So, I was filling out this survey yesterday, as I often do. I think I’ve mentioned before that these surveys typically consist of fairly stupid marketing-type questions that I only fill out in order to accumulate points for “gifts” that have gotten increasingly crappy over time. Right now I’m on the verge of 10,000 points, and I think I may quit doing these things once I hit it (I can get a $55 Amazon gift card for 8,500 points – roughly 154.5 points/$, but I can get two $35 ones for 5,000 points each – about 142 points/$). Usually I try and fill these things out honestly and to the best of my ability for about two or three questions, and then I get really bored and just kind of click things randomly (just kidding, of course, lest I be in violation of some sort of terms that might cause me to forfeit my points; I actually fill out every question with due diligence). Anyhow, yesterday’s survey was a little bit different.

Yesterday’s questions were kind of interesting (relatively speaking), and I actually gave some thought to the answers. I thought I’d share them here, and see what you think (‘cuz that’s one less day where I have to try and think of something to say that doesn’t relate to the weather or Syracuse or something – though I promise to somehow tie Syracuse in at least once, so as not to disappoint).

Anyhow, on with the questions. They all included answers like “none” or “other” or “I don’t know,” but that would be cheating, so I’ll leave those out and assume I have to pick from their list.

Which of the following people, if any, would you say is America’s greatest “Founding Father?”

Benjamin Franklin
John Hancock
Thomas Jefferson
George Washington
John Adams

Hmm. Well, John Adams, for all his good qualities, was kind of a dick. And I have a tough time getting past the whole Alien and Sedition Acts thing. Especially the The Sedition Act, which provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress, or president in speech or print. I would so be in prison if that was still on the books.

John Hancock? I don’t really know much about him, except he had a funny name and a really big, um, signature. He was Governor of Massachusetts and President of the Continental Congress for a while. He was also accused of smuggling by the British, and he told them to piss off when they tried to search his ship, insofar as they lacked the equivalent of a search warrant, in what may have been the first act of physical resistance against the British.

George Washington got picked to be General mostly because he was taller than everybody else. He was kind of a crummy commander, and (contrary to his legend) he lied to the Continental Congress about the severity of the conditions at Valley Forge, in order to get more money out of them. Washington ordered the scorched earth campaign led by John Sullivan and James Clinton that destroyed more than forty Haudenosaunee (aka, Iroquois) villages, so I’m really not a big fan.

For me, I guess it comes down to Thomas Jefferson (horticulturist, politician, writer, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, inventor, slave banger, founder of the University of Virginia, and, nearly 200 years after his death, still a threat to the Texas Bored of Education) and Ben Franklin (inventor, diplomat, author, humorist, ladies man, and beer lover).

That’s a tough call, but I guess I’ll have to go with Ben. Hell you can even go to Philly and see his privy pit, right around the corner from the Franklin Institute. Plus, they used to make the Franklin Automobile right here in Syracuse (and my grandfather did the leather upholstery on them).

See, I told ya I’d tie this to Syracuse somehow.

Which of the following, if any, would you say is/are America’s greatest explorer(s)?

Lewis and Clark
Davy Crockett
Daniel Boone
Kit Carson
Buzz Aldrin
Jebediah Smith

If the last choice had been Jedediah Springfield, I’d have probably gone with him. But when moon landing denier and all-around asshole Bart Sibrel got all up in Aldin’s face and wouldn’t quit yelling that he was a liar, the (then) 72-yr old Buzz socked him one, I became a big fan of the Buzz. Besides, how can you not go with a guy named Buzz?

Which of the following, if any, would you say is America’s greatest engineering accomplishment?

The Hoover Dam
The Empire State Building
The Transcontinental Railroad
The Erie Canal

The railroad was a pretty big deal, but, seeing as I live right next to it and look at it every morning from my bathroom and kitchen windows, I’m gonna be a homer and go with the Erie Canal. It just goes to show that with enough Irishmen and enough shovels, you can do pretty much anything.

Which of the following innovations, if any, do you feel has contributed the most to America’s success?

The steam engine
The electric light
The cotton gin
The assembly line
Gas-powered automobiles
Modern aviation

This is one where if I was allowed a write-in vote, I’d vote for labor. You know, the people that actually made all the other choices? But if I can’t go with that, I dunno. I guess you’d need to define “success.” I mean, are we talking military success? Economic? Can you have one without the other? I guess for military success, you can’t beat modern aviation, which gave us the ability to rain down an unprecedented amount of destruction on our hapless enemies. But then you wouldn’t have gotten very far in aviation without the gasoline engine (and gas-powered cars and modern aviation would have been impossible without the assembly line credited to everybody’s favorite Nazi sympathizer, Henry Ford). And the assembly line would be nothing without a labor force to work on it (oh, forgot; that’s not a choice). So I’ll go with the electric light, without which, it would have been hard to work inside those dark factories.

Oh, and the steam engine? American? Puh-leeze. You have to credit the British for that; hell, the first one was patented by the English military engineer and inventor Thomas Savery in 1698 – almost 80 years before the declaration of independence – and refined by James Watt (who had a unit of power named after him that you may have heard of: the Watt). If you ever want to see a great collection of steam engines and boilers (and a whole lot more, including everything from dinosaurs to rockets), you need to go to the Science Museum in London, which, among other things, has James Watt’s lab (all its contents were packed up and recreated precisely in the museum).

OK, sorry to digress, but I used to be a bit of a steam head in one of my past lives.

Which of the following, if any, would you say has had the greatest influence on modern American popular culture?

Smartphones (e.g., PDAs such as the iPhone or Blackberry)
Video game systems
Digital video recorders (e.g., TiVo, DVR)
iPod/MP3 player
Personal computer
Internet

Internet, hands down.

Which of the following, if any, would you say is the most important amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition (1st Amendment)
Protection against search or seizure without a warrant (4th Amendment)
Allowing women the right to vote (19th Amendment)
Direct election of Senators by citizens (17th Amendment)
Allowing those over 18 the right to vote (26th Amendment)
Right to keep and bear arms (2nd Amendment)
Abolition of slavery (13th Amendment

They’re all pretty important (though the 4th and 1st have been rather trampled on), but abolishing slavery has to be the most important, no? I mean, people are not the property of other people. It’s a disgrace that we were founded on that principle, and travesty that it required an amendment to the Constitution (and some 700,000 deaths) to abolish it. Even more disgusting, it wasn’t until 1995 (that’s NINETEEN) that Mississippi ratified it.

Which of the following, if any, would you say is/are America’s biggest “villain(s)”?

Bernie Madoff
Lee Harvey Oswald
Benedict Arnold
Timothy McVeigh
Al Capone
The Rosenbergs
John Wilkes Booth

The Rosenbergs? Oy. Hard not to go with Tim McVeigh, but he’d probably enjoy the title, so fuck him. I think I’d add Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush to the list if it were up to me. Booth and Oswald are certainly up there, but I’ll have to go with Madoff for screwing over so many people who thought they’d be able to retire and now will have to work until they die.

Which of the following, if any, do you believe is America’s biggest modern political scandal?

The impeachment of President Nixon
The impeachment of President Clinton
President Reagan and the Iran Contra scandal
President George W. Bush and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq

Iraq WMDs (or lack thereof). Iran Contra is close, though.

Which of the following, if any, would you say has been America’s greatest mistake?

Vietnam War
2000 Presidential election
Bay of Pigs invasion
2009 financial bailout
Slavery
Japanese internment camps during World War II
Government response to Hurricane Katrina
Takedown of Saddam Hussein
2010 health care reform
McCarthyism/The Red Scare
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
War on Terror
Salem witch trials
Prohibition

This one’s a toughie. I’m inclined to pick the 2000 election, but, as bad as that (and what it led to) was, it’s hard not to go with Vietnam, or the Atomic Bombs, or the whole War on Terror bullshit, or the Japanese internment camps…. But I have to go with slavery.

Which of the following, if any, would you say has been America’s greatest achievement?

Government system of checks & balances (3 branches)
Winning independence from Britain
Constitutional right to freedom of speech
National highway system
Electing a mixed race President
Constitution stating that all men are created equal
Space program
The New Deal
Giving women the right to vote
Modern aviation
Putting a man on the moon
Abolition of slavery

Well, let’s see…. If the Constitutional stuff hadn’t been so corrupted over the years, I might go with one of them. I can’t go with abolishing slavery, because I just can’t consider doing what’s right to be a great achievement. We should have done the right thing from the beginning. Same with giving women the right to vote. I’m a big fan of the space program, but I guess, to me, the greatest achievement was the New Deal. It really was what made this country great (when it was still great), and created a class of people somewhere in between the privileged and the destitute. Not that it solved all problems, of course, but (for a while, anyway), it really made this country something special. And that it was all brought about by a member of the privileged class makes it all the more remarkable.

Which of the following, if any, would you say is/are America’s most iconic symbol(s)?

Grand Canyon
Bald eagle
Hot dogs
Mount Rushmore
The White House
Statue of Liberty
Washington Monument
American flag
Baseball
Apple pie
The colors red, white & blue
Cowboys
Uncle Sam
Twin Towers
The Capitol Building

The Twin Towers? Christ, I hope not. I hope we’re not symbolized by death and destruction. I think I’ll go with the Statue of Liberty. A symbol of what we used to stand for (in theory, anyway), imported from a foreign country. Yep, that says America to me.

To the best of your knowledge, during which of the following decades did slavery in the United States officially end?

In the…

1800’s
1840’s
1860’s
1880’s
1900’s
1920’s

Is this a trick question? I mean, unless you’re from Mississippi.

To the best of your knowledge, during which of the following decades were women given the right to vote in the United States?

In the…

1860’s
1880’s
1900’s
1910’s
1920’s

Again, a trick question? As I recall, the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, wasn’t it? Doesn’t everybody know that? Or do I just know it because I was born and raised in the cradle of the Women’s Suffrage movement?

To the best of your knowledge, which of the following conflicts resulted in the greatest number of American casualties?

Civil War
World War I
World War II
Korean War
Vietnam War
Iraq/Afghanistan Wars

Um, duh? What with everybody being an American in the Civil War, that seems like a pretty obvious one.

OK, so that’s what I think. What would your answers be?