. I want to live.

I wish there were a good diabetes education program in a nutshell so the average person knew what was going on. Maybe I should write it myself.

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I have, for some unknown reason, been reading a lot of “political” books lately. Nothing to do with the upcoming election, since I don’t like either major candidate and I’m already sick of the political ads and they haven’t even had the conventions yet.

There have been a lot of similar books published over the past decade or so, and I have neither the time nor the desire to read most of them. But several have caught my eye in recent months and I thought I’d pass along my comments, for better or for worse.

I’ve already written about The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, by Vincent Bugliosi, and you can see my comments on that book here. That book was a quick read. The next one, not so quick.

The Bush Tragedy, by Jacob Weisberg, is an investigation into the Bush and Walker family history and their collective personalities, in an attempt to explain George W. Bush’s motivations. As with all books where the author is dealing with a living subject at second hand, and the subject of the book has made no personal contributions to it, one must read everything with the proper skepticism for armchair psychoanalysis.

Still, it is apparent that Weisberg has done his best to be evenhanded and to both praise and criticize where each is appropriate. His analysis of why George W. Bush’s presidency is a tragedy that need not have been so is explained in careful terms, and his ongoing analogy with Shakespeare’s tragedy is apt. The book would be an eye-opener for anyone, regardless of his/her opinion of the subject.

It would help, I think, to have read Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty before tackling The Bush Tragedy, because there is even more background information on the Bush, Walker and Pierce families that will show the reader where Weisberg is coming from and round out the details. Say what you wish about Kitty Kelley, she’s an eminently readable writer and she notes quite correctly that no one has ever successfully sued her over the contents of her books. Given the kinds of high-priced lawyers some of her subjects could afford, and the resources at their disposal, that alone says something about the accuracy of Kelley’s reporting. And her notes about her sources for this particular book are eye-opening indeed.

The other book I’m reading right now is Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein. I haven’t finished it yet, but what I’ve read so far seems spot-on. I had already read Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon by Anthony Summers, and learned quite a bit more about Tricky Dick than I had ever believed possible.

I wouldn’t have been quite old enough to vote if the 18-year-olds-can-vote amendment had passed in 1968. My first presidential election was in 1972, in which I voted against Richard Nixon. Not for McGovern, who didn’t much appeal to me, but I’d seen enough of Nixon to want to vote for Donald Duck if it meant no more Tricky Dick in the White House. Perlstein’s book gives the historical perspective on the rise and fall and rise and fall of Richard Nixon, along with other “impossible” candidates like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It’s a fascinating portrait of the times and, I think, a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why today’s political climate is the way it is.

That’s a lot of political reading for anyone, but for someone who is fascinated by history and biography (as I am), it’s well worth the time.

Have you read any of those books?

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Let me begin this by saying that I don’t particularly like either of the major candidates running for
president this year.  While both of them have numerous admirable qualities and good ideas, they also both have numerous faults and failings and neither makes me enthusiastic about the consequences of voting for him.  I am not a supporter of either man, and on election day I will have to once again have to hold my nose and choose which I think will be the lesser of two evils.

Now, as for political propaganda–I recently read a forum post from a curmudgeonly fellow who was passing along one of those ubiquitous internet letters that people tend to pass on if they happen to agree with them.

The letter purported to be from a Cuban who made the point that Fidel Castro started out as a young, charismatic guy who promised change, and a lot of Cubans were sick of the status quo so they went with the young guy who promised change, and OMG LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.  The reader is, apparently, supposed to draw his/her own conclusions about the following of charismatic young guys who are all for change.  And, no doubt, vote accordingly.

This led me to thinking about other charismatic young guys who were all for change.  One of them wrote the following words, which, alas, far too few Americans have ever seen or paid attention to.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Barack Obama is 47.  In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33.  John Hancock was 39.  James Madison was 25.  Patrick Henry, who advocated change more fiercely than most, was 40.  Thomas Paine, who did likewise, was 39.  And George Washington was 44.  If charismatic young men like these hadn’t advocated change, we’d likely still be singing “God Save the Queen” today.  (I have often said that the descendants of people who were conservatives in 1776 have a special name–Canadians–because that’s how I came to be the descendant of a gentleman who scooted across the border from New Jersey to New Brunswick and stayed there.)

Many Cubans still hold a deep grudge about what happened at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and I know several who will never vote for a Democrat because they hold Kennedy and his cronies personally responsible for that.  However, even the most cursory examination of history will show that the Bay of Pigs was the Dulles brothers’ idea, that they’d gotten it pretty well set up to go before Kennedy was even elected, and that they were part of the Eisenhower administration while they did so.  They went ahead with it under the assumption that once it was under way, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in American troops in support.  Kennedy proved he did indeed have another choice, and he took it–but he was man enough to publicly accept the responsibility for what happened next.

John McCain is 72.  In 1961, Allen Dulles was 68. John Foster Dulles was 73.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was 71.  Should the Cuban who wrote the letter not be thundering about old men who thought they were still warriors, acted accordingly, and OMG LOOK WHAT HAPPENED?  Had the Bay of Pigs not happened, Castro would not have had a readymade propaganda victory at the very beginning of his rule, and what might have happened in Cuba as a result?

Obviously, both sides of that particular argument are hogwash and the comparisons they make are specious in the extreme.  Obama is no Castro and McCain is no Dulles.  To vote for or against a presidential candidate because some other guy in some other time and/or place did something is absurd.

But it seems that once again, a lot of people who, as Santayana said, know nothing of history, are once again doomed to repeat it.

photo credit: Obese Seagull Productions

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I’ve been a fan of Vincent Bugliosi’s since the Helter Skelter days. The Manson bunch were held in the Inyo County Courthouse right up the street from where my grandmother lived, and F’zer and I were in Independence while they were filming the TV miniseries based on the book and we got to see Bugliosi’s alter ego walking across the street being filmed.

I’ve read most of Bugliosi’s books since then. Went to see him give a talk on his Supreme Court book just a few days before 9/11, as a matter of fact, and was very impressed by how he handled the standing-room-only crowd, including a few people who obviously went from talk to talk just to heckle.

In recent books, though, I think he’s gotten a bit too shrill. It isn’t enough to lay out the evidence, he has to hit you over the head with it again and again. Now, granted, there are plenty enough dullards out there nowadays that I’m sure he feels the approach is necessary, but since when did any of them ever read a book?

I just finished The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, and unfortunately it’s more of the same. Bugliosi makes the case, sure enough, but he obviously feels so strongly about the Bushwhackers that he pounds home every single point with all the facts and fury he can muster. Heck, I agree with him and I got tired of the assault long before I reached the halfway point in the book.

I know it’s infuriating to see so many people in the USA who are so utterly clueless about everything they see or hear on the news (if they pay attention to the news at all). I know it’s infuriating to see so many people so utterly incapable of thinking for themselves. (Which is why I wrote my series on taking a stand against ignorance to wind up last year.) It’s understandable for a man as intelligent and articulate as Bugliosi to take on the challenge of “telling it like it is” with regard to the Bushwhackers and their immoral and unnecessary war. But to write a book as though one is presenting a case to a jury full of dummies… well, unfortunately, it wears out its welcome before its time.

I’d like to see him write a companion book that isn’t quite so strident. There’s a case to be made. But this approach isn’t going to reach the people who ought to get it.

Perhaps for his next book Mr. Bugliosi could lay out the case (reasonably, not shrilly) for all the anti-gay-marriage statutes amounting to the establishment of a state religion, and therefore being unconstitutional? I for one would buy that book the day it hit the shelves.

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In my series about taking a stand against ignorance, I said that reading is the key. And that doesn’t just apply to people trying to take a stand against ignorance–it applies to just about everyone. We all buy new appliances or other electronic devices now and again. And believe me, there is no more important time for reading than when one’s learning how to work something new.

I’ve done tech support for over 20 years now. I’ve also learned a lot of new things and tried, at least, to master a lot of new gizmos that have been invented in that time. Thus, it’s hard for me to understand why so many people just never bother to read the manual.

I’m sure almost everyone has heard the old saw “When all else fails, read the directions.” That would not be so universally applicable, of course, if people actually did read the directions. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen piteous wails from people who took back a messed-up laptop computer to the uncaring big-box store they bought it from, only to have the computer sent who-knows-where by the service department and who-knows-when they’ll get it back. Do the instructions that came with the computer say “Take it back where you bought it”? No, they do not. They say “Take it to an authorized service center.” But almost nobody bothers to read that part. And then they come to an online forum and carry on about how badly they were treated by the store and how long they’ve been without the computer, and if they’re asked if they found the store’s name on the list of authorized service centers… well, the person asking the question might just as well be speaking Martian.

Unhelpful help, and more

Of course, the manufacturers themselves have contributed to the problem by supplying only quickie setup guides in the box and relegating the real user manuals to computer files of some sort–whether a “help” file or a manual in PDF format. Help files are short, and you often have to know exactly what you’re looking for to get the answer you need. The manufacturer may use terminology that the user wouldn’t think of in a million years. When I was writing software manuals by translating programmer-ese into English, I used to joke that a programmer illuminated a room by disabling the light inhibit. I’m a pretty advanced user of Microsoft Word (having dealt with it since version 3 for DOS) but I long ago gave up trying to do any serious looking-up with its help files (even with the cute little cat I’ve got standing in for that idiot paper clip). One good book on the subject, a minute or so browsing the index, and bingo, I’ve got the answer I could have clicked forever to try to find in “help.”

So why don’t people read the directions? There’s usually no faster way to get things going properly, or to fix things that have gone wrong. And, of course, reading the directions makes one self-reliant. How much better it is, to be able to flip a page or two and fix what’s wrong.

The question of self-reliance

When I started out in radio, if something would go flooie (technical term) when the Chief Engineer was not there, and we called for help, the first question we would be asked was “What have you tried already?” In other words, we were expected to know at least a bit about what might be done to try to fix the problem, and to actually try it, before we threw in the towel and bothered the engineer at home. And yet by the time my husband became a Chief Engineer, it seemed as though nobody bothered to try to solve the problem themselves–they’d just call the engineer, even if it was a problem they’d called about a dozen times before.

I’ve found, in teaching people how to use computers, that there seems to be an almost universal fear of “breaking something” or “messing something up.” Wouldn’t it be easier to read the directions and find the solution in writing? But no, people want someone else to tell them what to do.

I don’t have the answers. I just read the directions. I guess I’m one of the few people in the world who actually does RTFM.

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You may have noticed a common thread running through this series of messages.  That’s not accidental.  Because I firmly believe that the best way to take a stand against ignorance is very simple.

Read.

Read as though your life depended on it, because in a very real sense, it does.  Read the news in depth.  Find a good history book and read that, because if you know your history you’re immunized against claptrap from all sides of the political spectrum.  Nobody can tell you that this, or that, present-day politician is “the best” or “the worst” in history, if you already know what those 19th-century guys were up to.  Nobody can say, as Pat Buchanan did not so long ago, that 1968 was “the most divisive year in United States history,” and get away with it if his audience knows what happened in 1861.

If you have a library card, use it.  If you don’t have a library card, get one.  Make a resolution to visit the library often, and to ask the librarians what’s good to read.  And once you bring your reading material home, of course, read it.

More than 30 years ago, Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called “The Ancient and the Ultimate.”  In it, he presents a carefully-thought-out case for the ultimate multimedia device, which even in the wilds of 1973 was not some exotic electronc gizmo or a product of way-out science-fictional thinking.  It was a safe, familiar object, easily obtainable.

A book.

I can’t possibly summarize Asimov’s reasoning on this, but I think he was right.  And I think anyone who reads that essay will understand why he was right.   The essay was collected in a book called The Tragedy of the Moon, which is a collection of essays on various subjects.  You can find it at any public library.  Or, if you really want to be daring, you can order your own copy from Amazon for as little as 89¢ plus shipping.

The great thing about a book of short essays is that if one doesn’t interest you, you can skip to the next one.  And within that same book are two other essays of an eye-opening nature, having to do with social conventions rather than scientific method.  Once you’ve read “The Ancient and the Ultimate,” then read “By the Numbers” to see what Asimov thought about computers and how he predicted they’d affect our world.  And then “Lost in Non Translation” to get a clearer viewpoint about the biases we all share.

Tomorrow starts a new year.  Resolve to take a stand against ignorance.  Individually and collectively, the future we shape will be better if we do.

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One of the best ways to take a stand against ignorance is at the same time the most difficult. We all believe what we believe, and know what we know. And yet, we become more and more ignorant the longer we stick with the status quo. To take a stand against ignorance, one has to be willing to ask one simple question:

But what if that’s not true?

Think of all the advances human knowledge has made because someone was willing to take what “everybody knows” or “everybody believes” and start asking questions. Where would we be, for example, if Copernicus and Galileo hadn’t considered the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and hadn’t asked “But what if it that’s not true?” What if doctors had kept thinking that dirty hands were just fine? What if Martin Luther had never looked in the Bible and started thinking about Church doctrine in a whole new way?

Ask the question. Think about the answer. You might just learn something.

And we should likewise ask questions about our own talents and life paths. What may be “true” for us might not be so for our children. We should never force our children into our own mold. Our children have to know more than we know, or human progress stops. What if Bishop Milton Wright had insisted that his sons Wilbur and Orville follow in his footsteps? What if Abraham Lincoln’s parents had made sure their son was also an illiterate hick? What if Benazir Bhutto’s family had forced her into purdah? Think, again, about all the people in the world who achieved something their parents never dreamed of. It may be an apocryphal story, but Leonard Bernstein’s father is supposed to have groused, “How was I supposed to know he’d grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”

The minute you find yourself thinking that you know all there is, or that what was good enough for your parents is good enough for your children–that’s where ignorance begins. Take a stand. Ask questions. Take a stand against ignorance.

(note: I have disabled comments on this post because for some unknown reason it’s drawn what my daughter would call a cubic ass-load of spam. If you’d like to send me a comment, please use the comment form. Thanks!)

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It’s been a really long time since I graduated from high school. My 40th reunion is coming up in 2008. Yes, I’m old.

I don’t know if it’s true any more (my kids have been out of high school for years, too) but in those days nearly every high school had a required course in civics. At my school it was called “Modern Problems.” The unfortunate thing about civics classes is that they were almost always taught by coaches, because there just weren’t enough gym classes for coaches to teach, and besides, the administration had to make it look like they weren’t just hiring the guy to coach football.

And thus, since a lot of coaches were marginal at best as teachers (with apologies to Mr. G. who coached wrestling and was a top-notch physics teacher, too) nearly everyone snoozed through the classes and ignored pretty much everything once they’d regurgitated it on a test.

Which, in retrospect, is kind of a shame. Because there really were a few nuggets of valuable information to be had. One of the most important things we studied in civics class was the topic of propaganda techniques.

Of course, in 1967-68, propaganda was something those godless Commies did to “indoctrinate” their hapless masses. We were supposed to be able to see communist doublespeak for what it was. We weren’t asked to analyze what our own “indoctrinators” were spitting out. Which is also a shame. We could have learned a lot by paying attention to the politicians of the day.

In this day and age, one of the most important ways you can take a stand against ignorance is to recognize when you’re being manipulated. The techniques of propaganda are alive and well, even if they’re called “spin doctoring” or some other phrase today. Once you understand the method, it’s a lot more difficult for the spin-meisters to bamboozle you.

A complete discussion of propaganda techniques is beyond the scope of this short essay, but there is an excellent discussion here. Be patient; sometimes the site takes a while to load. Which is a good sign–people are learning what to look for.

Print that list of techniques out and read over it. Then, the next time you hear Warren Windbag, Barton Blowhard, Peter Politician or whoever “bloviating” on a subject, see how many of those propaganda techniques are being used. The more such analyses you do, the more you insulate yourself from claptrap.

This video is par for the course for my high school years, but if you can get past the laugh-out-loud factor, it actually does present propaganda techniques in a format that’s easy to understand. After all, it was being played in civics class.

Edit: Well, apparently the video doesn’t play nice with my theme… gonna have to take my own advice and learn something new today so I can fix that!

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