Dehydrated Ignorance: dumbing down the poor using H2O and untruth as weapons

Water wars
Photo ©2016 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved. 

In the preface to his book The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, the late author Kenneth M. Stampp wrote, "I have simply found no convincing evidence that there are any significant differences between the innate emotional traits and intellectual capacities of Negroes and whites."

Poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, however, has turned this theory on its head because scientists and doctors are now saying lead-laced water will affect the "natural" intelligence and behavior of some 8,000 children living there who have ingested and bathed in poisoned water as well as the health of residents with compromised immune systems, the elderly, and pregnant women.

What is the simplest way to exterminate people? Give them contaminated water.  It's almost like giving blankets laced with chicken pox virus to indigenous peoples and smells like the syphilis tragedy known as the Tuskegee Experiment.

Flint's water poses an environmental emergency, and citizens should be evacuated just as they should be moved from any unsafe place.

According to the Census Bureau, Flint's Black population is 53%, the median income for a household in the city was $28,015, and the median income for a family was $31,424. The U.S. estimated real median household income was $53,657 in 2014 and $54,462 in 2013. 

What are private companies doing to help citizens in Flint?

I reached out to the top private U.S. companies according to Forbes' - Cargill, Koch Industries, and Mars - to see if they were going to help citizens in Flint... only got a response from Cargill, a global food processing corporation based outside Minneapolis, Minnesota that operates a living sea salt business in St. Clair, 68 miles from Flint.

At press time, Cargill Spokesman Mark Klein said he had not heard of anything his company was doing to help in Flint, but they recently had helped folks after "the recent flooding along the Mississippi River." 

I received no response from Koch (I wasn't surprised!) or Mars.

Photo ©2016 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.

Jesus and water

Looking back at biblical times, while on the cross, Jesus stated, "I thirst." He was given vinegar to drink, and soon expired.

"Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." (John 19:29-30) http://www.housetohouse.com/BibleQuestions.aspx?Letter=all&Question=4197

Before, in Samaria, Jesus asked a woman at the well, "Will you give me a drink?" He informed her that man becomes thirsty after drinking potable water but the water of truth he was about to give her would quench her thirst forever. That is the two-pronged catastrophe residents of Flint have been denied - water and truth - and they will find themselves suffering from dehydration and cognitive maladjustment for a lifetime.

Just deny them water

When I was a substitute teacher in the Cobb County public school system, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw students get a drink from the water fountain or buy bottled water instead of a soft drink. School officials told us not to let kids out of the classrooms for a drink of water when they raised their hands and said they were thirsty. If they got a drink, then they would have to go to the bathroom and may not come back to class!  Kids on reduced (paid) school lunch chowed down each day on a bottled Coke and French Fries.  Wonder how their PURE water intake compared to students in private or charter schools...

The children of Flint have been denied clean water and truth, and they could live in dehydrated ignorance for life.

According to some nutritionists,  if you do not supply enough water to your body, your brain cannot function well, and you could develop headaches, migraines, become fatigued and develop joint pain. Time will tell the list of ailments the citizens of Flint will endure.

The body is 55-78% water. Tissues and organs are mainly made up of water.  

Brain- 90%

Blood - 83%

Muscle -75%

Bone - 22%

According to the Mayo Clinic, lead poisoning in adults can cause abdominal pain, constipation, high blood pressure, kidney failure, seizures, nervousness, muscle and joint pain, and mental functioning decline. It can also result in a medical emergency causing vomiting and toxic metabolic encephalopathy, a syndrome of overall brain dysfunction.
(http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisoning/basics/symptoms/con-20035487)

Just giving out bottled in Flint will not solve the problem. "Treatment for lead poisoning involves removing exposure threats and sources of contamination," notes Mayo Clinic. "Chelation therapy, which involves taking medication that binds to the lead and allows it to pass during urination, is standard in treating the condition. EDTA therapy using ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid is another treatment reserved for people with higher levels of lead. Even with therapy, damage caused by lead poisoning is not always reversible." 

Photo ©2016 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.

The big "water is good" lie

Have you ever had a big glass of cool water on a hot summer day? There's nothing like it if the water is free from contaminants. But poor children are not being raised on clean water. Even though bottled water sales have increased, many people are forced to bath in it instead of drinking it. On the news, I saw a Flint mother bathing her one year old with room temperature (cold) bottled water in the kitchen sink. "I feel like I'm living in a Third World country," she explained.

Lead based water negates the melanin advantage

Despite a theorized melanin advantage, Black children in Flint are now intellectually inferior to whites who have also ingested the water there.  Dr. Francis Cress Welsing stated that blacks were genetically dominate and superior to whites because of melanin, but her Theory has been set upon its head by Flint's unclean water system. Two weeks after Welsing's  death, scientists have proclaimed that folks who drank and/or bathed in Flint's water over the past two years could have lower intelligence and social problems going forward. Guess that trumps (bad word choice) the melanin advantage.  

Dehydrated ignorance is a term coined by Tomi Johnson on 1/22/2016.