Blackmoor Vituperative

Fun fact! The Earth’s human population has doubled since 1971. So if, hypothetically, someone were to snap their fingers and kill half of the Earth’s population, they would set our inevitable self-destruction back by less than two generations. Hardly seems worth it, really.

Wait, what are you talking about, WE decided!? MY best interest?! How can you know what’s MY best interest is? How can you say what MY best interest is? What are you trying to say, I’M crazy? When I went to YOUR schools, I went to YOUR churches, I went to YOUR institutional learning facilities?! So how can you say I’M crazy?

This week’s “Brain Pickings” features a 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt, admonishing people to do something, rather than merely criticize what others do.

“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt.”

Fun fact! (And somewhat relevant due to yesterday being Cinco de Mayo, celebrating when Mexico helped the United States win the American Civil War). When Roosevelt gave this speech in 1910, there were no border controls between the USA and Mexico. There was no such thing as a Mexican “illegal immigrant” in the USA until the 1920s, when white supremacists in the USA starting imposing quotas on immigrants based on their country of origin. (There were earlier laws regarding immigration, but these did not actually prevent anyone from Mexico from coming to the USA freely. Earlier laws mainly focused on Chinese immigrants, and on preventing the importation of “contract labor”, which is to say, slaves in all but name.)

Fun fact! Increased “security” at the USA-Mexico border in the early 1900s had the perverse effect of increasing the number of permanent Mexican residents in the USA, because it made it more difficult for them to go back home once they got here.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, or as it’s known in Mexico, May 5. This is a day when we Americans celebrate the day that Mexican troops defeated French troops which were on their way to Mexico City. By doing so, they helped the United States win against the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Just one example in a long history of Mexicans and the descendants of Mexicans contributing to make the USA a better place.

¡Viva México!