Hestia & the Court

He was a colonel who fought in the mexican revolution and he is considered the first transgender person in mexico to get his gender correctly recognized at an institutional level and he did it by sneaking in a "fake" birth certificate into the records. That's extremely cool imo.

He would also threaten to shoot anybody who misgendered him and that's one of the most badass things I've heard. It's such a shame that his history was lost and untold for decades and I can't wait for historians to dig deeper into his life.

Here's a good english language article about him.

Originally Aired: July 10th, 1976
Written by: Bob Dorough
Performed by: Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Essra Mohawk & Jack Sheldon

Shel's Review

Music: 🎵🎵
Animation: 📺📺
Pedagogy: 🎓
Accuracy: 🎯🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬😬😬

I really don't like this one. It's like Schoolhouse Rock Warioware but worse and patriarchal. Sometimes there's ten seconds that are enjoyable and then it's over. It's not a coherent song and it goes far too fast to meaningfully teach anything and many moments are just grating. Often the actual song has nothing to do with the invention being taught. Like what is with the airplane song it tells us nothing about the Wright Brothers it doesn't even have the word "airplane" or "flying" or "Wright." The animation could be worse but it's far from the best. I think the line between them getting creative with the facts to be cute and what they're teaching us is just so unclear that it can't teach anything at all. Kids like me might think mother necessity was a specific real person. They might think all these stories of child inventors being inspired by their moms are actual history of how these things got invented. But none of it is true. The only thing even resembling history is that these names are connected to these inventions, but it's only the names that are real, not the stories. It's simply not what happened. We actually have historical documentation of when these guys got the idea to work on whatever invention they're being credited with and for almost all of them it was while they were adults when they watched someone else demonstrate the technology they supposedly invented.

I also find the whole framing very sexist. It's all about helping your mom do domestic tasks for you better instead of just fucking helping out around the house. Women's jobs are cooking and sewing for the genius boys they raise into powerful men. Yuck.

Ten inventions are mentioned in this song, well, "inventors." The Cotton Gin, the Lightbulb, The Telegraph/Morse Code, the Sewing Machine, the Telephone, the Airplane, the Steamboat, the Wireless Radio, the Automobile, and the Textile Mill. Only white male inventors are named. Not even George Washington Carter gets a mention. Let's talk about them all.

The Cotton Gin

The Cotton Gin was invented in India in the 5th century. When it came toto America in the 19th century, it didn't work quite right for the type of cotton being cultivated in the American South on slave plantations. This song attributes invention of the Cotton Gin to Eli Whitney, but he was the fifth American to file a patent for a Cotton Gin designed for the type of cotton cultivated in America, and he didn't even invent it himself. Catharine Littlefield Greene came up with the key innovation that made his design take off the successful model that would become dominant. Whitney was involved in selling a commercially successful incremental improvement on the cotton gin but he did not invent it.

Also, what's with the smiling white people working on a southern cotton plantation that's definitely not what happened.

The Light Bulb

Numerous people invented light bulbs before Thomas Edison. Seven people invented light bulbs before Moses Farmer, whose light bulb was the one that Thomas Edison encountered in a shopand he literally asked Farmer about how it worked and for advice on how to build a light bulb. By now there were light bulbs being patented all over the world in England, France, Russia, Canada, Italy, all sorts of places. 11 people invented the light bulb before Edison, who actually bought the patent rights off some Canadian inventors. Five months late, someone improved on the design. A very important figure in the success of Edison's light bulbs over his competitor's was one of his employees, a Black inventor named Lewis Latimer who improved upon the existing designs sold by Edison's company in order to make the light bulbs actually last long enough to be cost effective to use, and also possible to sell at a lower price. Were it not for Latimer, light bulbs wouldn't have been able to compete with candles and gas lamps. Still, neither Latimer nor Edison "invented the light bulb" it was developed by a collective effort of many people improving upon each other's work incrementally.

Also, the song makes it seem like we don't have lights before the light bulb. We did have gas light fixtures in houses. Lamps and candles too. Chandeliers. Lighting existed.

Take special note of how the emphasized that the light bulb made him rich we will return to that later.

The Telegraph & Morse Code

So, the telegraph was invented by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain. They didn't use Morse Code, though. Samuel Morse, Joseph Henry, and Alfred Vail collectively developed their own telegraph, an incremental improvement, and they created their own code to be used which was different than codes used by the Cook and Wheatstone telegraph. Oh, but, get this, what Morse invented was actually only a code for sending numbers and you had to look up words in a code book! Word #4005. Word #7, etc. Alfred Vail made the incremental improvement of adding letters and punctuation. So, no, Samuel Morse did not, by himself, invent the telegraph or Morse code.

The Sewing Machine

Numerous people invented the sewing machine before Elias Howe. The first patent was created by Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal. The first full design was then created by Thomas Saint. Then four more people across various countries made incremental improvements on sewing machine designs and schematics. The first practical and widely used sewing machine was invented by Barthélemy Thimonnier, who was French. This was 1829. Then in 1832 another American invented another incremental improvement. The first American patent was filed by yet another dude from that guy, and then a couple more guys invented incremental improvements. Then, finally, the first machine to combine all the best parts of all the previous models that had been steadily improved for fifty years, was invented by... John Fisher! An English guy! in 1844! Not Elias Howe! Elias Howe made an incremental improvement and filed his patent in 1845, and then Isaac Singer made an incremental improvement in 1851 and that's when Singer became the KitchenAid of sewing machines. Elias Howe did not invent the sewing machine.

The Telephone

I could go on a whole rant about how Alexander Graham Bell was a terrible awful person who did devastating violence to the Deaf community in particular and also to many other communities. The first device converting sound to electricity and back again was invented by Johann Phillip Reis (not American). The credit for who should be considered the "inventor of the telephone" is highly disputed. There's six guys who made major contributions to the technology. Oops, that's right, it's all incremental improvements and collaboration! In fact, Bell's patent for the telephone? It was titled "improvements in telegraphy.*"

The Airplane

This is something humans have been incrementally trying to successfully invent for thousands of years. Otto Lilienthal (German) was the first to actually be successful. The Wright brothers took their inspiration from Lilienthal's designs. The Wright Brothers themselves even gave credit to Lilienthal! Good on them! I think since their airplane was the first design to be really like, a super sustained flight that could keep going until it ran out of fuel and was easy to control, that they do deserve credit here. Also, they actually gave credit for the fact that their breakthrough was an improvement on someone else's work! Good for them.

The Steamboat

Surprise, Robert Fulton did not invent the steam boat. He made the first very commercially successful steamboat which was an iteration of designs by previous inventors over a process of gradual improvement. Most notably a steam boat called the Charlotte Dundas which Robert Fulton watched a demonstration of.

The Wireless Radio

This is such a weird inclusion because Guglielmo Marconi never even lived in the United States and was just quite simply an Italian who spent some of his childhood in England. Ironically I think quite possibly more than any other named inventor in this song Marconi actually did pretty much single handedly invent wireless radio communication. He was building on existing science around radio waves but nobody else had been pursuing using it for long distance communication and he was uniquely the one who figured how to make transmissions work long distance.

I mean I guess this technology did help the US grow in that it helped every country grow but it's not American history.

The Automobile

Ford was a fascist one of the most evil men in history and also did not invent the automobile, just a very commercially successful iteration of a technology that came out of a collective effort from many people around the world over a long stretch of time gee who'd have thunk.

The Textile Mill

Samuel Slater very famously is known as "Slater the Traitor" because he stole his textile mill technology from a British man he was apprenticing under. There truly was no "invention" here he was just a big name capitalist and industrialist.

The Great Man Myth, Individualism, and Capitalism

OK, so, here's an entire essay inside the review, which also I think serves as a nice little grande finale for season three. I'm going to get Marxist.

So, first-off, for clarity, Individualism and individuality have different meanings. Individuality is all the special little things that make you younique (unique.) It's good to have individuality! That's different from Individualism. Individualism is an ideology focused on the actions of individuals above all. This used to be very difficult to explain before the COVID-19 pandemic but now it's pretty easy to illustrate. Vietnam took a collectivist approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the actions of entire communities working together to stop the spread of the virus on the communal level. The United States took an individualist approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on advising individuals to "make smart decisions" to "protect their own health."

In East and Southeast Asia, there has already been a long-standing culture of wearing face masks when you are sick, or during viral epidemics, to prevent other people from catching your virus. This is a collectivist attitude, focusing on making a group effort. In the United States, the vast majority of people do not understand what the function of a face mask is. No matter how many times public officials like Rachel Levine went on television repeating over and over "your mask protects me and my mask protects you"—people still said "I don't wear a mask because I'm not worried about getting sick." Once vaccines became available, the government gave up entirely on trying to prevent communal spread and leaned into the policy of "If you are concerned about getting sick, then you should get vaccinated to protect yourself." This is an individualist attitude, focusing on the actions of individuals.

Individualism is a major component of Western Capitalist ideology. Instead of focusing on matters of socioeconomic class, such as how systems suppress workers and elevate the rich who do no work at all; the ideology of Western Capitalism focuses on what you are doing to make yourself rich. There is no greater systemic oppression, only your own failings. Efforts to combat poverty focus on helping people "lift themselves out of poverty" to "break the cycle" of poverty in their family. Proposals to do things at the collective level like raise the fucking minimum wage to a living wage pegged to inflation are decried as Un-American.

Great Man Theory is an Individualist lens of viewing history. The focus is on the actions of individual Great Men who made particularly big differences and impacts upon the world through their great ideas and strong actions. Instead of looking at material economic factors and class conflict, we memorize the names of Great Men and strive to imitate them. In this song, remember how it's remarked that "inventing" the light bulb made Thomas Edison very rich? It is all framed as history being driven by Edison having great idea that changed history, and for that he was rewarded with wealth. Never mind that his father-in-law was incredibly wealthy, or that he received many opportunities while quite young which were never afforded to most Americans at his time.

So, how do you change history? You gotta git gud kid. Become one singular very amazing person. Don't organize with your fellow workers. Don't band together in solidarity with other communities. Just become the best individual person.

And what of the mega-wealthy? The Jeff Bezoes, Elon Musks, and Bill Gateses of this world? Why, they are actually Great Men who should be celebrated and worshipped for their success. They're not investors but inventors who "invented" Amazon, Paypal, and Windows. I'll give a little credit to Bill Gates but Jeff and Elon did jack shit. And even with the credit we give to Bill, we must remember that his parents were well off enough to support his whole drop out of college scheme, and that the actual success of the company was not due solely to Bill's original innovations but due to the collective labor and effort of everyone working at Microsoft over many years. But the Great Man theory attributes it all to Bill Gates, alone.

This is in contrast to the correct way to view history which is historical materialism and dialectical materialism. Sure, there may be some pretty awesome dudes in history who made a big impact, like Karl Marx or Che Guevera; but they would have been forgotten and washed away by the tides of history had it not been for collectives of people they worked alongside. History is better understood through the lens of material economic factors which drove collective decision-making at the socioeconomic level. The dialectic is that great ideas, such as communism, certainly do matter. But an idea alone does not move a boulder. The slowly rising water in the cave threatening to drown you is what moves you to work together with everyone else trapped in the cave to move the boulder blocking the entrance.

In Das Kapital, Marx writes that the capitalist class is driven to invent new technologies in order to increase productivity and decrease labor costs. By moving more of capital into the machine, the capitalist class can hoard more of the labor value for themselves. In a socialist society, we would instead be driven to invent new technologies in order to increase quality of life for workers and decrease how much labor needs to be performed by each worker. Instead of endlessly "helping our nation grow grow grow" as this song puts it, we could live in a pleasant equilibrium with nature where less and less work is required to maintain a satisfactory standard of living for everyone. The drive to invent new technology would exist either way. The question is which socioeconomic class in control of that drive, the workers? Or the owners?

These days, we hardly have anyone who could be honestly called "an inventor." Engineers work for massive firms and any innovations they create are claimed by the company—become the intellectual property of the capitalist class. Whatever "great men" we have around, they are proletarians working for the bourgeoisie to create and accumulate capital. In return, they are given a slightly larger share of the labor value than their fellow proles. More than ever it is clear that collective effort is what results in new technology, not genius individuals. Because the STEM fields are higher paid than the rest of us, they have a lower rate of unionization and their workers often hold a false consciousness that causes them to identify with their bosses instead of standing in solidarity with the contractors who clean and feed their Googleplexes. But ultimately they, too, are exploited workers, and should unionize, and stand in solidarity with the rest of us.

Thus concludes season three of America Rock!

One positive thing to say

What's with Elias Howe suddenly going "aaaAAAAAAAAAaaaa" at the end of his bit. It's so out of nowhere and weird and I find it cute.

June's Review

Music 🎵

Animation 📺📺

Pedagogy 🎓🎓

Accuracy 🎯

Yikes 😬😬😬😬

Watching this, I could not stop thinking about Shel's quote about this being Schoolhouse Rock Warioware. Like, that's exactly it! It seems like a warioware game! You get a little minigame where you play as A Telephone and have to click the right number and then it cuts back to the in between scene of some character they made up. There is one major difference between this theoretical SchoolhouseRockWare game and warioware:

I like warioware, whereas I HATE this song. There was just... nothing enjoyable about it for me. Every single segment was either incredibly annoying to listen to (please stop screaming at your children, Mrs. Wright) or deeply uncomfortable (I'm sorry but Thomas Edison is not a cute child to me he's a guy who murdered elephants as propaganda). I didn't like the music, I didn't like the jokes, it didn't work for me.

The animation is slightly better, but not by much; I think the ending with the turning off the lights is a great payoff but it's a payoff to a really mediocre cartoon. Everyone looks kinda the same in this. There's a distinct lack of creativity for a song about inventions!

Teaching wise... well, what is this teaching? Ont he one hand, it's trying to make you go "don't forget! ELI WHITNEY made the COTTON GIN and THOMAS EDISON made the LIGHTBULB". And on this it sort of works, even if (as Shel pointed out) it's wrong about almost every single one of these, with only the Wright brothers both actually managing to do something unique and not be a complete piece of shit. It gets like, maybe 1 point for accuracy at most here.

On the other hand, though, it's trying to do more myth making, but this time about where innovation and invention comes from. Shel did a fantastic essay above that talks about the focus on individualist guys in this song, so instead I want to talk about the other figure: Mother Necessity. She's obviously not a real figure, just representational; but what does she represent? Every single invention in the song solves a problem listed or implied in the song; the sewing machine helps her not be exhausted, electric lights help her cook, a phone helps you get a date, etc.

This is another central tenant of the song; that our history of invention is one of progress forward, solving problems and creating a better country. None of these inventions are interrogated, none of their other effects are considered; automobiles and factories Solved Problems and Made The Country Grow! Inventions push us forward and make your mother happy, they're invented by cute boys who want to help their mother and when they happen they're about as wonderful as when you help clean the kitchen for your mom and she's real proud of you.

This is the part of the song that really gets to me. I'm not saying that innovation is bad, but the extremely un-complicated way it's presented here is the start of a journey that ends at awful techbros trying to convince you to add ChatGPT to your software because it's INNOVATION it's the FUTURE. Not every new idea is good, and even the good ones have horrible consequences and can be horrifically misused! The song doesn't want you to think or even consider this, it just wants you to think about a nice old lady who really needs your help assembling her rocking chair.

Up Next: What's the worst America Rock! song? (It's Elbow Room, duh)

i find archives hard to navigate, so here's a collection of links to all-digital 2slgbtqia+ archive materials that are relatively easy to look at and navigate without archive training or specific inquiry in mind

• tumblr and instagram of queerhistory.com

• digital transgender archive

• digital exhibitions of the arquives

• online exhibitions of the glbt historical society

• digitized collections of the lesbian herstory archives

• exhibitions of the gala queer collective

• bc gay and lesbian archives

• gender outlaws tumblr

• lesbian herstorian tumblr

MAJOR CONTENT WARNING: THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY VERY FUCKED UP IN A WAY THAT COULD BE VERY TRIGGERING FOR SOME READERS. IT USES NAZI IDEOLOGY TO JUSTIFY THE GENOCIDE OF INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Originally Aired: May 22nd, 1976
Written by: Lynn Ahrens
Performed by: Sue Manchester

Shel's Review

Music: 🎵
Animation: 📺📺
Pedagogy: 🎓
Accuracy: 🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬😬😬😬😬😬

This is, no question, the absolute worst Schoolhouse Rock! song. Ever. In history. I haven't watched any of Earth Rock! yet but I can't imagine it could get worse than this. The music is grating to the ears, like the world's worst square dance. The key change at the end sounds so awful. It's absolutely false as to what happened historically. I don't even understand what it's teaching because it's so wrong. Also? It's using the Nazi concept of Lebensraum to justify the genocide and annexation of Indigenous North American nations through a jaunty celebratory tune.

I will give it one singular point in the animation department because it has colored backdrops instead of being newspaper strip characters on a white background. That's the only possible way this could have been worse. At least they put a little effort into drawing their disgusting genocide celebration. But not even that much effort—it's hardly pretty to look at.

Lebensraum

So Lebensraum is the German ideology of settler colonialism. It emerged at first in the 19th century and was heavily inspired by Manifest Destiny. Lebensraum when literally translated means "living space." It refers to the supposed need for Germany to expand its territory in order for the Aryan race to have enough room to grow, especially more rural agricultural land. While it was first conceived in the 19th century, it really took off under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, and was used as the justification for the invasion of Poland. Lebensraum argues that it is justified to forcefully, violently, and permanently remove Non-Aryans from their land in order for the Aryans to have more legroom. Time and again, Adolf Hitler cited and pointed to the United States and Manifest Destiny as the justification and prime example of Lebensraum in action as a justifiable and good political move.

Living space. Walking room. Legroom. Elbow Room. It's the exact same ideology as in this song. "We have to expand west because we need more room for us, and it's OK to force people off of their land in order for us to have more land."

Manifest Destiny was the original inspiration for the Holocaust. In fact, the Jewish ghettos were often framed as "reservations" for the Jews. Where do you think they got that word from? It came from the reservations that colonizers forced indigenous people onto with violence. Manifest Destiny was the ideology of what can only be described as a mass continent-wide genocide. Unlike the holocaust, nobody invaded to stop the United States, and the world has never fully reckoned with what happened. Unlike the holocaust, there was no preexisting diaspora on other continents to organize evacuation operations or enlist in an army crossing the ocean to fight the Americans. The Lord Jefferey Amherst was never held accountable for smallpox blankets. Andrew Jackson was never held accountable for the Trail of Tears. This genocide has no well-known catch-all name, and Manifest Destiny is not taught in American schools as a horrific thing to be reckoned with like the holocaust is in Germany.

Manifest Destiny was the precursor to the holocaust, but this song was written after the holocaust. There are no excuses. Every single person involved in making this song should have known better and could have known better. Not a single person raised their voice and said "wait, isn't this the same justification the Germans used for killing as many Slavs and Jews as possible? Are we the bad guys?"

Sacajawea

Lewis & Clark did not "hire' Sacajawea. She was the non-consensual child bride of Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau bought her as a slave when she was only 13 and forced her to marry him and have his children. She had been kidnapped from her people by Hidatsa slave traders. Charbonneau was the one that was hired. The only notable thing we know about him from before the Lewis and Clark expedition is that he was Quebecois and was once caught violently raping an Ojibwe girl, age unknown. For this, he was stabbed by the girl's mother, and even the colonizer recording this incident made a point of saying that Charbonneau deserved it.

She certainly did important things for the expedition, but she did not lead them "all across the countryside." She accompanied them for about half the journey, from what is now North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean—but that's an insane distance and she did not and could not have had knowledge of the way the entire route. She was an important participant, but she wasn't like, the guide who mystically knew how to get to the pacific ocean. She was as much an adventurer as they were—though she didn't have much choice in the matter. Apparently she even had a reunion with her brother along the way but wasn't allowed to leave the expedition and rejoin the Shoshone nation. Even her kids got "adopted" away from her and sent to boarding schools. She died very young.

Also, not mentioned, was their other "guide:" York. York was Clark's slave who he owned since childhood. His childhood slave. Who he forced to go on this journey with him. Apparently, York was pretty damn impressive and instrumental in the success of this whole ordeal. No mention of slavery though. Schoolhouse Rock never mentions slavery.

Other Problems

Napoleon was 5'2'' and Thomas Jefferson was 6'2''. So while, yes, Jefferson was a whole foot taller than Napoleon, it wasn't that dramatic a height difference. Apparently the average French man at the time was 5'2''. French guys were just shorter back then.

This song makes it seem like the entirety of the current US territories were purchased from France in 1806. Here is a map of the Louisiana Purchase, and another map with the Lewis and Clark expedition overlaid on top.

As you can see, Los Angeles is absolutely not in the Louisiana Purchase. What this song doesn't mention is that France only controlled a very small portion of the territory they "sold" to the United States. Most of that land was inhabited by indigenous nations who had no involvement in the "selling" of their land, nor were they even informed of this "purchase." Furthermore, a lot of the expansion that happens in this song isn't even land that was a part of the Louisiana Purchase. So how did the United States acquire that land? Alaska was purchased from Russia, which had been colonizing Yup'ik and Inu'it land. Hawai'i was invaded and conquered. And what about the entire west coast and southwest territories? Why, the United States went to war with Mexico! Most Americans don't even know that the US invaded Mexico in 1846 and took Atzlan as a trophy in a war of conquest, which is where good 'ole LA is, among other major cities.

The violent history of US expansion is erased, as are all of the indigenous nations who lived west of the Mississippi before the US invaded and forced them all onto reservations. Except, what are these "bad times" that are referenced again and again? Who is firing these arrows from off-screen that magically appear? Why exactly are people firing arrows at settlers? It's all left in the background, as if indigenous peoples are a natural danger, like wild animals, rather than people who are defending their homes from an invasion.

And The Future is Bleak and Terrifying

It's so creepy how the lyrics keep repeating "In [G—d] We Trust" again and again as they describe violent expansion by force. How just completely face value it's stated that expansion to the west coast was "our manifest destiny." How land is completely deforested and replaced by train tracks followed by highways. The implication that not only has the US killed, but it will kill again so long as more land is needed. The moon landing was very recent when this song was written, but you know what else was quite recent? Hawaiian Statehood which was only 17 years ago and very much fresh in the memory of the adults creating this song. These days, among our generation, "fifty nifty states" is this enshrined notion, that our borders are set and adding or ceding land is unthinkably radical. Even DC and PR statehood movements are out of a desire for equity and not due to a desire to expand US territorial claims. But to Lynn Ahrens, who was 11 years old when suddenly the US now owned a bunch of islands in the pacific, well, why wouldn't the US continue to expand its territory? Let's add the fucking moon to our set of colonies.

This is so cartoonishly evil. This song is evil propaganda for children that you would come up with in a cartoon for children where there is an evil empire that wants to conquer the world. Children watching this learn that the US is the Good Land of Freedom and that the entire world can and should eventually succumb to American Rule as the needs for American Lebensraum grows. Fuck the economical nature of population density and harmony with nature, let's turn the entire fucking planet into endless cul-de-sacs and highways so we can have our "elbow room" and we'll kill fucking anyone who stands in our way.

OK, that's it, I'm done. I could go on forever but that's it. I'm done. I just. I have a lot of sympathetic rage about the American Genocides because the Germans killed 99% of Jews in my great grandmother's home village in Lithuania, and 99% of Jews in my great grandfather's home city in Belarus. The Germans did it in the name of Lebensraum. They got the idea from the United States. They did to my people what the Americans did to all of the indigenous nations of Turtle Island and while we get all this sympathy and memorials for it, where are the memorials for Manifest Destiny? Where are the Museums of American Atrocities? If there was not a Jewish diaspora who campaigned foreign nations to fight the Germans, funded and organized evacuation campaigns, and enlisted in armies to fight the Germans—and afterwards campaigned demanding reparations—would the Germans have been making jaunty children's propaganda cartoons about the wonderful expansion of Germany into the Baltics? Where are the reparations for the indigenous nations of Turtle Island? And yet anyone who questions the mainstream narrative about this genocide is some sort of crazy rabble-rousing radical. It makes my blood boil.

This song makes me want to run through the streets screaming* Death to America* holy fucking damn.

June's Review

Music: 0
Animation: 📺
Pedagogy: 0
Accuracy: 0
Yikes: 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

You know, after building it up as the worst song in all of Schoolhouse Rock! for so long, I'm still pretty shocked by how bad the animation and the music are! It's all the worst parts of No More Kings but cheaper and shittier. Especially coming right after the massively racist but fun to listen to Great American Melting Pot, this is just awful. It's not a good song folks! And the animation is like—aside from 1 or 2 funny gags—just miserable to watch. I was ready for the massively offensive themes, but I wasn't ready for how much the song would just suck!

Ha Ha That Was A Joke I was not prepared for how bad this song was. I had to stop watching when she yells out "manifest destiny" and "the west was just meant to be," because it was so fucking disgusting. Every single thing they say is a miserable lie, there's not a single redeeming element of the song. Shel has gone into detail about all the ideas, but I'd also like to again point out how evil the through-line of the song is. All of the crimes and horror of America reduced to a single stupid Nazi narrative about needing more space. It takes everything from colonization to building railroads to the fucking moon landings and goes "oh, well, it's all the same thing ya know", and then that same thing is NAZI SHIT. I want to puke.

But even that isn't what pushed me to violate our scale and give this a full swathe of 0s across the board. No, what did that was my desire to find something linked to me a long time ago, a remix of the song filled with anger and screaming about how racist it is—a tiny Soundcloud file that I still don't know the origin of¹. I attempted to find it on Youtube.

Instead, I found home video after home video of kids singing this song. I had forgotten, of course, that Schoolhouse Rock! was made into a musical called Schoolhouse Rock Live, and this song is a part of it. Can't you just imagine little Timmy up on stage yelling about manifest destiny? Little Debbie promoting the ideology of Hitler? When we say propaganda rock, we aren't just talking about these videos as a vague idea. These were actively used to teach kids, and still are. Seeing hundreds of videos of grade school children loudly and excitedly singing the Lebensraum song actually broke me. This song wasn't just as bad as everyone said it would be—it was somehow far worse.

Up Next: Actually, you see, when the founding fathers used the phrase "merciless Indian Savages" in the declaration of independence, they meant that in an anti-racist way.

---

1. Shel: Is it this?