Immediately after delivering his brief Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln deemed it a “flat failure.” Indeed, for all its subsequent historical significance, Lincoln’s speech was met on that solemn fall day with thundering silence. And no wonder: It was in desperate need of punching up.
If only Cursebird, the real-time feed that tracks how people swear on Twitter, had been around then, the lanky railsplitter could have fed his speech through the profanity stream’s back end and walked away with a well-deserved standing ovation:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this cocksucking continent, a new nation of motherfuckers, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all motherfuckers—if not the cunts—are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a bullshit fucking war, testing whether that nation of motherfuckers, or any nation of motherfuckers so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that bullshit fucking war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those unfortunate cocksuckers who here gave their lives that that nation of motherfuckers might live. I refer, of course, to the Northerners, not those slavery-supporting jizz-faced douchebags from the South. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, plus, realistically, what the fuck else can we do? You think I’m going to pick up a musket and plunge into this unholy fucking shitstorm? Blow me, you asshole-eating pussies.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave cocksuckers, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, because the world is filled with flaming assholes and jerk-offs, but it can never forget what these brave cocksuckers did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which these unfortunate cocksuckers who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead cocksuckers we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead cocksuckers shall not have died in vain—that this nation of motherfuckers, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the motherfuckers, by the motherfuckers, for the motherfuckers—if not the cunts—shall not perish from the earth. Which, as I previously mentioned, is filled with flaming assholes and jerk-offs. If you don’t believe me, wait until you get a load of the fucking teabaggers seven score and six years hence.
I memorized the Gettysburg Address when I was a kid growing up in the public schools of Tennessee and assumed the things it said were true. That’s when I was a child.
Looking back, from the perspective of having studied American history for more than sixty years, I realize how false Lincoln’s speech really was. Dishonest Abe Lincoln was a master of political spin, whose words were the polar opposite of his deeds. Government of the people, by the people and for the people was exactly the thing he was trying to crush in his unconstitutional and brutal attack on the Confederate nation.
Lincoln’s words are a mockery when one considers that he held 13,000 northern political prisoners, without trial or due process of law – just because they disagreed with his illegal war.
Famous American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), said of the Gettysburg Address: “The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”