How the world works

I am absolutely drained as I write this so forgive me when it comes out complicated, incoherent, and unreadable. Perhaps I should not even write it, but I find that much of my life I have passed on doing things at the wrong moment only to find the right moment never came.
Perhaps that is because I have always thought I knew how the world was put together but keep finding out it is put together in ways I had never conceived. Long held, cherished ideas prove not only false but blatantly implausible and possibly impossible.
Take, for instance, the way Native Americans are regarded in the U.S. Somehow I just assumed that once the fighting and killing was over the indiginous people...I don't know...assimilated or something. That they were accepted and became integrated, happy, productive participants in U.S. society.
It never even occurred to me that maybe that was not what they wanted...much less that the government itself still was not sure if the various tribes and reservations are independen nations, dependent nations, not nations at all...
If you had told me even two months ago that Native American children were still being forced, against their and their parents will, to attend boarding schools, I would probably have called you a liar. Had you told me the U.S. Government, the Federal government, the institution responsible for upholding the Constitution that is (allegedly) the Supreme Law of the Land, preotecting the people...if you told me that government was still forcibly removing Native Americans just as Andrew Jackson did 160 years ago, I never would have believed it. After all, we are modern.
Modernity is knowing how to build cars and spaceships and nuclear bombs...it is television, radio, laser surgery...it is having accumulated the knowledge of thousands of years and knowing how to treat illnesses and put vitamins into foods that do not typically hold that vitamin.
Modernity is racism having died in the late 60s and early 70s. Living today is having studied history and changing views to work for the benefit of all mankind.
It is all wrong. It is all false. Modernity is the same crappy people, just with new toys that lets them...us...spread our stupidity, our fear, our mistreatment, our prejudices, farther, faster, more devastatingly in shorter time.
Imagine growing up somehow believing the world is how it is meant to be. All the nations of the world that should exist do...and have for a while. Then figure out that no...the nations are in flux. Who is to say Puerto Rico might not become the 51st state? Somehow, I just believed the changes of states stopped with Hawaii.
At some point I realized Hawaii only became a state 12 years before my birth. Why would our country stop there?
I grew up believing a form of Manifest Destiny. Somehow, it seemed right and natural that this country spread from sea to sea. The wars fought were mostly justified. The U.S. was indeed a beacon of light and goodness in a sea of darkness.
Richard Nixon was a hugely popular but terrible President. Watergate was an embarrassment that made Republicans wish he had been a Democrat and gave Democrats a morality advantage that was only exacerberated by the Republican establishment and pursuit of the Vietnam War.
This was the world I knew. This was the world I understood. This was truth.
My scholastic history has always been a promising one. It did not take long to start believing I was a sharp cookie. Why? Well, 1st through 3rd grades I went to a private school. We used the PACE system. Paces were booklets that had staggered learning. A pace might be as few as 25 or 30 pages and as long as 100. There would be short blurbs, then a few questions. After each chapter would be a "self-test" that helped review. At the conclusion of the Pace would be an administered test. This method of learning agreed with me.
My first year I was one of 2 people in the entire school to exceed 75 paces. In fact, I did over 100. The only person who did more was Sue, my older sister. She was smart too. Too bad she associated with trashy people.
I continued to excel all throughout school. I was always on honor roll, and school came easy. This served to validate my belief that I knew how the world worked. After all, I was learning what I was taught.
The honor roll continued 4th through 7th grade. I was in the TAG (Talented and Gifted) program. Everything I tried I excelled at. I never lost a game at State or local in four years of Chess competition. I was in advanced math classes. And the beat went on.
When I went to PCC for my Senior Year of High School, it continued to validate my conception of how the world worked. Nor was I illiterate. Every summer I read literally hundreds of books. I could have been considered an authority on the Revolutionary War, Civil War, both World Wars, and the Indian Wars.
Then something happened. I started seeing holes in the theories. Holes such as...my long-held, cherished, and unquestioned belief in the righteousness of most if not all U.S. wars.
It is POSSIBLE the Revolutionary War was justified. Possible...but I can see flaws. The War of 1812 is similarly a grey area. The wars with the Barbary Coast Pirates were good things. The Mexican-American War, however, was an unjustifiable land grab. Virtually every Indian War was a defense of illegal acts committed by U.S. citizens. Andrew Jackson was a felon and a skunk. Far from upholding the Constitution as he swore he deliberately violated it. When Marshall handed down Worcester v Georgia, Jackson is reported, even by his worshipper Robert Remini, to have said, "Marshall has made his decision. Now let us see him enforce it."
The states were, I believe, correct about having the right to secede but wrong about slavery. I will pass on declaring the Civil War justified or un...because it was both. The Spanish-American War was a war of U.S. aggression. The gun-boat diplomacy was an international crime.
World War I...wow. Well, first off, saying Germany started the war is debatably correct TECHNICALLY...but realistically, it was Russia that started the war with their mobilization...a move which could not be stopped and meant a war. Couple that with the illegal blockade by England, the illegal actions of the U.S. (declaring oneself neutral, then financially supporting and selling arms to but one side is illegal according to International Law at the time) ultimately led to U.S. involvement...you can make a strong case the real reason the U.S. went to war was economic investment...the Lusitania was just a convenient excuse. Finally, the actions in Russia after the war were despicable.
World War II, if the U.S. were not occupying the Phillipines, Hawaii, and other key Pacific Islands, may not have proved a threat to Japan. As it was, the U.S> record in that war is nothing to be proud of...start with the famed internment camps, move to the race war in the Pacific, conclude with the politics of allowing Russia to take Berlin and the long-debated morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
Korea...well...I don't actually know that much about it.
Vietnam...had the U.S. demanded the French remove after World War II then there would have been no Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh LOVED the U.S. He tried to patter the Vietnamese governement after ours. Read the Constitution he wrote. Did you know he read OUR Declaration of Independence when declaring Vietnam...gasp...a REPUBLIC? But that was 1945.
For political reasons, the U.S. supported, then financed, then replaced the French in Vietnam. It might be added...this was done not under Republicans as I had always believed but under Democrats. Another shaking of my faith in my understanding of how the world worked.
Which brings up an interetsing point. Nixon actually scored incredibly high marks in many ways. He exited Vietnam whereas his predecessor was increasing involvement. He was called "the greatest administration ever in responsiveness to Indian needs and wants" by even Vine Deloria Jr. To be sure, he was personally a louse and made certain actions by Reagan, Clinton, and George W. possible...but then again, that perfidy was already possible.
What do I mean? Well, I had always believed the President was an office that worked for the good of the people. The men who held that office were men of honor with lives above reproach.
Ha! Rutherford B. Hayes was elected not by the Electoral College but rather in an election fraught with rampant fraud by both Democrats and Republicans and decided by a deal that ended Reconstruction, removed the gains for black civil rights, and was a betrayal of everything accomplished morally by the Civil War.
In 1888 Grover Cleveland won the popular vote...but lost the Electoral vote. How much faith can we have in a system that as far back as the 4th President was decided by chicanery and has been filled with chowderheads?
FDR, the worst President in history by a long shot, openly drank during prohibition. Regardless of how you feel about Prohibition, it was the law of the land...and having the President, the fount and rock of morality, openly committing a felony...well, that is pretty bad. No wonder the office started to lose its luster.
I find it interesting that people debate the importance of Clintons crime...yet noone questions it was a crime. He openly and obviously committed a felony while in office...if I were to perjure myself in a court of law I would face (and rightly so...or at least, previously rightly so) prison time. If I were sent to jail for perjury now, heaven have mercy on anyone responsible because I would not.
The thought of bringing Bush up on charges is now ludicrous. His deceptions must be taken in light of the precedent of the prior administration. The precedent was established that the U.S. will stand for that behavior from its leaders.
As for war justifications...just think back to Bosnia. We put in power the only makers of mass graves I have been able to find documentation on.
I have never been behind the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq is iffy at best. I find it sad that misinformation about who knew and said what and when have so obscured the truth that we will never know for sure if Clinton actually planned to go in. I personally believe he did. To me, he rivals FDR and Jackson for the title of worst President and Bush is catching up pretty quickly.
Or maybe...just maybe...figuring out the world is not put together the way I thought it was is just making me see that people who actually get stuff done are pretty universally slimeballs.
It cannot be argued that Andrew Jackson shaped the course of U.S. history. Nor can it be argued that FDR completely shifted our world position. Nixon? He did end the police action in Vietnam, reshape domestic policy, move the federal-Native American position, reverse a lot of the damage done by Termination, and so forth. Reagan had a morally troubling administration (Iran-Contra? Standing by for the invasion of Lebanon?) but he was a powerful force economically and internationally. Clinton did make changes in Bosnia and internally. Bush is shaking things up.
But there are other places I am figuring out the world does not work the way I thought it did. Take medicine...I thought doctors pretty much had a handle on how the body works. I am stunned and frightened to realize I am not sure what scares me more...what they know and can do, or what they don't know and have no clue about.
No, the world is not the established, comfortable place I thought it was. Events are moved in ways i never thought possible. People are worse than I thought they were and there is still a lot that needs to be determined.
I see I have been writing this for over an hour...that seems like a good time to quit. Or maybe I should quit before I post this.