Savage

What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?

Religious Danger

To go with the previous post, let’s remember a <quote from Dan Savage of The Stranger> from 2016:

If kids got raped at Denny’s as often as they got raped at church, it would be illegal to take your kid to Denny’s. Trans urinators aren’t a danger to kids. Youth pastors are.”
—Dan Savage

Oh. Yeah.

Seen on Reddit

What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?

God’s Rightwing Terror Turn

This post on Reddit contains a lot. But, since I have such extensive (and deplorable, destructive) insider knowledge of Bill Gothard, his cult and his cultists and their oeurve, It rang true.

None of the Gothardites is more passionate and … well, cultish than the (in)famous Quiverful Duggers. And, of course, they are chock full of pedophiles and pedophilia and outrageous stupidity and lunacy.

Here’s the link to the post: America’s top Christian family is full of pedophiles, and two comments from Redditors that I agree with:

“The Duggers are a multi-generational family of devout Christian child predators.”

“Amy, now 39, was not allowed to be alone with her grandfather at any point when she was growing up in Arkansas. ‘I wondered all the time. I asked. I asked my mom, I asked my grandma, and they obviously were going to protect the answer. They didn’t want me to know that information growing up,’ she says
After his death, Amy’s mom sat her down to reveal the truth, that her late relative was a ‘predator,’ as Amy labeled it in her new book.
“‘I honestly did not know why until my mom and I spoke after he passed away,’ she shares. ‘But I obviously assumed. I always had assumptions as to why, but it was never spoken about. It was a little difficult, but I’m one of those people that when I was little, I asked questions, sure. But if something was told to me, I just believed it.’
“‘I was very naive, and I’m a kid, so I was like, “Okay,”‘ she continues. “I knew grandpa couldn’t go to the trampoline with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t sit and watch a movie with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t be in a car with me. I knew grandpa couldn’t take me to school. There were so many things, and I just knew that that’s how it was.

And here are the two comments I most relate to:

The sole value of organized religion — and conservatism in general — is respect for and obedience to [one’s perception of] traditionally established hierarchy, and hierarchy dictates that those on top (in-groups) are rightfully idolized and receive privileges, credibility, and resources, while those on the bottom (out-groups) are demonized/dehumanized and/or bound by restrictions, scrutiny, and lack of resources.
To them, the second-greatest injustice imaginable is for those [they perceive to be] on the bottom [of social hierarchy] to have access to the rights, credibility, and resources reserved for those on top. The first greatest injustice is for those on top to be bound by the restrictions, scrutiny, and lack of resources reserved for those on the bottom.
It is never the act itself that upsets them, but rather, the social standing of the person doing the act, as said act is a privilege meant for those on top of [their perceived] hierarchy. (See also: pedophilia – Trump and Catholic church vs. LGBTQ+ and drag queens)
To them, children are property of their social betters, and “know your place” is their mantra.
Shido_Ohtori

And:

Exactly. They don’t have morality (this or that is wrong) nor ethics (what if everyone did this?). They are not built like that.
And it’s deeper than just them thinking rape is right or wrong depending on who does it to who. It’s that they can’t even conceive of any harm as a crime unless it is against a social better. They won’t see it.
Violence, humiliation, rape, exploitation, coercion flow down the authoritarian’s hierarchy in a way that’s so natural, so inherent to their worldview, that it would be like noticing the air and getting mad about it. Authoritarian types don’t resort to violence to put the hierarchy back in place, the way people imagine. Violence IS the hierarchy. It’s what it’s for. It’s what it’s made of.
—DaBlurstofDaBlurst

But here’s the rub: These people are now in charge of the government. And this regime is completely destroying everything we knew. It’s a new world, and it’s run by the New Apostolic Revivalists, with billionaire tech boys tagging along and exploiting it for everything it’s worth.

I’ve said many times: Trump is irrelevant and almost dead. It’s increasingly obvious that he is not in control, is not in touch with reality, is fed what he wants to hear. The government head is nominally the vice president and the real players are Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel and some assorted funders/enablers with very deep pockets.

Democracy is done in this country. We are a religious oligarchy. Among other things. Cruel, venal, irreligious, hypocritical, ultra-violent. And I’ve been along for the long, slow, ever-steeper slide, courtesy of American evangelicals.

The only question is just what happens next. I can guess.

Here I Stand

What should we come to … if political denunciation is to be turned without check against art?

Crashing and Burning the Drumpf Shuttle

The Apostle Paul said, “Having done all, stand firm.” After a lifetime of studying German history, and having been “raised up [as a child] in the way I should go,” this is my firm stand, based upon the way I was raised, which I am not departing from, and the deep study I have made. Silence no more.

Just now in the House: Over 100 Democrats are asking for unanimous consent to protect against cuts to SNAP and Medicaid by vote of the House on record.

North Carolina’s notorious Republican Rep Virginia Foxx has the floor and refuses to relinquish it to allow a vote to eliminate from Trump’s bill cuts that will close hundreds of rural hospitals, destroy health insurance for tens of millions, close hundreds of nursing homes with our elderly left with nowhere to go, destroy care for veterans, give a massive budget to the unaccountable secret police force called ICE that is bigger than the military budgets of most other nations on earth, and cause widespread hunger and misery … for a single purpose: Tax cuts for billionaires.

This bill goes beyond cruelty. This is wickedness in high places, immorality, and is fundamentally hostile to the mission and life of Jesus Christ and the American promise. It is a continuation and expansion of our long National Sin and Shame-our tradition of concentration camps, cruelty, segregation, slavery, and genocide.

Case in point: Just a bit ago, when Jim Clyburn of South Carolina invoked his request by (paraphrasing) for this nation to follow Jesus Christ’s absolute command of us to feed the hungry and care for the sick, Foxx refused to yield and the chair ruled that invoking Christ “constituted debate and is therefore out of order and cannot be entertained.”

But yes. Let’s continue to truly believe that this administration and its empty, immoral, indecent, and anti-Christian Republican party are, indeed, true Christians.

A family member memorably told me fairly recently I could not vote for a Democrat and escape going to hell. On the contrary, I dissent: It’s my firm, unshakeable belief no one can vote for Trump or any Republican on any level, and therefore for concentration camps, masked kidnappers, and white “Christian” nationalism and codified American cruelty and escape God’s ultimate, final, eternal, fatal judgment of hell. I would add that, as smirking folks are fond of telling me, “That’s not me saying it. It’s Christ himself.”

It’s time for actual, real Christians who are committed to follow and implement Christ’s main commandment: “Love one another” … and “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me” to rise up, leave the cult of Trump and truly implement those Christ-given commands.

You want a Christ-centered nation? Fine. Then remember: Jeff Bezos and his handful of billionaire friends and their supporters can pass through the eye of needle easier tan they can get into heaven. You’re worshiping the wrong gods.

Here is what a true Christian nation would do right now: Supercharge Social Security to provide full retirement for anyone older than 60. Fully fund universal healthcare and remove the profit motive from it. Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Treat the mentally ill and addicted. Fully take care of all veterans. Honor honest labor with real, livable wages. Take in the oppressed of other lands, no matter their skin color. FOLLOW Christ’s commands. Period. He meant what he said and it was very plain.

Then, and ONLY then, may you call this nation “Christian”. Until then, you’re enjoying the cruelty and setting your own path to perdition. Hurting others is not what you should be about.

This is my firm appeal to friends and family who are blind to wake to your peril. This is my firm stand. What’s yours?

It was a Cold and Boring Night

“To me, as a gay boy, hugging another boy was perfectly natural. It always has been, it always will be. I always felt instinctively somehow that people would disapprove and say I was naughty. And I always felt instinctively that I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it and all those disapproving people could just go suck eggs and pound sand. Even at the height of the worst spiritual and sexual repression that Oklahoma and its churches could dole out, my inner belief has always been the same. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve known who I am and what I wanted since I was at least five. And everyone else who is not onboard with that can go over Niagra Falls without a barrel.”

21-Apr-64

Interviewer: So, tell me your story.

Steve: I was born in Roswell, New Mexico, one cold Saturday morning in December 1963. I lived in Roswell and Clovis, spent my teens and twenties in Duncan, OK <involuntary shudder>, and then lived in Dallas, TX; Pleasant Hill, CA; Highlands Ranch, CO; San Francisco, CA; Ann Arbor, MI; Brentwood, CA; and Nashville, TN. I was blessed with decades with the love of my life. I was a mensware salesman, a reporter and PR director, a run-of-the-mill temp, an internal communications manager, a substitute teacher, an author, a regular elementary teacher, a jack of all trades, a master of none. Then I died.
What’s to know?


Int: It sounds like an entry in one of those old city telephone guides, you know, the ones like “City of Roswell, NM, 1966: 1616 W. Juniper 88201. Pollock, Marion E., service station mgr.; Janis W, bus driver, custodian; children Kathy, 10, Vicky, 8, Steven, 3. 505-623-1354.

S: Perhaps.

Int: There’s always more to the biographical entry. Even as biography, it’s rather skimpy.

S: Fine. How’s this: My mother went into labor at 2 a.m. on a Satuday morning, Dec. 14, 1963. Everything was closed on a cold winter night. They hustled my sisters over to my near-by aunt’s house, then headed for the hospital, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center, where a future actress who would be named Demi Moore had just been born the month before.

They didn’t really want the Catholic Poor Clare Nuns at St. Mary’s on the south edge of town to deliver a bouncing baby white Protestant boy and have him lie in a nursery sprinkled with Papist holy water surrounded by what my grandparents always called, “Mescans”—a deliberate slur, both literal and figurative, an all around great word for them and their purpose. Catholics were Mescans, Mescans were Catholics. If you went to St. Peter and Paul’s, you were Mescan. You went to the First Church of the Nazarene, you were good Christian white people destined to conquer heaven and have its fruits and riches yours forever and ever amen. The attitude when they moved from Oklahoma where negroes were to be found to New Mexico where there were few and far between negroes, but Mexicans abounded simply shifted their racism from black to brown. “We can’t say ‘nigger’ no more? Fine, we don’t need ‘nigger’ around here anyway, they ain’t that much of them here. But we got lots of Mescans. Wetbacks. Illegals. Mescans steal. Mescans lie. Mescans are pestilential. Somebody gets shot in Roswell, a Mescan done it. We keep loaded pistols under our pillows in case a wetback comes bustin’ through the front door. Thank god for Jesus and the NRA and Sig Sauer 9mms!”

[Can you see a theme, perhaps a thread, that will run through some of my family encounters? Let’s clear this up first. I quote racists. I don’t share their views. Even if they are among the people who created my existence. It doesn’t fly with me. Never has. How my grandparents and parents approached issues of race and sexuality will pop up here unexpectedly like this throughout.]

So about my debut. 2 a.m. I’m screaming (stupid idiot that I was) that it was time to get the hell out of this vag and never, ever, never acquaint myself with one in a personal way ever again. Dad fumbles for some matches. Probably ice on the road, he’s driving with a finger while trying to light his 900th Lucky Strike of the day. He doesn’t have any matches left. She sighs and orders him to turn around and go to the house and get some. Nothing open at 2 a.m. in Roswell, NM, USA, during the deep dark nights of December 1963. So he turns around, grabs some matches, starts the drive back to the hospital.

ENMMC is up in the swankier northern end of town. The fashionable side, not like the ugly, poor Catholic side with all the Mescans. ENMMC is located on West Country Club Road, just off North Main Street. I was BORN on Country Club, motherfuckers and don’t forget it.

So, let’s see … 2 a.m. labor, time of arrival, 06:12 a.m.

Basically the story is that thanks to America’s tobacco companies, their addictive drugs within deadly products, two things were fated for me: One, to almost have been born in the back of the family 1958 Rambler station wagon. Two, to make sure that Dad dies of COPD and heart failure, his body destroyed just as he crosses the 80-year mark.

So, see what I mean? Boring. As. Fucking. Hell.

I: Let us and our readers be the judge of that.

S: Great. Editors and the “people” … fine, I’m sure everything will be just peachy. Go on?

I: For now, if you’re not too tired.

S: Fine. There were years of attending exhausting get-togethers at the Roswell First Church of the Nazarene, W. Eighth Street. I can still taste the sloppy joes from the kitchen in the “family center” (gym). Mom was invited to a service there in 1952 by one of the extended family cousins. She prayed the prayer and joined. And believed, at least, that is until about 1976, when her everlasting war with her oldest daughter shifted into high and serious and everlasting gear.

We moved to the ancestral home of Duncan, OK, in 1974. After a couple of years, the oldest sister rebelled against the “not-with-it-ness” of the Church of the Nazarene. There also weren’t enough husbands on the hoof at the small church in Duncan we attended. She and the more malleable middle sister decamped for the holy rollers. Mom muttered something about slowly changing herself, and promptly dragged me off to the a place that called itself “Gospel Beams” church. A perfectly cromulent word, but in that context … odd and weird. It wasn’t “First Church of the Whatever,” or “Fir Street Baptist,” it was …. Gospel. Frickin’. Beams.

I suffered so many indignities there. For starters, I didn’t buy the bullshit. Here was my 12-year-old self’s perspective: On one Sunday, I’m going to Oak Avenue Church of the Nazarene, the exact church my dad’s grandmother and her twin sister had propped up for decades, and in which my parents had been married. Wherein there was a disapproving Chuch Lady, predating Dana Carvey’s performance on Saturday Night Live by years, named Mary Mahan (isn’t that a perfect name for smarmy self-righteous Sunday School teachers who conduct warfare on teenage girls who have the temerity to wear not just pants, but horrors! Blue. Jeans. when they are to be seen in the public square. The Church Lady had, of course, her Church Man complement but who wasn’t her husband, the preacher. Charles Stroud meant well, I’m sure, but he agreed with Church Lady and was just as conservative and NOT WITH IT to my sisters, one of whom at that point was about to be a senior in high school, and the other was out of school and doing nursing and office work. And this in 1975-76, a supposedly freer and happier time.

Come one Sunday morning Oldest Sister sits in parking lot of Hypocritical, Self-Righteous and Husband-Material-poor Church, where had sat our ancesters in the pews, still sprinkled with the rice from our parents wedding. They talk it over. Sister 1 says she just can’t bring herself to go in that place ever again. (She didn’t … it burned down in 2009, surely a sign of the removal of God’s blessing if there ever was one.) Sister 2 agrees, but she has other more nefarious plans afoot. They pull out of the parking lot and head to the east side of town, the locale, ‘mongst the poor Rednecks living near the original Chisholm Trail, of Gospel. Frickin’ Beams. They’ll get married there. Husbands on the hoof are far, far more plentiful.

Meanwhile back at the Church of the Nazarene, we get a spiffy little sermon. Follow me here. This is quite crucial to my future. The sermon runs like this: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!!!” <Amens, claps, whistles, “Kill the Devil!” Great-grandma shouts from the grave>.

Fast forward a week later. Mother’s heart has been burdened (poor Mother) with the information given her by the Holy Spirit, who at certain propitious moments in my life has acted more like Mercury, the winged god of speed and messenger boys everywhere, than a sober, deliberative, slow-moving force. So this time, the message is, “Oldest Daughter shouldn’t be defying your religious authority woman! Do something!”

Mother does. She immediately yanks me out of the Church of the Nazarene, where, remember, I’ve just been told on the authority of the church into which I was born and raised and had memorized the 1960 Church Manual so I could know how to perform weddings and funerals because … get this … I thought I would become a Church of the Nazarene preacher, [HA!] and had informed Mother of this when I was about 11.

Given a choice about which church to attend would have been lovely. Alas, it was not to be. I was the young, stupid child who couldn’t possibly be trusted to know what was good for him. So, after one hour of being exposed to “Gospel Beams”’ … shall we say, bizarreness and cultish overtones … I’m confident I would have scurried back underneath the skirts of the mother church (of the Nazarene), even if those skirts did belong to a pants-hating biddy who had a hand in every Oak Avenue C of the N pie.

But I wasn’t given a choice. Remember the previous sermon, supposedly delivered by a stern god to church leaders possessed of “utter sanctification” and who are therefore qualified to speak on subjects most weighty: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!”

I was 11. Puberty was dawning. Teenage outrage, hatred of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, inflated sense of injustice, and general all-around questioning and boundary-pushing are imminent.

The next Sunday, we don’t hightail it over to the other side of town with the sanctified who hate devilish tongue-speaking. Instead, we head straight for “Gospel Beams.” “We’re going here from now on,” says Mummie Dearest.

What happened? Well, last week the church of my birth told me speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession. This week at “Gospel Beams”? FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE THESE WOMEN DRESSED IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!

Then: The kicker. If I am to understand through the gibberish, the complete lack of any catechism, any order of service, regular communion or a multitude of things, there is one clear message: If you do NOT speak in tongues, God is withholding His greatest blessing from you and therefore there was something wrong with you if you didn’t immediately babble in “the presence of the Lord.”

In other words, NOT speaking in tongues was evidence of God withholding his favorite gift from you and therefore you opening yourself up to … you guessed it, demonic possession.

It was perfect. This nonsense lasted for next six (!) years until I got a car and a paper route with lots of Sunday morning deliveries to make, and therefore could make my mumbled excuses of “having to work on Sunday mornings” and thus avoid “Gospel Beams” like the plague.

Admittedly, this was convenient. How many times can you watch emotionally and physically repressed women have the greatest outbursts and then run up and down the aisles screaming, with tragic stains of tears spotting their impeccably tailored UltraSuede outfits?

It was the only time in their lives where they could say anything in their gobbledy language and get away with it. They could have been calling their husbands “black holes of emotional needs with cocks the size of pencil erasers”; they could have been yelling about how the very church around them was suffocating all of us, burying us in a cloying smell of death and fear and weird ritual “call and response” exercises, all done up in a format that claimed that the Holy Spirit was in charge of the church bulletin’s list of the order of the service; He and He alone decided which songs to sing, which verses to recite, whether to let the congregation leave before 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon because the pot roast would burn or whether to just meld it with the 6 p.m. service, which had it’s own weird rituals.

Namely: In that evening Sunday service, one went into the church at 6 p.m., sang some choruses the music for which hadn’t been written down; instead, the music dwelled in the brain of the church organist and music director. This system relied on obscure verses to provide lyrics to songs. If you were a newcomer, well, tough shit. You should just KNOW the tune to Psalm 63:3-4: “Thy lovingkindness is better than life. Thy lovingkindness is better than life. Thus will I bless thee, while I live; I will lift up my hands unto they name.”

The choruses, and many other things, will come upon you stealthily. Some day, you’ll stand and belt out, “They lovingkindness is better than life.” with the best of them. And you won’t have to look up the text to Psalm 63:3-4 in the King James.

After the choruses were sung from memory, there would be the show stopper. It was time for the crowd to “testify.” They would get up (as the Spirit moved them to jump) and they would testify: “I thought about that lady in the cubicle next to mine at Halliburton and how she wore that black dress to work on Tuesday and I also thought of about 18 different things I would do to her if I weren’t shackled to the ol’ ball-and-chain and if the sexy lady didn’t think I was a toad with three heads. But the Lord spoke to me and said, “Hey dumbass! You’re married under solemn holy vows and cannot think with your cock anymore, so put it away!” and He saved me right then and there from committing the grave sin of dissing my wife who hasn’t put out since 1957!” And so on.

But “Testify Time” often came with a built-in hazard that almost every Sunday hoisted the Beams of the Gospel by its own petard. The idea was that anyone could speak as the Spirit moved them. But the fatal flaw was that “Testify Time” could be easily hijacked by someone claiming to be moved. And the beauty of that was that no one else could stop him ’cause then they’d be speaking against the mysterious ways and movings of the Lord!

This always led to a brilliant, albeit stultifying, interlude every Sunday night. And some Sunday mornings. See, this dude named Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher would get up and start to speak spontaneously and randomly and boringly about … God alone can remember what. Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher tried all the words and phrases and everything, but … dear lord, he just wasn’t good. He did NOT have the showmanship, the theatricality, the ability to get Ultra Suede-ed women screaming in tongues, of the father-son team that pastored that church.

So Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher always brought the place to a standstill. People would get bored. Some would drift away thinking, “I gotta get up at 6 a.m. to go to work, I can’t sit here all night! Don’t judge me!” The organist would sigh and eventually close her hymn book and leave the stage. I would engage in an hour-long seesaw between fighting off sleep and wondering if I did those goddamn Algebra problems in my homework. The relatives would later tut-tut and cluck-cluck about Joe Who-Wanted-Desperately-to-be-a-Preacher and his Showstopping Show. And I would always wonder, “What are you bitching for? He’s perfect for that place and it’s crazy rituals! They’re both bizarre, rambling, byzantine, stultifying, yawn-inducing, and completely ridiculous!” And I would always keep those opinions to myself.

Invariably, by 7:30 or so, even Mom would give up and give the signal and THANK YOU JESUS we could leave. The evening was over, I was a little over an hour from bedtime with school the next day during half the year, and only a little light left out during the rest of the year, so the evening was always ruined completely. Until I was 16, got some wheels and started working a little, and therefore had built in excuses, Sunday nights were the most miserable time of my entire existence. Thank god for K-Mart; when I started working there at 17, I had to often work Sunday afternoons from 12-6. Church started at 6, leaving me to drive myself straight home. Oh, the glorious freedom!!! Money, wheels and a Get-Out-of-Church-Free card!!!

Rapture. [Get it? Rapture? See what I did there?]


S: Fun religion-related fact: Sister #2’s extensive geneology research uncovered the origins of the Pollock clan in Scotland at the House of Pollok near Glasgow. In the house is a lovely, very faggy portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, in the full froppery of the age. The story is that King James was a complete fag: a fanny pounder, an ass bandit, an artist, funny, confirmed bachelor who managed to fuck enough to produce some offspring … in otherwords, a light-in-the-loafers Mary, Friend of Dorothy, honest-to-god poofter Mariçon fanny bandit bugger poofter pansy fruitcake Uranian Nancy Boy who is also a pillow biter and shirt lifter, Molly/Maryann, cocksucking, ass fucking, limp-wristed Son or Daughter of Bilitis, who just happened to be the King (and queen) of England when the most famous post-Reformation English translation of the Bible was put together … and then dedicated to … His Pansyness.

I can even remember the start of the dedication to the King James Version of the Bible. It is a translation which inexplicably remains sacred and inviolate to millions of Americans who believe that all other translations are the Devil’s Work—especially that 1960s New International Version, which was authored, obviously, by Satan in a futile attempt to tempt you away from the KJV, the One True Bible. Never mind that the KJV is the one translation commissioned by the biggest fruit and nut to hold the British Throne since King Edward II, a poofter whose poof hole was made poofier with red hot pokers and thus he expired. That is, the biggest fruit and nut until at least, oh, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson. Yes, I’m well aware they are prime ministers. It’s just that the British throne is no longer occupied by monarchs. The actual Queen (and whatever king succeeds her) has no power and prefers to remain well above sordid political affrays. At the moment, in fact, she is having nothing at all to do with the nasty, muddly mess of Brexit, and wishes to keep herself and the Royal Corgis (who possess more brains than all the prime ministers of the last 75 years put together) clean and well above the fray of sordid power wielding.

Ahem.

Sorry.


Fair warning: There will now be an incredibly long, massive digression. Feel free to skip ahead over the following King James Bible bit. I always did growing up; you should have the same privilege.


I said I clearly remember the KJV dedicatory. If you’ve never had the privilege of growing up in a true, Bible (KJV)-believing household, here’s your chance to get a feel for what it’s like.

The dedicatory is the way the holy priests of the church decided to flatter their fluttery sovereign: They gave him his new Bible and wrote him the most fawning letter in recorded history. This flattery of the fluttery King James is peerless. It took them longer to think of this short paragraph than it did to translate the whole book. And if you’ve ever read the book of Numbers, you KNOW how long it must have taken.

This introductory bit of the monks were so far up His Nibs ass that they could see out his nose. It is officially known as “The Epistle Dedicatory.” It was included in almost every KJV Bible until the latter part of the Twentieth Century.


An aside: Of COURSE!!!!! the Dedicatory was eliminated out of Satanic, Popish ignorance and dishonesty and thus “distorts the intent of the preparers … hides the flavor and meaning of the time in which it was prepared, and presumes that we know better than the preparers. It also changes history by withholding vital historical information,” says the New Albany-Louisville Bible Students Ecclesia. Which appears, interestingly enough, to be an … organization, shall we say … dedicated to pure things such as Gay King James’ Very Own Bible.

The comment quoted above is followed by a longish screed against erasing history and goes on rather tiringly about the scourge of political correctness (quelle horreur!). They end their rant with “We are not critical [underlined not critical] of Catholics! We are critical of Catholic doctrine. The distinction is ENORMOUS!

Insert “blacks” and “black culture” for Catholics and what do you have? “We are not critical of Black people! We are critical of Black culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “I don’t have anything against blacks, but I just hate Rap, welfare and breeding like bunnies!”

And you can play this white, cis, heteronormative, privileged, etc., game with any group from history: “We are not critical of Jews! We are critical of Jewish culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “We are not critical of Gays! We are critical of Gay culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!” “We are not critical of Mescans! We are critical of Mescan culture. The distinction is ENORMOUS!”

<AHEM> Sorry for the digression from the digression. Back to the main digression:


“The Epistle Dedicatory’ [Gird your loins, girls, it’s gonna be a long read. My pithy, snarky, sarcastic comments attempting to spice up this lickspittle fawning are in brackets.]

“TO THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE [Get HER!], JAMES, by the Grace of God [and Elizabeth’s shriveled up ovaries], KING OF GREAT BRITAIN [until the Twenty-teens Brexit fiasco], FRANCE [“I fart in your general direction”], AND IRELAND [As if! He wishes!], DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, etc. [Yadda yadda yabba doo] The Translators of the Bible [groveling in the mud] wish Grace [Definition: “Unmerited divine assistance …” “unmerited” certainly fits the description], Mercy [“compassion or forbearance.” Question: Was a man who could have someone beheaded at a gesture capable of being particularly compassionate?], and Peace [oh good lord, the man waged wars right and left and north and west] through JESUS CHRIST [whoa, all caps, don’t shout, my dear monks] our Lord [finally, the end of the sentence].

“(1) Great and manifold were the blessings [We kicked in the teeth of the Welsh and a chicken showed up in our pot, miraculously!], most dread Sovereign [the man called his male lover his “wife” and indulged in very quite un-Dread-Sovereign-like activities], which Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, [who could mercifully strike us down and end this nasty, brutish and short existence—now THAT would be true mercy!] bestowed upon us the people of England, when first he sent Your Majesty’s Royal Person to rule and reign over us [Sorry, that was due to the Scots … and to Henry VII the usurper of Bosworth, and to Elizabeth I’s shriveled up womb, and to other strange oddities of history, but whatevs, good monks].

For whereas it was the expectation of many [oh, the foolish Many with their expectations!], who wished not well unto our Sion [“He’s a faggy Scot! Of course we don’t wish him well!” said the Many], that upon the settling of that bright Occidental Star, Queen Elizabeth of most happy memory [she of the most happy, arsenic-laced, white-ass makup], some thick and palpable clouds of darkness would so have overshadowed this Land [you mean Boris Johnson was floatin’ around the Strand back then too?!], that men should have been in doubt which way they were to walk [to the altar? to the nearest other man? what to do?!]; and it should hardly be known, who was to direct the unsettled State [wherein there had just been Much Slaughter: Catholic by Protestant, Cavalier by Roundhead, sluts by wrothful fathers, and WITCHES by everyone]; the appearance of Your Majesty, as of the Sun in his strength, instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists, and gave unto all that were well affected exceeding cause of comfort [“NOW is the Winter of Our Discontent made Glorious Summer by this Son of York!
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.”
C’mon, boys, you totally stole all this from frickin’ Shakespeare!]; especially when we beheld the Government established in Your Highness [No Papists or Demoncrats in Your Ministries, no sirree odds bodkins!], and Your hopeful Seed, [Well, now about that seed … something quite wild shall happen with that unhappy seed, but we won’t tell these monks; let ’em be surprised] by an undoubted Title, and this also accompanied with peace and tranquility at home and abroad. [“Undoubted Title” traced all the way back to Edward the Black Prince, we swear! Also, yay, peace and tranquility at home and abroad! Now let’s go burn witches and slay some Spaniards! Also the Dutch! Kill the Dutch!]

“(2) But among all our joys, there was no one that more filled our hearts, than the blessed continuance of the preaching of God’s sacred Word among us; which is that inestimable treasure, which excelleth all the riches of the earth; [Quick, can you esteemed bros name the 33rd chapter of the Book Ezekiel, verses 15-20? No? Anyone?] because the fruit [heh—they said, “Fruit” when writing about James the Light Loafered!] thereof extendeth itself, not only to the time spent in this transitory world, but directeth and disposeth men unto that eternal happiness which is above in heaven. [Nothing but misery here on earth is possible; you must die in agony and obedience to an perhaps invisible spaghetti monster in order to have mansions and True Happiness(tm) in the next world, which we totally swear exists and where there shall be no Papist witches of any kind. Also, no gophers. We hate gophers ]

“(3) Then not to suffer this to fall to the ground, but rather to take it up, and to continue it in that state, wherein the famous Predecessor of Your Highness [The Virgin Ice Queen Elizabeth I, if you’re keeping score] did leave it: nay, to go forward with the confidence and resolution of a Man [And oh, what a Man Jamesy was!] in maintaining the truth of Christ, and propagating it far and near, [and boy do we know how proper non-Papist Christians can propagate themselves far and near] is that which hath so bound and firmly knit the hearts of all Your Majesty’s loyal [Loyal? Ding-dong! It’s Guy Fawkes at the door and he wishes a word with you!] and religious people unto You, that Your very name is precious among them [as it still is among King-James-Version-of-the-Bible-ONLY folks in His Majesty’s former colonies]: their eye doth behold You with comfort, and they bless You in their hearts, as that sanctified Person who, under God, is the immediate Author of their true happiness [He spread his gay-ity far and near and made EVERYone happy!].

And this their contentment doth not diminish or decay, but every day increaseth and taketh strength, when they observe, that the zeal of Your Majesty toward the house of God doth not slack or go backward, but is more and more kindled [okay, now this is all sounding just plain naughty-naughty, you cloistered bro-bros!], manifesting itself abroad in the farthest parts of Christendom, by writing in defence of the Truth, (which hath given such a blow unto that man of sin, as will not be healed,) [James is writing Truth-defending tracts! Take that, Satan!] and every day at home, by religious and learned discourse, by frequenting the house of God, by hearing the Word preached, by cherishing the Teachers thereof, by caring for the Church, as a most tender and loving nursing Father [that loving Father who goes to church every time the doors are open when he’d rather be back at the castle playing ring-around-the-bedstead with his wife, the Duke of Bedford, and who pays for those church doors out of his dwindling purse, (God smack Elizabeth in her pancake-madeup face for spending all that money on ships) and who suffers through many sermons about the perils of the bare female ankle <yawn> and the heartbreaking, sinful evil of teaching peasants to read].

“(4) There are infinite [seems a bit hyperbolic] arguments of this right Christian and religious affection in Your Majesty; but none is more forcible to declare it to others than the vehement and perpetuated desire of accomplishing and publishing of this work, which now with all humility we present unto Your Majesty. [We worked DAMN hard to do this for your Royal Gayness, so you DAMN well better appreciate it … er, if it please Your Grace!] For when Your Highness had once out of deep judgment apprehended how convenient it was, that out of the Original Sacred Tongues, together with comparing of the labours, both in our own, and other foreign Languages, of many worthy men who went before us, there should be one more exact Translation of the holy Scriptures into the English Tongue; [Good, plain, white, Anglo-Saxon English, as it should be, not in those dirty Jew, brown-skinned Aramaic and oily Greek languages, no sir!] Your Majesty did never desist to urge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the work might be hastened, [“So, Abbot, can you have your bros draw like, 100, capital letters a day so we can get this done in my lifetime, huh? 100 a day, don’t leave out the naughty bits in Song of Solomon and chop-chop, there’s a good lad, or We’ll chop-chop your head!”] and that the business might be expedited in so decent a manner, as a matter of such importance might justly require. [Tote that barge! Life that bale! Or get Thine scribbling ass in jail!]

“(5) And, now at last, by the mercy of God, and the continuance of our labours, [but mostly our labours, ’cause we didn’t see no finger of God coming out of the clouds above Canterbury inking no thee’s, thine’s, thy’s and begat’s … oh, dear God, all the begats that we had to write!] it being brought unto such a conclusion, as that we have great hopes that the Church of England shall reap good fruit thereby [good fruit coming from a book dedicated to a good fruit! These just write themselves]; we hold it our duty to offer it to Your Majesty, not only as to our King and Sovereign, but as to the principal Mover and Author of the work [thanks for all the lashings and breads-and-waterings!]: humbly craving of Your most Sacred Majesty, that since things of this quality have ever been subject to the censures of ill meaning and discontented persons [unless you send us some troops to protect us after this, these ignorant Papist hayseeds around here are gonna try to burn us at the stake], it may receive approbation and patronage from so learned and judicious a Prince as Your Highness is [again, we’ll need some troops and firefighters, which you just have to send because this was all your idea and now the Papists are all pissed at us], whose allowance and acceptance of our labours shall more honour and encourage us, than all the calumniations and hard interpretations of other men shall dismay us. [The same calumnarious men, in fact, who are going to cut off your son’s head so cleanly in 1648.] So that if, on the one side, we shall be traduced by Popish Persons [Catholics! Shudder! The horror! Also, don’t you just LOVE them actually writing “Popish Persons” unironically and all that?] at home or abroad, who therefore will malign us, because we are poor instruments to make God’s holy Truth to be yet more and more known unto the people, whom they desire still to keep in ignorance and darkness [Popish plots to keep the masses ignorant! They’re different than our plots to keep the masses ignorant because the Pope is the Beast (see Revelation, re: the Beast) and only we are true Christians!]; or if, on the other side, we shall be maligned by self-conceited Brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking unto noting, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil [Oh, that conceited bishop over there in Lincoln or somewhere, we know his kind! He thinks he knows everything, the mary!]; we may rest secure supported within by the truth and innocency of a good conscience, having walked the ways of simplicity and integrity, as before the Lord [the Bishop of Lincoln wears pink bloomers under his red stole and reeks of Chanel No. 5! We only wear hair shirts and the manly, simple scents of our own unwashed bodies!]; and sustained without by the powerful protection of Your Majesty’s grace and favour [Again we ask: Having made us do this book thing, which took like 20 million man-hours and enough ink to stain the North Sea purple for centuries, you WILL protect us from egotistical bishops and Popist Poopheads, won’t you? Please?], which will ever give countenance to honest and Christian endeavours against bitter censures and uncharitable imputations [and burnings at the stake for buggery and witchery and encouraging the plebes to learn to read].

“(6) The Lord of heaven and earth bless Your Majesty with many and happy days [21,466 days, to be exact, if you’re curious], that, as his heavenly hand hath enriched Your Highness with many singular and extraordinary graces [yeah, his “graces” included dressing in silk frocks and playing “hide the tarse in the furse”], so You may be the wonder of the world in this latter age for happiness and true felicity, to the honour of that great God, and the good of his Church, through Jesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour.” [Dear great God, his church, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the prophets and saints, you monkly bros were long winded! It was like that long-winded inauguration address by William Henry Harrison, who ranted on for two hours in a cold rain and caught his death of pneumonia or typhus or both and died after 31 cough-filled days as President. Dedication?! It takes dedication to even read one convoluted phrase! Ahem. Amen!]

—Epistol Dedicatory, King James Version, Holy Bible, 1611

That’s some fawning, long-ass shit, huh? Geezus H. Bro monk noses were so far up His Nibs’ ass, he looked around and said, “Is that you, Buckingham?” But yes, I just adore the fact that all this time the fundies have insisted on the King James version being the One, Only and True Bible, they’ve been worshipping with something created for a big, ol’, fuh-laming faggot. Delicious irony does indeed exist in the world.


I: That was quite a digression. Long-winded much? Um. Sorry. Any chance we might get back on track? Say, perhaps, to the 1960s when you were but a wee lad in Roswell?

S: Sure. Why not. In fact, let’s go back farther and note some genealogy, shall we? Welllll, speaking of dead relatives, I recently found out a juicy little tidbit that scrambled my bacon. It’s not a DNA test that revealed I was … somebody else’s child or something … but. I got an email from familysearch.org. You know them, that’s the exhaustive genealogy repository presided over by the Mormons so they can posthumously baptize you and all your forebears and Anne Frank and Popes John Paul I and II as Totally We Swear Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Now, I normally ignore them but looked at this e-mail because they had a bunch of marriage records of the line of me great-grandparents. One was for James Holmes, who my sister has documented as being part of our family, and who was married to … Sarah Sally Donelson. Oh lordy. Yup, as in her daddy was John Donelson, as in Donelson, TN, as in the co-founder of Nashville, as in the owner of the Clover Bottom Plantation and its buncha slaves and as in the dude who was also that asshole Andrew Jackson’s father-in-law and was undoubtedly an asshole himself with the whole killing Injuns and buying and selling shackled negroes. Yep, that guy. Me great-whatever-grandpappy. Sigh. It’s like a stab in my liberal, bleedin’ heart.

I: And they undoubtedly had many descendants, so I would anticipate the guilt is spread around quite a bit. So how do you figure in the mass of all those descendants?

S: You WOULD ask. So here’s the lineage: John Donelson, who founded Fort Nashborough with James Robertson, now known as Nashville, married Rachel Stockley.

John and Rachel had two kids: John Patrick and Rachel, Jr.. Rachel Jr. married Andrew Jackson. John Patrick married Mary Purnell and John Patrick and Mary had Sarah Sally Donelson. So my great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Andrew Jackson’s niece. And now I want my piece of the action from Donelson’s Clover Bottom mansion being hired out for all those expensive weddings, and from the city of Nashville. Given how many other relations there are, my share should be at least $1.98.

To continue: Sarah Sally Donelson married William Holmes, birthed James Holmes (who had, and I am totally not making this up, a brother named Welcome. Welcome Holmes! Isn’t that a gas?! You just can’t write gags that good!). James-the-brother-of-Welcome-Holmes married Mary Denton. They had a daughter named Sarah Holmes. Nothing jokey and hilarious for their kid, just “Sarah” period.

Then Sarah Holmes married John Yates and they had a daughter named Malvina Yates and Malvina married a dude named Joseph Starr. Joseph and Malvina had twin daughters named Mittie and Minnie Starr (not much imagination for a great-niece of Welcome Holmes). Mittie and Minnie were my relatives who built and propped up the Oak Avenue Church of the Nazarene aforementioned. Minnie then married Lee Robert Teague.

Minnie and Lee then had a daughter named Lorene Teague, who married Curtis Pollock, who had a son named Marion, who married Janis, who had, on that cold December night that was outlined in such detail at the beginning of this narrative, me, myself, I … moi.

Like I said, where’s my share of the revenue and land value of Clover Bottom? Since my house is on what was originally the land stolen from the Injuns to create Clover Bottom, my mortgage should be wiped out at least, and $1.98 ain’t gonna cover it. We queens gotta look out for our interests, you know?

I: Lord. <sigh> Let’s back up. Way back up. You skipped from barely escaping being born in a car to being yanked between fundamentalist churches when you were 12 to lengthy digressions on King James, Bibles, foppery, popery, and genealogy. Wasn’t there anything that happened in between, say, your birth and the whole church thing?

S: You mean all the screaming and crying? The Battle Royale that was the parentals’ attempts to get me to go to Kindergarten? The abject terror of everything from fireworks and sirens to teachers and heights, elevators and roller coasters? The seduction of my best friend from across the street when we were five years old, and I would get him to raise his shirt so we could hug barechested for as long as I could get him to do it, and how sometimes I bullied him into doing it and that one time, sheltered at the side of the garage surrounded by the back yard fence, I got him to raise his shirt and laid on top of him barechested and it was the most sublime feeling I ever had, one that I’ve tried to replicate my entire life? You mean all that stuff?

I: Well, er, uh, well, yes, that “stuff” would be good to hear about, yes.

S: Okay, you asked for it. So, the first time I went to the movies in my entire life, my sisters took me to a horrific horror film at the Plains Theater on Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico. Unfortunately, the Plains is no more; the building is infested with the world’s tackiest displays of silliness and its marquee now touts it as the “UFO Alien Research Center and Museum” and the pics I’ve seen of it are incredibly horrible. The place where such sublime cinema as American in Paris and Beach Blanket Bingo and Bonzo Goes to College now defines tacky. Look up the definition of “so tacky it doesn’t even qualify for camp,” and you’ll find pictures of this UFO Alien tourist trap.

Anyway, before all that, sometime in early 1968, when I would have been a little over four years old, my sisters took me to see this unspeakable horror film, which had been released on 8-February that year. It was just awful, terrifyingly scary, and horribly and tackily done to boot.

It was entitled, Blackbeard’s Ghost and it was made by the <shudder> Walt Disney Company and starred Dean Jones (ohdeargodthehorror) and three actors who I would later actually appreciate greatly: Suzanne Pleshette, Elsa Lanchester and Peter Ustinov (the poor, poor things, having to prostitute themselves to the Walt Disney Corporation in 1968! See what I mean about all the horror?)

I: Pardon the interruption, but Blackbeard’s Ghost isn’t usually thought of, if it is thought of at all, as a “horror flick,” nor is Disney typically a purveyor of terror.

S: A lot you know! Speak for yourself! Disney is perhaps the quintessential shit show/horror show exemplifying Corporate Fascism of all time. And its products are indeed horrific, whether that Frozen abomination of last year or that whole Davy Crockett mass insanity of the 1950s.

Where was I before your naive interruption? Oh yes. I was four. And scared of everything. So I basically cried all the way through the movie. See, in the movie, Blackbeard (Ustinov) was a ghost. He had died and been condemned to haunt a … restaurant or hotel or something or other to atone for his great sin of Piracy on the High Seas. Dean and Suzanne had to help him out to not be a ghost anymore.

There’s this scene where Blackbeard gets on a policeman’s motorcycle and drives it and it looks like no one was driving it because he’s an invisible ghost (and there was NO explanation about how a pirate from the 1600s could possibly know how to drive a police motorcycle which is no lead-pipe cinch, boy. And that pirate also somehow knew how to turn on the motorcycle’s screaming SIREN (!!!!!) which terrified the bloody hell out of me whenever I heard them in real life.

Well, I screamed louder than the movie siren and cried so much that the poor oldest sibling of mine had to remove me to the lobby. I may have calmed down and gone back in for a bit, but I know she was steaming that she was missing her movie while her bratty brother (she still refers to me as a spoiled brat, as recently as 2016, when I was 52 years old; she seems to be sort of stuck on that idea) had to be mollified in the lobby to keep the other patrons from shoving a stopper in my gob.

Now, to be fair to myself, I actually wasn’t being bratty. It really was terrifying. Loud noises and auditoriums with their huge, high ceilings and vertiginous balconies, as well as stadiums, always freaked me the hell out. So not only was there a scary ghost, a wailing siren, the Disney company, Dean Jones’ acting and some angry, shushing patrons, but there was that vast space of the Plains Theater and it’s steep balcony reserved for kissers, smokers and negroes. It was not an Amusing Experience, that I can tell you.

I: It doesn’t sound like it. While movie reminiscing is interesting, I’m more interested in the seduction, as you put it, of your friend from across the street.

S: Well, there’s some more stuff before that. Don’t you want to know my earliest memories?

I: Um, yes, actually. Let’s get some order in this thing. Start with what you remember after your almost-born-in-the-car-because-of-nonexistent-matches-for-cigarettes-tobacco-companies-should-rot-in-hell birth.

S: Sure. I remember the very warm and fuzzy memory of waking up in the late evening, when it was dark outside, and I was in my crib under my blankie, and there was a table lamp on, but the rest of the room was dark, and the parents and siblings were watching TV in the living room, and I felt all warm and snuggly and sleepy and happy. Then I went to sleep.

More? Well, we have the hospital visits. So many hospital visits. Hospitals terrified me too, especially ambulances, getting sick in ambulances and emergency rooms. I have been in them so frequently in my adulthood, however, that they hold no further terror. Except now during the global pandemic. Jesus, we’re all going to die.

But wen I was two, I had to have my tonsils out. And Dr. Richardson yanked ’em at the place where I was born, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. It was actually a cool place to visit. It smelled pretty good and unusal and antiseptic, and it had two stories. One of probably only two escalators in the whole town of Roswell. It had an elevator, but that was scary and I avoided it.

The hospital had these colored lines embedded in the floor and you just followed the colored line that took you where you needed to go. If you needed to go to the ER, you followed the red line and it took you right there. Patient rooms? Follow the green line. Blue was for maternity. And so on. I’ve always loved rainbow colors and that floor was so cool.

Visiting someone, you would follow the green line, which led you right to the escalators. You rode upstairs and there were three wards (I think), but children under 14 or so were not allowed inside them unless they were a patient.

Now, my Uncle Leon had a lung disease which developed after he got polio when he wsa a kid. He was hospitalized numerous times until he died in August of 1967, when I was three-and-a-half. We would go up to the Medical Center to visit him, and I always stayed in the upstairs lobby with the sisters (who couldn’t go in the ward either) or Dad or whoever, listening to the constant shooooshing of the escalators and the occasional ringing of a chime, praying to god that no ambulances would come.

I loved that escalator. I still remember the fun of riding it. Why was I not scared of it like I was everything else? I haven’t the foggiest.

But the elevator? Hoo boy, that was an evil monster. This one time, we went to visit someone; maybe Leon, maybe not. Oh, the horror! The descending side of the escalator was out of business! You could only go up. It was evening, so they weren’t even working on it. It was blocked off so you couldn’t even use it like a stairway to get back down!

Once we got upstairs, there was a problem then. The stairs were a bit too much for my little legs, but I was a bit too big for Dad to carry me, and besides they were way at the end of the hall. So when the visit was over, we had to get back down somehow and that somehow was the elevator monster, which was also right by the escalator and front lobby, while those damn stairs were further away.

Oh the terror.

Dad had to pick me up and hold me and I cried. We got in and the doors closed and whoosh! My stomach fell out and we plunged that entire whole one story! 12 whole feet!! It took forever and five minutes! Then the doors opened and we stepped out into the lobby. I stared through my tears vengefully at the broken downalator side of the escalator. I seem to remember vowing that if we ever came back to that hospital I was NOT going upstairs unless the downalator was working. It never betrayed me again, fortunately.

But what I was tellin’ was that sometime around this period, probably 1966, I needed my tonsils out. I remember being put in a room which had a crib with tall side bars and rails around it so I couldn’t jump or fall out. I was roughly two or two-and-a-half.

I have three memories connected with this. First, a group of nurses, perhaps some in a nursing class, gathered around my crib, smiling and talking and cooing to me. All in white with white caps. Freaked me out. Although I was cute, ’tis true, so they had a reason to gather round and smile and talk to me. But they were women barking up the wrong tree, boy, and I had no use for them.

Then I remember lying in the crib in the night. The room was dark, but the door was open and so light from the hall came in. There was a “10, 2, and 4” Dr. Pepper clock with a blue neon border on the wall opposite the hospital room. “10, 2, and 4” referred to the old Dr. Pepper slogan that urged people to take a break every day at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. to drink a Dr. Pepper. That Dr. Pepper shit would help wreck my health after decades of drinking it, so I guess that memory is rather prophetic.

Then I remember the start of the surgery. I was in the OR and there were people with white hats and gloves and masks and Dr. Richardson was coming towards me with an instrument. Then they must have hit me with anaesthetic. I don’t remember anything else, fortunately. How they kept me from screaming and crying in terror during all that, I don’t know. I suspect they drugged my little ass up. In 1966 with an Air Force base down the street, they could probably get all the trippy drug shit they could load up on, so who knows what they used.

And the final memory was going home from the hospital. For some reason, they parked the 1959 Rambler station wagon at the curb, instead of up in the driveway. Maybe there was another car there. It was very cold and I think it may have been snowing, or had just snowed. I was taken out of the car and covered in a blanket and then carried inside.

Those are the earliest memories I can summon. Happy now?

I: I’m happy if that takes us up to when you were five.

S: Almost. First there’s the memory from when Leon died in 1967. I remember our aunt Joyce taking me and my cousin Jeff, who is just three months younger than me, by the hand and leading us up to Leon’s casket in the funeral home. We were both dressed in suits and ties. In what I now think is pretty weird, but whatever, Joyce lifted me up to see Leon lying there, saying something about how he looks like he’s just asleep, but he’s gone, and having me reach out and touch his cold, dead cheek. I am not making this shit up. And she didn’t seem to be crying or upset. Trying, I guess, to reassure us and not scare us, especially me, the scaredy cat. I don’t think Jeff was ever scared of anything in his life. But that’s another story. I don’t remember anyone being in the room but us and the body, so it was probably before the funeral or something.

Cousin Jeff has a memory of the exact same thing except it’s he and I sitting during the funeral. He also remembers Joyce holding us by the hand. Where our parents where, we have no idea. I have no memory of the funeral, but a little of the grave side moments.

So I guess you can say I first touched a dead man when I was three-and-a-half.

I: Did that not scar you for life?

S: Weirdly enough, no. I didn’t scream or cry or try to run away. In fact, I was a little fascinated that he could be alive and in the hospital and then be lying there in his good suit with a cold cheek and be just gone. That was a mind-blowing concept. I didn’t question it, but I thought it was weird. Perhaps it was a very smart thing that Joyce did; I’ve had no problem the rest of my life with dead people, just with the fact that every living thing dies, and I have no desire to stop living.

I: Okay, well, let’s move on from dead bodies, shall we? Now, not to get too nosy and drool over the juicy bit that might be coming, tell me more about the “boy next door” or across the street, as the case may be. What was the barechested hugging thing when you were five all about?

S: Oh, lord. Okay, we agreed I’d lay everything out there to the bright light of openness and transparency and truth. Fine. Here it is. And I stress, there’s nothing “sexual” about this. It’s about two curious five year olds exploring the sensations of the body and what can make you feel good. We were BOTH five and peepees were not involved. In fact, I personally didn’t know what sex was until I was 14. So I don’t want any of the outrage brigade reporting this to the cops as a child porn fantasy. It is most definitely NOT that! It’s something kids have done and do and will do naturally for centuries. But anyway, here goes.

His name was … and I am not making this up … Fayette. Yes, he was a blond-haired, blue-eyed cute boy whose mother named him Fayette. No amount of Googling has turned him up. Either he died years ago or, more likely, changed his name to something less likely to get him beaten up. I mean, he couldn’t even shorten it to Fay, could he? He’d still have to fend off hordes of toxic masculinity. Maybe he called himself George. Or Rock. Whatever he did, I hope he survived his name.

This woman would often, like mothers of the era would do, go out on their porch and yell for him as loud as she could all over the neighborhood: “FAYYYYYYY-EEEETTTTTTTTEEEE!!!” Over and over until he answered her. At this time, before schooling began, he didn’t seem to be bothered by his name, just that it was time to go inside.

I could write reams about the free range kids that we were in the era, even at five. We could cross the street to each others’ houses, which were within about four houses apart, so it was a smallish range we were free to roam in, but it included our back yards and riding our bikes three blocks away to first grade.

I don’t know how or why it started. But I did sorta fancy Fayette. He was my type. Blond/blue/hairy chested/over 40 still IS my type. We even looked a bit alike. I certainly liked him more than the girl down the street who I think wanted to be my girlfriend except we had arguments and I once yanked the bow out of the sash around her dress because we were mad at each other. There’s another (and gory) story about her parents for when we’re done with this one. It involves my greatest childhood phobias, blood, stitches, and emergency rooms.

Now that I have had lots of experience teaching kindergarten, I have realized that five year olds love to hug. They’ll hug anything. Teachers, visitors, stuffed animals, the roof support pole in the classroom, the trees on the playground. And they will especially hug each other. The boys don’t hug the girls (that could be a problem), but they do hug other boys. These are happy, innocent, good-feeling clinches. Our rules these days are “don’t touch anyone else,” so we often have to be stern and pry them apart and say “don’t do that!” but we can’t explain why in any detail. Not just me, but most kindergarten teachers, really don’t want to talk about danger and touching and sex and good hugs and bad hugs and why they’re bad. Let the first grade teachers do it. I tend to look a little the other way. If one boy looks uncomfortable I immediately put a stop to it. But otherwise, I don’t break it up with a pole or an angry comment (some teachers do the angry face thing), but I do put a stop to it. I just don’t go into anything with them.

My point in mentioning it is that we were, it looks like, normal five year old boys who liked to hug each other. The same thing happened in kindergarten and sort of first grade, but after that, you stop hugging other guys or it becomes problematic at best and provokes ass kicking at worst. So you grow out of natural expression and into closeted repression, all well before you turn 10. I did … to a point.

Anyway, I don’t remember how it started, we just liked hugging each other. But I liked it better than he did and I wanted to do it for a loooonnnnngggg time. And at some point, I discovered that it felt even better if our skin was touching without those pesky shirts to get in the way. So for awhile, our play time became a bit of a negotiation with me trying to persuade him to raise our shirts and hug, for at least a little while. I think I became a bit of a bully about it; I remember we had a fight because he wanted to stop and I didn’t one day. And I don’t think I ever asked him to again. I sensed that I was right up against an unspoken and not understood line. Being a kid that was afraid to get in trouble (even though I hadn’t really ever been trouble and the consequences had never been more than my mother’s quick swat on my butt), so I just stopped trying to get poor Fayette to give me some of that sweet, sweet hugging.

Sorry, Fayette, if you run across this. Sorry if I was a bully about this and sorry if we fought. It was my fault. But I was five and clueless. And you were adorable. But still so very, very sorry. I hope you’ve had a wonderful life.

Really, sincerely, I hope he has. I used to hope he turned out gay like me and that he had actually enjoyed our hugging and that he has had a great life and is married to a great guy who gets millions of hugs from Fayette.

But at the time, roughly 1968, the best feeling I had ever had was discovering the thrill of pressing my bare chest against another boy’s bare chest. No kissing or anything else occurred. We just hugged. And for me, that great feeling was in the chest and in my heart. Not … down lower. I was five, c’mon. It’s not a dirty story. In fact, it’s a sweet story, of how kids, in spite of how it may freak out us adults, will explore and discover and do what comes natural.

To me, as a gay boy, hugging another boy was perfectly natural. It always has been, it always will be. I always felt instinctively somehow that people would disapprove and say I was naughty. And I also felt instinctively that I knew what I wanted and I was going to have it and all those disapproving people could just go suck eggs and pound sand. Even at the height of the worst spiritual and sexual repression that Oklahoma and its churches could dole out, my inner belief has always been the same: There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve known who I am and what I wanted since I was at least five. And everyone else who is not onboard with that can go over Niagra Falls without a barrel.

So there.


I have another clear early memory, somewhat related. My mother was shopping in Gibson’s, an early version of Wal-Mart that was in towns like Roswell and Duncan and places in between. Gibson’s always smelled of fresh popped popcorn; all the dime stores did. I can smell it even now. I was in the seat of the shopping cart and we were moving along. Suddenly, I saw this other boy in the seat of his mother’s shopping cart going the opposite way. Our eyes locked and we just stared at each other. We didn’t make faces or holler at each other or turn to mothers for reassurance. We stared during those few minutes that we were stopped across from each other.

He had dark black hair. We must have been three or something. Same age. I have no idea what was going on in his head, but in mine, I thought he was gorgeous. And then our mothers continued shopping. We watched each other until we were out of sight.

I wanted to hug him too. If you want to know when a gay guy knows he’s gay, well, there you go. For me, three to five years old. But what is gay? At first, at that age, it’s just attraction. Fascination you can’t figure out. Knowing you can’t hug the girls in your class, but you sure can hug the boys and it’s seen as boys being boys, and that’s what you want anyway. Being gay is your heart beating faster at random moments like seeing a cute boy your age in a store. And that happens whenever we’re six or 56.

This is all separate and apart from the sex in being gay. The attraction is there. And once the realization that the attraction is not acceptable to the people around you, well, after the attraction comes the closet.

And after the closet comes the sex part of being gay. At first, you’re closeted just because you like other boys and you know by first or second grade that that is just not going to fly if you want to avoid a wide variety of severe consequences. So you’re in the closet about your attraction. Then, at a certain age, you’re told what sex is. And the closet door gets more tightly closed.

For me, I found out, sort of, what sex was in three ways: From a novel in the library, from a clinical article in our Encylopedia Americanas, and in the form of the question, “Is there anything you want to know? If so, ask me or your dad. Oh, and homosexuality is a grave sin that God will punish you for with everlasting burning. Let us know if you need anything!” from my mother. (Dad believed the home front was women’s responsibility, especially educating us about religion and sex. And she was, to her credit, committed to education and having us be educated and informed. After all, she scrimped and saved to get those 1962 Encyclopedia Americanas in the first place.)

Here’s how I learned what (straight) sex was at age 14, after gathering some hints from things whispered in junior high.

  1. I heard that “intercourse” was sex, probably at junior high. I went home and looked it up. It referred to the word “coitus.” So I looked that one up. And wham bam, thank you ma’am, there it all was. With drawings of male (flaccid) and female reproductive systems. With full descriptions of foreplay and how the penis becomes erect. And how it is inserted. And how there is sexual activity, the man, er, what was the word they used? Moved his penis in and out of the woman’s vagina. Yeah, that was roughly it. And then he had an orgasm and ejaculated sperm into the vagina. And then the sperm swam into the uterus, found an egg, penetrated it and voila! the beginnings of a zygote/fetus/child. Such a warm and interesting way to describe it all. And to this gay boy, let me tell you. The whole male reproductive diagrams were fascinating, as were the whole getting an erection and ejaculating thing. But what about us gay boys? The female diagrams, which didn’t really give you a clue about how a woman actually looked in her nether regions, still repulsed me even without a beaver shot, as male friends would later so charmingly put it. I didn’t care about beavers or pussies or vulvas or why such bizarre names were applied to them. My mother and my sisters had those. Fine for them and any man who wanted that. But I sure as hell didn’t. It was the penis I was interested in. And HUGGING.
  2. Around this time (1977ish), I discovered a seemingly innocuous fictional book in our public library about a tornado hitting a small town in Ohio. It was Twister by Jack Bickham (if you want to look it up), based on the super outbreak of 1974 that levelled, among other cities, Xenia, OH. The plot: Two of the main characters, man and woman, are having an affair. As the storm gathers, they’re somewhere having sex. And Bickham gives it the full, dirty description that our Encyclopedia Americanas lacked. A paraphrase from what I remember: “Reaching down, she grasped his engorged penis. Just before she tucked him inside her, she felt a tiny qualm … ‘Oh, Jack, you’re so big! You fill me UP!” And so on. I had to go look up what engorged meant. But it was the first connection, however badly written, between the clinical encyclopedia entry and reality. So this is sex. Well, count me out. I’m getting a thrill from sleeping naked and getting a hard on, but I’m not using it THAT way, that’s for damn sure! So, still in the closet, some clarification occurred for me, but the closet was now useful to both hide me from the scrutiny of others and to protect me from the horrors of heterosexuality. It was both comfort and prison.
  3. The third way was the aforementioned question from my mother. It was not informational, except for the part that slammed my closet door closed and nailed the son of a bitch shut for the next 16 years. This was merely confirmation of what I had sensed since I was five.
  4. And finally, how did I find out what gay sex was? Wellllllll, here’s where things get sticky (both complicated and sticky like as in sex sticky). Putting it simply, I was groomed and then sexually abused by a male relative. For what I figured out, the abuse was off and on for 12 years. The grooming began when I was 14 and he married into the family, and finally ended when I was 27 and figured out a simple way to stop it that was so simple that I hadn’t grasped it before. I simply removed access to myself. I just made sure we were never alone together ever again. It worked. He moved on to other targets. Including his own daughter’s boyfriend. But that’s a story for much later in our tale.
  5. Although I was rather experienced in everything but anal sex by the time I was in college, a wonderful book called The New Joy of Gay Sex was mighty helpful. When I would go to the local mall for lunch between morning and evening classes, I invariably stopped in Waldenbooks and usually bought something, but much of the time I just browsed. I discovered their “Marriage and Sexuality” section fairly quickly. And lo and behold! There on a shelf, often in different spots on different shelves when I would visit, was a copy of The New Joy of Gay Sex. Hallelujah!! The only problem: I couldn’t buy it. That would involve checking out up front where another human would discover I was a fag. Plus it was on the expensive side. And for a commuting college student still living at home, where would I stash it? Probably in the car, but that carried risk. The best plan? Do what all the other fags were doing. Wait until there was no other people around, grab it off the shelf, move over to the History section, maybe even put it between the pages of a bigger book, and take in the glorious images that made your heart beat in your ears and your pulse race, because these pictures were showing you what you had been wanting since you were five. Hell, they were even showing you what you were missing by having your only sexual contact be the abusive stuff you were getting from the in-law. The drawings were great. I learned it could be loving and open and free and exciting and painful and there were things called condoms and sounding rods and how you could clean out your ass and use it to fuck, and nipple clamps and golden showers and daddies and proper fellatio and good, explosive cum blasts and hand jobs and cruising and tea rooms and having sex with black men and Prince Alberts and piercing and tattoos and drag queens and tops and bottoms and the role of the prostate in a bottom’s amazingly good, explosive orgasm and AIDS/HIV and protection and love and kissing and … and … and … It was a magical book. Our Harry Potter. The story is the same: Harry is “different” and living with uptight, intolerant, straight people (muggles) in a closet below some stairs. And then the day comes when an owl arrives and Harry discovers others like himself. In fact, a whole entire world for him and his kind. You can interpret that many ways. But for us queers, it was immediately recognizable. The New Joy of Gay Sex in the Waldenbooks was our Harry Potter. It was the invitation delivered by the owl for us to come and ride the express train to Hogwarts/Gayville and never look back, to be free of Muggles/Breeders forever. I looked for it and caged long reads of it as much as possible, until finally, my erection would get obvious and I would have to hide behind the magazines I was buying (usually GQ or something else with shirtless men in it) and then also hide it behind the front counter until they gave me the bag back and I could use that bag to hide my hard cock that was already dripping pre-cum through the top of my jeans and threatening to poke his insistent head through the top of my belt. I would walk immediately to the car, find a place in a parking lot where the pants could come down, find the most appealing shirtless pic I could find in GQ and then take care of business. It was a glorious time, being 18-22 years old. Glorious.

So, that pretty much covers the sex education of this particular average American boy of the 1970s/80s. We’ll be revisiting all this later. But there’s so much more childhood to cover first! Apologies for being a bit out of order.

I: <Whew> Wow, that’s … interesting. You had quite a time in that closet!

S: Yes. Don’t we all?


I: Well. <ahem> Let me adjust my hot collar and get back on track. Kindergarten is where I believe we are.

S: Ah. That. Kindergarten. What a … fucked up, memorable year.

[This is nonfiction work in progress. Come back soon for more.]

American Civil War Casus Belli: African Negro Slavery.

Let’s be clear: The war was about slavery, from first to last. And after the gun stopped firing, the war continued in multiple ways that all-too-often includes violence and murder.


A report on Battlefield.Org points out two things: Americans are inexplicable divided as to the causes of the Civil War, reflecting both historical ignorance as well as the continued delusions among the current crop of Lost Causers who continue to believe in and are invested fully in, the generational denial surrounding the Great Mass Treason which resulted in 1,000,000 American casualties.

Let’s be clear: The war was about slavery, from first to last. And after the guns stopped firing, the war continues in multiple ways that all-too-often includes violence and murder.

But let’s look at the « Battlefields.Org discussion of the Casus Belli », which starts with a piquant little survey from 2011:

“In 2011, at the outset of the sesquicentennial, a Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were significantly divided on the issue, with 48% saying the war was ‘mainly about states’ rights,’ 38% saying the war was ‘mainly about slavery,’ with the remainder answering ‘both equally’ or ‘neither/don’t know.'”

Battlefields.Org

Fascinating, if appalling that that many people either aren’t sure or are convinced that it was the santized “states’ rights,” rights which, after all, gave the states the “right” to keep and bear slaves.

Battlefields.Org then goes on to examine the four declarations from states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas) which wanted all posterity to understand why they committed treason and nearly destroyed the country. Those declarations are fascinating reading and we’ll get to them below.

Civil War Casualties (Probably at Antietam, September 1862).

Battlefields.Org brokedown the content in the secession declarations thusly:

Georgia;
56% Slavery; 23% “Context”; 5:% Economic Issues; 4% States’ Rights; 2% Lincoln’s Election.

Texas:
54% Slavery; 21% “Context”; 15% States’ Rights; 6% Military Protection; 4% Lincoln’s Election.

Mississippi:
73% Slavery; 20% “Context”; 4% Lincoln’s Election; 3% States’ Rights.

South Carolina:
41% “Context”; 37% States’ Rights; 20% Slavery; 2% Lincoln’s Election.

[“‘Context’ refers to procedural language and/or historical exposition that is not connected to a specific argument,” says Battlefields.org.]

I would quibble with their interpretation of the declarations. Slavery is absolutely number one in every case. Everything else flows from it: They hated the north’s refusal to enforce the southern states’ rights to … own African negro slaves and the refusal to catch such property and return it to its owners. They hated the Republican/Anti-Slavery/Abolition party which had caused its leaders to control of the Federal government, where same leaders would make war on the southern states’ rights to … own African negro slaves. And as for “context,” it’s usually just a rehash of the history of the Revolution and their continued stubborn clinging to their idea of what being in the union meant; i.e., it meant they were free to leave at any time for any reason, but the reason was always going to be about slavery and the fed’s containment strategy of … African negro slavery.

Saying “Lincoln’s Election” was a “cause” is therefore also disingenous. He’s not mentioned by name. He’s just happens to be the leader the northern agitators and abolitionists had chosen to head up their program of destroying the south and …. its peculiar institution: African negro slavery.

So Battlefields.Org can parse it out this way and with a word cloud that says “States” is the most-used word, not slavery, but again, it’s disingenuous. The right that each southern state wanted to assert in all situations and around the country and the world was … African negro slavery. Period.

They went to war to preserve their right to own African negros as slaves in perpetuity. To Andrew Jackson’s heirs here in Donelson/Hermitage, they fully believed that African negros would continue to be slaves working cotton fields along the Stones River in 1860, 1890, 1950, and even 2019 and beyond.

Period.

It really is that simple. There are multiple “reasons,” but each reason is a reason because it directly relates to owning African negros as slaves.

And therefore, the 11 states separated themselves in an effort to preserve slavery; they committed treason, went to war and created a million American casualties and utterly failed, thank God, to preserve their peculiar institution. They have never ceased however, even after getting thoroughly kicked in the balls and sent running home to mommy, licking their wounds and keeping the freed African negroes down, to operate, with waxing and waning success and effort, to resurrect the same old arguments, rehashed and rehashed.

White supremacy and domestic terrorism is epidemic and a singular gift of the varied framers of “Articles of Secession” throughout the south all those years ago.

At any rate, here are the money quotes from the four articles of secession of the states of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Georgia and South Carolina are particularly verbose and yawn-inducing. They are catalogues of grievances, great and petty. Virginia is short and sweet: The Brits tried to make us do some stuff and we left. Now the antislavery power is trying to force us to do some stuff, so we’re leaving again. But ultimately it all amounts to: “The Northern people are being mean to us and they’re going to make us give up our negroes .” Yeesh.

Casualties on the scene at Dunker Church, battlefield of Antietam. September 1862.

Georgia


“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

“While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation. The main reason was that the North, even if united, could not control both branches of the Legislature during any portion of that time.

“We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South.

“They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.
“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.

“For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.

“Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.”
Approved, Tuesday, January 29, 1861

Articles of Secession, State of Georgia

Mississippi



“A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.”
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
“It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

“It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
“It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
“It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
“It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
“It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
“It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.
“It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.
“It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.
“It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.
“It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.
“It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.
“It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.
“Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.”

Articles of Secession, State of Mississippi

South Carolina


“The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
“This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
“The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
“The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
“The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

“On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
“The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
“Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.”
Adopted December 20, 1860

Article of Secession, South Carolina
Civil War casualties (Petersburg?)

Texas


“Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery– the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits– a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
“By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
“The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

“The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions– a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color– a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
“For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
“They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.
“They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.
“They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
“They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
“They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
“They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
“And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.
:We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
“That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
“By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

“For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons– We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
“Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.”

Articles of Secession, State of Texas

Virginia


“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
“Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the Union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
“This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule to be hereafter enacted.
“Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the 17th day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

Articles of Secession, Commonwealth of Virginia

It’s all quite fascinating, eh? Basically, they’re “<Whine, whine, whine> You’re going to take our slaves, get ’em hopped up, and let ’em rape our women and murder us in our beds, when everyone in the whole world knows that God himself created the African negro to serve the white man. I mean, they get free housing and medical care and food! Anyway, we’re gonna commit treason now and try to destroy the entire country in order to protect our natural racial superiority, which gives us the Christian right to own African negros as property.”

The Civil War’s casus belli is not difficult to figure out. The secesh told us repeatedly why they attempted to do what they did: the ownership of their fellow human beings based on skin color. Perfectly simple.


Dead Rebel soldier somewhere on the battlefield (Petersburg?).

The Indictment

“Senate Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the republic itself. I’m not naive enough to think they would hold Democratic presidents to the low standard they’ve applied to Trump, but all future presidents will be able to point to Trump to justify …”

Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) is an attorney and the former director (9-Jan-13 to 19-Jul-17) of the U.S. Office Government Ethics, which exists to “Provid[e] leadership in the executive branch to prevent conflicts of interest.” That’s a mission which, since January 2017, is going completely unfulfilled and, in fact, is being subverted beyond all belief.

After leaving the USOGE in the summer of 2017, Shaub “joined the Washington D.C.-based election law organization the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) as Senior Director, Ethics. At CLC he has focused on protecting what he calls the erosion of democratic norms that the country has witnessed in his time,” according to Wikipedia. The last six months of his tenure at USOGE were also the first six months of the Godfather’s tenure and therefore was when he witnessed the complete takeover of the democracy and its renovation into a kleptocracy headed by a old, narcissistic, lunatic, mob boss. So he’s seen some things and knows whereof he speaks.

Shaub wrote today a concise listing of the multiple points of illegality, theft, unConstitutionality, incompetence, petulance, and general assholery committed by this mobster and his cronies, supported fully and without reservation by the God and Guns evangelical crowd, of which I’m proud to say I’m an EX member, who was in that cultish atmosphere from birth, not by choice and left as soon as I gracefully could. But I digress.

Here’s « Shaub’s full indictment » and it includes the Republican party, especially those in the Senate:

“Senate Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the republic itself. I’m not naive enough to think they would hold Democratic presidents to the low standard they’ve applied to Trump, but all future presidents will be able to point to Trump to justify:

“a. Soliciting foreign attacks on our elections;
b. Using federal appropriations or other resources to pressure foreign governments to help them win reelection;
c. Implementing an across-the-board refusal to comply with any congressional oversight at all;
d. Firing the heads of the government’s top law enforcement agencies for allowing investigations of the president;
e. Retaliating against whistleblowers and witnesses who testify before Congress;
f. Investigating investigators who investigate the president;
g. Attempting to retaliate against American companies perceived as insufficiently supportive of the president;
h. Attempting to award the president’s own company federal contracts;
i. Using personal devices, servers or applications for official communications;
j. Communicating secretly with foreign leaders, with foreign governments knowing things about White House communications that our own government doesn’t know;
k. Abandoning steadfast allies abruptly without prior warning to Congress to cede territory to Russian influence;
l. Destroying or concealing records containing politically damaging information;
m. Employing white nationalists and expressing empathy for white nationalists after an armed rally in which one of them murdered a counter protester and another shot a gun into a crowd;
n. Disseminating Russian disinformation;
o. Covering for the murder of a journalist working for an American news outlet by a foreign government that is a major customer of the president’s private business;
p. Violating human rights and international law at our border;
q. Operating a supposed charity that was forced to shut down over its unlawful activities;
r. Lying incessantly to the American people;
s. Relentlessly attacking the free press;
t. Spending 1/4 of days in office visiting his own golf courses and 1/3 of them visiting his private businesses;
u. Violating the Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution;
w. Misusing the security clearance process to benefit his children and target perceived enemies;
x. Drawing down on government efforts to combat domestic terrorism in order to appease a segment of his base;
y. Refusing to aggressively investigate and build defenses against interference in our election by Russia, after the country helped him win an election;
z. Engaging in a documented campaign of obstruction of a Special Counsel’s investigation.
aa. Lying about a hush money payoff and omitting his debt to his attorney for that payoff from his financial disclosure report (which is a crime if done knowingly and willfully);
bb. Coordinating with his attorney in connection with activities that got the attorney convicted of criminal campaign finance violations;
cc. Interfering in career personnel actions, which are required by law to be conducted free of political influence;
dd. Refusing to fire a repeat Hatch Act offender after receiving a recommendation of termination from the president’s own Senate-confirmed appointee based on dozens of violations;
ee. Calling members of Congress names and accusing them of treason for conducting oversight;
ff. Attacking states and private citizens frequently and in terms that demean the presidency (see Johnson impeachment);
gg. Using the presidency to tout his private businesses and effectively encouraging a party, candidates, businesses and others to patronize his business;
hh. Causing the federal government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at his businesses and costing the American taxpayers well over $100 million on boondoggle trips to visit his properties;
ii. Hosting foreign leaders at his private businesses;
jj. Calling on the Justice Department to investigate political rivals;
kk. Using the presidency to endorse private businesses and the books of various authors as a reward for supporting the president;
ll. Engaging in nepotism based on a flawed OLC opinion;
mm. Possible misuse of appropriated funds by reallocating them in ways that may be illegal;
nn. Repeatedly criticizing American allies, supporting authoritarian leaders around the world, and undermining NATO; and
oo. etc.
“None of the Republican Senators defending Trump could say with a straight face that they would tolerate a Democratic president doing the same thing. But, given this dangerous precedent, they may have no choice if they ever lose control of the Senate. Is that what they want?
“And this is only what Trump did while the remote threat of Congressional oversight existed. If the Senate acquits him, he will know for certain there is nothing that could ever lead to Congress removing him from office. And what he does next will similarly set precedents.
At this point, I would remind these unpatriotic Senators of the line “you have a republic if you can keep it,” but a variation on this line may soon be more apt when Trump redoubles his attack on our election: You have a republic, if you can call this a republic.”

Walter Shaub via Twitter

We cannot indeed call this a republic; it is a shambolic kleptocratic theocracy. And our last one, remote chance of restoration will come next November. If we’re not out there with the numbers just posted today in Hong Kong’s election (72% or so), then our democratic republic will fall and, given what is likely to be a similarly shambolic kleptocracy in Great Britain, democracy, decency and the rule of law will be largely at an end on the planet, ending the final, very slim chance we have of mitigating accelerating climate catastrophe.

A “cancer on the presidency” has metastasized “hugely.”

« Read the rest of his tweets ». Fascinating.

On Crime and Punishment This Fourth of July

“It’s well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone’s part at this particular moment in the country and society.”

As the gigantic Fascist Cult of Nationalistic Personality Display takes over formerly democratic, non-partisan American space/time in Washington DC tomorrow, it’s worth looking back at some of the (quickly forgotten) roots of the democracy. « This one is about Marquis Cesare Beccaria radical ideas on crime and punishmen».

“‘On Crimes and Punishments‘ was the first attempt to apply principles of political economy to the practice of punishment so as to humanise and rationalise the use of coercion by the state. After all, arbitrary and cruel punishment was the most immediate instrument that the state had to terrorise the people into submission, so as to avoid rebellion against the hierarchical structure of the society. The problem that Beccaria faced, then, was the simple fact that the elite had complete control of the law, which was a family business and a highly esoteric language that only the initiated could master. The path leading to the rational reform of penal law required a fundamental philosophical rethinking of the role and place of law in society.”

Aeon

«The full treatise has been translated for English and is available here». It’s well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone’s part at this particular moment in the country and society.

[Image: «Ben Jennings in the Guardian» He’s fabulous! So is the Guardian! Go read them (and donate if you can) now!]

Paranoia, Fear, Terror and Facebook, et al.

“Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries.”

Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries. And someone warned us about giving in to terror, especially that orchestrated by demagogues and news media personalities. Hmmmmmm.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. It’s a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors.

In a move that’s just taken effect after approval of the revised application forms, the department says it has updated its immigrant and nonimmigrant visa forms to request the additional information, including “social media identifiers,” from almost all U.S. applicants.

The change, which was proposed in March 2018, is expected to affect about 15 million foreigners who apply for visas to enter the United States each year.

Associated Press

Yes, we’re so scared we’re insisting on a lot more:

In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants are now asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status, as well as whether any family members have been involved in terrorist activities.

Associated Press
Franklin Roosevelt

Just a few years ago, our leadership was saying:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 4-Mar-33

How refreshing. And he had Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, polio and the imminent deaths of 100 million human beings to worry about. We are no longer made of sterner stuff. We freak out over Twits (and their Twitterings) and have palpitations over words and clutch our pearls if someone is transgressive about … well anything.

Grow a spine Democrats! Listen to the dead man and stop fearing! Send tis administration packing by using the ballot box or Articles of Impeachment! Now!

9 November: Schicksalstag

In the next few days, there will be much remembrance of the events of 100 years ago—the end of World War I. Not as much in the U.S., where World War I is like the Korean War, a largely forgotten conflict, even though 115,516 Americans died between 1917-1918, along with over 320,000 sickened, most in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

In the next few days, there will be much remembrance of the events of 100 years ago—the end of World War I. Not as much in the U.S., where World War I is like the Korean War, a largely forgotten conflict, even though 115,516 Americans died between 1917-1918, along with over 320,000 sickened, most in the influenza epidemic of 1918.

But for Europe and the world including the U.S. in spite of our isolationism, the end of World War One is momentous, remembered, and memorialized.

From the German perspective, several 9 Novembers during the 20th century were extremely fateful; in fact, today is known in Germany as the Schicksalstag, or Day of Fate.

100 years ago today, after German sailors began to revolt against orders by the Imperial High Command to sail out for a final, climatic battle with the British Royal Navy (which the sailors considered suicidal), Chancellor Prince Max von Baden somewhat prematurely published news that Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated. Also prematurely, State Secretary Phlipp Scheidemann, part of the leadership of SPD, announced the formation of a new German republic: “The old and rotten, the monarchy has collapsed. The new may live. Long live the German Republic!” Events afterwards gathered speed; revolution toppled all the monarchical regimes of the German Reich, and the Germans sued for peace on the western front.

These events gave rise to a rightwing article of faith in future years: the Dolchstoßlegende, or the Stab in the Back legend, which the National Socialists would use as a foundational belief. According to the German right, the German army was still in its positions on the Western Front, undefeated, until (mainly Jewish and Socialist) politicians back in Berlin, such as Scheidemann, overthrew the Kaiser and declared the Republic, thus “stabbing in the back” the German army and navy. In spite of the fact that the Navy had mutinied and was no longer a fighting force and the German army was actually disintegrating in France and Belgium, the Dolchstoßlegende helped the German right delegitimize the Republic and prepare the way for its destruction.

An attempt at that destruction was made 95 years ago today when National Socialists and members of other nationalist parties attempted a coup in Munich. In what is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch, NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler declared himself leader in Bavaria, but the march through Munich originating in several beer halls was stopped by Bavarian police. Sixteen nationalists and four policemen were killed, the NSDAP was disbanded and Hitler was jailed. After the party’s ascent to power in 1933, 9 November was celebrated as a national holiday to remember the fallen of the putsch; any mention of the 9 November of 1918 was forbidden, unless it was a repetition of the Dolchstoßlegende.

The Dolchstoßlegende and years of similar lies and antisemitism were part of what ignited Reichskristallnacht on this day 80 years ago in 1938. Jewish synagogues and property were burned and destroyed throughout the Reich; more than 400 Jews were killed or committed suicide. About 30,000 Jews and other “undesirables” were arrested. Many later died in concentration camps. “Crystal Night” was named for the large amount of shattered glass that littered streets around the country. A final humiliation came when Jews were made responsible for the damage and those who collected on insured damages were forced to sign over insurance payments to the Reich.

And finally, on this day in 1989 29 years ago, after decades of war, destruction, the Holocaust, the Cold War and much lost territory, the Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall) was breached and East and West Germany were reunited. Because the actual reunification occurred on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the more formal date of 3 October 1990 is now celebrated as the official holiday.

Given that 100-150 million lives were lost around the world between roughly 1912 and 1989, 9 November is an appropriate day for a worldwide mourning.

Beery Originalist Quotables

Here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:

As the beery angry drunk Bratty “C’mon Just  Touch It!” Keginaw takes the Supreme Court in supremely retrograde and heavily misogynistic directions, here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:

“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 (Ratified by founding father and president John Adams and approved unanimously by the Senate)

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”

James Madison, Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

Thomas Paine, Excerpt from The Age of Reason

“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

George Washington, Letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789

“No religious doctrine shall be established by law.”

Elbridge Gerry, Annals of Congress, 1:729-731

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”

Ethan Allen, Religion of the American Enlightenment

“No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

The United States Constitution, Article VI, Paragraph III

“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed.”

James Madison, First Federal Congress, Congressional Register, June 8, 1789

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity.”

Thomas Paine, Excerpt from The Age of Reason

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.”

George Washington, Letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792

Amen.

The Speed of Events Overtakes Me

“BREAKING: An armed teacher reportedly fired a gun in a school in Dalton, Georgia, police say. No students have been hurt. Police have the teacher in custody, who was barricaded inside a classroom.”

A. “Arm all the teachers!”
B. Welp, that didn’t take long. Oops.
C. “Well then arm all the janitors!”
D. Prez says “Confiscate all the guns!”
E. Crazy how many things can happen while you’re in the doctor’s office.

On Shitholes

Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.


God’s Destiny for America has a Pottymouth

[Once again, my conscience overflows and will not give me rest without giving vent to something political/religious. So skip/block/defriend to your heart’s desire; just don’t say you didn’t get a trigger warning.]

During a lengthy sleepless (yet again) night, the above pictured “breaking news” started popping up on websites whereever you happened to be looking. The Presidential utterance was met by the usual silence from Graham, Dobson, Falwell, Jackson, Metaxas and Trump’s personal spiritual advisor Paula White (who wants your January paycheck or else God’s consequences will be visited on your head. Give her your 8% and you … get a Mercedes or something. Funny, but I thougth tithing was supposed to be 10%? Mercedes from God at a discount, I guess.). Meanwhile, Dallas First Baptist’s Jeffress doubled down; his only regret? Being a pastor doesn’t allow him to use the same phrase. We should refuse “shitholers” and bring more Norwegians into the country! Amen! Preach!

Then this afternoon came the Post’s «interesting analysis of what, to borrow the Presidential phrase, a “shithole” Norway used to be», and why it’s now THE place from whence our immigrants should come. This graphic is key to the article:

Graphic showing U.S. and Norway gross domestic product in comparison to each other. Norway now far exceeds the U.S.

So I earned something today: We should move to Norway if we want a higher quality of life away from pottymouths. The problem with that plan? They don’t take people from morally and economically vacuous “shithole” countries like ours.

Duly noted.

This country has not only slid downwards in domestic product, it’s been sucked into a vacuum of moral leadership. What are Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Bishop Harry Jackson, Eric Metaxas saying today? Dead air. They got tax cuts, the IRS was called off their backs and Bibi is happy. Was it just over 20 years ago that the same suspects were gnashing their teeth over merely how to explain the term “blowjob” to their children? We used to call this current kind of thinking “the ends (tax cuts, IRS exemptions and proclaiming that Jerusalem is the capital and therefore the Rapture is nigh) justifies the means.” And I don’t remember ever being told that was a good thing. I was told it was secular humanist “situational ethics” and it was evil. (An aside: If Jesus wants to come back, I seriously doubt a presidential proclamation moving, eventually, the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is going to be what actually moves Him.)

And thus we have Dallas First Baptist Church’s Robert Jeffress doubling down and saying he supports the “shithole” comments 100 percent. Not only that, but “America is not a church where everyone should be welcomed regardless of race and background.” He added some regret that as a pastor he’s not supposed to use naughty words.

(!)

Urm. Yes. America has always been portrayed (the reality notwithstanding) as the greatest and most welcoming secular church in human history. A shining city on a hill, said Reagan. “Give me … The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” said Emma Lazarus in The New Colossus, a poem we liked and believed in so much we had it engraved on a massive public monument.

Specifically saying she will have no comment is Paula White, who is often portrayed as Trump’s “spiritual advisor,” and who is currently demanding that “faithful” people give her church all of their January paychecks (which amounts to just 8%, not the Biblically commanded 10%—mustard seed faith on the cheap!). If they do, Jesus will bless you with riches! You get a Mercedes! And you get a Mercedes! And you get a Mercedes! And you get ’em at a 2% discount from God’s list price! And if you don’t pony up? God will visit consequences on your head. You get the plague! And you get a divorce! And you get a gay child!

There are some vestiges of sanity, so props where they are due: A.R. Bernard resigned from the White House “evangelical council” months ago and stated, “His own comments expose him. They were elitist and blatantly racist.” And former Southern Baptist head Ronnie Floyd stated the obvious, “I would not agree with those comments at all. We need to see that every person is made in the image of God. … Anytime we devalue a person it’s not good … Regardless of their skin or ethnicity, we need to honor one another.”

As I am sometimes reminded, I was dedicated “to the Lord” when I was a month or so old in the Roswell First Church of the Nazarene, a denomination where I learned things that were the 180-degree opposite of what Trump and White and Jeffress and Falwell and Graham and Dobson are doing. I learned that good old verse “by their fruits ye shall know them.” I was taught that quaint old Golden Rule, something about do unto others. I was also taught following Christ didn’t mean Mercedes. God knows, for all of Mom’s hard-earned 10% back to the church money, a Mercedes was never outside our door, unless it had broken down and Zsa Zsa needed a telephone to call AAA. No, in my childhood, following Christ meant a life of hardship and service and respect and sacrifice and a life lived in common and shared in common with other people, including lepers, tax collectors, felons, you name ’em. And rendering unto Caesar.

I was also taught the following pertinent scripture. Please note the absence of “except for those from shitholes” in these quotes:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28
“For I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes.” Jeremiah 31:25
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” John 7:37
“In everything, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'” Acts 20:35

New Testament

Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.

Roy Moore's Gotterdammerung

“Antonio: ‘Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!’”
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3, Page 5.

We thank thee, Alabama; verily we doeth, for recognizing an ancient truth, as it applieth to Roy Moore. Congratulations, Senator Doug Jones!

They Don’t Like the New ‘America First’ As Much As They Did the Lindbergh Version

So let’s see if I’ve got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.


Deutsche Welle reports that “a new survey published by German public broadcaster ARD shows Germans trust Russia more than the US.” Or to be specific: “28 percent of respondents felt Moscow was a reliable partner, compared to 25 percent for Washington …. More than 90 percent said Paris was a reliable partner, while more than 60 percent said Britain …”

So let’s see if I’ve got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.

Yes, I hear you. I too am sick of all the Winning and Greatness we have achieved Again.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Markus Spiske via Unsplash.]

Questions. We Got ‘Em.

Why? Because, as reporter Anne Kingston notes, women are “female reproductive vessels” and not human beings. And because Long Dong Silver has always, and will always, get a free pass. And both of these are realities for reasons which surpasseth understanding.


Long Dong Silver Rides Again

Why, just now, are we reading that Supreme Court Associate Justice Long Dong Silver, who apparently goes by the name “Clarence Thomas,” was again outed as a serial sexual predator? Why was the story, dated 27-Oct, buried in the National Law Journal? And why are we just finding out this from … a «Canadian news magazine of much repute»? And buried in the last paragraph? Of an article on the “coarsening of American politics”? And about which (the repeated grabbing of a woman’s ass at a 1999 party, not the Macleans article) no one else seems to know about?

Why? Because, as reporter Anne Kingston notes, women are “female reproductive vessels” and not human beings. And because Long Dong Silver has always, and will always, get a free pass. And both of these are realities for reasons which surpasseth understanding.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Ravi Sharma via Unsplash.]

American Carnage: 3-Dec-17

Nazis are just “the normal people next door” and nothing bad should happen to either them or the New York Times for pointing this out, says The New York Times.


Globaloneyism?

What we learned this week:

• The wheels of justice grind very, very slow, but they are grinding towards folks who allegedly but probably committed treason against the country, but who will almost certainly not do jail time, much less pay the ultimate penalty historically paid by traitors.

• Speaking of future criminals, perhaps they might wish to take instruction from the example of Slobodan Praljak.

• Terry Crews can tell you that it is currently acceptable to be a sexual assault victim … unless you’re a black male. Then people adopt a “meh” attitude. I.e., #MeToo is quite trendy at the moment, but is likely to become passé rather quickly.

• Gronk probably needs to be reined in and it’s probably already too late.

• Life is about to get particularly hellish; CVS is buying Aetna and Disney is buying (part) of Fox. Also, Congress’ War on Everyone Except Their Donors is nearing one of its biggest successes of the last 40 years.

• A would-be blacksmith saw a show on tv that instructed him how to make something weapon-ish, which undoubtedly included a post-ironic “don’t try this at home” small print warning; he then tried that at home, burning down three downtown blocks of buildings in a town near Albany, NY.

• Alabamians (whether it’s a majority of them will be seen on 12-Dec) have no problem with pedophilia rationalization, especially while the Elephant Tides or whatever their stupid name is are winning. There is no surprise here at this reality.

• Nazis are just “the normal people next door” and nothing bad should happen to either them or the New York Times for pointing this out, says The New York Times.

And I’m not linking to any of that because … reasons. Google what you don’t understand.

Good night, y’all.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by “FreeStocksDotOrg” via Unsplash.]

American Carnage: 17-Nov-17


The Diddler’s Club

What we learned this week:

• Al Franken is the latest member of the “People Who Diddled People Who Didn’t Want to be Diddled” Club. This Diddlers Club, of which we’re all so very proud, officially now consists of the nation’s President; at least two former presidents; two or three sitting United States Senators and lord knows how many more; a Supreme Court Justice; god knows how many Members of the House of Representatives and their staffs; governors of various states; members of various state legislatures, including a member in Ohio who was exercising his member with another man’s member, cheating on his wife as he attempted to pass virulently anti-LGBTQ legislation; the impeached Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who may become a United States Senator next month; journalists of various stripes; sports figures and commentators; Catholic priests and Protestant preachers; college professors; doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs and at least one family member. It’s quite a roster, very inclusive.

• In other words, we learned what women have been trying to tell us about the lives they have to lead because they have something every heteronormative man seems to badly want: a vagina. Also some men, because they have what every homonormative man wants: a penis.

• What’s the matter with Kansas? The hypersecretive autocratic government which took power over the last ten years operates incompetently and in «extremely secretive, weird ways».

• I missed this back in September, but one acolyte of “Christian” nutbag autocratic Bill Gothard, who has platinum status in the Diddler’s Club (and he’s in his eighties) is in trouble in Arkansas. «Kenneth L. Dewitt applied Gothard’s principles of Godly behavior while running a prison ministry for imprisoned Arkansas women. The Godly principle apparently involved Dewitt having incarcerated women come in under his “umbrella of authority” and submit to God’s plan for women: repeated diddling because … men. Dewitt is “is currently serving a five-year sentence at the Ouachita River Unit after pleading guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault of prisoners.” Gothard couldn’t be reached for comment; he was probably unreachable in a private jet giving private dictation to one of the shapely arrows in his Quiver.

• If you don’t recall the sordid details of Reality TV stars The Duggars, who were Gothard’s proudest achievement and America’s favorite voyeuristic targets (19 blond white kids, what’s not to like?!), «here’s a link from 2015 that pretty well explains the entire wreckage of Gothard’s slimy trail, stretching back to the 1950s. [Full disclosure: My parents ponied up to pay for me to go to a Gothard Basic Seminar and an Advanced Seminar back in high school. Family members have been fully involved in the “ministry” and continue to angrily defend the old goat even now that’s he’s been sued by, what, 30 or so?, abused men and diddled women. IF we were still talking to each other and IF I was masochistic enough to be there for Thanksgiving dinner, Gothard would be a topic that would have to be avoided ere blood was shed on the turkey carcass. /End disclosure.]

• One more piece of recent Gothard news: IBLP, Gothard’s “former” ministry from which he has disassociated with just like Trump, cachinged last month on the sale of a property they owned in Australia. «They scored $9.5 million U.S. dollars on a property valued at just $6 million». And they won’t even have to practice the usual offshore tax haven chicanery to avoid a hefty tax bill; they’re an American “church” and therefore exempt from taxation. Maybe they’ll have a come-to-Jesus moment and repent and spread the money among Gothard’s Diddlers Club targets. Right after the Holy Spirit heeds their prayers and pigs fly from Melbourne to Los Angeles. Aside: I love how the Aussie press just tells it like it is in this case: “US religious cult.” You have NO idea, my Aussie friends!

• I said only one more Gothard piece. I lied. There’s an article in The New Republic that discusses the … politics and peccadilloes, shall we say … of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame. I mention it because Gothardites and other similar evangelical fellow travelers have always had a very weird (at least to me) fetish for the 19th century, and their worship of Wilder and Little House is repeated in a million ways over everything from Gunsmoke and John Wayne to learning how to cook like pioneer women. Some of them even submit to the kind of abuse meted out by 19th century husbands, but that’s a different paragraph. «Little House, Small Government» is a nice starter primer to this phenomenon, although it’s sadly too short to be able to explore the evangelical connection or the fetishization of dying on the Oregon Trail.

• Turning to more uplifting in the face of bigotry, abuse and violence news, there’s a fascinating account in a publication I’d never read called Emergency Physician’s Monthly. «It’s the story of what happened to one hospital’s ER team the night the NRA slaughtered some folks» listening to what now passes for “country” music. It’s a highly recommended read, as are the other articles on the site.

• Speaking of the wild frontier, the usually lily-white Outside magazine actually printed «a lament from a young man who went west» to work some seasonal jobs at Montana resorts. Why did he not have a great season? His skin color wasn’t up to snuff. (Which of course meant he worked in “housekeeping.”) The article explores his experience with the casual “lighten up” (har har, get it?) type of racism from coworkers and guests which finally wore him down and sent him packing back east to relative safety. Remarkably, his white coworkers calling each other “ni—-s” as a “joke” was about the worst that happened to him. It’s amazing he wasn’t shot or jailed; it’s even more amazing that Outside printed the report. I grieve for his loss of innocence, and hope he has all the success in life he wants. I’d also like to shake his hand; he’s braver than I.

• Closing with one Diddlers Club story that’s so fun. Ohio state rep. Wes Goodman, family values warrior and, of course, Republican, resigned his seat after he was caught using his state office for some consensual diddling with a person who was not his wife and not a woman. Yes, yet another one of those “Fags must die! If you agree, meet me in my car at the local park for some cocksucking followed by the signing of a petition demanding the death penalty for fag kissing!” kind of people, as usual, hoisted on his own petard, or his boyfriend’s whatever. As someone quipped on Twitter, “Goodman’s wife is probably so pissed, he’s having to move into a log cabin!” (Get it? Log Cabin Republicans are the gay ones who haven’t figured out yet that they support a party which has members who seriously, sincerely, would go Leviticus on their gay, rich asses given half a chance. Goodman’s website has been scrubbed today; but the good old friend, the Wayback Machine, is providing nice clear copies of things the good man has written. Unfortunately, his Twitter account has been locked down, but that’s not a barrier either. Here’s Wes’ priceless take on the Family: “Healthy, vibrant, thriving, values-driven families are the source of Ohio’s proud history and the key to Ohio’s future greatness. The ideals of a loving father and mother, a committed natural marriage, and a caring community are well worth pursuing and protecting.” Oh, how fun. Don’t you love closet cases who talk about “vibrant, thriving” committed natural marriages when the only thing that’s actually “vibrant and thriving” is their relationship to their boyfriends’ cocks? Little Wes is a cutie. He and Aaron Schock, if that old gym queen manages to avoid prison, should totally get together. They’d make a truly hot, power Log Cabin Republican partnership. I hope Wes is a bottom, ’cause I doubt Aaron lets just anyone go balls-deep on his bleached ass.

• And, oh yeah, there was another NRA nutbag gun attack. It is now officially news if a mass shooting does NOT occur on any given day.

So, ain’t our America nation grand? After reading all this stuff (and then writing about it) I feel extremely … greasy. Like the country has gone much bukkake all over my gay face. I need a bath and some penicillin. And this country is 100%, pure Grade A, psycho nuts insane, from the demented consummate con man in the White House to … well just about everyone else. Not at ALL what I thought living in the U.S. during my middle age would be like. Can’t wait to become elderly. ‘Cause that shit is also seriously fucked up in major ways too.

Good night, y’all.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Vlad Tchompalov via Unsplash.]

American Carnage: 10-Nov-17

Peckerwoods!

What we learned this week:

• Comedian Louis CK and Crusading Crazy Ass Roy Moore were accepted into that venerable old boy’s club, that newly-open-to-didlers-from-outside-the-church institution, The Ancient and Venerable Order of Priests Expecting Complete, Knightly Exoneration; Rewarded With Oodles Of Dancing Students (a.k.a. “P.E.C.K.E.R.W.O.O.D.S.”) Golf and Country Club. Greeting them at the door was the Ancient and Venerable Third Assistant Vice President Clarence Thomas, who treated the new initiates to pubic hair-laced Coke cans and asked Roy Moore if Moore was interested in buying him, because living conditions in “free” Washington D.C., are highly overrated.

• Corey Feldman is still alive. And also Corey Feldman knows lots of Hollywood people who will be applying for membership at Peckerwoods G&CC very soon. This has Corey quite frightened.

• 150-year-old former presidents need help to take a piss, but are still able to feel up female reporters and tell them dirty jokes, both of which are done in front of former First Ladies.

• White gay men are no longer welcome in the gay rights movement because the whiteness of their skin means they are privileged, cisgendered and non-intersectional. Henceforward, when we’re getting the shit beaten out of us at school; can’t afford college; get harassed or beaten or shot by the police for kissing our boyfriends in public parks; gulp down the handful of toxic drugs we fought to get in the 90s while watching our mothers scour the kitchen sink after getting a glass of water lest God’s disapproval in the form of the AIDS plague will be visited on her house and infect her innocent grandchildren; spending the 54th year of life with our families berating us for our lifestyle choice and allowing demons to inhabit our bodies; well, we cannot possibly have any contribution or role in the LGBTQ community. Because our skin color is white. And that means we cannot participate, question, discuss, converse and sure as hell can’t culturally appropriate anything from anybody. No alliances with us are welcome. No matter how many suicide attempts we committed during our teen years because we are total fags, it counts for nothing. You must be black, female, lesbian, transgendered before you are allowed to participate in efforts to secure civil rights for LGBTQ, etc. Your skin color is white, so you must be a white supremacist Nazi dedicated to keeping people of color down. “Intersectionality is a bitch, white boys; paybacks are hell and Karma gonna bite you in your lily white highly privileged asses.”

• That Kathy Griffin is a bit off her nut though, isn’t she?

• John Hillerman is dead at 84. Yet, Justin Bieber and Joel Osteen still walk the earth. Osteen’s Mercedes-bestowing god sure has a wicked sense of humor.

• There seems to have been some baseball played. Something about a World Series won by perennially losers the Houston Astros. We wouldn’t know, we weren’t paying attention.

• New England Patriots player and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez’s brain was dissected and shown to be the worst case of NFL of the brain ever recorded. Oh, this just in, it was CTE of the brain. We regret (not) the error.

• O.J. Simpson will continue to haunt our lives even if he actually dies. This week: Tossed out of the Cosmopolitan in Vegas for being … the only intoxicated person in the casino. The Juice owes the Cosmo a favor; that place is a cesspool of skeezy. Getting banned from it for life probably will save his life (or perhaps a few courses of penicillin). We were at the Vdara/Cosmo complex in 2014. The swimming pool still gives me nightmares. And hives.

• They’re remaking/updating/relaunching a lot of old 90s TV series for no apparent reason than, like the Simpsons, the creative well in Hollywood dried up decades ago, probably about the time Carol Burnett packed it in on her variety show, which was was always packed with incredible talent. A Roseanne reboot and a Will and Grace reboot we did not need. Also, The Simpsons must die; each episode is worse than the previous, a race to a bottom we cannot make out but we know it’s there. Family Guy is suffering while its creator is buzzing around the universe, so it’s probably also time that James Woods whips out his AR-15 and ends the show’s life for good and all as well. Bobs Burgers is still reasonably fresh, but it may be peaking now. (And by the way, just ’cause I’m a white faggot does NOT mean I should have to watch the Will and Grace reboot. My intersectionality about class, wealth, New York City snobbery and poor body image means this show deeply oppresses me, even if it may have influenced some people decide not to shoot our faggoty white asses when we got legally married by the U.S. Supreme Court. Whatever may be, I’d still prefer old Lucy Show episodes to most of this dreck.

• Tuesday’s election seemed to be a case of buyer’s remorse, wherein the guy who bought a pink Ford Fiesta with the undercoating package and Scotch-guarded seats wakes up after a long nightmare and wants to toss the Pink Fiesta off the nearest cliff, but knows there’s just no way that’s going to happen. So instead, he settles for going to the nearest Ben and Jerry’s and consuming 23 different punny flavors, coincidentally imbibing enough “RoundUp” (TM) to shrivel his gonads to the size of B.B.s And while waiting for his blood glucose numbers to fall below 1000, stares at the Pink Fiesta and thinks, “I hate this fucking century and this fucking country and powerful people who diddle powerless people and get away with it. Every. Single. Time.” And then, feeling better and on the way home, the wheels on his pink Fiesta fall off for the 45th time that week.

• Speaking of Pink Fiestas, the anniversary of Trump’s ascendance to power is appropriately the same as Kristallnacht and the infamous “Stab in the Back,” whereby leftists and Jews back home knifed German troops on the Western Front in the back just right when they were about to end the whole damn war victoriously, causing the Kaiser to abdicate and the nation to find itself in need of rescuing by an Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler. Putting the facetiousness aside for a moment, the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht should be looked upon as an abject lesson about what happens when you allow hate, ignorance, false equivalency, and frat boy snark mindsets to take over entire countries. But that would require Americans to actually absorb reality and study history, two things we are adamantly refusing to do at this moment. Gott Strafe Amerika! And he’ll do it too.


[Text by HawkEye. Photo by Dawn Armfield via Unsplash.]

The Own Us

It’s all a sordid mess and they need to be yanked hard.

Take Back Our Voter Data

The CBC « reports on Professor David Carroll » and the fight to get Cambridge Analytical to tell us what is in our “psychographical” profiles. It’s all a sordid mess and they need to be yanked hard.

“They claim to have figured out how to project our voting behavior based on our consumer behavior. So it’s important for citizens to be able to understand this because it would affect our ability to understand how we’re being targeted by campaigns and how the messages that we’re seeing on Facebook and television are being directed at us to manipulate us.”

—CBC Canada

Nothing will happen here, though; these people gave us the current government and our legislatures are not on our side.

But you can be on Prof. Carroll’s side by « following his Twitter feed » or support his « Crowd Justice pledge » to “take back our voter data.”

To the Editor

In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War Two.

“Globaloney Stamps.
“Chicago, June 1. — Today I received the shock of my life when I went to mail a package to my boy in service. I needed 20 cents in stamps and was given four 5 cent stamps with the red flag of Albania spread almost across the entire surface. Just what is this country coming to?
“Mrs. H.V.”
Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10


Methinks I smells the grandmother of a future Trump supporter!

Actually, “Mrs. H.V.”, on 6-June-1944, “what this country had come to” was the liberation of the European continent from Nazism and Fascism, which it did along with 22 other nations (hence the term “Allies”) and an “associated power,” Albania, which at the time of your “Letter to the Editor” was occupied by forces of the German Wehrmacht.

By the way, Albania’s designation as an associated power was formally recognized at the 1946 Paris conference. Albania officially signed the treaty ending World War II between the “Allied and Associated Powers” and Italy in Paris, on 10 February 1947. Albania had been occupied by Fascist Italy then Germany; it was quickly subjugated to communist party rule and suffered under Enver Hoxha for the next five decades.

Finally, “what this country had come to” on D-Day 1944 was to recognize on a five-cent postage stamp that it wasn’t winning the war alone, was not in the war alone, and was not suffering in the war alone.

I hope your “boy in the service” was able to hold on to his U.S. Postal Service five-cent Albanian flag stamps. They’s probably worth some moneys today. [And thank him for his service.]


“Four More Years of War
“Mankato, Minn., June 1. — I wonder how many people now earning big money, more money thant they have ever handled before, and who will vote a certain way thinking to insure a continuation of this income, ever pause to think what another four years will bring?
“Among the many unpleasant things that are to me a foregone conclusion is that Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he? It is the perfect solution of unemployment, a problem he failed to solve until we managed to become embroiled in war. Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.
“He has a mania for spending and giving and war allows him privileges which peace would curtail, we hope. So, I say vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.
“Reader”
Chicago Tribune, 6-June-1944, Page 10


Is that you, Erle P. Halliburton? No? Are you Fred Drumpf? Ah! I suspected so. It’s the 1944 version of a Twitter storm (ask your son, he’ll explain).

Where to start, where to start.

1. “What will another four years bring?” Oh, honey, you have no idea. You should just suspend time and stay safe and quiet in 1944, baby. You don’t really wanna know the answers to this question. Lessee. Hitler? Dead. Mussolini? Hangs lifelessly from a lamp post. Tojo? Incompletely suicides, resurrects, then is executed. Roosevelt? Dead. A National Security State is born. We have to start hand-feeding everyone in Berlin. Truman gets pissed over a negative review of one of his daughter’s piano recitals. We fuck up in Korea causing … some very bad shit to be set into perpetual motion. China turns red. Japan turns black, largely from just two very large bombs. Lots of soldiers come back from all points of the globe and take your job, discontinuing your own income.

2. “… Roosevelt will drag the war out another four years. Why wouldn’t he?” The war will continue for one year and three more months. Roosevelt won’t drag the war out because he’ll be dead in ten months.

3. “… unemployment, a problem he failed to solve …” Unemployment was nearly 25% in 1933 when Roosevelt took office; in 1941 it had fallen to 10%; and when he died in 1945, economists considered the country at “full employment,” with less than 2% of the nation’s workforce unemployed. You’re just being deliberately idiotic here, my friend.

4. “… until we managed to become embroiled in war.” The United States was not attacked by Franklin Roosevelt; war was declared by the Empire of Japan on 7-December-1941 with the launching of a surprise attack on military installations near Honolulu, Hawaii. War on the United States was declared by Germany the next day. The United States Congress “embroiled” us in the war by declaring war in Public Law 77-328, 55 STAT 795 on 8-Dec-1941. After Germany declared war on the U.S., the Congress reacted with a declaration of war on Germany in Pub. Law 77–331, Sess. 1, ch. 564, 55 Stat. 796. The “embroiling” would seem to be, then, a joint act of Japan, Germany and the United States Congress, the parties with power to declare, embroil and conduct warfare.

5. “Another very good reason to drag it out is, that he is not restricted in war time spending.” Dear “Reader,” am I to extrapolate from this sentence that you wish to conduct the most massive conflict in human history involving most of the peoples and locations of the planet, the object of certain parties (see #4 above) being to destroy the United States and dozens of other countries … that you wish to conduct this war “on the cheap”? The Congress has appropriated funds necessary to forestall the aim of aforementioned parties and it is the duty of the President to use those funds to defend the country to the utmost against, again, parties which wish us destroyed. And you’re taking exception? Oh, sweetie, wait until a certain actor whom you’ve seen in “Bedtime for Bonzo” seizes the presidency and spends over $700 a piece for hammers for the armed forces, which will partially explain trillion-dollar-deficits. Then we’ll get back to you and ask your opinion. Surely we can count on that opinion being, shall we say, apoplectic? Or is it just Mr. Roosevelt who gets under your skin? Enquiring minds wish to know.

6. “… vote for Roosevelt and draw four more years of war at least.” A vote in November 1944 six months hence will, dear “Reader,” get you nine more months, not years, of war, and just about one month of a Roosevelt fourth term.

So buck up, dear “Reader“! The end is nigh. Now go sit by the radio and let General Eisenhower entertain you with tales from a place called Omaha Beach. And then write back and tell us how much money you would have allocated to the D-Day Invasion of German-occupied Europe, the largest military invasion in human history. Give us a hint. $100,000? $200,000? Can’t wait for your fascinating reply!

Ignorant and Doomed

Among savages incapable of retaining collectively learned experience, a perpetual infancy results. I can no longer figure out these days whether I’m reading history or current events. [Note to self: If it’s on the Kindle, it’s a history book. If it’s on the web browser on my laptop, it’s currently happening.]

Berlin, 4-May-27:
“Goebbels spoke again at the Veteran’s Association House. ‘A fresh heckler was thrown out into the fresh air,’ he noted laconically in his diary. … Somebody had indeed heckled Goebbels during his speech and on a signal from the Gauleiter had been seized by a horde of SA men, brutally manhandled, and thrown down the stairs. A journalist from the Scherl publishing house who was discovered in the hall was subjected to the same treatment. …”
—_Goebbels: A Biography_ by Peter Longerich 2015

Columbus, OH, 21-Nov-15:
“Then, when Mr. Trump began talking about surveillance of refugees, the college-age couple standing in front of the students began chanting, “Hating Muslims helps ISIS.” The students were caught off guard, but after a moment of uncertainty, some of them joined in.
“Mr. Hopkins [a Trump supporter at the rally] leaned over and screamed, “Shut up!”
“Mr. Trump stopped his remarks and looked toward the commotion with disgust. “Two people, two people,” he said dismissively of the couple, as the crowd started booing and the people around them began shouting. “So sad,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah, you can get ’em the hell out.”
“The crowd erupted in triumph as the protesters and students turned to leave. “Get out of here!” Mr. Hopkins shouted, shoving one of the two protesters in the back on his way out.
“One of the high school girls said afterward that as they exited, people in the crowd had asked them, “If you don’t love America, why don’t you just leave?” and that a man had told her that if she had not been filming on her phone, he would have slapped her.
“She and another student said they had heard an epithet for black people hurled their way.
“After Mr. Trump wrapped up his speech and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blasted on the speakers, Mr. Hopkins rushed to the stage to get a picture of Mr. Trump.
“Asked what he thought of the rally, he said: “It’s like a movement! And he’s a man of action.”
“And the protesters? “Very rude.””
—_The Wasington Post_, 25-Nov-15

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
—_The Life of Reason_ (1905-06), George Santayana

I need add nothing to all that.

At Least One American Gets It

“America currently has no functioning democracy. ”

James Earl Carter, 39th President of the U.S.

“Amerika hat derzeit keine funktionierende Demokratie … Ich glaube, die Invasion der Privatsphäre ist zu weit gegangen. Und ich glaube, dass die Geheimnistuerei darum exzessiv gewesen ist. [Snowden’s revelations] wahrscheinlich nützlich, da sie die Öffentlichkeit informieren … nie zuvor dagewesene Verletzung unser Privatsphäre durch die Regierung. ”
—Jimmy Carter

Loose translation: “America currently has no functioning democracy … I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far. And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive. [Snowden’s revelations were] probably useful because they inform the public … [we’ve] never before seen our privacy violated by the government.” «[Der Spiegel]»

Jimmy is probably at the top of an NSA watch list somewhere, something which would no doubt greatly please those on the right.

The only quibble I have with this, Mr. President, is that you make it out to be a recent thing. We’ve had no functioning democracy to speak of since A.) You lost your re-election bid in 1980; B.) When the Democrats lost the house in 1994 and ushered in their “Contract on America”; and/or C.) When the Supreme Court dictated the results of the 2000 election, giving the presidency to the loser of the election, each of these being a signpost along the road to our present corporatocracy. Otherwise, bang-on, Jimmy!

I Believe …

“Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.”

Edward Snowden

“I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945 … Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.’
— Edward Snowden

Yes … but, Mr. Snowden, you are up against a public-private entity unprecedented in its power and hypocrisy and self-delusion. We have those duties, yes. But what does that look like? Surely it doesn’t look like a press conference in a Moscow airport. But what?

And?


“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
—Barack Obama

[Meanwhile, his “gay brothers and sisters” tap their feet, waiting impatiently. Well, then, hurry it up already!]

Finally

I was the first registered Republican in my family. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Ronald Reagan, the second for George H.W. Bush. I listened to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, thought I was a Dittohead, and was one of the few who watched and liked his television show. I actually cried when George Sr. and Barbara left the White House to Bill and Hilary in January 1993.

And then the Republicans lurched to the fringe, became immoderate, aggressive, in-your-face, and triumphal, became harnessed to extremist religious philosophy. They attacked anytime President Clinton breathed. Limbaugh yelled (in 1992) that he was happy to be in the opposition; it’s more fun, you can snipe and bitch and moan and not have to actually do anything. The Republicans launched their Contract on America (er, I mean for).

And then, in 1994, came Harry and Louise. Corporate money flooded in, and the Republicans steamrollered and destroyed health care reform, dooming hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to premature death over the next 16 years. The militias and ti-foilists, precursors to the Tea-baggers, came out. And all that culminated in terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s murder of 168 people in my own backyard in the service of a right-wing political philosophy.

I mourned the loss of health care, as well as the Murrah Building, and ranted and railed against my party. In 1996, I registered as a Democrat, voted for Bill Clinton and then watched the Republicans continue to make war, year after year, against the middle class, and especially against gay and lesbian Americans like me.

I’ve been trying to remember exactly what the turning point for me was. And I’m almost 100% certain it was health care reform. When the Republicans attacked and destroyed the possibility of a saner, more humane health care payment system, they also attacked and destroyed me. I returned to the Democratic fold where my family had originally been for the better part of a century.

I didn’t turn on the Republicans, as the saying goes; they turned on me.

Their behavior right now, as we wait for the final House vote, is beyond disgusting. No lie too big or too outrageous to read into the Congressional record or give to the cameras at CNN.

But to me, it doesn’t matter what happens in November; I realize the Democrats will probably pay a price. And I don’t care. It takes courage to do the right thing, they’ve finally grown a bit of a pair, it’s the right start. And if they lose control, fine. The resulting nastiness will, once again, prove to Americans who too easily forget history, that the right does not have our best interests at heart, only those of corporate boards and religious charlatans.

Will watch the final vote and the president’s statement following. And be finally relieved that 100 years of obstruction of a basic fundamental human right has finally ended.

Two Right-Wing Terrorist Murders in Two Weeks

And now two right-wing terrorists have committed two political murders in two weeks. First Dr. Tiller in Wichita, a murder which was, from the point of view of the terrorists, successful in its aims. Now, an obscene attack on the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum begs the question, are we in for a Summer of Rage?

Researcher Chip Berlet «notes where we are at the moment»:

Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive, or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.’
Huffington Post

The same right-wing pundits are now getting a bit nervous at what they have wrought; Fox News pundit Shepard Smith reportedly said today:

“There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they’re just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place…I could read a hundred of them like this…I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous.”

Could be a long, hot, murderous summer we’re looking at here.

Post-2000-Election Rant (Dec. 2000)


Original Message
From: Doe, John
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 6:54 AM
To: airbeagle
Subject: Palm Beach Video

Funny, slightly mean:

« Confused Palm Beach Voters »

AirBeagle’s Rant:

Says Steve, in his typically verbose manner showing that he’s fiddling while his company burns down around him (NorthPoint is 50 cents a share today!):

Yes, John, the cartoon is funny. Yup, repeatedly making fun of elderly Jewish voters who were supposedly confused enough by the ballot to punch chads for Pat Buchanan, a man who admired Hitler, could certainly be defined as “slightly mean,” as you put it. But funny, nonetheless.

I do like the other cartoon on the site above where Al and Dub duel it out in Tennessee with a banjo and guitar, a la Deliverance, then go to Texas and try to have a shootout, a la Wild West, but Al’s gun has a trigger lock and Dub can’t shoot straight enough to hit him. Hilarious. I’m not being sarcastic, now, either.

I honestly also like the following other laughable aspects of Indecision 2000:

  • Election night TV/Internet/News coverage. Laughable if it weren’t completely disheartening and ridiculous.
  • The Sore/Loserman 2000 posters. Brilliant.
  • The BUSH/CHEated 2000 posters. Cute, but a weakish response to Sore/Loserman.
  • Ralph Nader – “screw all you guys.” Pat Buchanan – “well, Hitler did have his good points.” Reform Party – “Are you ready to rumble?” Harry Browne – “Yes, we should make all drugs legal and get wasted out of our minds.” The REAL Florida ballot confusion – you could vote for the Socialist party or the Socialist Workers party.
  • Republican “rioters” chasing that poor Demo lawyer down the hall screaming, even though he’d just taken a sample ballot.
  • Thinking that Minnesota Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura should be taking the oath of office on Jan. 21. Can we still draft him? Jesse “The President” Ventura?
  • The picture of Dub holding up three fingers and Dick holding up two fingers and the caption, “How many times have you been arrested?”
  • America imputing tremendous significance in Al kissing Tipper on stage in Los Angeles. Retch.
  • The religious right having no problem with their candidate’s drunk driving or using a highly pejorative, scatological term to describe a member of the news media. Jesus may have changed his heart, but the mouth still needs some work. Can you say major league hypocrisy?
  • Speaking of major league bald-faced lying: Lynne Cheney hotly denying that her daughter, Mary, is a lesbian, when said daughter lives in Conifer, Colorado, with her lover and spent 1998 touring the country with Mr. Leather USA, while she was the official Coors Beer representative to the US gay/lesbian community, a post that she only quit shortly before the campaign season began.
  • Joe Lieberman looks a lot like the father on TV’s ALF, who was always being foiled by the hairy alien puppet, doncha think?
  • The blinking, deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on Dubya’s face as he stands in front of flags telling the nation what his handlers wrote that morning, praying that the teleprompter doesn’t break down or that he disappoints Poppy and Bar – clearly so far out of his league that he looks more like an emir of Kuwait in 1990 praying to Poppy, Dick, Colin and Norman to come rescue him and the oil wells from the great satan Saddam.
  • The sense I have that before Al-bot speaks to the nation that Joe is behind the screen winding him up and pointing him towards the cameras.
  • And speaking of cameras, I just wanna tell Tipper to stop with the Japanese tourist routine, already!
  • James Baker telling everyone that the election shouldn’t be decided in the courts, then watching the Republicans file the first lawsuit and subsequently filing twice as many suits as the Demos.
  • Hearing Gore’s campaign manager curse Republican “g-damn guerilla tactics,” then saying that if Gore is not elected, she’ll be fine at McDonald’s – “Girl! God will provide!” she said. Quote, unquote. (Maybe she should have been flippin’ Big Macs instead of running Al’s disaster of a campaign.)
  • The deep wrinkles on Laura Bush’s upper lip, from where she’s had to clench her teeth and lips together so tightly over the years in that disapproving librarian scowl while dealing with either her incredibly over-bearing mother-in-law or her drunken frat boy husband. She’s even having to take on Bar’s old First Lady cause: Literacy. Probably isn’t going to be allowed to have one of her own.
  • Hearing that the networks ran hours of video of a lone yellow Ryder truck speeding up the Florida interstate like OJ in the white Bronco runnin’ from LAPD.
  • And speaking of OJ, hearing him call in and compare the two events.
  • Hearing that, in Florida, Dems say every vote must count, even if handcounted and that voter intent has to be determined and “this number of undervotes is suspicious,” while the Repubs say everything’s been counted, and handcounts aren’t reliable and the election’s over; while in New Mexico, Repubs say every vote must count, even if handcounted and that voter intent has to be determined and “this number of undervotes is suspicious,” while the Dems say everything’s been counted, and handcounts aren’t reliable and the election’s over (regarding the election in Roosevelt County, NM). Yeesh. Now THAT’s major league hypocrisy.

The mean-spiritedness and nastiness of the last month is just part of the American experience. Thank god for the First Amendment. We can all scream as loud as we went one way or the other. We can also choose not to listen, too. I’ve been tuning out most of the news out this week. My opinion, bottom line: If the Supremes rule against Al, he should concede and come back in 2004 to send the drunken frat boy and Poppy’s Posse packing. In the meantime, he can help reinvent the internet or help Tommy Lee Jones shoot a remake of Love Story, where, he and Tipper play the leading roles themselves, he tells Tipper he needs a personality transplant and then engages her in the longest recorded movie screen kiss. I’m sure there’ll be a Buddhist and an ailing dog in need of prescription drugs in there somewhere.

Let Dub run around the White House for four years like he used to when he was a kid, tossing the baseball up in the air, sniffin’ and learnin’ to say “strategy” instead of “strategery.” Just pray that Dick’s heart attacks only come yearly and are never fatal.

A Rant on the 2000 Election Season (Nov. 2000)

In the current election season, and following revelations of Shrub’s DUI in Maine, here’s the latest rant.

The following is an e-mail that is currently circulating around the internet. Following this is AirBeagle’s ranting response. This is all very long, but stick with it.

Subject: Dear Mr. President

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, “Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore.” So, I sat down and reflected on that and I am sending my “Thank you” for what you have done, specifically:

1) Thank you for introducing us to Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and, of course Juanita Broaddrick, who told NBC that you raped her. Are there any others that we should know about?

2) Thank you for teaching my 8 year old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was about 10 or so to discuss sex in general with him, but now he knows more about that part of it than i did as a senior in college.The cigar thing was also neat for the kids.

3) Thank you for showing us that sexual harrassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of “sex” is. It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex and one person may have sex while the other one involved does not have sex. Monica said frequently while you were on the phone, she would work at one end, and you at the other. What productivity!

4) Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie “Wag the Dog” could be plausible after all. The people of the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Serbia are all running to rent the video, now that you made them part of the story.

5) Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful, and John Kennedy look moral.

6) Thank you for the 72 House and Senate witnesses who have pleaded the 5th Amendment and the 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democratic campaign fund raising.

7) Thank you for the 19 charges, 8 convictions, and 4 imprisonments for the Whitewater “mess” and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other “Clinton” scandles.

8) Thanks for remembering the families of the many deceased people who once were your friends, who served you and died so young and suddenly: Vince Foster, Jerry Parks, Ron Brown, Admiral Boorda, Les Aspin, Barbara Alice Wiese, Mary Mahones, Jim McDougal et al.

9) Thanks also for reducing our military by half, “gutting” much of our foreign policy, and for providing no real missle defense system for the American people. Thank you for sharing with our Chinese friends all of our nuclear weapon designs, the supercomputer technology to build such weapons, the ballistic missile technology so they can have more accurate missiles, and the encryption technology so they can keep it all secret too.

10) You are amazing visiting all those countries! Thank you for flying all over the world on “vacations” carefully disguised as necessary trips. It’s wonderful, too, how you have surpassed every other president in the size of you entourage on these trips: 75 jumbo jets and 2000 guests to China alone. Your Africa entourage also was remarkable and it was nice of you to bring Betty Currie. She needed a break from testifying before the grand jury.

Please give my regards to Hillary, when/if you see her. Tell her I’m working on a”Thank You” letter for her as well. Looking forward to January 2001.

Author Unknown

And now AirBeagle’s long and vitriolic comments:

I no longer identify with either party at all, although I tend to swing more towards the Democratic side. They’re just sexier some how. [grin]

But I get impatient with bitter Clinton-haters like the letter writer above. Clinton, like all our presidents, is human and therefore has made some really huge mistakes. We all do. I personally regret buying that silver 1976 Pontiac Sunbird with red stripes and loud side pipes that burned your legs every time you stepped out of the car. I still have the scars on my ankles. And that whole 1980 Volkswagen Scirocco thing. Ugh.

But ALL presidents/national leaders have made huge mistakes in their careers. As Churchill said, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Find me a president or leader, demo or repub, who can comport himself in high office with perfect behavior and I’ll tell you we’ve elected Christ himself. In other words, the perfect president doesn’t exist and is a figment of the collective national imagination. Get a grip, people, and some objectivity!

Now Shrub admits he got stopped for DUI. What else hasn’t he told us? How much more spin will Karen Hughes give us? I’ll bet Barbara is so hacked right now her head’s about to spin around in circles. NOBODY attacks her boys and gets away with it.

But ya know what? I’m FAR more concerned about his statement that Social Security is not a federal program and that he was responsible for having a hate crimes law in Texas, when he did exactly the opposite. So he was stopped for DUI … he’s an alcoholic … there but for the grace of God … but I’m more concerned about how many brain cells the drinking killed than a little traffic stop in Kennebunkport. By the way, do we REALLY think that Daddy didn’t get involved in that? A fine, license suspension in Maine for “a little while” and no overnight drunk tank time? Yeah, right, Poppy didn’t have anything to do with that.

It’s high time we remember some of the more salient points about our special American history, and how un-perfect it really is:

Our founding fathers were not, in fact, particularly Christian. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, John Adams, et al, to a man were Deists and denied that Christ was the son of God, that Christianity was a healthy religion and that heaven and hell existed. Thomas Paine was especially vitriolic in this (read “Common Sense”). Thomas Jefferson, who believed much the same, kept slaves even while writing “All men are created equal” and had a torrid affair with one of them. Ben Franklin used to sit naked in the window taking what he called “air baths.” By the way, “All men are created equal” actually meant to the founding fathers that “All white, land-owning, males over the age of 21, are created equal.” Nothing more, nothing less. Also, the second amendment was written at a time when Uzi’s and AK-47s were inconceivable.

Abe, the most revered Republican president, was not the saint/savior he’s made out to be. Freeing the slaves was merely a political tool. I quote: “If I can save the union by freeing the slaves, I will do that. If I can save the union by freeing some slaves and leaving others in bondage, I will do that. If I could save the union by not ending slavery, I will do that.”

Another quote: “I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution in the States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so. I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” Yup. Really sounds like Abe fought the war over slavery. In fact, slavery was a convenient political expediency to isolate the south and win back foreign opinion for the union, which had been slipping. He was against continuing the trade and allowing it to spread outside of the southern states where it was established. And he was definitely a white supremacist. Further, his stories of log cabin schoolwork with a piece of coal on the back of a shovel were nonsense and the raving lunatic Mary Todd Lincoln makes Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton look like harmless Barbie sorority sisters.

That Teddy Roosevelt stormed up San Juan Hill was probably a myth; as assistant secretary of the navy, he also manipulated the sinking of the Maine into an excuse to wage the Spanish-American War, in itself an excuse for a massive US Imperial land grab.

The three arguably most scandal-ridden US administrations were Republican: US Grant (you name it and it was a scandal); Warren G. Harding (Teapot Dome) and Richard Nixon (The gate thing; the Vietnam thing; the Checkers thing, etc.).

Calvin Coolidge had such contempt and dislike for the office and the people that he preferred to chop wood rather than deal with the daily drudgery of the office. He took no steps to prevent the ‘29 crash. His successor, Hoover, promised two chickens in every pot and two cars in every garage but could do nothing to turn around the depression. And Hoover’s tenure as the Secretary of Commerce and patronage of that department as president created such graft and corruption that his successor, FDR, had to perform a massive cleanup of the department.

As for sexual harassment, what about the great Republican “I Like Ike” and his long-time, well-known affair with his little Army secretary, Kay Summersby. And didn’t Ronnie divorce Jane Wyman to marry the Nanster? In my family’s church, that means he’s an adulterer and goin’ to hell, but they still voted for him in ‘84 anyway.

Poppy George: “Read My Lips” – What’s the difference between that and “I did not have sex with that woman” ?? One was about lying to the American people about a private consensual sex act, the other about lying to the American people about promising not to raise their taxes and take more of their money. Hmmmm. Why is America so uptight about sex, but so not about monetary matters, like huge government waste, an obscene stock market, corrupt corporate greed/welfare/purchasing of politicians and the political process? Also, the price of popcorn at the movies?

Reagan’s debate shenanigans, and what about that stuff about not letting the hostages off the ground in Iran until after he took the oath of office so he could announce publicly “Ronnie’s here, everything’s better, look what I done done”? Or for that matter, just who ran the country in his second term when senility was already setting in? And yes, Iran-Contra. Anybody remember James Watts? “Two blacks, a jew and a cripple.” Did Al Haig have his hand on the nuke button during the assassination attempt? So many questions.

What Democratic scandals other than “I hate Bill” have we had? Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian? Marilyn Monroe screwed JFK? Lyndon Johnson lifted his beagles up by the ears and miraculously got the dead people of the Texas Hill country to vote for him? Clinton can’t keep his pants on? Hillary’s a strong woman (read: Bitch), therefore, a de facto threat to all that is male and holy? Al Gore claimed to invent the internet, be the inspiration for Love Story and promises to fight for us?

And lastly, don’t get me started on Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Sorry, but this is a man who made some questionable and rabidly rightwing votes as a congressman, seeks to deny his own lesbian daughter rights and protections enjoyed by other citizens (not to mention attempting to deny she was even a lesbian, even though she served as the gay and lesbian community liason for the Coors company of Golden, Colorado, and once toured the nation with Mr. Leather USA 1998 and lives with her lover in Conifer), and a man who rakes in millions and millions of dollars in cash and stock while using his political connections at home and abroad to obtain lucrative contracts for one of the country’s most sleazy corporations, all while conducting massive layoffs (including my father once and my brother-in-law twice), all while generating record-setting profits. Not to mention that little “Let’s circumvent the Constitution of the United States by living in Highland Park, Texas, but making a quick hush trip to Wyoming to change our voter registration. Shhhhh.” Yeah. I want him a heartbeat away from the throne, pulling Dubya’s strings.

Finally, (aren’t you glad) anybody who can write can cast anyone else in a very bad light. The letter writer above can do it with Slick Willy; I can do it with any Republican administration, including several supposedly above reproach. So we can write the opposite: The Founding Fathers believed religion was an important part of life; Abe freed the slaves; US Grant won the war and was manipulated by unscrupulous politicians; Teddy won us an empire; Ronnie brought morning to America; Poppy won the Gulf War and began the economic miracle; FDR pretty much just continued what Hoover had already started; Gore did play a key role in nurturing the internet and was indeed one of the inspirations for Love Story and probably will fight for us, in a way. And Dick. Well, Dick. How to be nice to Mr. Cheney? Hmmmm. He hasn’t locked up his daughter (yet) and he was a dang fine Secretary of Defense. See? It’s easy. [grin]

As a matter of fact, I’m doing that myself at work. My assignment last week at work was to craft a vice president’s resignation message to the company, in which he/she claims to be leaving because he/she got an opportunity he/she can’t pass up and that he/she firmly believes in the company and what a great company this is and how much he/she loves the CEO. The truth: He/she told someone else last night that one of the primary reasons he/she’s leaving is that the CEO is, in fact, a complete and inveterate liar who can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

Knowing that my rent needs to be paid, which side of the story do you think I’ll be passing on to All NorthPoint? [grin] Yeah. That’s what I said.

So there. That’s my rant for today. If you’re still reading at this point, apologies for the length. I’m in an expansive mood today. Now, back to the salt mines. May God have mercy on us in the next administration.

The following are additional comments from Frank after reading my rant above:

Just a couple of non-brief side notes. Most Americans don’t remember or care about anything beyond the past year (i.e., history is meaningless). Your mention of Grant/Harding/Nixon is accurate and necessary. But nobody cares. I would love to commission a poll asking a scientific sample of Americans if they even know what Watergate was. I think part of our (when I say “our” I refer to you, me, and our age cohorts, or those in our age cohort who even think about these things) indignation about history, political scandal, hypocrisy, etc., comes from our having lived through a time when a president actively and directly circumvented and rode roughshod over the Constitution to take the reins of power into his own hands for his own corrupt uses – and kept a list of “enemies” for political liquidation. But Nixon resigned over 25 years ago. It might as well have been 250 years ago for all that anybody in this country cares about the lessons of history. I was reading an article in yesterday’s NY Times about a 13-year-old kid in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, who is the “chairman” of his middle school’s Bush “campaign.” He and another boy were debating about the election in his social studies class. When the Exxon Valdez spill came up, the Bush acolyte said, “People would rather pay less for oil and take the small risk that there may be a small spill. Besides, we did clean up the Exxon Valdez spill pretty well.” We live in a country where national amnesia is the norm, promoted at the highest levels, and starting with parenthood.

Richard Nixon makes Bill Clinton look like a penny-ante third-rate podunk dogcatcher from Little Rock, but nobody will ever admit that, because there is a national interest in promoting amnesia – unless the memory you are exploiting is nostalgic. It’s okay to have entire cable channels devoted to the regurgitation of old film clips of John Lennon, Jackie Kennedy, and Princess Diana, but when it comes to re-examining the wounds and atrocities of our national past, we would rather just stuff it and bury it. Unfortunately, I think the national mood right now is one of collective amnesia and apathy, and this is the perfect climate for someone like Bush II. (See the op-ed article, “George W’s America,” in the Nov. 4 NY Times).

The “author unknown” crap that you paste at the start of your e-mail is the usual boring litany of Republican/right-wing/Rush Limbaugh boilerplate invective against the Clinton years. It is a well-worn script they read from as though they were reciting Romans 1:26-27 for the 3,000,000th time.

These people are blind with rage and hatred, and they are obsessed with Old Testament vengeance, at any cost. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." (Romans 12:19)

The lack of “moral outrage” by Republicans over GWB’s DUI arrest in 1976 (and whatever other skeletons he has in his vast closet) has not much to do with a lack of outrage or justice and everything to do with their single-minded mania about recapturing their White House and their virility as a political party, and erasing the fact that their greatest symbol, Ronald Reagan, is now a 90-year-old, doddering, drooling, catatonic zombie. The only thing that matters to the Republican Party is taking the country on a communal time-travel machine back to the days of (putatively) pre-Alzheimer’s and pre-Iran/contra Ronald Reagan – intoning, “Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will”; joking with his surgeons after he was almost assassinated, “I hope you’re all Republicans”; babbling in his farewell speech about “boat people” waving up to sailors on the USS Midway and screaming, “Hello, freedom man!”; and refusing to say the word AIDS in public until 1987.

The mood for amnesia – I just thought of this – is actually a national longing to BE Ronald Reagan (pre-Alzheimer’s). Forgetfulness is bliss. Sweep problems under the rug. Make up corny anecdotes to fit every occasion, bad or good. Reagan’s housing secretary, Samuel Pierce, just died, and in his obituary, the main thing he was remembered for (besides the scandals which plagued him) was that the Gipper had mistaken a member of his own cabinet for a mayor at a White House reception in 1981 (“Hello, Mr. Mayor”).

Hell, there’s even a website called ‘God Bless Ronald Reagan.com.’ (“Remember when we had a REAL president?”) I kid you not.