Authors: Don Stewart
Tags: #Nonfiction, #History, #United States, #Reference, #Education
The Slacker's Guide to U.S. History: The Bare Minimum on Discovering America, the Boston Tea Party, the California Gold Rush, and Lots of Other Stuff Dead White Guys Did (10 page)
The good news is that you are just one cog in the wheel of 330 million. This means that your contributions to the goals of the country are pretty insignificant. As a result, several occupations have written their own profession-specific preambles because it is much more likely that you can have an impact on the success of your employer than the success of the country.
Here is a sampling of how a handful of professions help to keep their workforce on track.
Garbage MenWe the garbage men, in order to keep America clean, establish an orderly kitchen, and pick up, curbside, the crap you don't want, promise to do this to promote the general safety and welfare of America, and promise to do so for a minimum amount of money so as to not place an unfair burden upon Americans.
StrippersWe the strippers of America, in order to keep stress on any male-female union, establish a penalty-free environment for men to treat us as objects and give a high-friction lap dance to help promote our own prosperity.
LawyersWe the lawyers, in order to form a less perfect union, promote our financial welfare above all else, and secure the blessings of wealth by charging obnoxious fees, do promise to slow down and complicate each and every transaction possible.
PoliticiansWe the politicians, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for our re-election defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of lobbyists for ourselves and our posterity by taking bribes and/or campaign contributions, do hereby promise to spend every waking moment to make our Union perfect by assuring our re-election above all other goals and ideals.
Professional AthletesWe the athletes, in order to form a more perfect sports world, establish wealth, ensure our own domestic tranquility, and provide for our sexual welfare, hereby promise to only have one girlfriend in each city, never take our wives on road trips, and strive to wear protection more than 50 percent of the time when having extramarital relations.
HE
T
HREE
-F
IFTHS
C
OMPROMISE
We bought 'em, we own 'em, we count'em
Who's Bad?
The Philadelphia convention of 1787 set the stage for one of the great debates in American history. The two major questions that needed to be answered were whether or not before his death the King of Pop Michael Jackson had intentionally turned his skin pigmentation white in an effort to show his respect for the equally dead King of Rock 'n Roll Elvis Presley, and whether or not a person who has been purchased from a slave trader and given a lifetime of employment opportunity in one of the Southern states should be counted as a person.
For Southern slave owners, the first question was easy. It was obvious that Michael's black to white transformation was the result of careful cosmetic engineering motivated by his desire to thank Elvis for breaking down some of the racial biases that existed in the music industry before the draft dodging former Mississippian broke them down. The second question was a little more challenging. Slave owners all over the South were asking themselves, “If that slave I beat and whose wife I took home gains his freedom, what the hell will he do to me?”
For Northerners, Jackson's skin color getting whiter all the time had nothing to do with him being appreciative. It was clearly the result of a chronic autoimmune disorder called vitiligo where the body's own immune cells assault the skin's pigment resulting in a lighter more Justin Timberlake look. As for whether or not black people who were confined to a lifetime of servitude were in fact people, that was an easy one for Northerners. It was obvious that a slave was not a real person and should be counted as property not a person.
This divide in slave-counting philosophy became important in 1787 when the “we bought 'em, we own 'em, we count 'em” Southern states and the “we are above owning slaves” Northern states got together in Philadelphia to hammer out the makings of a Constitution.
AFTER A FEW ROUNDS OF DRINKS AT A LOCAL KARAOKE BAR, IT WAS AGREED THAT CONGRESS WOULD BE DIVIDED INTO TWO HOUSES.
An upper house that called for equal representation for each state and a lower house that called for proportional representation for each state. As proportional representation was agreed to, it became necessary for each state's residents to be counted in order to determine how many congressmen would be eligible to represent their state in the lower house.
The balance of power in Washington came down to the question how should slaves be counted? The slave-free states argued that only free citizens should count when determining representation. They knew that for years Southerners had become great customers of African slave brokers. And whether or not the slaves all looked the same, the Northerners knew there were tremendous numbers of them. If every slave was counted, it was obvious to the Northerners that the slave-loving South would run Washington.
Conversely, white Southerners knew how difficult it was to keep angry black men in line. They were not ready for this free-labor system to stop.THEY WERE PROUD OF THEIR ABILITY TO GROW THEIR SLAVE OWNERSHIP DESPITE THE LACK OF TAX BENEFITS FOR DOING SO. THEY FELT ENTITLED TO BE REWARDED FOR THEIR HARD WORK AS SLAVE OWNERS.With the Constitution hanging in the balance and the need for compromise more important than ever, the Northern states and Southern states agreed to a formula that would count each black slave as three-fifths of a person. It was reasoned that this would allow the Southern states to be compensated for their years of raising and training black slaves, but not to the point that it would be impossible for the Northern states to find equal representation in the new Congress.
As for Michael, the North and the South agreed to disagree on why he lightened up instead agreeing thatWHETHER IT WAS THROUGH COSMETIC BLEACHING OR VITILIGO, THE KING OF POP DIED THREE-FIFTHS BLACK.
