Neanderthal Genes

I watch history professors on television, and last week I joined friends at a talk by Prof. Chris O'Sullivan. 

American history professors sometimes calm us, because they've studied the lives of the many venal or incompetent Presidents we've had in the past. Historians bring perspective to the age of President Spanklyn Trumpington Borderline.

America survived Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon. But many have forgotten Nixon, who, with Henry Kissinger,  prolonged the war in Vietnam for four years, killing hundreds of thousands of people for no purpose at all other than to ensure Nixon's re-election. As O'Sullivan put it, Nixon did not plan to run for re-election as "the man who lost Vietnam." But once he had won re-election, peace was no problem. 

We've already forgotten the second Bush, who started a moron's war against the wrong country and destroyed most of the Near East. And as for Andrew Johnson, who the hell was he?

As for the Near East, science now says that most of our dwindling Neanderthal genes come from encounters there, not in Italy after all. I might still resent an old pamphlet by Professor Wisdom I once read, in which Wisdom claimed that the Irish were Neanderthals, except that it turns out that Neanderthal genes might be a good thing to have after all.