I also hear often that “A People’s History of the United States” is used as a school textbook, though I wonder how widespread it really is. It was never used in my classes, and I never saw any other students with it growing up. I’ve only seen adults reading it.

“Widely Adopted History Textbooks” http://historytextbooks.net/adopted.htm
“What Are the Best AP US History Textbooks” https://blog.prepscholar.com/what-are-the-best-ap-us-history-textbooks
“Is book by Howard Zinn the most popular high school history textbook?” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/apr/15/rick-santorum/book-howard-zinn-most-popular-high-school-history-/

That’s a tragic combination of projection and willful blindness.

Trump is trying to prevent America from sliding off the cliff into the Left’s 1984.

Most liberals may simply be suffering from TDS but clearly at least some liberals sense that the Left is leading/forcing America toward a 1984 reality. Unable to face the predictable results of the Left’s agenda, they project it upon Trump, which allows them to remain willfully blind to the path they are enabling.

Remember thinking “Beta! Cool!”.

Sorry to hear that. It’s been decades but my experience was overwhelmingly positive.

The Sir Hercules part is one of those side-stories. Here it is in its entirety. A tour de force.

https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/facebook-cracking-down-antifa-removes-nearly-1000-affiliated-groups

Facebook has banned 520 Antifa-associated pages and removed 160 ads for the group. The site has also restricted 1,400 hashtags that pertain to the militant leftist group’s activities.

“[W]e are expanding our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to address organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform,” Facebook said in a statement.

The tech giant also said it will allow users to post content that supports such movements and groups, so long as they do not otherwise violate Facebook policies but will restrict their ability to organize on our platform.

Beyond just blocking the groups, Facebook is preventing the radical organizations from running ads and monetizing content, in addition to prohibiting nonprofits on the site from soliciting funds on behalf of the orgs.

The company is currently making the case that its content-moderation policies apply in equal fashion to violators on the left and right ends of the political spectrum.

The company’s policies have recently led to the deactivation and removal of 790 QAnon groups, restriction of nearly 2,000 QAnon groups, and another 10,000 accounts on Instagram. Thousands of ad pages associated with QAnon have also been wiped from the platform.

Facebook has eliminated the possibility of finding either radical organization with the Facebook search feature, and has been working to modify the hashtag feature on Instagram to prevent the spread of harmful accounts as well.

Funny you mention Latvia. Up until 9th grade in 1963, I went to a very small rural school in the deep south. I can’t imagine how this came to be, but one day we had a Latvian come in to give us a talk about communism and what had happened to his country. I’ll guess I was 11 or 12, maybe a bit older. So let’s say it was ca 1960. I had never heard of Latvia and I don’t remember anything specific about what the guy said, though I still have an out-of-focus mental image of him. But it made a big impression on me. I think it was another of the things that sort of inoculated me against falling for communism.

Terrible to think that today 12 year olds are being affected in the same way by Zinn, 1619 Project, etc.

Re Aldous Huxley, reading “The Doors to Perception” started me down a very bad road….