I know you’ve had star wars posts…

The recent kerfuffle on school lunch: nobody but me knew that Frances Perkins persuaded Roosevelt to pursue school lunches for American children in order to provide soldiers for the next war: World War 2. That scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi tours the cloning facility – the factory fetus bottles, the kids in tech classrooms – not debating or synthesizing- (implying they’ll learn modern tech-stuff, but not debate old values) the beefy young men dining on recognizable school lunch trays — that’s a pretty distilled fascist vision of perfection.

The meals were aimed at young children of immigrants in cities- they were to be the mixed-light-brown race of foot soldiers, not officers. Notice how the emperor has blue eyes and a British accent- he’s running the show. The nameless soldier hordes are darker, nameless, and “engineered for less higher-thinking and more obedience.”

It was a racist position even then- the scholarly journals of nutrition- the field-workers would tour America and document what people ate. The comments for black tenant farmer families in the deep South- the photos were of near emaciated families- was that these people needed to eat less calories.

It showed up in the comments, even now. People were more upset about fat minority kids eating meals in Chicago, than any other thing. Well, besides my kid.

We have an all-volunteer army, now. But every war, it’s a Democrat asking when we can go back to the draft. They’ve never backed down from that vision. Frances Perkins sounds inocuous, but she might be worth some edumacational posts. She lived in college housing when she was an old woman. Robert Reich was one of her housemates, for instance. Republicans live with their families, so there’s less continuity of activist vision.

with regards,

ari

*****