USAWHYL: United States What Have You Learned?

A Life Story and Figurative Societal Talisman, of Sorts.

My academic demigod was a woman named Jane Hansen, née Jane Bancroft. For the record, I could supplant the term demigod with demon. A distinction without a difference, perhaps. Strike “perhaps” and go with the term “likely” pursuant to the last sentence particularly given that neither demigods nor demons ever die.

Were she physically still here, she would howl with laughter replete with horns, pointy tail and Yarmulke.

During one of our innumerable discussions (“intelligence” was the soup du jour on the menu this particular day) she informed me that “the true, and ultimate, measure of intelligence is the ability to learn from past experiences.” I was 11 at the time and blown away by the complex linguistic simplicity of her very matter-of-fact statement. Actually, it was more the sterile emotionless proclamation of an academic scientist than ‘twas anything else.

If you knew Jane Hansen you know that emotion, aside from a love for animals and muscle-car-intellect, was in relative absentia. Joe and Jane Hansen

Anyone that has a modicum of a public presence in what is known as the United States of America knows that there are certain things you mustn’t do and, if you dare, you do so at your own peril. U.S. society is a vicious and brutal one in which I regularly receive threats and what are intended to be disturbing comments. A reality nullified, for the most part, by the fact that I am neither easily threatened nor disturbed. I have experienced things in my life that would have 90 percent of the people reading this urinating, defecating and vomiting all over themselves. Nonetheless, I am fully cognizant of the social, political, institutional and practical dynamics of the society in which I find myself imprisoned.

Resultant of the foregoing, I almost never mention my children because I know, for a fact, that there are plenty of craven brutal bastards that will attack one’s children in the United States. You’ll have to take me at my word when I earnestly state that attacking my children is an existential and tactical goddamned error of gargantuan proportions. All three of whom are Black Women in the United States. Having said that and pertinent to the subject matter at hand, I will share with you an experience I had with my middle child that fortified, with crystal clarity, Mrs. Hansen’s admonishment on intelligence.

Chyna and the Stove

My middle baby girl, Chyna, was the polar opposite of her elder sister. Her elder sister, by two and a half years, was a very quiet child. She was a content and happy child, but very quiet. I can remember times when her mother or I would go check on her to see if she was alive, she would be so quiet at times.

Chyna, on the other hand, came into this world raising hell. She owned all; her mother, her sister, her grandparents, the car, the house, the dog and, first and foremost, her father. If you were not either of those things you were in for a difficult time. A very difficult time.

Having grown up as an only child and raised alone by my dad since I was ten (though my mother was nearby), I acquired formidable domestic skills at an early age. To this day, I get on my hands and knees to mop and wax my floors as I trust neither mops nor dishwashers. And although my dad would cook (between the two jobs he worked) I did not want him to as that was not, by any means, his forte. My acumen, in a plethora of things, was intensified by his being a former U.S.M.C. Non-Lethal Combat specialist and my early placement in military school.

Since I did not desire my dad’s cooking, I learned to do so myself and I am considerably gastronomically endowed. So, as I grew up and became a man married with children, I did the lion’s share of cooking and believe you me, my wife did not have the slightest problem with it. One might even say she savored it.

When Chyna became a toddler (oh, mercy) she would constantly come into the kitchen with me. Wherever I was, she was. All of my girls were like that (especially the youngest who I raised alone since her birth). I trust all parents are keenly aware that the kitchen is a dangerous place for a child, especially a toddler, but Chyna was not to be denied. Luckily, we had a large kitchen and I could, for the most part, keep her contained. However, from time to time she would get a little too close and I would firmly say to her “No baby, no! The stove is hot! Don’t touch the oven door, hot!”

Well, as anyone that has ever been around a toddler knows, it just takes seconds for them to get into deep trouble if you don’t keep an unflinching eye on them because their locomotive progress increases quantitatively by the day. On this particular occasion, I turned away for about two seconds, literally, and Chyna managed to touch the oven door. She shrieked in pain (thanks to whatever one thanks she was not really hurt) and she never ever touched that door again. In fact, the first word she learned, other than Daddy, was “hawt!”

It’s been almost 30 years hence and she still remembers “hawt!”

What Chyna exhibited was intelligence, the opposite of which would have been retardation. I know it is considered an offensive and outdated pejorative term that makes some squeamish, but the reality is that the opposite of intelligence, in this context, is “retarded.” The verb "to retard" means 'to delay or hold back', and so "retard" became known as a medical term in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe children with intellectual disabilities or retarded mental development.

Ergo, a retarded or “intellectually disabled” child, or person, has an inability to learn from past experiences. Chyna had the intelligence to remember the pain and discomfort. She associated that experience with a word: hot. Whereas the intellectually disabled child, while still experiencing the excruciating pain, would continually touch the hot oven door over and over again incapable of connecting the word with the experience. Incapable of cerebral banking.

You must know where this is going by now, lest you choose to touch the oven door and continue shrieking.

Over and over again.

In 1977, former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey spoke about the treatment of the weakest members of society as a reflection of government: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The Children, The Elderly, The Sick, The Needy, The Handicapped and The Sick Society Run by the Inmates

I started out this piece speaking about children for reasons a bit beyond a notion.

The Children: Child abuse is a serious issue in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), there were 558,899 victims of child abuse and neglect across the country in fiscal year 2022 and it is likely quadruple that number. Be mindful that these statistics underestimate the true prevalence of child abuse, as many cases go unreported. Here’s a breakdown of the types of abuse:

1. Neglect: 76% of all cases involved neglect, making it the most common form of abuse.

2. Physical abuse: Reported in 16% of cases

3. Sexual abuse: Reported in 10.1% of cases

Child abuse destroys its victims, and hurt children become hurt adults. Societies, fortunately or unfortunately, are run by adults. I’ll leave it to your own genius to appropriate the requisite societal math and deductive logic to understand the gravity of this reality and perhaps, just perhaps, you might find clarity, enlightenment.

In addition to physical abuse, sexual abuse and overall neglect, Child Hunger in the United States is appalling. In 2020, over 12 million children in the U.S. faced hunger, according to Feeding America. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2021, more than 9 million children lived in food-insecure households, where access to adequate food is limited due to a lack of resources. The main causes of this horrific malady are all preventable: climate change, inequity and war. All of which the United States is king.

A few months ago, I read an account of a local man arrested for stealing food out of a restaurant dumpster of which he broke the lock. Your society spent the time, resources and effort to jail that man because he was hungry. Here’s some “food” for thought: While the world wastes about 2.5 billion tons of food every year, the United States discards more food than any other country in the world: nearly 60 million tons — 120 billion pounds — every year. That’s estimated to be almost 40 percent of the entire US food supply and equates to 325 pounds of waste per person.

Marinate in that, if you will, for a WHYL.

The Elderly: Commonwealth Fund’s 20th International Health Policy survey compared health experiences of older adults, including those with the greatest medical needs, in 11 nations. The U.S. ranked at or near the bottom in most categories, including access, affordability, timeliness of care, and care coordination. An entire, personal injury attorney, ambulance chasing, industry has been spawned resultant of rampant elder abuse nationwide. Nothing pays like grief, tragedy and fear in the good ’ole US of A.

The Needy: The U.S. has the highest income inequality among the G7 nations. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality (ranging from 0 for perfect equality to 1 for complete inequality), was 0.434 in the U.S. in 2017. In comparison, other G7 countries had lower Gini coefficients, such as 0.326 in France and 0.392 in the United Kingdom. The income gap between European-Americans and Black People in the United States persists and is, actually, a matter of police-y. Median black household income was 61% of median white household income in 2018.

The Sick: As for the sick, the U.S. spends more on its privatized healthcare system per capita than most nations…combined. It also has the worst outcomes for those expenditures, per capita. The United States is akin to the Neanderthal of societies in that is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens. It is also one of few nations on the planet that does not as it brags about being “the richest nation in the world.” It would be superfluous for me to state the fact that the disproportionate number of "NHO’s” (Negative Health Outcomes) are of Black People in the United States. Who knew?

Who NHO’s?

Follow your nose.

The Handicapped: Dan Goldberg can inform you about this travesty better than I can. Disaster of the Disabled in the U.S.

WHYL You Shriek in Agony

Maybe you M.F.’s can’t help each other because the handicapped are unable, if not unwilling, to help the handicapped. The blind leading the blind, so to speak. Or, as I prefer to describe it, a sick society run by its inmates precipitating a world in utter chaos. Chaos caused by the same type people that always cause it. They cause it due to fear and greed. A sickening and perverted symbiotic, cannibalistic, relationship in which one is fed by the other.

In the final analysis, and as I am wont to state, we came to this world for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to leave. The death march begins upon our first breath which is democratic, as it were, to all living things on this planet. The only thing that matters is what one does between the first breath and the last which is predicated upon what prevails in our lives.

Good or evil. Intellect or ignorance. Right or wrong. Heaven or hell. Darkness or light. Higher self or lower self. Yin or Yang. And, indeed, Black or White. A dimension of kaleidoscopic color, or the absence of it.

I have surmised that what Mrs. Hansen was articulating was not much different than what Dr. Albert Eistein said about insanity, when he purportedly stated: “The definition of insanity is doing the same experiment and expecting different results.” Or, more succinctly, in the matter-of-factly stated words of the marvelous fictional philosopher Forrest Gump “stupid is, as stupid does.”

I have written, on many an occasion, that the United States does not evolve; it never has and was not designed to. In optimal circumstances it revolves, at best. In less optimal circumstances it devolves (as is its current state). You see, locomotion, movement, is not, necessarily, progress. If I continue to run around in a circle, I am moving, I am expending energy, but I am not going anywhere.

You ain’t either.

So, as we watch the society meltdown. As we witness, in real time, genocide not just abroad, but right here (an article for a later date). As we stare down the nuclear barrel of devastation unimaginable to most. As we continue to murder people that look a certain way because they look a certain way as a matter of police-y and flood the open-air prisons called “N-er” cities those same people live in with guns made by Ruger, Smith and Wesson, Walther, Beretta and Uzi (uh oh, that may have been “antisemitic”). As we watch mass shootings multiple times per day in every venue from elementary schools to grocery stores, movie theaters and churches let us contemplate whether this society is retarded, or just stupid.

What have, in four centuries, you learned as a society? Because, clearly intelligence, as defined, explained and substantiated, is moot. Therefore, it is not an option for consideration.

Hot.