How to Kill a Nation: The Ultimate Guide to Genocide

Permission is granted to reprint the following article as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright information, and the resource box is included. Please let me know if you use this article by sending an email to dje@newedisongazette.com. How to Kill a Nation: The Ultimate Guide to Genocide Copyright © 2013 Douglas W Jerving. All Rights Reserved. It was 12:30 pm, November 22, 1963. Already I was late to leave home and go back to school. It was cold outside; a blustery late fall day, back when autumn days really were cold, especially for a skinny six year old kid. I was happy and warm at home. This was my comfort zone, my retreat for half an hour before I had to return to the things I can no longer remember before being released at 3 pm to go home and watch the Mickey Mouse Club. It was only two blocks I had to walk to Douglas Road Elementary School. School was something that I think I enjoyed at that time, but I am not sure why. My teachers were all extended versions of my mother: kind, gentle, caring. But school was also (or still at that time), something new and a bit scary. I was not yet sure what to make of these new authority figures in my life. My first memory of my first day of school at Douglas Road was of the horrifying long moments walking the perimeters of the fenced-in playground in the company of my Mother, Janice Marilyn (who later claimed, now a ridiculous fantasy, that she had been named after Marilyn Monroe). We lived on the east side of the school. The west side of the school was Berryland Housing Project. That was where the black people lived. There was no racism in my family's attitudes towards them. They were just the people on the other side of the great divide that was Douglas Road School. I cannot recall even a single black face in school with me at Douglas Road. Maybe that is because I was never taught to see people as colors different from my own, but I think it is more probable that we were a “White” kids school. That first day of school, on my entrance to Kindergarten at five years old was in September 1962. The perimeter walk with my mother, two blocks away from my home, was meant to assure me that all was right in the world. This was just my next step into the brilliant daylight and glorious hope that was America. Of course it was not put in such glowing terms for me, a five year old kid in late 1962. But the encouraging belief that God is in Heaven and therefore all is right with the world was a huge part of what my dear Mother promoted as a dispeller of my fears of the larger world existing outside our home at 3733 West Douglas Avenue. After a long walk around the corner that the small school inhabited, and after my mother's assurances that my fears of the great beyond were nebulous, I eventually entered the gate. I passed through the tall chain-link fences into the land of black asphalt pavement, and then into the half-day incarceration cells, to be released to my family in the early afternoon once again, daily, and for weekends. The fall of 1962 passed quickly. I don't remember it. Nor do I remember the winter, the spring or the summer of 1963. I don't even remember the early autumn of 1963, and beginning school again, this time as a first grader, now doing full time incarceration. Since my school was only two blocks from home, I was given reprieve at lunchtime to go visit my mother. At that time in history every kid lived within walking distance of school unless you lived in the “country”. For half an hour each day, five days a week I was allowed to go home, so long as I returned to the camp on time, at 12:30 pm. I don't remember details as if they were some sort of daily ritual. Routine becomes a part of you when you are too young to remember how it got a hold of you in the first place. But it is possible to sense disambiguity in one's situation, no matter how young, and I felt mine. It was almost a teenaged angst that possessed me, even at six years old, that made me feel that school was a certain form of incarceration, or at least a deprivation of the life a child should have at home. Really, it was nothing less than the separation anxiety that every child experiences as he moves from the loving arms of his mother to the embrace of the Other. So on that particular day, November 22, 1963, I was a first grader who had come home for lunch and was about to return. It was cold outside, and it was warm in the house. I was happy to be home and resisted going back to school. I avoided my mother’s attempts to get my coat on, so that she could get me out the door and back to school. (I was oblivious to the fact that my mother had to attend to my little sister Sue.) It was already several minutes past the time I should have left the house; probably by now all of my little compatriots had already made their way back. But I was only two blocks away. Finally, she had got my coat on. At last she might be able to shrug me out the door and back down the block to school. She had struggled with me for minutes that seemed to her hours. She was finally rewarded with a bull-headed child who succumbed to her will. At last, his coat was on and he was almost half out the door. It was now just after 12:30 pm. Too late to be on time. The little rebel would be late returning to school. But at least he would be out of her hair! The Television set was in the corner before the door. I used it as a tool to maintain my hold on the home I did not want to leave. If I gave up my fixation with the TV it would yield my will to hers, and I would be forced to put on my coat and walk out the door and back to the penitentiary two blocks away. But she managed against my will to get my coat on. It was now inevitable. I had to yield. I circumscribed myself to the fact that I had to go back to school. The Television set was still there making attractive noises, keeping my attention, like a deer in the headlights. Not for any reason, except that it was the TV and I was a kid. TV was a passive aggressor, capable of subverting everything, and it was subverting me. Janice opened the Living Room door, which led to the common hallway shared by our family and the tenants upstairs. Her little man finally had his coat on, and was ready to be sent out the door on his way back to school. Resistance was futile! Mom had the upper hand. She had at last won the battle. The great battle between Mother and Child was now over and a sense of Motherly victory over the forces of childish nonsense finally prevailed. The door was open. The coat was on. The child was now in the process of banishment for the next few hours until 3 pm. Seconds before moving out that door the news flash interrupted my exodus, and my mother detained me for a brief few seconds while a still screen on the TV set was taken over by the voice of Walter Cronkite behind it. It was like some terrible event from a Twilight Zone episode. The Television was now taking control. Cronkite, in my mind, the TV itself, was now informing us that it was the reality that we all feared. The horror that was previously just play was now real. Or maybe reality was only that which TV told us. It did not matter to a six year old the difference. Cronkite’s voice. The voice was like something out of a Hitchcock show. I had seen them all, and had no way of distinguishing reality from fantasy. Strangely, neither did anyone else! It was just another War of the Worlds scenario for most of America. Something that could never really happen, and should be dismissed. It could not be true. But unlike War of the Worlds this time it was true. My mother halted me from going out the door. It was more important to hear this Word From Above first, and so we both heard it together: The President has been shot. Then she silently shuffled me out the door on my way to the camp. I don’t remember anything else until the time I was in my classroom back at school. But I remember vividly the minutes following my return. I have no idea what my first grade teacher at that time was rambling on about once I had taken my belated seat. I just remember raising my arm to be called upon. Raising the arm meant you had something to say. I had something to say! I sat with my right arm upraised for what seemed an impossible time, and when I could not hold it up any longer, I raised my left arm. I flagged it back and forth. I grew tired and raised my right arm again, supporting it with my left hand, while I fidgeted back and forth. The Teacher must have thought I was going to pee my pants any second, and so finally she challenged me with exasperation. Yes, Mr. Jerving!! What is it you want! My response was more than she could take. “The President has just been shot!” Those were my exact words. I remember them exactly to this day. She immediately chastised me before the class! Who could believe such horrible pronouncements? She belittled me, and made me out to be a liar. The worst kind of liar! A six year old monster who’s self interest exceeded that of the worst monsters of all that history might produce. I retreated to silence. Two or three minutes afterward, a hall monitor stepped into the classroom and quietly informed the teacher of the facts. A few minutes later a TV was rolled into the class-room, probably not for the benefit of the children, but for the teachers, and we kids were all given the opportunity to see what I said was the truth. The teacher never apologized to me for her criticism. After all, I was just a six year old kid. I don’t remember anything else from that day. It was Friday. The last day of the week. It was the same day of the week as this 50th anniversary of the event that changed the world. How strange that the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy should also be a Friday? The next several days were a blur of television coverage. I watched it all. No more horrible event remains in my mind, including the 911 tragedy than that one event. I watched it all, and heard it all at six years old. I was glued to that TV set. It was all that was on, and I was intimately a part of it all, including the assassination of the so-called assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. I was six years old! No one wanted to believe that the president had been killed. My teacher did not. No one wanted to believe that the goodness of America could be thwarted by a lone nut, let alone, a conspiracy of the highest ranks within our own government. No one wanted then or wants now to believe a six year old kid. And today, everyone who still insists on a conspiracy of the highest levels of our government to assassinate one of its’ own is still treated like an ignorant child. The best way to kill the hopes and dreams of a nation, a people, a group, is to treat them as if they are all ignorant children, incapable of knowing right from wrong or how to govern themselves. Despite the facts, whether known ahead of or after an event, belittle the truth, and those who insist on telling it. If that does not work, then create convenient suicides for those who are bold enough to come forth. Destroying a people is not hard if you have first subverted their will to disbelieve. Once you get them to quit questioning your authority you have them by the balls. When your very teachers fall in line with the indoctrination of the State they have effectively committed a form of social suicide, which is in reality the genocide of the people they hoped to inform. America gave up its’ faith in a better republic the minute it allowed the Warren Report to become the confession of faith in the religion of Americanism. Until we renounce the Warren Report as heresy (rather than letting its’ conspirators charge us as the heretics) we will not be free to experience the Republic of the people, by the people and for the people. Until then, we will be under the self-inflicted genocide of America by our own starry-eyed desire to believe in the goodness of our own assassins. ------------------------ Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at dje@newedisongazette.com. ================================= Return to The New Edison Gazette main site.