What Are They Thinking?

I've always been curious to see people, mostly young ones, but not always, walking around with tee shirts having portraits of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and even Lenin. Can you imagine someone wearing a tee shirt with a likeness of Hitler on it???? (Remember the brouhaha over the Walled Lake school building that was renovating and, in the process, tore up a rug only to find a swastika in ceramic tile underneath? In the end, the Walled Lake schools did the right thing, using it to teach--in so far as the ceramic floor had been put in almost 20 years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.)

Do these fools who wear the Lenin, Che, Mao tees not know anything about them? Nothing? I hope not. I hope they are just fools, ignorant that these men were mass murderers, responsible for the collective deaths of tens of millions of people. But, if they are, what does that say about their education and their teachers? Learning about these men wasn't part of the history curriculum? History teachers didn't know about these men either? It all has to be something like this, but what? None of the possibilities is any good. Of course, perhaps I am missing the point. Maybe the tee shirt wearers support what these mass murderers did.

And remember the Christian Church, I think it was a Methodist one, that sent happy birthday greetings to Ho Chi Minh? How many people bought into that foolishness, that Ho was not a communist, really, but a Vietnamese nationalist who only wanted what was best for his people of Vietnam? How many still do? I suppose the millions in the South who were butchered by Ho's legions after the US left might have a question as to what was "best.

I read an interesting thing today and it got me to thinking. JFK was an average President, who accomplished little. LBJ was a more successful President, at least in terms of accomplishments (for better or worse, which I believe were worse). The "Great Society" programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the War on Poverty, Head Start and Chapter 1, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, etc. were Johnson's, not Kennedy's. (I could argue, and I do, though, that the legacy of the martyrdom of JFK was instrumental in passing these programs, although they weren't his.) OK, knowing this, is there still any candidate out there, obviously a Democrat, who would identify himself as the reincarnation of LBJ instead of the ghost of JFK? I think not, not a snowball's chance in hell.

Excuse me, I have to go get my laundairy (sic). It's finished. I had to wash my tee shirts....