When I was a kid, Grandpa used to get the inside of the dairy barn “whitewashed” every spring when the milk cows were on pasture. A couple old bachelors came with an old Fargo truck with a little whitewash sprayer in the back of the truck and sprayed the entire inside of the dairy barn a nice clean white color. The light bulbs were wrapped in newspaper first, so they didn’t get sprayed too. After a year with flies dirtying on the ceiling, whitewash – made with fine limestone dissolved in water and a bottle of creolin mixed in – made the barn look and smell clean and hygienic, and killed some bacteria and flies, too.
Whitewashing isn’t just for barns; even the White House in Washington got a coat a few years back. It was during the war of 1812, when a successful charge the US soldiers on Canada led to the the early parliament buildings in York (later called Toronto) being burned to the ground before the British soldiers and militia could chase the Americans back across Lake Ontario. In retaliation, the British soldiers charged the White House when the president was away with his protecters. The first lady had stayed home and invited many of her friends over for dinner, but before the dinner was even served, it was interrupted by the sight of a large group of British Red Coats marching towards the White House. The first lady quickly escorted her guests out the back entrance to safety before the Red Coats arrived. When they entered the White House without opposition, the smell of a fabulous dinner was overwhelming, so they assembled around the big table and ate a meal fit for a king before piling the furniture in the middle of the great hall and lighting it on fire. Soon, the close-by fire department and some US soldiers appeared, and the Red Coats escaped. The fire department quickly extinguished the fire, but the White House was badly charred. To restore the White house to its distinctive white color, it was whitewashed.
Today; especially with elections coming up, many of the facts that our residents should be informed about are whitewashed before they are released to the news media. I often think that some of the regular statements told by some politicians are not only whitewashed, but sound like they were created by artificial intelligence software, so only topics popular to the majority like “I’ll lower taxes, and we spend too much fighting climate change, and food is too expensive” are released.
Last week, we watched as a huge hurricane moved towards the lower USA for days before it came ashore. Weather professionals warned of its power and strength, and that if you were in its projected path, your life was in great danger. A first responder who worked where the hurricane was expected to pass even appeared on a major TV station advising people to write their name and date of birth on their arm with a permanent marker so that they could be identified when they were killed. After the hurricane devastated many states, killed more than 100 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage, some wannabe politicians complained that billions more dollars should have been allotted to help restore the affected areas. No mention that people in the path of the hurricane should have kept track of the projected path and left before it got close.
I often wonder if common sense has been whitewashed from today’s education system, or are we just too polite to ask those tough questions?
