First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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1. Do American History textbooks traditionally say that Georgia was the only one of the 13 American colonies that was a penal colony?

2. Were in fact the overwhelming majority of residents of all 13 American colonies criminals that England had dumped there (a policy called “transportation”), starting with the first boatload of human souls that formed the first permanent English colony at Plymouth Rock MA in 1620?

3. Did England continue “transporting” criminals to all of the 13 American colonies until America declared her independence in 1776?

4. Did England then “constipate” its jails for the next 12 years until 1778 on the assumption that it would be able to quell the American rebellion and resume “transporting” criminals to the 13 American colonies?

5. Digressing momentarily for an amusing historical tidbit why, after beginning in 1778 to “transport” its criminals to Australia, was England forced to terminate its “transportation” program in 1854?

6. Why do English barristers wear powdered wigs?

7. One of the Suggested Topics that was not voted at our Aug meeting as our Sep focus was “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg which was described (together with our focus book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”) in an article in the September issue of The Atlantic Magazine which is posted under “Reference Materials” on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org -- does The Atlantic article say that Prof. Isenberg in fact focused on the American South rather than America as a whole?

8. Did the “White Trash” of the Ante-Bellum South suffer almost as much economically as the African-American slaves that worked the cotton plantations?

9. Does James Michener’s “Mexico” describe how many, if not most, Southern plantation owners simply moved to Mexico after the American Civil War where they re-established cotton plantations that employed native Mexicans for starvation wages as de facto economic slaves?

10. Is it any wonder that the freed American slaves and “white trash” who remained in the American South as “share croppers” could not possibly compete effectively with the new Mexican cotton plantation economy?

11. Does the Atlantic Magazine article describe how our focus book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” focuses on the dirt-poor “white trash” of Eastern Kentucky and their experience before and after moving to an Armco Steel-Rolling Mill town of Southwestern Ohio?

12. Does either of these books really describe what has happened to the so-called Rust Belt of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania?

13. Did Yours Truly grow up 1942-1960 in Saginaw MI, the northern-most General Motors town featuring a couple dozen GM plants (a zillion GM Steering Gear plants which also manufactured all the pollution-control equipment, Chevrolet Transmission, half a dozen foundries where worked all the African-Americans (and ONLY African-Americans) hired under GM’s so-called “equal opportunity employment” policy, and the GM Parts Plant where all the old tools/dies were sent so that additional obsolete parts could be manufactured periodically for old models that GM still supported)?

14. Has Yours Truly attended all 11 of the every-five-years full-weekend-immersion reunions for Arthur Hill High School’s 1960 class of 711, including our 55th last summer?

15. Would a sample size of 711 be considered by most polling organizations as large enough to portray accurately the entire nation, not just the State of Michigan where most of them still live?

16. In addition to returning to Michigan every 5 years for his high school reunions, did Yours Truly have his family visit his parents for at least a week every year 1960-2001?

17. On those occasions, did Yours Truly always discuss at length conditions in Michigan with his father who was CEO of the local bank and who represented Michigan as an elected delegate to 13 consecutive Quadrennial Conferences governing the worldwide Methodist Church spanning more than 50 years (a worldwide record that still stands)? And with his mother who was many times selected Citizen of the Year for organizing many different groups that worked with unwed teenage mothers and with drug abusers, and for always “rolling up her sleeves” and “working in the trenches” as an ordinary volunteer in the groups she organized?

18. Was Yours Truly a member of the United Auto Workers Union during the summer of 1964 before starting law school, when he worked 3 drill presses on a graveyard-shift skeleton crew building up stock for the faster machines?

19. As a momentary digression, whenever Yours Truly spots an old Chevrolet in circumstances in which it is possible to lift the hood, does he still like to see whether it has one of the Valve Housings for the Booster System for the Chevrolet Power Steering which he worked to produce that summer?

20. Should Yours Truly apologize for Questions 13-19 belaboring the point that he probably knows more about the decline of America’s Rust Belt than either the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” or the author of “White Trash”?

21. During the era from World War II through the 1980’s, was Detroit the wealthiest large city in America?

22. Was the American auto industry, at least through the 1970’s, still enjoying its worldwide near-monopoly on car production, following its status as “The Arsenal of Democracy” in World War II?

23. Did UAW members make more than the median American wage?

24. Was it reasonable for someone graduating from high school in Michigan in the 1960’s and 1970’s to decide that the expense and effort of continuing on to college was not worthwhile, when he could support a family in style and enjoy the “good life” of Michigan’s “Water Wonderland” and “Winter Wonderland” as its license plates have alternatively trumpeted?

25. Is it any wonder that everyone who made such a decision upon graduating from high school in the 1960’s, 1970’s or 1980’s to live the “good life” as a factory worker in Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania would be upset over having their jobs exported to low-wage countries?

26. Haven’t we studied on many occasions how The Establishment* has conducted a War on American Workers by Exporting American Jobs beginning with the so-called Free Trade Agreements of the 1990’s?

27. And haven’t we concluded each time that The Establishment* will continue to Export American Jobs until the wages of American blue-collar workers are driven down to third-world poverty levels, since impoverished third-world workers are the recipients of those American jobs?

28. And wouldn’t Yours Truly’s fellow undergraduate economics majors agree that it is impossible to base a prosperous economy on “selling hamburgers to each other”?


NB: Re Questions 26 and 27, have we always defined The Establishment as the billionaires who “own” virtually all the pols of both political parties as a result of campaign contributions and who “own” many members of the media and who “own” many members of academia.