Editorial
   Lies of American History Come Home to Roost
 
            Times’ columnist David Brooks praises the "frontier" values of Trump voters. Here's one of the frontiers people's greatest hits: the slaughter of Native American women and children during the Black Hawk War, as though the Native-Americans were the aggressors and not resistance fighters.
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis all played a role in this massacre. "The slaughter on the eastern bank of the river continued for eight hours. The soldiers shot at anyone—man, woman, or child—whether they tried to swim across the river or to surrender. They also scalped most of the dead bodies.”* Though Robert E. Lee, who had a lust for murder and torture along with some other heroes with cornball names like "rough and ready” Zachary Taylor who are saluted by official American historians, Great Men freaks, their actions in Mexico were so brutal that an Irish contingent defected: "Irish heroes; you listening Bannon, Kelly Anne, Mulvaney?: "An interesting aspect of the war involves the fate of U.S. Army deserters of Irish origin who joined the Mexican Army as the Batallón San Patricio (Saint Patrick's Battalion). This group of Catholic Irish immigrants rebelled at the abusive treatment by Protestant American-born officers, and at the treatment of the Catholic Mexican population by the U.S. Army. At this time in American history, Catholics were an ill-treated minority, and the Irish were an unwanted ethnic group in the United States. In September, 1847, the U.S. Army hanged sixteen surviving members of the San Patricios as traitors. To this day, they are considered heroes in Mexico."*
 Sept 13 is remembered as the day when Robert E. Lee and others killed some Mexican kids who were defending their home town. The youngest was 13, their leader 20. You still want Lee’s statue up? Or would tearing it down be an act of "Political Correctness," that slogan you guys keep using, which, if it were a horse, would have been sent to the glue factory a decade ago.
“In Mexico, a special day is remembered to celebrate the bravery of the teenage military cadets at the military academy at Chapultepec Castle, which was attacked by Scott's army on September 13, 1847. “Dia de Los Niños Héroes de Chapultepec (day of the boy heroes of Chapultepec), is commemorated every year on the anniversary of the battle.
"Ordered to retreat by their Commandant, these young cadets joined the fight- the boy heroes who are honored every year are the four teenaged cadets (Francisco Marquez, the youngest, was thirteen years old!) and their lieutenant squadron leader, Juan de la Barrera, (the oldest, age 20), who lost their lives in that battle.”**
 
For this issue of Konch,
-Tom Christensen writes about Robert E. Lee's role at the battle of Vera Cruz.
-I interview the great historian, Gerald Horne, who calls American history,
            "smelly."
-We conclude our interview with Corrine Jennings co-owner of the Kenkeleba
 Gallery.
                        -Poet, Sam Hamod, our regular, salutes our friend, the late Dick Gregory.
                        -Constance Jane Moore graces our pages with her poetry.
                        -Barbara Lowenstein presents a side of African rarely seen on American
 television.
 
Ishmael Reed
*Black Hawk War , James Lewis UNITED STATES HISTORY.Encyclopedia Britannica
**http://www.historyguy.com/Mexican-American_War.html