media blackout

Posted on October 14, 2013 by greg

As you probably know, over the weekend ~~a million~~ ~~twenty thousand~~ ~~eighteen hundred~~ ~~more than two hundred~~ almost a dozen truckers ~~shut down America~~ ~~engaged in a powerful civil protest~~ circled the Washington, DC beltway a few times. You may not have heard a great deal about this courageous stance in face of tyranny because of the widespread mainstream media blackout..

Shutting down America

Also over the weekend a ~~million military veterans~~ ~~several thousand veterans~~ ~~nearly four hundred people (some of whom might be veterans)~~ few dozen members of the Tea Party rallied at the World War II monument on the Mall under the leadership of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin, then marched on the White House where they ~~impeached the president~~ stood around for a while and waved a Confederate flag. You may not have heard a great deal about this courageous stance in face of tyranny because of the widespread mainstream media blackout.

On the way to impeach the president

See, this is the disadvantage of living under tyranny. Widespread mainstream media blackouts make it really hard to shutdown America and impeach the president. Also, it rained — which always puts a damper on a revolution. But so long as millions of real and true Americans are willing to stand up bravely and defy a dictator who is ~~a negro~~ ~~a communist~~ ~~a Muslim~~ ~~a foreigner~~ trying to force affordable healthcare down our throats, then…then…you know, freedom and Benghazi. For all. Amen.

thwarting all over the place

Posted on October 10, 2013 by greg

As we all know, truckers are going to shut down America this coming weekend and arrest all those members of Congress who are violating the U.S. Constitution by not impeaching President Obama for being a secret Muslim. Also Benghazi. And fuck healthcare in the neck.

Freedom! Benghazi! Guns and Bibles!

At least that was the plan. But you guys, that plan may be thwarted. Totally thwarted! According to a real actual article written by Glenn Ryt on RedState.com, “unknown White House officials” have approved a plan by the Department of Transportation to use the National Guard “to thwart the three day Trucker slowdown.” See? They’re going to thwart!

How is this traitorous thwarting going to happen? The National Guard will shut down the I-95 Capital Beltway.

The National Guard resources to be used to thwart the truckers will include rifle toting National Guardsmen called up from units that will be coming in from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. They will use Guardsmen on foot and using trucks, jeeps and armored vehicles, which will be stationed at all entrance ramps to the Beltway to block incoming traffic starting early Friday morning.

Rifle toting and thwarting, you guys. Armored vehicles at ALL ENTRANCE RAMPS to the beltway! All of them, every single one. We know this is totally going to happen on account of “the paucity of information” on the DOT’s website. They’re trying to hide their plans for trucker-thwarting. The DOT website claims “[D]uring the government shutdown, some online content may not be updated on a regular basis.” You see? DO YOU SEE?

Second Amendment! Drill drill drill! Fuck healthcare!

That can only mean one thing: the National Guard is totally going to shut down the beltway. This overtly traitorous act is only possible because Obama the Muslim closed down the government — and he did it just before the truckers were scheduled to arrive in the District of Columbia. Coincidence?

Now, you may be asking yourself “Why would Obama shut down the entire government in order to allow the National Guard to shut down the beltway in order to prevent the truckers from shutting down the beltway, thereby shutting down the entire government?” SHUT UP!

Thwarted!

Anyway, you guys, I know it’s disappointing, but it’s possible the truckers might have to abandon their plan. They may not be able to shut down America after all. All those Congressional traitors might not get arrested. On account of the thwarting.

this guy, again

Posted on October 8, 2013 by greg

I’ve written about this guy before. His name is Paul Broun, he’s a Republican from Georgia (though if Texas ever runs out of nitwits — which seems unlikely — this guy could easily be a Republican from Texas), and he’s got something important to say.

“America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare. This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

Yeah, I know it sounds like he’s talking about some sort of Extinction Level Event, like an asteroid smacking into the Earth, instead of a health care system…but that’s Paul Broun. The guy has no sense of proportion. Hell, he’s got no sense at all.

Paul Broun, Republican, and some animals he killed and ate.

This guy has told his constituents that he believes President Obama might use a natural disaster or a pandemic to institute martial law and rule the U.S. as a dictator. You might think that would encourage Broun to support a health care system that covers more people, since it would reduce the odds of a pandemic…but no, not this guy. He’s even compared passage of the Affordable Care Act to the ~~American Civil War~~ “Great War of Yankee Aggression.”

You have to ask, just how did this guy get to be so bonehead stupid? The answer is he’s stupid because he believes God wants him to be stupid. He believes God wants you to be stupid too, and wants the government to be run stupidly. If you want a government run by morons, then Paul Broun is your kind of guy.

All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C.

There you go. This guy says the Bible teaches us how to run public policy. Except for that icky business about “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Because c’mon, that’s like Socialism.

Paul Broun, Republican, and another animal he killed and ate.

Did I mention this guy is a doctor? Yeah, a doctor. A doctor who believes embryology is a lie from the Pit of Hell. He went to the Medical College of Georgia, the 13th oldest medical school in the U.S. For reasons I fail to understand, they haven’t asked him to return his diploma. Also too, because he’s a Republican who is bonehead stupid AND opposed to science on principle, this guy sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology.

So of course he has an opinion on climate change…and yes, of course, it’s stupid.

Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.

No consensus other than the 97% of climate scientists who say humans are having a dramatic negative impact on the climate.

Oh, and by the way, all those dead animals in his Congressional office? He killed them and ate them. No, no…I’m not kidding. You see, the Bible apparently says it’s okay to hunt animals for food, but not for sport. So if you kill a lion, you have to eat it. Or part of it. Otherwise you might as well be supporting Obamacare and the Devil.

“If I shoot it, I’m gonna eat it. I had roast warthog, it was cooked in a French style. [The lion] wasn’t particularly tasty. It was kind of chewy, but I ate it.”

Now, you may be asking yourself ‘Does this guy have some sort of organic brain damage?” It’s a good question. Part of the answer might be in the way Broun found his way to Jeebus.

He was 40 years old, drunk at an NFL football game, having problems with his fourth wife, and he saw another guy in the stadium…the famous Rainbow Man…a guy wearing a rainbow wig and a t-shirt that said John 3:16. A couple of weeks later, after fighting with his wife, Broun picked up a Bible, read the verse, decided to quit drinking and dedicated his life to Jeebus.

Stewart Rollen, Rainbow Man

This guy Broun went on to become a lunatic member of Congress. The other guy, Stewart Rollen, the Rainbow Man, went on to become a lunatic inmate in the California Penal system, serving three life sentences for kidnapping. You know those mysterious ways God is said to work in? This must be one of them.

You want the really bad news? In the last election, Broun ran unopposed. Unopposed. The Democrats couldn’t find anybody willing to challenge this guy. Even so, on election night there were around 4000 write-in votes for Charles Darwin.

Seriously. I’m not making any of this up. We live in a very weird fucking world, people. Very weird indeed.

government shutdown explained in two quotes

Posted on October 3, 2013 by greg

Marlin Andrew Stutzman is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives. He represents the 13th District in Indiana.

Marlin Stutzman, Republican, Indiana

“We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Don Fanucci is an extortionist for the Black Hand in Little Italy. He represents the Sicilian mobster Maranzalla.

Don Fanucci, Extortionist, Black Hand

“This is my neighborhood. You and your friends should show me some respect. You should let me wet my beak a little… Tell your friends I don’t want a lot. Just enough to wet my beak.”

It’s that simple.

no, no you’re just wrong, stop whining

Posted on October 2, 2013 by greg

Okay, just stop. All of you shit-for-brains who keep calling President Obama a tyrant, just stop for like twelve seconds and open a fucking dictionary. Seriously, words have actual meanings; this isn’t Through the Looking Glass and you’re not Humpty-Dumpty.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

No. No, it doesn’t. The term tyrant has had the same fundamental meaning since the 13th century. We’re talking eight hundred fucking years in which everybody who wasn’t a complete fuckwit agreed on what a tyrant was.

And speaking of fuckwits, here’s Wayne LaPierre, Fuckwit-in-Chief of the National Rifle Association:

As members of the oldest civil rights organization in the nation, NRA members know tyranny when we see it.

No. No, you don’t. You don’t know tyranny when you see it. Maybe that’s because you haven’t actually seen tyranny. But here’s the difference (one of the many differences) between fuckwits like LaPierre and other folks: we acknowledge that a civil right is one that protects individual freedom from unwarranted infringement by the government, and ensures the individual’s ability to participate in the civil and political life of the State without discrimination or repression. Because of the Second Amendment, the NRA is technically a civil rights organization. We dislike giving them that cred, but it’s reality and we acknowledge reality.

The NRA, on the other hand, doesn’t. Because they think they live under tyranny. The same is true of notorious fuckwit Alex Jones.

Obamacare Is The Gateway To American Tyranny!

No. No, it’s not. It’s just a healthcare system. Not only that, it’s a healthcare system you can choose to opt out of, if you’re willing to pay a small fine in the event you actually need healthcare. Think of it like this: you can opt out of the speed limit if you’re willing to pay a small fine in the event you get caught. That doesn’t mean speed limits are the gateway to tyranny, you moron.

And then there’s this fuckwit:

Obama wants us to “reject the voices that warn of tyranny”. Well of course he says that, because that is exactly what he is perpetrating upon you and me; TYRANNY ! This president has shown BY HIS ACTIONS, that he doesn’t give a fig about democracy, liberty or freedom. He has gone out of his way to crush Christianity, American values and free thinking.

No. No, he hasn’t. You have to be dumber than dry toast to think Christianity has been (or is being) crushed. You have to be galactically stupid to think American values have been crushed. And not only is free thinking alive and well, so is free expression. Your bone-headed blog is proof of that.

Here’s a simple test to determine whether or not you live under tyranny:

If you can call the ruler of your nation a tyrant without fear of 1) arrest, 2) incarceration, 3) arbitrary, non-judicial execution, or 4) any sort of reprisal at all, then you are NOT living under tyranny.

Seriously, you people sound like a bunch of whiny babies. Obama wants to force us to have health care…tyrant! Grow the fuck up. Obama doesn’t think I need a thirty round magazine for my AR-15…tyrant! Well, you don’t need a thirty round clip, but right now you have the legal right to buy one, so stop being a sniveling little bitch about it. Obama thinks it’s okay for gay folks to marry…tyrant! Giving gay folks the same rights as hetero folks does not — and cannot — infringe on your freedom, so don’t wet your pants over this. Michelle Obama says we should eat more fruit and vegetables…tyrant’s wife! The president’s wife is black and a woman and she has opinions different from yours, deal with it.

Okay, you dislike President Obama and you’re opposed to his policies. Fine. That’s perfectly legitimate. But Jeebus on toast, if you truly think he’s a tyrant then all I can say is you are too fucking stupid to breed.

You want to see tyranny? Go pull this whiny bullshit in North Korea. Never mind holding a public demonstration and using a loudspeaker to call the president a tyrant; never mind writing a publicly accessible blog accusing the president of murder and drug dealing and suppression of civil liberties; never mind sitting in a coffee shop and freely discussing your opinions about the president. Just go to North Korea and whisper that the leader of the nation is a tyrant — and see how long it takes before you’re in a cell having electrodes connected to your gentleman’s tackle.

Tyrant…pffft. You people are embarrassing yourselves.

inherit the windbags

Posted on October 1, 2013 by greg

New Ulm, Minnesota. You may know it as the Gateway to Mankato, or the Polka Capital of the Nation (hometown of the legendary polka band Harold Loeffelmacher and the Six Fat Dutchmen, as well as accordion virtuoso Whoopee John Wilfahrt). But there’s more to this town of 13,594 good citizens than The Jolly Lumberjack Polka.

New Ulm is also the home of Martin Luther College, where eighty educators teach some eight hundred students to be deliberately and willfully stupid. College faculty recently discouraged students from participating in the New Ulm Actor’s Community Theatre’s production of Inherit the Wind. The faculty expressed concerns about “perceptions that could be formed by some constituents due to the material portrayed in the play.”

Spencer Tracy and Frederic March (Inherit the Wind)

If you’re not familiar with the play (or the brilliant 1960 film adaptation starring Spencer Tracy), it’s loosely based on the 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial, in which a Tennessee high school teacher was put on trial for illegally teaching evolution in a state-funded school. That’s right, it used to be illegal to teach evolution in some states. Essentially, the play is about the conflict between religious faith and freedom of thought. The title, appropriately, comes from Proverbs 11:29.

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.

Martin Luther College ain’t having any of that freedom of thought business, no sir. Nor any of that evolution foolishness. The college is owned and operated by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), and WELS Lutherans are pretty strict about creation. The WELS website states:

The Bible and Lutherans teach that at the beginning of time God created heaven and earth and all creatures. He did this in six days. He spoke his almighty word to create all things. He made everything out of nothing.

That isn’t any more stupid than other creation myths (though I’m rather partial to the ones that involve turtles; I like turtles). And hey, it’s their college and they can believe what they want and teach what they want, right?

Martin Luther College (statue of Luther pointing to a passage in the Bible and asking "Who wrote this shit?"

Martin Luther College (statue of Luther refuting turtle-based theology)

But it seems rather cowardly of them to discourage their students from participating in a play that discusses some pretty important issues. It doesn’t speak well of their ministry if they’re afraid for it to be challenged — not in court, like in the play, but by a play put on by a community theater in a town of fewer than 40,000 people. It shows a distinct lack of faith in their students if they’re afraid that acting in a play (or working on the production crew) will cause them to form ‘perceptions.’

The college’s Vice President in charge of Student Affairs put it best:

“This is a ministerial school. People employing our students need confidence about their views.”

Heaven forbid their students might start to think for themselves — then Lutherans who aren’t afraid to talk about faith and evolution wouldn’t engender confidence in their flock.

That, right there, is stupid piled on top of stupid. I really don’t care if they choose not to believe in evolution; they have a right to be ignorant. What bothers me is that this is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to extremism. It’s the sort of closed-minded thinking that leads to abstinence ‘education’ in schools, and rejection of vaccines, and government shutdowns. Be stupid yourself if you want, but surely it’s a sin (if sin exists) to force other folks to be stupid too.

Let me leave you with these words of wisdom from Whoopee John Wilfahrt…

Polka, baby, polka.

the chant needs a little work

Posted on September 30, 2013 by greg

You guys, guess what. Our long national nightmare is over. Okay, I know that’s what Gerald Ford said when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency — but according to some folks, we got ourselves re-nightmared when our current president was elected (if he really was). But those folks can relax now, on account of the nightmare is over again.

Well okay, it’s almost over. It’ll be over on November 19th. That’s the day, according to Larry Klayman (God-loving Founder of Freedom Watch) when good, decent American citizens will gather in front of the White House “in the millions.” In the millions, you guys. And after they’ve gathered, decent American Larry Klayman says they’ll begin this chant:

“Mr. President (to use the term loosely), put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!”

Well okay, it’s not a great chant. It lacks a certain rhythm. Well, okay, it lacks any sort of rhythm at all. I suppose you could blame the parenthetical comment “(to use the term loosely)”. It doesn’t slide gracefully into the chant. But what’s more important — rhythm or passion? I’m sure that under the leadership of patriotic citizen Larry Klayman, those millions of people will overcome their complete lack of rhythm through the power of their passion.

Larry Klayman (good, clean, god-loving American)

Larry Klayman (good, clean, god-loving, decent American)

Now you may be wondering how that’s going to end our long national nightmare? Allow me to explain.

Here’s what happened. Muslim Kenyan Barack Hussein Obama was recently indicted by a grand jury. Well okay, it was a Citizens’ Grand Jury. Well okay, it was a group of citizens Larry Klayman (Patriotic American) gathered together in Ocala, Florida (county seat of Marion County, population 56,945) and called a grand jury. And yeah, okay, maybe they don’t have any legal authority or power or official-sounding stuff like that, but they looked at the evidence prepared by an unbiased prosecutor (Larry Klayman). And you guys, after carefully considering that evidence, these people totally issued an indictment against Gay Socialist Barack Hussein Obama.

You’re going to find this hard to believe, but despite this indictment, Barack Hussein Obama (anti-white racist native of Muslim, Kenya) refused to submit himself for trial. You guys, he just outright refused. Can you believe that? So the Citizens’ Grand Jury had no choice; they were forced to try him in absentia. And you guys, guess what. They found Atheist Usurper Barack Hussein Obama totally guilty. What was he found guilty of? .

— defrauding the American people and Floridians by proffering them with a fake birth certificate

— tricking voters into electing him in 2008 and 2012

— also too, being Muslim, socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda

— also too in addition, Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate, Navy SEAL Team VI-gate, Fast and Furious-gate, and NSA-gate

Having been found totally guilty, Shari’a Law Professor Barack Hussein Obama was sentenced to “the maximum prison term for these offenses of 10 years.” Ten years! He was also “ordered to immediately surrender himself into the custody of the citizens of the United States and Florida.” But you guys, Barack Hussein Obama (Christ-hating anti-gun homo) didn’t surrender himself at all.

This, of course, came as no surprise to freedom loving Larry Klayman. He predicted that Barack Hussein Obama (African Usurper) would flout the law.

“Obama will not willingly obey the law of the people. He will attempt to hide behind the iron fences of the White House, perhaps cowering under his desk for fear that the people will rise up and demand his ouster.”

The good news is that now the millions of people who will gather in front of the White House on November 19th will know exactly where to find Negro Coward Barack Hussein Obama. Under his desk. And they will gather, those millions of people, on account of Larry Klayman (Popular Leader) has told them that this is the greatest crisis facing the American People (of whom Barack Hussein Obama is not one) since the Revolutionary War.

“[T]he tyranny that has been imposed by a new despot, one far more evil than King George III. King George III may have been a greedy “control freak,” but at least he was a Christian. The United States is being run by a Muslim bent on furthering an Islamic caliphate who seeks to destroy our spirituality and the body politic of our Judeo-Christian roots.”

King George III, control freak, Christian

King George III, greedy control freak, Christian

Barack Hussein Obama (Godless Commie Nancy-Boy) is nothing at all like ~~white~~ Christian control freak George the Third, no sir. Obama wants to destroy our roots, you guys. And so good, decent American Larry Klayman says all good and decent Americans need to act. He says we need to “stand tall and descend on the capitol.” If you stand low and descend on the capitol nobody will be able to see you.

Convicted Satanist Barack Hussein Obama needs to look out from under his desk on November 19th and be able to see the tall-standing millions of good, decent Americans, and hear them chanting. And when he does, then…then…I guess he’ll, what, resign?

I don’t know…maybe this plan needs a little work. I’d suggest Larry Klayman begin by meeting with a good chant consultant. Then somebody should remind him of this quote by Christian King George the Third:

“I wish nothing but good; therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.”

Great minds think alike…and so do greedy Christian control freaks.

just another afternoon by the river

Posted on September 25, 2013 by greg

The Des Moines River is a little over 500 miles long. The section I spend most of my time on is maybe a mile. Probably a little less than that. It’s an urban section of river; there’s nothing ‘natural’ about it. There aren’t any real river banks, there are no trees lining the water, there are no organic eddies or sandbanks or mudflats. There are concrete walkways and arched bridges and dams and promenades and buildings. You can buy a coffee (or a beer or a glass of wine) in a small kiosk and sit and watch the water roll on.

I do that fairly often. When I do, I usually find myself looking at the river and wondering what it must have been like before. Before, this was French territory. Most folks think of North America as a former British colony, which is a limited version of the truth. In fact, the British were largely confined to a relatively narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast. Most of the interior was held by the French. Well, actually it was held by the native tribes who lived there before any Europeans made their way across the ocean. But history was written by Europeans, so it’s mostly concerned with what Europeans did.

My point, if you can call it that, is this: Iowa used to be part of Nouvelle-France. New France was fucking HUGE. It stretched west from Newfoundland all the way to the Great Plains (and, eventually, clear to the Rocky Mountains). It included all the land south of Hudson Bay down to the Gulf of Mexico. The entire drainage basin of the Mississippi River comprised a district called Louisiana, which was divided into Haute Louisiane and Basse-Louisiane. Upper and Lower Louisiana. Sort of like North and South Dakota, only with the benefit of not being either of the Dakotas. Of course, the native peoples didn’t give a moose’s ass what the French called the land. I suspect they just stood around grinning and snickering to themselves while these odd white guys kept ‘discovering’ places and renaming them. The first white guys set foot in what eventually became Iowa in 1659. Pierre-Esprit Radisson and his brother-in-law Médard des Groseilliers. Despite their poncy names, these guys were tough. They were coureurs de bois — runners of the woods. Unlike voyageurs, who were licensed to do business by trading companies (in other words, capitalist lackeys), coureurs de bois were independent, entrepreneurial fur-trappers, traders, and explorers.

Radisson and des Groseilliers explored and mapped a big chunk of the North American interior. Radisson eventually had three or four towns named after him, and a hotel chain, and even a Canadian Coast Guard vessel. Nobody named anything after Médard des Groseilliers. This is what happens when you partner up with a guy whose name is more cool than yours. But even though these men made their way to Iowa, they almost certainly didn’t travel up the Des Moines River. Nobody really knows which European made the first trip up La Rivière des Moines. It could have been Michel Accault, Antoine Angel, and Father Hennepin in 1680; they were in the area. Or maybe it was the cartographer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin a few years later, though it’s more likely he copied some other guy’s map of the river. The Baron Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce de Lahontan said he traveled up the Des Moines, but most historians think he was lying about it. We know that Pierre Charles Le Sueur made his way up the river in 1700, but he probably wasn’t the first. A few years after Le Sueur, Father Peter Francis Xavier de Charlevoix wrote this:

[T]he river Moingona issues from the midst of an immense meadow, which swarms with Buffaloes and other wild beasts

Swarms of buffalo where there are now coffee shops. How cool is that? The buffalo are gone now, other than a few small herds kept in parks so sticky-fingered children can look at them. The buffalo are gone, and so are the French. We know why the buffalo are gone. Because we were well-armed murderous bastards and we slaughtered them for our amusement. But why did the French leave? They had a massive presence in the New World — not just all that territory in North America, but throughout the Caribbean. That’s why pirates in the movies (the ‘bad’ pirates, not the good Errol Flynn pirates) always speak with a French accent — because they fucking owned Hispaniola. So why did the French leave? Give some of the credit to François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, a slave born on Hispaniola.

In 1791 Louverture took the island away from the French by leading a successful slave rebellion. That pissed off the French and a decade later Napoleon Bonaparte sent a sizable military force to New Orleans to support an effort to re-take Hispaniola. The United States was only about 15 years old at the time, and having the French military camped out in New Orleans made the government nervous. Almost half of the goods imported into the U.S. passed through the port of New Orleans. So even though the French failed to retake Hispaniola (which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), President Thomas Jefferson thought it might be a good idea to find a way to get the French off our stoop.

In 1803 Jefferson decided to try to buy the city of New Orleans from the French. He figured he’d offer France a cool US$10 million for the city — and what the hell, maybe some of the surrounding land. Why not? France would get a little cash in the bank, the U.S. would get a nice port and party town, everybody would be happy.

But Bonaparte was dans le pétrin — in a pickle. He’d lost the income from the sugar grown on Hispaniola, he was facing another war with Britain, and his nation was close to bankruptcy. So before the U.S. made its ten million dollar offer, Bonaparte proposed to sell ALL of Louisiana for 50 million francs (plus canceling a debt of about 18 million francs). That amounted to about 15 million dollars. Jefferson had planned to offer ten million just for the city; now he could get the entire French enchilada (yeah, I know, let’s not get bogged down in national cuisine here) for another five million. A bargain, right?

Congress opposed the purchase. Seriously. Jefferson was about to double the size of the nation — to pick up around 828,000 square miles of territory at a cost of about three cents an acre — and Congress opposed it. They said the president didn’t have the authority to make or accept the offer. They disliked the idea of granting citizenship to the French, Spanish, and free black people who lived in the territory (nobody even considered citizenship for the native peoples). They worried about the political effects of bringing in all those farmers when so much of the power of Congress depended on the wealth of the merchants and bankers along the coast.

In other words, Congress — primarily the House of Representatives — were dicks about the whole thing (sound familiar?). But the sale squeaked through in the House and was passed by the Senate, and hey bingo, the United States was suddenly bigger and in a position to start seriously fucking over the native peoples west of the Mississippi.

So I walk beside the Des Moines River. I sip my coffee and watch the water pass by. And I think about those courageous coureurs de bois (and they were courageous; it took some massive balls to go wandering in unexplored and often hostile territory), and I think about the European politics that eventually led the United States to the genocide of the natives who lived in the Americas (and the French were just as guilty in this; in 1729 Louis XV authorized the extermination of the Fox Indians because they were interfering with the fur trade). Half a mile south of where the photograph above was taken you can still find the remains of an old fort constructed to protect the French monks who’d come to the New World to force Baby Jesus down the throats of the natives.

So many wonderful and horrible things happened along this river. And the only thing that’s been consistent throughout is the river itself. The river doesn’t care. The buffalo were here, the Indians were here, the French were here, now I’m here.

Given that history, I don’t think this ends particularly well for me.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job