Learning Day: Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe

Game time.

Unnecessary, really. The cover copy had me at "left-wing indoctrination." Overselling looks desperate. The back cover rants longer than any chapter within, in flea-friendly print. Yet the "Southern Books! Real History!" logo is all we need. You can guess what flag it's printed on.

I've skimmed the first U.S. Civil War, but I don't feel its truth. My soul is weighed down by sanity. I’d have a deeper, richer understanding if I lost my whole fucking mind. At least, that's Lochlainn Seabrook's pitch.

Good thing this relationship with history doesn't have consequences.

What a title. I don't need the cartoon or Dixie swastikas to know that Lochlainn's mentally undead. Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe is a secular Necronomicon: all madness, no magic. Unfortunate. As a cultural archivist/bully/coroner, I keep a lunatic scorecard. I'd rather meet the Archmage of Bushwick than the sanest, smartest Confederate alive. They both think I'm soulless, but only one sees my character.

For the curious:

Still, Lochlainn has drive. His patch to US history bleeds determination to break your brain. Especially if you're eight-to-twelve years old.

Salient's a fun word. It means "what I think matters." Or, in practice, "whatever I fucking want." Cold Stone makes salient ice cream, while Halo Top is a low-salience disorder. Objective? Not even close. Accurate? Nope, I just inhaled a Halo Top. But one word lends freestyle lies weight.

Reactionaries treasure early education. There, they can reach youth before better books. Two pages of Curious George trains you to know that Lochlainn's an incurious failure. Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal winners don't measure up to Bluey, and Sea Raven Press knows it.

A veteran Gettysburg mourner, Lochlainn is Sea Raven Press's star writer. And only writer, save a few stray titles buried beneath salient slavery facts. Don't call him prolific: he likes padding books with endless indexes at vampire bat font sizes. Even this one. While I wanted a love letter to whips, I got annotated bathroom graffiti. The Sea Raven Press slogan is "Thought-Provoking Books for Smart People," because branding is magic. You can say anything, and repeat it forever. Eventually, it becomes salient.

Speaking of slavery, don't. Lochlainn says it's not too salient to the war, except when it's an essential right, and thus a Yankee distraction. So we'll get tangents out the way early.

A heavy burden. Do you face your imports running around unwhipped, or make fat racks? Endless bushels and bushels of golden cash from golden tobacco? Sometimes, life forces you to inject pure profit under both eyelids. Nike calls this question "Monday."

As for his examples, I'd love to joke about modern conditions. The door's wide open. Unfortunately, life in all three cities is perfect. Every day in Kensington outshines the last. Texan health care is the envy of the 19th century. And I can't even imagine someone in San Francisco without a home.

Jefferson had a point. Or as we called him, Gramps. You've got one hand on each ear. And another hand signing for more wolves. And three counting money. Also, instead of wolves they're other people. And you severed their ears for missing quota.

Lochlainn repeats himself a bit. As an orator, Gramps would hate that: make a point twice, and he'd whip you four times. Say what you want about slave rape, but only once. Otherwise, you'll sound like a fanatic.

He's not a fan.

"Abolitionist" says it all for Seabrook, but he finds time to annoy Gramps. In half a Wikipedia stub’s length, he calls Brown insane, psychotic, ridiculous, and an existential threat to God's light. Brown’s followers are thugs and gangsters, sprinkling modern hate in for flavor. There’s also tonal overlap with the famine fan club, but I think I'm supposed to make that subtext.

Per the Klan playbook, Lochlainn finds States’ Rights more salient.

We're going exactly where you think, with a new flavor. Walk with me. If it helps, pretend that you're eight and trying to learn why Dad drinks through February.

Yup, Lincoln's a Red. In his own way, Seabrook makes progress look inevitable. He sees the 1.5 century old Lost Cause through Grok memes. Granted, scientific socialism and other pitches for making life less shit were about 15 years old. But they weren't hits in EagleLand, where loyalty to Mammon unites all creeds. Before the end of the decade, Lincoln will be a radical cleric or starving toddler.

As for handouts: does everyone need an amendment? I’m willing to teach the controversy.

Seabrook has a small sequence problem: he explains resentments kids don't have yet using other resentments they lack. His target reader‘s eight. Liberal often isn't a dirty word yet. Or a word yet. He should fearmonger from scratch.

The language around Lincoln gets...unusual. While Lochlainn always writes like he blocked a bayonet with his forehead, his lines about Lincoln are extra frantic. Traumatized, even. As if Lincoln is less dead statesman, more living home invader. My region, literacy, and difficulty tanning encourage me not to care if Lochlainn lives or dies. I'm still concerned.

Also, the entire book is about Darth Lincoln. Davis comes up, but he's more of a nonentity in these pages than real life. I bought this looking for an insane Googus & Gallant, but it's Goofus and Goofus and Satan. Take Seabrook's spin on mental health:

Yeah, that'd suck. Next, Lochlainn ties megalomania to mass human bondage. Kidding. It's Lincoln all the way down. While many asylum authors meander, Seabrook only smears one name on his cell walls.

Seabrook's 1863 has the language and fixations of 2010 4chan. So does mine, but I'm hilarious. That said, he identifies the timeless flow of tyranny. It starts with policing your language, and ends with policing your Mandingo fights. Blink, and the word mandingo fades altogether from polite company. To save your culture from porn tags, take a stand. Otherwise, liberals will erase you like JOI City.

Feel something missing? I hear you. There's a story some music lectures tell, of a professor that hears an unresolved chord, sprints across the room, and mashes the final note. I’m normally an agrarian volunteer to brevity, but here's G:

1984’s about Lincoln.

Seabrook shits on any strawman I could build. If I stapled a rant on Twitch bans to a chattel slavery fan, I'd tattoo "hack" on my face like I'd stabbed subtlety in prison. But Lochlainn is chainless. He can declare "I love slavery for the same reason your son hates women in Mario Kart." He is truly, wholly, indisputably free. Unless someone needs lavender picked or gold mined.

If your child is notably fast/slow, they might not get that Lincoln's a bonier Skeletor yet. Lochlainn's got you. Just combine our themes thus far:

While Locklainn's brain screams loudly, some repetition creeps in. You've got to jump around for variety. It takes another hundred pages to drift from schoolyard nicknames for Lincoln.

I'm not lying. Schoolyards try to get clever. They're like hackathons for insults. Bullies strive to go pro and scream at condenser mics. Seabrook, on the other hand, gives up. Odd, when there's an amusing lineage of insults comparing Lincoln's face to a gibbon. But he’d have to read a bunch of boring stuff about an old war to know that.

Dead. Booth clearly stole credit for Seabrook's work. It'd take entire seconds to recover from this diss, or notice it was a diss at all.

While "reverse nicknames" sound like Lochlainn's brain leaking again, I get the idea. It's like calling Seabrook genius, or megadick. The entire Confederacy ran on reverse nicknames. When they called slavery the Cornerstone of civilization, they meant they could take or leave it.

That said, why attack other texts? Isn't homeschooling rough enough? Imagine your homework constantly bitching about real books. Let's save the slander for the defenseless dead.

He's a historian! Lochlainn wrote a thousand page Lincoln book, and I bet it’s only half indexes of footnotes to chapter lists. Since length is quality, that deserves respect. We’ll give the rest of the chapter–a bulleted list of Lincoln’s sins–extra attention. It’s long, and thus gold. And repeated near verbatim (sorry Gramps) in “Important Facts About Abraham Lincoln.”

Let the trial of Abraham “The Real Slaver” Lincoln begin.

Awful. Pedants can split hairs between WW2's 10,000,000 conscripts and the Union's 170,000. But Lochlainn, like a shitty lawyer, bets on stilted wording. Two zeroes can’t hide Lincoln’s shame.

Awful. That's food stolen from firing squads’ families.

Fine. History's pattern is clear: outrun the navy, and you're a privateer. Dawdle, and you're a corpse.

Awful. The IRS extracts value from me at gunpoint, as if I were livestock. No nation built on that sin deserves to exist.

Awful. There’s a Supreme Court type that answers to educated blacks. For them, this holds gospel truth.

Awful. Slavery, which was fine if it existed which it didn’t, would have ended sooner but preferably not at all if Abe hadn’t delayed forcing the South to abandon perfection before its natural end in a week and/or never. If you’re lost, try Lochlainn’s books for five-to-seven year olds. He claims they’re for adults, but he’s just being polite.

Awful. Megadick’s reasoning here is sound. But be nice to Gramps, we remember the title.

The verdict’s clear: Abraham Lincoln is the worst president named Abraham Lincoln. I sentence Dishonest Abe to an eternity of F students screaming his name. Endless Lochlainns and Rickeys, until the sun dims and the last educated black kisses their blonde RealDoll goodbye.

This section sucks, but the rest also sucks. Like the list of scary dictators. Lincoln’s peers include:

Don’t worry, they have pictures. This Civil War book holds infinitely more photos of Hitler than I predicted. Well, unsympathetic photos of Hitler. You know how it is.

We've met cranks in love with fictional characters. Historical caricatures count, and Seabrook offers a spin on the classic form. Abraham Lincoln is clearly fucking his wife. Raw jilted rage drives Seabrook's prose, as if he can hear them hammering away upstairs. The wild, passionate, protracted sessions aren’t the worst part. It’s their quiet, warm embraces before Mrs. Seabrook remounts Dishonest Abe. Sadly, this isn’t Lochlainn’s kink. He is in hell.

Hell ends on a quote from a notable confederate.

Lee?! The whole book’s framed around Davis. The fucking title is…why not end with one from…fuck it. Nevermind. I must not be an educated black.

Honestly, I feel for Lochlain. His world's held hostage by leadership unmoored from human logic or love. That would suck.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Elliot Watson, the most liberal socialist megalomaniacal tyrant since lincoln. Also has six arms and is like nine feet tall.

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