This. Is. Us. Part Two

We have ALWAYS been this. One example among countless: The Sand Creek Massacre: “An estimated 70 to 600 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho – about two-thirds of whom were women, children, and infants – were murdered and mutilated by Col. [John] Chivington [a Methodist minister] and the volunteer troops under his command. Chivington and his men also took scalps and many other human body parts as trophies, including unborn fetuses, as well as male and female genitalia.” [Wikipedia]

Captain Silas Soule refused to attack at Sand Creek, testified against Chivington and “within three months was murdered by a soldier who had been under Chivington’s command at Sand Creek. Some believed Chivington may have been involved.”

Chivington suffered … the end of his political aspirations (oh, the poor, poor man), but nothing else and died of cancer peacefully in bed in Denver in 1894 at the ripe old age of 73, unrepentant to the very end.

Thus has it always been, with more massacres certainly to come.

This.
Is.
US.

This. Is. Us.

The following quote so accurately pegs the U.S. of the 2020s as it did the U.S. of the 1890s. Shirer writes of Upton Sinclair’s famous and seminal work, The Jungle, regarding the Chicago and U.S. in which he was born and raised.

This. Is. Us.

More will follow.

On Courage to Stand Your Ground

Regarding < this interview in the New Yorker>: A response.

As I know from being a reporter (and as opposed to the myth we all had agendas), all I had to do was let someone talk and then print a transcript. They showed their moral bankruptcy or stupidity or cupidity themselves without help. This reporter has done exactly that.

While outside the Irving trial and her bio I don’t know much about her or her path here, but this reveals serious, mealy-mouthed moral bankruptcy. She’s on board with the “both sides are good people” thought school and seems to have been bought off by an American embassy in Jerusalem.

While outside the Irving trial and her bio I don’t know much about her or her path here, but this reveals serious, mealy-mouthed moral bankruptcy. She’s on board with the “both sides are good people” thought school and seems to have been bought off by an American embassy in Jerusalem.

Have to wonder how she rationalizes an administration that celebrates a white Christian nationalist pastor, Joel Webbon. As I said, just print the transcript and they eagerly reveal who they are:

“I do think that there’s some level of not all Jews, but particular Jews in positions of political power in the West, outside of Israel, not their own country, but in our country or in England or this or that, and opening the door to Muslims to come and ravage the nation. …

“So I see Muslims, not as our friends, but doing this, destroying nations. But I see Jews holding open the door.”—Joel Webbon [Right Response Ministries livestream, 21-Apr-25.] “Oh, but that beautiful embassy in Jerusalem!” <ahem>

Back to Lipstadt: Her very weak response to the American GeStaPo snatch-and-grab mass arrests of non-Jews and their “resettlement” in the south makes me wonder: Would she have, voluntarily or not, served on on one of the Judenräten in the German-occupied East?

Sadly, for me at least, she gives her answer in her own words. Makes you wonder what she said off record. She has the serious career and credentials behind her, but ghat’s all the more reason not to falter now.

While her reticence might be down to worry about threats, she HAS way more to fear from the truly antisemitic American right wing, who have for centuries put down any Jew, fellow traveller or not. She now reminds me of the character Aaron Jastrow from “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.”

Antisemitism is wrong. Full stop. The state of Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, & the West Bank, full stop. Fascism & genocide are wrong whether perpetrated by Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Communist, atheist or my Aunt Fanny. Both the above statements are true. No gray.

“If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.” — Gordon A. Eadie, 1945

When you’ve done all you know stand, then stand there, to paraphrase Ephesians, which adds that your stand should be made while wearing the whole armor of your faith—your moral compass.

It’s trite, but never again is now. So as for me and my house, I stand. Wholly and on the record, unafraid.