One of my teaching mantras is that my students will get two grades for taking the course. One goes to the registrar. That grade has no real importance. If the student gets a C or better, that grade will have no impact on their lives. However, the grade the world gives them will have a tremendous effect on their lives. I’m not sure that comment resonates very much with my classes at the very beginning of the class. Nevertheless, most understand my comment several weeks into the semester.

This week, the class discussed the unit on Indigenous Religions. Nadine wrote her essay about the Aboriginals in Australia. One of the issues about which she wrote was how they were inherently into sharing, functioning as a large extended family, protecting and preserving the world, etc. That is true. However, when the British colonized Australia initially as a penal colony, the Brits didn’t share the same mindset as the Aboriginals. This was how the British treated many Aboriginals.

The Aboriginals

In my reply to Nadine, I said that people live in two different worlds. One world is like that of the Aboriginals. Some buy into that mindset of sharing, functioning as a large extended family, protecting the world, etc. However, many live in a totally different world. I pointed out that many Americans live in Bill Cody’s world. They see him as a national hero. Well, I don’t see him as some great American.

Bill Cody killed 4,282 buffalo in a matter of 18 months in the late 1860s. He was famous and got the nickname Buffalo Bill Cody. He had a roadshow after his years in the military, and many Americans still idealize him.

Buffalo Bill Cody’s sideshow

Buffalo Bill Cody did kill 4,282 buffalo and did so for two reasons: for the hell of it and to starve Native Americans by killing a major source of food along with denying them the rawhide for clothing, housing, and basic utilities. Then the military could move them to reservations all of which was a part of our Manifest Destiny. Many Americans see Cody as a national hero and the others see him as a racist who was into genocide.

Enter Rep. Margorie Taylor Greene. She claims that Biden stole the election from Trump.

In which world do you live?

Greene was put on the House Education Committee even though she claimed that the Parkland school shooting was a hoax. This video is a discussion that Don Lemon of CNN had with a mother whose son, Scott Beige, was killed at Parkland. Her son was teacher at Parkland. He was shot and killed while trying to get students into a classroom to protect them from being killed.

Watch this video of Lemon talking to Beige’s mother.

Greene maintains that on 9/11 a plane didn't crash into the Pentagon, and the California wildfires were caused by Zionist Israelis using a laser beam from deep space, Muslims don't belong in America, and her litany goes on.

So, we started off in the world in which Aboriginals in Australia believed in sharing, working together as a large extended family, protecting and preserving the world in which we live. We jumped to Buffalo Bill Cody’s racism and genocide and arrived in today’s world. Which world do you wish to live? Choose wisely.