A POET EDITS WASHINGTON

History is subjective. History is written by victors. History can be a lie. All these are old topics. But none of these imply (recorded) History cannot be redressed.

And it is redressable (is that a word? Nevuh mind, Moi is a Poet...) by education. And it is important that what is learned are not falsehoods. As John Bloomberg-Rissman observes in his participation in the forthcoming POETS ON THE GREAT RECESSION blog,

"The lower the level of education, the more likely a voter is to take seriously racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-science, religiously fanatical, etc etc candidates."

All this is to say, one of the tourist attractions we visited recently was the Memorial to the U.S. Marines. Here's one aspect, the famous coverage of Iwo Jima:



Now, notice the inscriptions beneath the statue. The words refer to all the wars in which Marines have participated. See the reference to the U.S.-Philippine War. They call it the "Philippine Insurrection."

No. Americans: please learn your history. The U.S.-Philippine War was not an "insurrection", which would imply that the Filipinos rebelled against the Americans. The more acccurate term would be "Invasion"--that is, invasion by the United States over the Philippines. That's right, the Philippines already had declared its independence against its prior colonial master Spain. Not only did the Philippines declare its independence, after 300-plus years of colonialism the Filipinos actually had defeated -- that's DEFEATED -- Spain. So it earned its Declaration of Independence. The Philippines was already an independent country.

Then the United States invaded (a lot of money in sugar and coconut in those islands, yah?). And that's how the ex-colony became a colonizer, too.

So. Go ahead. Read this post. And if there were justice in this world (not to mention monies left in the federal budget), that text of "Philippine Insurrection" would be edited to what it actually was and is historically true: "Invasion of the Philippines."

Listen to this Poet who, by the way, donates to the Disabled American Veterans Association (so please don't consider this an unpatriotic rant but an attempt for more Truth).

Hay(na)ku!
Different shit--
Same ol' dawg!