giving her the benefit of the doubt I had responded to “since you’re jewish what do you know about the jewish mafia?” with an explanation of the Purple Gang and Meyer Lansky and the absorption of the mafia into the national security state, and she comes back at me with that.
This came after two days of me explaining historical materialism to her. I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about white people
Fun fact Idaho is the only US state with a gibberish name. It was named by a conman who claimed to be an elected representative from the territory (he wasn’t) and suggested the word Idaho for the state. He claimed it was a Shoshone word meaning “gem of the mountain” (it’s not)
This sent me on a rabbit hole of looking up the origin of state names, and it turns out that it is to this day unknown where the name Oregon even came from. There are several ideas on the wiki page for etymology of Oregon, but apparently nothing is conclusive.
Maine, Utah, Rhode Island, and Arizona are also unknown, but with some possible explanations. I only mentioned Idaho because it’s a known gibberish word created by one guy. Also fun fact, New Mexico was named that by the Spanish before Mexico was a country.
Rhode Island ‘named by Dutch explorer Adrian Block. He named it “Roodt Eylandt” meaning “red island” in reference to the red clay that lined the shore. The name was later anglicized when the region came under British rule.’
There’s a second explanation that explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano compared the area to the island of Rhodes. It’s uncertain why the colonists there chose the name, but the Dutch name is the most probable. But there’s no certain explanation.