terror-asses

Posted on January 4, 2016 by greg

Right. Okay, you guys say you want to talk about the Great Bird Sanctuary Treason Plot of Harney County. I can do that. It’s an extraordinarily stupid act, and it’ll probably just dissipate in a couple of weeks, leaving behind nothing but some trash and the fetid stink of disappointed testosterone — but sure, we can talk about it. First, though, I’m going to insist on a tangent. Maybe two tangents; I haven’t decided yet.

Harney County, Oregon. Named for William Selby Harney, a 19th century military man who fought in the Indian Wars, and the Mexican-American War (which, I should point out for Trump supporters, was a war between Mexico and the United States and NOT a war on Mexican-Americans), and the American Civil War. General Harney was also deeply involved in the Pig War.

General William S. Harney, who knew a thing or two about escalating a minor fuss.

Okay, the Pig War. I’m going to guess you’re probably unfamiliar with the Pig War of 1859. I’m also going to guess you’d be happy to remain unfamiliar with it. Too bad, on account of it’s sort of relevant. The Pig War was basically a dispute over who controlled a chunk of land. In this case, the chunk of land was the San Juan Islands, which are located between Vancouver and the U.S. mainland. Both the U.S. and the U.K. claimed sovereignty over the islands. They set up a commission to settle the fuss, which of course meant the dispute dragged out for years.

However, while the commission was doing whatever bullshit commissions do, people went on living on the islands. One of those people was an American named Lyman Cutlar, who had himself a nice little garden where he grew potatoes. Another of those people was a British citizen named Charles Griffin, originally from Ireland. Charles raised pigs. On the 15th day of June, 1859 one of his pigs (identified in court documents as ‘a large black pig’ though it’s unclear if that’s a physical description of the pig itself or a reference to the creature’s breed–a Cornwall Black, which is generally referred to as a Large Black) ate some of Lyman’s potatoes. Lyman shot and killed the pig. Charles objected to what he perceived as unmerited swine assassination. Lyman offered to pay Charles US$10 for the dead pig. Charles refused, demanding $100 (which, let’s face it, is an astonishing price for a dead pig, regardless of how large and black it is). Lyman refused, saying “Your pig was trespassing and eating my potatoes.” Charles responded “My pig doesn’t recognize your property boundaries, and besides it’s your responsibility to keep your potatoes out of my very fine pig.”

The Cornwall Black pig, a breed notorious for their appetite for pilfered potatoes

Charles asked the British authorities to arrest Lyman for murdering his pig. And they said “Yeah, okay, why not?” Lyman in turn asked U.S. authorities to protect him from the British. And they said, “Sure, okay, we can do that.” Because people are generally really fucking stupid, by August 10th, the British had five warships anchored off the San Juan islands, with some 2000 troops prepared to arrest Lyman Cutlar for killing Charles Griffin’s potato-eating pig. The U.S. had about 400 men with a couple dozen cannons under the command of Gen. Harney, prepared to help Lyman Cutlar protect his potatoes from being molested by wandering swine.

This standoff lasted for thirteen years (during which Harney and many of the troops went off to fight in the American Civil War, and most of the British troops went off to wave goodbye to some other part of the fading British Empire) until October of 1872, when an international tribunal chaired by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in Geneva, Switzerland ruled that the San Juan Islands belonged to the United States. Therefore, Charles Griffin and his tuber-ingesting pig could go fuck themselves.

Seventeen years after that, in 1889, Oregon established a county comprised of more than ten thousand square miles and named it after Gen. Harney, who at some point in time probably had to pass through the area on his way to someplace else. We’re talking about 10,000 square miles, you guys, with a population of just over 7,000 people. This place is seriously rural. And in 1908 the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was created in Harney County.

This guy claims he couldn’t spend Christmas with his children because he had to drive to Oregon to defend the right of a large black pig to eat potatoes. Or something.

And hey, nobody paid a lick of attention to the place until a couple of days ago. Which is when a dozen or so ten-gallon fuckwits, mostly from Idaho and Arizona, ‘seized’ one of the unoccupied buildings on the refuge. By ‘seized’ I mean they broke open the door, walked in, and marked their territory by spraying White Christian Cowboy musk all over the place.

A lot of folks are outraged that these guys aren’t being referred to as terrorists. They’re angry that these people aren’t being treated to the same sort of rapid response military force commonly used against unarmed black pedestrians. Which is totally justifiable anger and outrage. There’s absolutely no doubt this event would be reported differently and handled differently if the occupying fuckwits were fuckwits of color or Muslim fuckwits.

But are these guys terrorists? I have to say no. I mean, terrorists cause terror. It’s right there in the name. Terrorists are scary. These guys are terror-asses. For the most part, the public is treating them with well-earned derision. Their dramatic Red Dawn farewell YouTube messages are alternately sad and hilarious. Their insistence that they’re fighting tyranny by occupying a bird sanctuary in seriously rural Oregon in the middle of the goddamn winter is so patently ridiculous that it belongs in a Monty Python skit.

This guy claims he went to Oregon to die for the cause so that no other person ever has to suffer the injustice of going to prison for setting fire to government-owned land.

But hey, they’re there and something needs to be done about it, right? So, what to do? I’d suggest the very worst thing we could do would be to treat these as a threat to national security. This is NOT an armed insurrection. It’s NOT an act of sedition that warrants an armed assault. It’s a pathetic, testosterone-driven cry for attention.

Don’t get me wrong. I think every one of these paunchy, beef-witted, potato-heads ought to be arrested and charged with a Federal crime. I think those who can be proven to have carried a firearm in this mewling exercise should be charged with a felony, in the hope that they’ll be prohibited from legally buying or owning a weapon again. I also believe these idjits who yearn for another civil war in the United States can be a genuine existential threat to the security of the United States. But occupying the Welcome Center of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge doesn’t merit a major response.

I think it would be a serious mistake to turn this clay-brained episode into the sort of military stand-off the occupiers (and the newsfotainment media) are after. That would just grant them legitimacy, which they don’t deserve. Even the folks on FreeRepublic are mocking these guys–that’s how completely fucking stupid this is.

Here is a pig stealing a potato. Alert the media.

This is only a big deal if we make it one. This ‘occupation’ doesn’t deserve the attention we’d give to a potato-thieving pig.

sorry, but no

Posted on October 12, 2015 by greg

You know how sometimes you’ll overhear a snippet of conversation and you pause in whatever it is you’re doing, waiting to hear more? That happened to me this weekend. I was at the market, baked goods aisle, and I heard this:

“Well, I don’t agree with everything he says, but Ben Carson has a valid point…”

And I skidded to a stop (right in front of the fresh-baked pumpkin bars). Ben Carson has a point. A valid point. Okay. That’s possible. You know, if we’re talking about pediatric neurosurgery, then yeah, sure, he could have a valid point. Otherwise…

“…the Nazis did impose gun control on the Jews. Maybe if they’d had a chance to…”

Ah, okay, no. No, Ben Carson does not have a valid point. Ben Carson is nowhere near having a valid point. He’s not on the same map as a valid point. If Ben Carson was the head of NASA, a valid point would be Matt Damon abandoned on Mars — only without the potatoes. Ben Carson’s valid point is a parrot pining for the fjords.

Dr. Ben Carson believes he has a valid point. He is, sadly, wrong.

I wrote about this whole Nazi gun control bullshit a couple of years ago, and I won’t bother to repeat it now. But anybody willing spend a little time actually looking at history can put a stake through the heart of that lie.

“Maybe if they’d had a chance to defend themselves, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened.”

Sweet Jeebus Jack-o-lantern, how fucking stupid do you have to be to believe this? Look, Poland had an army. Maybe not the world’s best army, but an actual army. Soldiers who’d been trained. Professional soldiers. The German army kicked the shit out of them in five weeks. Belgium had an army; so did the Netherlands. The Nazis walked over them in short order. Norway and Denmark both had armies, and they fell in a month. The French had an army, and it was actually a fairly good one — more than a hundred divisions, including one of the best armored mobile forces in the world. They held out against the German army for two months before surrendering.

But hey, if only ordinary Jewish citizens — all those doctors, cobblers, merchants, teachers, musicians, butchers, scholars — if only they’d had guns. Sure, they weren’t trained in combat, and sure, they were scattered in hundreds of cities across half a dozen different nations — but if only they’d been able to own rifles and shotguns and pistols, then maybe the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened.

Except, of course, history shows that German citizens could possess guns (and so could Jews until 1938). And history also shows the armies of at least eight European nations were unable to stop the Nazis. So to believe Jews With Guns could have prevented the Holocaust you have to first ignore historical realty and…well, reality in general.

In other words, you have to be like Ben Carson.

right in the neck

Posted on August 31, 2015 by greg

The Athabaskan people who lived near the mountain called it Denali, which meant ‘the high one.’ It’s a pretty name for a mountain. I like it. Another local tribe, the Dina’ena, called it Doleika, which meant ‘big mountain,’ which is less poetic but still pretty accurate. It really is a big mountain.

The Russians moved into the neighborhood in 1783; they called the mountain Bolshaya Gora, which also means ‘big mountain.’ They didn’t really change the name; they just said it in Russian, which is appropriate. But the Russians left in 1867, and I suspect folks in the area just continued to refer to it the ‘big mountain’ in whatever language they happened to have handy at the moment. Because it really IS a big mountain.

Then in the late 1880s, the white folks in the region decided to call it Densmore’s Peak, after Frank Densmore — a gold prospector who was, apparently, inordinately fond of the mountain. I don’t have any solid evidence to base this on, but I’m going to guess the natives continued to call it Denali or Doleika regardless of what the white folks did. Because what did the white folks know about it? Fuck them in the neck.

Then politics happened. A guy named William Dickey, who’d been prospecting for gold in the Susitna River, returned to the Lower Forty-eight and wrote an article about Alaska for the New York Sun newspaper. This was January of 1897, shortly after Republican William McKinley had been elected President of These United States. McKinley, you see, was a proponent of the gold standard (on which to base U.S. currency) — and Dickey was a Republican who’d been a gold prospector. McKinley’s Democratic opponent in the election, William Jennings Bryan, was in favor of a silver standard rather than a gold standard. Dickey had met a lot of silver prospectors while in Alaska, and they all favored the Democrat. This is all important information because in his article, Dickey made this rather suspect claim:

We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the Presidency.

Whether that was true or not, it struck a chord for Republicans in Congress, and twenty years later they made the name official: Mount McKinley. They also named the area around the mountain McKinley National Park. Basically, it was Republicans saying ‘fuck you in the neck’ to Democrats (and to all the native folks in Alaska).

It seems nobody in Alaska liked the name, and most folks just continued to call the mountain Denali. Who cared what the people south of Canada called it? In the 1970s, Alaska made the practical decision to officially change the name back to the original Denali. They petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (yes, there’s actually a government agency that oversees geographic names) to do the same. And hey, the board seemed open to the idea.

Then politics happened again. The Republican Congressman who represented the Ohio district when William McKinley spent most of his life (a complete jackass named Ralph Regula) intervened and basically stopped the process. Basically, he was saying ‘fuck you in the neck’ to the people of Alaska. The people of Alaska sort of shrugged off the whole fuss and in 1975 the Alaska Board of Geographic Names (yes, the state has its own government agency to oversee its geographic names) went ahead and changed the name anyway.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter decided to change the name of the park from McKinley National Park to Denali National Park and Preserve. Basically, he was saying ‘fuck you in the neck back’ to Congressman Regula. But while the president was authorized to change the name of the park, Regula could still prevent him from changing the name of the actual mountain, which officially remained Mount McKinley. Basically, Regula was telling the president ‘re-fuck you in the neck.’

And that’s how things stayed until Regula retired. At that point Alaska again petitioned the Board on Geographic Names to change the damn name. Then politics happened yet again. Two members of Congress from Ohio — both Democrats — decided to carry on Regula’s profoundly stupid fight to retain the name of Mount McKinley. Basically, it looked like Ohio saying ‘fuck you in the neck’ to Alaska.

But the people of Ohio spoke out and told their members of Congress to grow the fuck up and stop interfering with Alaskan politics. And they did. So today, President Obama is officially authorizing the Board on Geographic Names to recognize what Alaskans have always recognized — that the mountain deserves to be called Denali because it really IS a big, high mountain.

And hey, guess what. Politics are happening. Republicans — and particularly those from Ohio — are rebuking the president’s decision. Speaker of the House John Boehner stated he was “deeply disappointed in this decision.” Senator Rob Portman decried the decision as “yet another example of the President going around Congress.”

And, of course, the proud patriots of FreeRepublic are voicing their considered opinions on the issue.

— Why not call it Glorious Jihad?

— If Hussein cared about what the people of Alaska thought, he would ask Valerie for permission to open up the northern slope for drilling. Alaskans want that, too.

— Obonzo didn’t do jack. He’s going up there to fundraise and kiss some minority @$$ for his ‘RAT comrades up there. Everyone in Alaska already refers to the mountain as Denali. The bastard Kenyan didn’t need to do anything. This is just another one of his “historical” In Yo Face Whitey Moments.

— Mount Barack….in honor of Bareback Mountain

— stupid bammy has to interject himself into normal people’s lives like the narcissist he is

— This is the work of a tyrant.

— I’m surprised it’s not going to be Kilimanjaro to make Zero feel more at home.

— Islam could easily be involved. Pakistan is close. Jihadis are everywhere.

To be fair, not everybody on FreeRepublic is a lunatic. Many of them have pointed out the fact that most Alaskans want the mountain to be called Denali. They don’t necessarily object to renaming the mountain; they just object to President Obama ~~renaming the mountain~~. Basically, the people of FreeRepublic are saying ‘fuck you in the neck’ to the president.

But hey, it’s a done deal now. And it’ll be Obama’s smiling face we’ll see standing in front of Denali on the national news tonight. And guess what he’s basically symbolically saying to the folks of FreeRepublic.

Right in the neck.

memorial my ass

Posted on May 25, 2015 by greg

Yeah, I pretty much dislike Memorial Day. Don’t get me wrong; the idea of honoring the men and women who died while serving the nation — that I respect. But that’s not really what Memorial Day is anymore. Now it’s mostly a day to say something nice about veterans, maybe see a parade, go shopping, then eat a hamburger. And you can usually skip right to the hamburger.

The thing is, a lot of folks don’t even understand Memorial Day. They get it confused with Veterans Day, which is a different beast altogether. The confusion is understandable, on account of they’re both about people in uniforms and big big big shopping discounts and picnics with hamburgers.

Allow me to ‘splain the differences. Memorial Day is the one where you say nice things about folks that actually died while in uniform. Veterans Day is the one where you offer ritual thanks for everybody who put on military harness — dead, living, somewhere in between (and if you think that’s just a figure of speech, go visit a VA hospital).

I like Veterans Day. That’s what we call it in the U.S., although most Western nations call it Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. I like it because it still retains some meaning. It’s still celebrated on the same day — the anniversary of the end of the First World War. The 11th day of the 11th month.

Memorial Day used to have meaning. It began as Decoration Day — a day when folks would decorate the graves of soldiers who died during the American Civil War. It was an organic holiday. It began spontaneously, on different days, in different years, in different parts of the nation. Folks just went to cemeteries where Civil War troops were buried and decorated the graves. You know, out of respect.

One of the earliest Decoration Day events took place in Charleston, South Carolina. Union prisoners of war had been interned at the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club. More than 250 of them died and were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. In April of 1865, a small group of freed slaves reburied the bodies in individual graves. They constructed a fence around the burial site, and put up an arched entryway with the inscription Martyrs of the Race Course. Then on the first day of May, some ten thousand former slaves and some white missionaries decorated the cemetery with flowers, and they held a picnic on the site.

New graves of Union soldiers at the Washington Race Course

Now that is a serious show of respect. Over time, Decoration Day became Memorial Day and through some sort of osmotic agreement, it was celebrated throughout the nation on May 30th. At least it was until 1968, when everything changed. But I’ll come back to that in a bit. First let’s reduce this national holiday to the personal level.

In April of that same year, 1968, a young photographer named Art Greenspon shot this photograph in the jungle southwest of Hue. Alpha Company of the 101st Airborne had walked into an ambush. Several killed, more wounded. Bad weather prevented any medevac until the following day. So the troops sat awake all night, in the rain, with their wounded and dead, wondering if they’d get hit again. The next day, when the rain lifted enough for a medevac, Greenspon got this shot of a soldier directing the chopper. By that point it had rained so long and hard that when Greenspon tried to rewind the film in his camera, it stuck to the pressure plate.

Here’s some military esoterica for you: the first choppers take the wounded; the last choppers take the bodies. The bodies can wait; they’re not going to get any more dead. Greenspon flew out on a chopper filled with body bags. When he got back to his base, he discovered most of the shots weren’t usable. This one was.

Art Greenspon was paid US$15 for that photograph. That’s all he’s ever been paid for it. A week later he and another photographer, Charles Eggleston, found themselves in a firefight outside of Saigon. Eggleston was hit by rifle fire and killed. One of the bullets passed through Eggleston’s hand, which slowed the round enough that when it hit Greenspon in the face, it didn’t kill him. Instead, the bullet lodged in his sinus cavity. In order to remove the bullet and minimize the facial scarring, the surgeons broke his cheekbone from inside his mouth.

Two months after that, during the darkest days of the war in Vietnam, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The intent of the act was to change the date on which four holidays were traditionally celebrated in order to create three-day weekends. Great news for workers and a boon to commercial enterprises. The effect, however, was to trivialize those holidays. Now Presidents Day, Columbus Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day are all about mattress sales and potato salad. We’re not really thinking about the men and women dying in jungles or deserts; we’re thinking about buying summer clothes.

Oh, we’ll still say nice things about the men and women who died in uniform. We’ll still have parades (that very few people attend), and politicians will still give speeches (that very few people will listen to), but mostly we’re just glad to have that extra day on the weekend, and a chance to save a buck on a mattress, and hey, it’s a good time of year for a picnic.

But Memorial Day isn’t — or shouldn’t be — about picnics. It’s about the people Art Greenspon flew with in that chopper; it’s about those bodies in the bags.

So yeah, I pretty much dislike Memorial Day. I don’t want to see the parade. I don’t want to buy a pair of cheap-ass flip-flops. I don’t want to hear any fucking politician thanking the troops for their sacrifice.

I want politicians to stop sacrificing them.

ADDENDUM: Last year on Memorial Day I wrote about my accidental visit to the local cemetery in the small town of Maxwell, Iowa. This year, while running around, I made an intentional detour to Maxwell. It looks exactly the same as it did last year (and probably for the last umpty-ump years) — flags lining the tiny town center, and all over the cemetery.

Maxwell, IA. Memorial Day, 2015

It doesn’t make up for the apathy and commercialism, but there’s something innocent and fundamentally decent about the way these small towns continue to honor their dead.

warm boot

Posted on September 15, 2014 by greg

Ninety percent of the work I do takes place in my head. The other ten percent involves shifting that work from my head to the computer through my fingers. Because so much of my work involves the creative writing of other folks, I spend a lot of time thinking about odd stuff, asking myself odd questions, researching odd topics.

Example? Sure, here’s one. Last week, I found myself exploring the history, function, and evolution of the lapel — complete with tangents on why we only see peaked lapels on formal evening wear, and the sad decline of the boutonnière loop on the reverse of the lapel. Here’s another issue I dealt with last week: at what point, in a science fiction mystery set in a massive orbiting space colony, does the number of sapient species living in the colony cease to create the illusion of the diversity of life in the known universe and begin to become a distraction from the story?

Where the gravel road intersects the line of trees is a bridge spanning a river.

I do most of this thinking and wondering and questioning and researching in a small office with a window that looks out on a deeply uninteresting suburban street. I periodically shift to the kitchen table, where the windows look out on some deeply uninteresting suburban back yards. The absence of anything visually interesting is usually a good thing; it makes it easier to stay inside my head, where almost everything is interesting.

But I also need to regularly reset my brain, so once or twice a week I either bang into the city or I go lounge around the countryside — which I tend to think of as either a cold boot or a warm boot (do people even use those terms anymore to describe different levels of rebooting a computer?). The city is a cold boot. A complete re-start. The countryside is a warm boot. Restarting without going through the rigorous Power On Self Test.

Jameson and Peanut

A couple of days ago I did a warm boot. Got in the car late one afternoon, went looking for a bridge over a river. Any bridge, any river. It’s really a pretty easy task. There are rivers, creeks, brooks, and streams all over the Midwest. The same with roads. At some point all those roads have to intersect with all those rivers, creeks, brooks, and streams. And that means a bridge.

Fifteen — maybe twenty — minutes later I was standing on a classic steel truss bridge spanning the South Skunk River. These used to be pretty common bridges; easy to build, practical, sturdy. They began making them out of wood in the 1870s, moved to cast iron a few decades later, then to steel in the early 1900s. Engineers still make various forms of truss bridge, but these old steel units on secondary or gravel roads are gradually being replaced by safer, more easily built, less expensive (and much less interesting) concrete beam bridges.

Perfectly understandable from a governance perspective. But it’s still rather sad. There’s simply no romance in a concrete beam bridge. No struts on which Peanut and Jameson can record their love.

Skunk River

It’s a nice river though, the South Skunk. Hundred and eighty-five miles long. Add another ninety-five miles after it joins up with the North Skunk and they both meander down into the Mississippi.

It’s not actually named for skunks, by the way. Back in the mid-17th century when the French coureurs de bois and voyageurs were wandering around in the wilderness, they often (and I mean seriously often) failed to properly translate the names given to local geographical landmarks by the native peoples. The local Sauk and Meskwaki tribes told the French explorers that the river was Chicaqua, a term meaning ‘having a powerful smell.’ The Indians were apparently referring to the onions that grew wild along the banks. But since they’d also used the same term in describing skunks…well, there it is. The Skunk River.

Long and straight, heading due east.

I noodled around on the bridge for a while, no longer thinking about aliens or the sociology of fashion, then got back in the car and headed farther upriver. But this is the Midwest, and the roads rarely follow the course of geological features. The secondary highways and gravel roads are long and straight, laid out east-west and north-south on a grid.

That’s the work of Thomas Jefferson. I don’t mean to suggest Jefferson was out in Iowa with a surveyor’s theodolite (that’s that little telescope-looking thing). It’s just that he came up with the concept of the Public Land Survey System. After the Revolutionary War, the new U.S. government needed to raise some cash, and find a way to reward the soldiers who’d fought. The solution was pretty obvious: there was a whole lot of land unoccupied by white folks — give it to the troops.

But first that new land had to be surveyed. It took years to actually implement the system. It wasn’t until white folks began to ‘civilize’ Ohio that the government began to apply the system. It’s really pretty simple. They established east-west baselines and north-south meridians, divided the territory into square townships (never mind if there were any actual towns there yet), made each township six miles by six miles, divided the townships into thirty-six sections of 640 acres each, set aside one section (always Section 16) for a school, and when it came time to lay down roads all they had to do was follow the grid.

Canoe access farther up the South Skunk.

Which is what I did. I followed the grid. A couple of miles east, eight miles north, a few miles west, cross over the soulless, ugly little concrete beam bridge, and there’s the river. With a canoe access marker, telling me how far downriver the next canoe access point is.

The brain is rebooted. I go home and the problem with the alien species saturation point seems a lot more clear. Later when a friend asked “How was your day?” I replied, “It was busy.” “Yeah? What did you do?”

And really, what could I say? I drove on roads laid out on principles designed by the third President of the United States, and stood on a bridge probably built during the Depression of the 1930s over a river mis-named by French explorers a hundred years before Thomas Jefferson was born — all to distract myself from thinking about aliens and lapels.

Instead I said “I went for a drive and thought about some stuff.” Which sparked a long, long silence during which I swear I could hear my friend thinking “What? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s what you call busy?”

“And I made my final selections for my fantasy football team,” I said. That seemed to satisfy him.

these fucking idjits

Posted on July 24, 2014 by greg

Okay, I’ll admit, I don’t credit the Open Carry Texas folks with an abundance of common sense. I mean, openly toting firearms in a store called ‘Target’ seems pretty stupid on a fundamental level. Sure, it could be interpreted as an ironic statement on the way the Second Goddamn Amendment is interpreted by some folks these days. Except the OCT folks are as lacking in irony as they are in common sense.

If openly walking around with a firearm in a big box store is stupid (it is really stupid), then approximately how stupid would it be to do the same thing in Dealey Plaza in Dallas? Here’s the answer: incredibly fucking stupid. We’re talking about Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy had a big chunk of his head explosively removed by a high-powered rifle.

Open Carry Texas promoting the Second Amendment in Dealey Plaza

Here’s one of the problems: these guys are fucking idjits. In Texas, they have the legal right to carry rifles and shotguns in public. I may not like it, but they absolutely have that right, just as they have the right to be fucking idjits. But here’s a true thing: being a fucking idjit in support of a cause isn’t the best way to promote that cause. People aren’t seeing these fucking idjits and thinking ‘Hey, cool, guns in Dealey Plaza, I want to get in on that.’ They’re thinking ‘Who are these fucking idjits toting guns in Dealey Plaza?’

Here’s another problem: The already blemished record of Texas in regard to powerful weaponry and U.S. presidents that are unpopular with conservatives is made even worse by Open Carry idjits. Like this one:

ArmedMom.png (550×614)

Where is an assasin [sic] when you need one? Oh, I don’t know…maybe in Texas. When people say shit like this, even in jest, it actually has the effect of increasing the climate of hate. A small effect, sure — but you put enough small effects together and you get a big effect. It increases the climate of hate and fear, and lowers the threshold for acting on that fear and hate.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that in 1963, a couple of hours before his motorcade took him to Dealey Plaza, President Kennedy told his wife, “We’re heading into nut country today.” He said that after seeing this poster:

I’ve said this before: I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I may find this sort of shit hateful and offensive, but I support the right of hateful people to express their hate in this manner. I may abhor the law that allows Texans to carry their long weapons in public, but it’s the law. Even in Dealey Plaza.

But it’s important that we don’t ignore the toxic effect of this stuff. Especially when we start seeing this sort of shit:

Does that look at all familiar? Now keep that poster in mind while considering the jackass in the following video — the jackass who says crap like this:

“[Y]ou worry about foreigners coming over the border, we got a foreigner as president! We got a foreigner that was born in Kenya, that has an illegal birth certificate, as president — and you guys are worried about foreigners coming over the border!”

Where is an assassin when you need one? You’re growing them in Texas. And in Arizona, and Nevada, and New Hampshire, and yeah, we’re growing them right here in Iowa. We’re growing them everywhere these fucking idjits gather to talk about ‘Second Amendment remedies’ for dealing with politicians and policies they dislike.

The odds are none of these hateful fucking idjits in Open Carry Texas will ever shoot anybody. But they’re making it easier for other fucking idjits to do it.

a small town in iowa

Posted on July 13, 2014 by greg

I can be a terribly annoying traveling companion. Unless I’m in a hurry — and I’m almost never in a hurry — I prefer to travel along secondary highways and county roads. That means driving more slowly on roads that are often poorly maintained; it means getting caught behind tractors for miles; it usually means no fast food for lunch; it means driving through small towns with absurdly conservative speed limits.

But I like the small towns. Small towns can surprise you. There’s always a chance you’ll come across something odd and/or fascinating and/or emotionally moving. On my way toward the Mississippi River last week, I came across a water tower in the shape of a teapot. And a billboard commemorating a local boy who’d been killed in Iraq. And a diner owned and operated by a guy with a hook for a hand. And a town named after a 19th century Muslim religious and military leader.

Elkader, Iowa

Seriously. I am NOT making this up. I’m talking about Elkader, Iowa, located on the banks of the Turkey River in Pony Hollow. Yes, that’s right — there’s actually a real place called Pony Hollow, through which the Turkey River runs. Elkader’s current population is about 1275, which is only about 800 people more than when the town was founded in 1846. Back then, it was nothing but a gristmill, a sawmill, and a blacksmith shop.

When the local leaders decided to name their new town, they chose to name it after one of the most respected men of the era: Emir Abd-al-Qādir ibn Muhieddine al-Hasani el Djezairi. He was a Sufi scholar, the Commander of the Faithful, a jihadist, an Algerian resistance leader, a poet, and a military leader.

Abd-al-Qādir ibn Muhieddine al-Hasani el Djezairi

But you can’t name your town Abd-al-Qādir ibn Muhieddine al-Hasani el Djezairiville, no matter how much you respect the guy. Fortunately, he was usually just referred to as Abdelkader. So…Elkader. Which, let’s face it, is still a pretty odd name. So who was this guy? And why would Iowans name their town after him? I’m so glad you asked.

Abdelkader was born in Mascara, Algeria in 1808 (or somewhere around there — 19th century Algerian record-keeping left something to be desired). His father ran a religious school for Sufis, so it’s not surprising Abdelkader was a good student; he could read and write by age 5, and by 14 could recite the entire Qur’an by memory. When he was 17 he set out on the Hajj — the religious pilgrimage all Muslims are expected to make if possible. Afterwards he noodled around the Muslim religious and philosophical world for about five years. He was, it seems, something of a religious nerd.

Elkader, dam on the Turkey River

In 1830, a few months after Abdelkader got home, France invaded Algeria. At that time, Algeria was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. France wanted to boot the Ottoman tyrants out of Algeria and replace them with…well, French tyrants. The people of Algeria weren’t particularly happy with Ottoman rule, but neither did they want to be ruled by the French. So Abdelkader found himself forced to shed his religious nerd role and start waging a guerrilla war against the infidel French. He became an Algerian nationalist.

And hey, he won. Sort of. For a while. He spanked the French, and at one point Abdelkader controlled a hefty chunk of Algeria. He established a benevolent theocracy; Jews and Christians were not only made welcome, they were given high government positions. He even earned the respect of the French soldiers who fought against him — not just as a warrior, but also as a kind and generous opponent. His treatment of French prisoners of war earned Abdelkader international praise. Although the French soldiers respected him, French leaders didn’t. They initiated a scorched-earth policy against the territories controlled by Abdelkader. The French destroyed the houses and farms of civilians, they burned the crops and slaughtered the livestock.

So after 17 years of fighting, Abdelkader surrendered. He was imprisoned in France for half a decade, then released on the condition that he never return to Algeria.

Elkader, stairs to the river walkway

He settled in Damascus, Syria and lived there in relative peace. Then in 1860 a conflict between Muslims and Christians broke out in other parts of Syria. The fighting spread rapidly; almost 400 Christian communities were destroyed, and maybe 20,000 Christians were killed.

When the conflict reached Damascus, Abdelkader intervened. He and his children and his followers went into the streets and rescued local Christians at great personal risk. He brought as many as possible into his home and his gardens and his courtyard — nuns, merchants, laborers, artisans, any Christian who was in danger. And he kept them safe.

Abd-al-Qādir saving the Christians of Damascus

News of this spread, and Christians all over the world rushed to embrace Abdelkader. Greece bestowed on him the Grand Cross of the Redeemer (a poor grasp of irony, the Greeks). The Ottoman Empire issued him the Order of the Medjidie, First Class. The Vatican gave him the Order of Pius IX. The parliament of Great Britain sent Abdelkader a gold-inlaid shotgun. Not to be outdone, President Abraham Lincoln sent him a pair of inlaid pistols. Even France, which had imprisoned him and condemned him to exile, gave him the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur and offered him a pension (they didn’t let him return to Algeria, though — they’re French, not stupid).

And in Iowa, they named a town after him. It’s not what you’d call a great town. It’s a tad beat-up. A little worn with age. Not very well-maintained. But the river is nice, and the bluffs that surround the town are picturesque. And they have a very fine stone bridge. Elkader is very proud of its bridge, and they want visitors to know it’s the largest stone double-arch bridge west of the Mississippi. Being west of the Mississippi is pretty important to the good people of Elkader; they also want folks to know they have the oldest continuously operated grocery store west of the Mississippi (Wilke’s Grocery, if you’re really curious).

Elkader, houses along the Turkey River

For the most part, Elkader is just another small Midwestern country town. But the guys who named it did a better job than they could have imagines. The town’s name draws a small but steady stream of Algerian visitors. Algerian immigrants, Algerians touring the U.S., second and third generation Algerian-Americans. They all come to see the Iowa town named for one of their national heroes. One Algerian-American came to visit, and decided to stay. He and his partner opened an Algerian restaurant — Schera’s. Did I mention this guy is not only Algerian by birth, but also a Sufi Muslim? And he’s gay.

Yes, there’s a gay-owned Algerian restaurant in a small Iowa town named after an Islamic insurgent. And the remarkable thing about that fact? It doesn’t seem to be that big a deal. Oh, sure, there are some local folks who dislike the name of the town, and tried to change it after the 9/11 attacks (Elkader, they complained, sounds too much like al-Qaeda). And yeah, there are some folks who dislike gay people. And yes, there are even some people who object to the ‘foreignness’ of the food served at Schera’s. But basically nobody pays much attention to the people who make a fuss. The town has always been called Elkader, gay folks have been legally getting married in Iowa for half a decade, and you either like Algerian food or you don’t. No big deal.

Elkader, bridge donation box

That’s just the way things are. They really are proud of their bridge, though, and with good reason. It really is a very fine bridge, east or west of the Mississippi. If you ever happen to find yourself in Elkader, they accept donations to maintain the bridge. Drop a buck or two in the box. It’s what Emir Abd-al-Qādir ibn Muhieddine al-Hasani el Djezairi would do.

no, seriously, jeebus, c’mon, are you kidding me

Posted on February 19, 2014 by greg

First, some confessional crap. My momma was born and raised in South Carolina. That means I spent a chunk of my youth there. We’re talking Deep South. Somewhere in a box there are photographs of me as a kid wearing a Confederate foraging cap. When I was a boy I actually owned a Confederate battle flag — the Stars and Bars. I grew up hearing about the War of Northern Aggression. And here’s a sad truth: I found the faded romance of the Lost Cause attractive.

Of course, I didn’t have a fucking clue what that Cause was, or what it meant. I just like the idea of heroic country boys standing up and fighting against a much bigger and better equipped army. I felt the same way about the Revolutionary War, about which I was equally clueless.

So I understand these guys, the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I understand they’d like to dissociate the Stars and Bars from its racist history. I get it — they want to distance themselves from dumb-ass, low-class, racist redneck white trash. I understand that they want to see the Confederate battle flag through a gauzy starlight filter that makes the Civil War look like a glamour shot from a cheap magazine.

But let me just say this to the Sons of Confederate Veterans: c’mon guys — wake the fuck up — this is NOT a good idea.

Seriously, the Sons of Confederate Veterans have convinced the Georgia Department of Revenue to allow them to put the Stars and Bars on their license tags. I am NOT making this up. There’ll be an extra fee to get this custom license tag (call it a tax on stupid people), but ten dollars of that money will go to the SCV in order to “promote Southern Heritage through educational activities and preservation efforts around the state.” Whatever the hell that means.

You guys, it doesn’t matter how you want folks to see the Stars and Bars. It only matters that for 98% of the world it’s a hateful symbol of racism and oppression. It only matters that it makes ALL Southern folk look like fuckwits. A symbol means what the majority of people think it means. You remember how the Swastika used to be a Hindu symbol of good luck and prosperity?

No, of course you don’t. Because the Nazis completely shit all over the swastika and now for most of the world the symbol means “I’m a white guy who hates Jews.” That’s what has happened to the Confederate battle flag. Doesn’t matter what it might have meant to your great-great-great granddaddy; now it means “I’m a white guy who hates black folks.” Now it means “Black folks, please throw rocks and shatter the windows of my car.”

Seriously, this is stupid at the cellular level. You can put this licence tag on your brand new Lexus or your Volvo station wagon, but this is what people will see when you drive down the street:

I don’t know…maybe it’s actually a good idea to let these cretinous flag-wankers identify themselves to the public at large. ‘Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.’ as the god-botherers would say. ‘Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.’

This licence tag, I suspect it will bringeth forth rocks through the windows. Can I get a hallelujah?

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job

Category Archives: historical crap