Do you year for the days of yore? You know, a simpler time when people didn't have to give a damn about each others' feelings; the days when, if one got sick, one simply prayed to whatever god one was allowed to believe in at the time. Ah yes, the days long forgotten, and the days we all talk about. Wasn't that great? Wasn't it fun wandering off to school at 6:00am so that you could play in a creek, and cut a vein open on a rusty nail? That actually happened to one of my mom's brothers by the way, or it may have been a rusty can, either way, not good. He didn't die...somehow, and is still alive today thankfully. But the horror of that story permeates in my mind. My mom talked about her and her other siblings (my mother came from a large family of about 7) wrapping my uncle's cut up in their clothes, and rushing him back home so that their parents could drive him to the hospital. He was apparently gushing blood all the way, and I imagine in great pain, though, with a cut as bad as that, shock tends to set in after a few moments. So, who knows? Perhaps he fainted, and doesn't remember a thing. Isn't that nice? Isn't it quaint? Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that he pulled out okay in the end, and lived happily ever after? Well, it shouldn't. Why? Because he could have died, that's why. And, even though he didn't, what kind of a people allow children to wander off into creeks with rusty nails and cans? I don't even care what your political beliefs are. Where I am from, that is called irresponsible, and life-threatening behavior. Yet, now more than ever, there seems to be this call to return to a simpler time. Can we really get more simple than we already are? We can't control this virus in any way that is effective. Should we really be looking to the days when people dropped dead like flies because of the flu? As a political scientist, I am often amused when I see pictures of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington strewn about someone's twitter account or other social media because I already know what lecture I am going to here. And I quote, "the big bad government has torn the constitution to shreds, and is trying to usurp our freedom with Hollywood, socialism, and atheism. So, we have to go back to a simpler time without clean water, biology or mental health so that we can defeat the devil of communist China cancel culture." Something like that anyway; it all blends together after a year of blathering on about whatever your particular flavor of political gossip is today. It disgust me to see so many seemingly "reasonable" people get sucked up into this obvious lie. Good old days? What on earth have you been smoking? It reminds me of when I hear morons ramble on about the purity of Thomas Jefferson's moral character because he didn't beat his slaves. What a complete load of rubbish. He should have never owned them, and he definitely should have never had sex with a fourteen year old. But we must hold his image sacred because he had some good ideas. Give me a break. I have heard people for years make excuses for the moral failures of their heroes, as if they just didn't understand their actions, and were really dear, sweet, loving people at heart. These claims are biased nonsense, and have no place in real history. It is something you would find on the history channel, a dopey actor portraying a historical figure with intense facial expressions, and heart wrenching monologues. That is not reality. It is a fantasy sold to you by entertainers. Behind the fantasy their is a real history, a deeper, richer, more complex, and vastly more interesting history that can instruct us on our current stat of fairs. But most people do not want to read their history; they want to live it, as if they were the dopey actors portraying the story of the past. As I will demonstrate very clearly in this episode, this yearning for the past is yet another of humanity's ways of rushing itself off to an early grave.