Ranting about how messed up the world is, espcially Oklahoma.
Author Archives: Curtiswselby
They say not to write a blog from a tired space, but I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, so frankly, everything I do is from a tired space. Likely I'm not doing the greatest job of search engine optimization. But I know there are others like me. Passionate about life.
A dove released in 2014 by the Pope in a prayer for peace is attacked by a crow…..I don’t mean to sound weird but….was this prophetic?
It was 2014, and Russia had attacked Ukraine. The Pope was praying for peace, praying that the hostilities would stop. As a symbol, (and who knows, maybe for fun too, it can be fun to interact with children on occasion), he and a little boy and little girl released some doves to represent peace. The doves were attacked by a seagull and a large dark crow. Eight years later, we are praying again for Ukraine, and I am left wondering if the Powers That Be were trying to tell us something back then.
A crow often represents death, and “worldly” instead of “spiritual” things. Seagulls on the other hand represent freedom, open mindedness, and “spirituality.” They are considered by most sailors to be good luck. So what would it mean if both the worldly and the spiritual symbols attack the symbol of peace?
Wonder if this bird got in on the action….?
Honestly, I’m not big on prophecies any more. I’ve known too many false prophets in my day, who profited quite a bit on the gullible. There was a time when I believed more than I do. I remember hearing about this, I was in a terrible place in my life. I didn’t care about Ukraine, Russia, the war on terror. I’d quit listening to the news. Somehow it came out on the radio. My ex wife was driving. We were going to eat out again. Slowly killing ourselves with fast food, destroying our finances by eating out all the time. I remember thinking, dully, “I wonder if there is any symbolism to this.” And then I never thought about it again until I started writing this post.
A line from the soundtrack of “Lost Boys.” “They need to feed/they both agree/the hawk and the dove.”
Was God talking to us back then? Was God trying to tell us that the country of liberty and the country of death would attempt to tear apart the peace of Ukraine? Or was it simply what birds do? Maybe the crow and the gull were looking for a quick meal and just randomly fell upon the doves. And the doves got away (as far as all the posts I’ve read have told). Does that mean Ukraine will survive?
I hope that Ukraine does survive. It is hard to believe they can win. And yet….they have already survived a week longer than I expected them to. It’s almost like Russia is no longer the military power house they once were. Like the generation that sacrificed so much to defeat real Nazis has passed away.
The heroes of Stalingrad were a different breed from the rapists of Ukraine.
At the risk of losing some of my readers….I respect Russia. They fought like tigers in World War II. The Russians feel like the world owes them for the sacrifices made in that horrible conflict. Ironically, the US feels the same way. It has been 77 years since we were brothers in arms. Both have forgotten what the other gave up, just like two prodigal sons fighting over a girl who frankly doesn’t love either of them.
Humans tend to want to see patterns. The universe is a less frightening place when we can make sense of it. Birds attacking the Pope’s peace birds has to make sense. It is part of man’s search for meaning. But I’m afraid I don’t see exactly what it means.
Iosef Kuglack, age 89 at the time of the photo, celebrating the 70th anniversary of our mutual victory over the Axis in World War II.
Is it possible for the Crow and the Seagull to coexist? Or is this a winner take all scenario? Is the town too small for both desperadoes? Will we ever come to our senses?
I want to believe there is hope. I want to believe that the lessons we thought we have learned have not been utterly forgotten. That the people who sacrificed so much in Stalingrad and in London, in Burma, in Goltry Oklahoma have not died in vain.
War is part of our makeup. That’s why we love sports. Why we love movies and books and stories. We want to hear about folks that overcome some conflict. But we need to evolve past the need to kill. We have nukes, chemical weapons, biological weapons. If we don’t overcome this tendency, the dove, the crow, the gull, and the albatross may all perish along with us.
There was a time when Liberty dominated the landscape. In the last hundred and fifty years, temples to Capitalism and to Man’s Self Worship have dwarfed her. Will She ever find her place again?
I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about again. A friend of mine told me that I needed to write about “liberty.” When I look up “liberty,” the first thing to pop up? The Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift of the people of France. We used to feel a kinship with that nation. France helped us win our independence. And then France had her own battles, her own revolutions. And both nations tried to make the whole transaction equal. Like lovers who cannot figure out how to make the relationship right, we kept trying to show each other our esteem and respect. But somehow what comes through is the contempt.
Ve are ze franch! And ve shall taunt you a second tima!
What is freedom? According to the internet, it is “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.” Helpful, or just more confusing…you be the judge!
In order for this to make sense, we have to know what is oppressive and what is just us being arrogant. We have to know what is authority, what is our way of life, all of these terms need meaning, or the discussion descends into meaninglessness.
So let’s start with “free.” “Not under the control or in the power of another, able to do as one wishes.” Or, “Not confined, imprisoned, or enslaved.” Last of all, “Without cost.” I think the first two are what most of us are talking about, though I believe that some corporations rather think the latter definition is true freedom. Freedom from paying my labor a just wage is surely the greatest freedom of all….
No, I’m not a Marxist. But the imagery in the picture hits home with me…..
Since this is a simple post from a simple man, I’m going to focus strictly on the “not controlled by another,” the most central aspect of freedom. Cousin Benjamin was a fairly big deal in the American Colonial Revolution. Freedom was very important to him, as it was to all of the Founding Fathers and Mothers in the Revolution. He had been apprenticed to his brother, and while some find that family treats you better, others find the worst hatred and oppression under one’s own roof. Eventually he broke away and became one of the early American success stories. The Iconic rags to riches story we all love, because we yearn for the Fairy Tale in our own hearts. Give me liberty, or give me wealth. If truth be told, there is a strong correlation between the two, strong enough they are easily confused.
I thought about using an image of Uncle Ben, but when I saw this, I knew this was the image to share. Both with his brother, and with Britain, Benjamin Franklin knew better than to seek healing from an abuser.
Freedom is the capacity to control yourself. To make your own choices. To grow in the directions you wish to grow. It doesn’t mean there are no limits at all. Ironically there do have to be healthy boundaries for there to be adequate liberty. But the limits are put there by Nature, God, the Universe, the Floating Spaghetti Monster, Chthullhu. And by ourselves. It is not arbitrarily commanded by other humans.
So what does that ultimately mean? And is it really such a high priority as the Revolutionaries gave it?
Image of Moloch, a factory personified in the movie Metropolis, the workers are damned to a living death so the City may live. And the elites may party.
Frankly, the word seems to be little more these days than a buzzword. Like “empowered.” Like “synergy.” Don’t get me wrong, the words themselves, especially in the right context, have deep meaning. But the way they are used in the world today, by politicians, news media, and business mikados….it has become little more than “duckspeak.” Each political party promises it, only to deny it in the next breath.
In the end, there is a powerful struggle between those that desire freedom, and those that desire control. Every management and economics text book I have ever read tells you that the whole point of management is to control. But few ever do the “deep dive” (buzzword alert) to discover that the more one group or person controls, the less freedom there is for everyone else.
Am I wrong? Is it possible for leadership to control and yet for the people to be free? Are we still free? And if we have lost our freedoms….how and when did that happen?
The winds of change blew in my youth. We hoped for a better world. We hoped for a brotherhood of freedom. We felt a magic, and we envisioned a world where our children would fulfill dreams we could not imagine. Instead, they have inherited a world of horror we could not imagine……
March 5 is Multiple Personality Disorder Day. Don’t forget to give a gift to each personality….
When I was young, I remember a movie came out called Sybil in 1976. I would have been five. It was about a real person who had dissociative identity disorder, better known as multiple personality disorder. I don’t believe I watched it, I just remember hearing about it. The thought that there might be some other person sharing the same body with me was terrifying. The Exorcist had come out three years before, and The Oman had come out earlier that summer. These three movies combined in my young mind to create an idea of the ultimate horror. What if I am the horror?
In Sybil the true story of Sybil Dorsett, the pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason (names were changed to protect the….innocent….?) is told. Evidently her personality fractured after her mother allegedly severely abused her physically and sexually. According to the book Mason had seventeen personalities. Through therapy her personalities became aware of each other, and in time with therapy, hypnosis, and medication, they become more functional, produced and sold works of art under their own names, and eventually coalesced into one whole and healed personality.
By Michelangelo – Information on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine ChapelInformation on Michelangelo’s painting of the Delphic SibylPrimary source (internal jpeg comments modified for copyright reasons):Secondary source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=360598
In ancient Greece, a Sybil was an ecstatic prophetess who would predict the future. There were Christian sects that believed The Sibylline Prophecies predicted the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as other great moments of history. Perhaps it is fitting to give this name to Mason, but I don’t read anywhere that she prophesied anything, though one of her personalities was interested in Biblical prophecy. Those who know me well know that this does not endear me to her.
I’ve never seen The Exorcist. But the thought of being demon possessed just whigged me out as a child.
The second film in the trilogy that tried to break my mind was The Exorcist. The thought that not only might there be alternate personalities I couldn’t control was bad enough, but the idea that a demon might control me, instead of me, was chilling in the extreme. I don’t think I ever fell for the whole “the devil made me do it” trap. Nor did I go down the rabbit hole my ex mother in law went down, seeing a demon behind every hedge. But I actually do understand the mentality. A melancholic portion of this returned when I read The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne. But now I believe that at least ninety percent of demon possession is either fraud, or tortured souls dealing with psychological problems like schizophrenia.
The devil went down to Georgia looking for a bed to steal…..
The last movie of the unholy trinity is the one that has haunted me most. Possibly it is because I actually saw it. And while it was edited for television, I was likely no more than eight when I watched it. This most hellish of films is The Oman.
The iconic suicide of Damien’s nanny haunted me as a child. “Look at me Damien! It’s all for you!” The evil nanny shouts before she hangs herself.
This last film opened up to me not just the horror of “something is out to harm me.” The Omen introduced me to Apocalyptic horror. “Something is out to destroy the world.” And as a little boy myself, I actually, horrifically, identified with Damien. And that opened up to me the possibility that I was myself evil. What would I do if I were the Antichrist? Surely not.
And of course, as a somewhat stable grown man the thought is nowhere in my mind. But as a small boy with a vivid imagination, I wondered about the possibility. It took some years for me to realize that, while yes there was sin and wickedness in me, I have no Hellhounds guarding me or nannies killing themselves around me.
Classical painting The Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist.
So in summary. If you have multiple personalities, get help. If you are dating someone with multiple personalities, write a book. If you get possessed by a demon, first go to a psychologist, then seek a priest. And if you think you are the Antichrist, the third verse is the same as the second. Have a happy Multiple Personality Disorder Day!
Russians get too rowdy on their Mardi Gras celebration. Putin could have saved a lot of money had he just passed out beads to topless women. No wonder Ukraine is trying to kick the party out!
The latest news your tired blogger has heard is that Russia has been using something called a “vacuum bomb” to devastate a Ukrainian base. Ukrainian losses during the bombing have been reported to be at least seventy soldiers.
Once again, I likely sound flippant. It is tragic that people are dying, and likely some will not appreciate my gallows humor. I’ve been doing posts on the history of the century old conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and it saddens me that we have not learned from our past better than this.
Ukrainian military base devastated by a “vacuum bomb.”
I joke about Mardi Gras, but I have a point to make on this. Mardi Gras is the time when all (well, most) sins are absolved, because the Catholic tradition has it followed by forty days of Lent, the forty days before Easter when we contemplate our sins, and the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It has little or nothing to do with Russian tradition, but it would not surprise me if Putin used this as an excuse. “It is not a sin, I’m just celebrating with some fireworks.”
Happy Mardi Gras Putin! Fat Tuesday was never more festive!
Politicians are saying that this bombing could be a war crime. Let’s examine this.
Before the American Civil War there was no such animal as a War Crime. Essentially the winner got to define what was a war crime and punished the loser accordingly (assuming that they had won with enough power over the enemy). According to an article in USA Today “From an international law perspective, a war crime is any conduct…that fulfills two cumulative criteria,” Dustin Lewis, research director for the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, told USA TODAY. “First, the conduct must be committed with a sufficient connection to an armed conflict. Second, the conduct must constitute a serious violation of the laws and customs of international humanitarian law that has been criminalized by international treaty or customary law.”
Now there’s a mouthful.
So….if I rape and kill and torture, but I’m not at war with anyone, there is no war crime. Hence, Putin is in the clear. He never officially declared war. “Around 05:00 EET (UTC+2) on 24 February, Putin announced a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine; minutes later, missiles began to hit locations across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv.” So obviously there is no war, and hence, no war crime.
You must find the good in everything when you are king!
The “Father of All Bombs” as the Russians call it is equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, using 7 tons of “high explosive.” The Russians claim they are replacing some of their low grade nukes with these FOABs as they are called. This triggered a memory in my mind. Didn’t Trump threaten to use the “Mother of All Bombs” on someone?
So we did use something comparable. Sort of. The FOAB has a blast radius of 300 meters, almost double that of MOAB, and the temperature attained is double. The TNT equivalent of MOAB (US) is 11 tons, that of FOAB (Russia) is 44. So very roughly four times as destructive. Calling them “mini nukes” is very exaggerating, since the Hiroshima bomb was equivalent to fifteen thousand tons of TNT.
I look up the list of war crimes on Wikipedia, and while the whole thing sounds revolting….some of it is intensely vague. “Intentionally killing civilians,” starts the list. Don’t get me wrong, I think we should do our reasonable best not to kill civilians. But when you are bombing a city, you surely know that there will be civilians killed. No bomb (certainly nothing like MOAB or FOAB) could ever be so precise as only to kill “the bad guys.”
Photograph taken in 1941 by invading Nazis. The photo had written on the back “The last Jew in Vinnitsa.” Which is in Ukraine.
Putin is lying to his own people. To his own soldiers….
I reused this image from last post, because a picture is worth a thousand words. Look deeply into those eyes. Because this was the face of the Ukrainian Revolution a hundred years ago. And a large part of how you view this current war depends on the story you read in those eyes.
The latest news available to the tired blogger: Putin has put his nuclear weapons on “high alert.” European countries including Switzerland (that’s right, you read that right, even the forever neutral Switzerland has thrown a gauntlet in Putin’s face) closing off the banks and freezing assets. Russian troops are fighting guerilla volunteers in the streets of Kharkiv, inching their way painfully toward Kiev. According to CNN and PBS Newshour, Putin has been claiming that he is targeting Nazis. I suppose his aim is just a little slow.
Here we see a random Ukrainian defending his city. I can see why Putin thinks he needs to act…..
Since writing that post I’ve done some more digging into the previous revolution. One of the key leaders in the Ukrainian revolution was Nestor Ivanovych Makhno. He is the handsome fellow with the brooding eyes that impressed me enough to include in both of my last posts.
Young Nestor in 1906.
Legend has it that the priest that was baptizing baby Nestor had his clothes catch fire on a candle, which was considered a sure sign that a trouble maker had been born. His father was a poor coachman, but at least the family had had the ambition to win their freedom from serfdom. He lived in poverty throughout his youth. He did receive four year of education. He was truant quite often, one day when he was playing hooky he went skating, crashed through the ice, and nearly drowned. He had lung problems the rest of his life. His mother beat him viciously when she learned he was not in class, so he became diligent for the few years he had left in school. In summer he worked on farms, in the winter he studied voraciously. After four years he was apprenticed to a carpenter. This reminds me of someone, I’m not sure who.
At age 16 the handsome lad joined a band of traveling actors. But these actors were little different than the stereotypical Gypsy bands that were written about so much in the nineteenth century. They stole from the rich and gave to the poor, and since they were poor, some say they simply kept quite a lot of what they stole. Eventually someone was killed, and since Nestor was part of the crew, he was imprisoned in Moscow. In prison he learned the theories of Anarchism and communism from the Arch Anarchist in Russia, Pert Arshinov. Under his tutelage he read as many books as he could get his hands on, and even started writing poetry. He was freed during the February Revolution, and returned home to sign the decree that “sovietized” the land, ordaining that all the land of the rich and the nobles should be redistributed to the peasants. He was the Big Man on Campus in his home town of Gulyay Pole. But he found that good times don’t last when you are sold down the river.
Imagine Oscar Wild as a revolutionary, and you get the idea.
The Soviets had acceded to a loss in the First World War. And to the victors belong the spoils. The Brest Treaty with Germany took the newly freed Ukraine from its liberty (in the eyes of Ukrainians, including Nestor) and made them a German conquest. Makhno was furious, and wrote: “There are no parties… there are only bunches of charlatans who for the sake of personal profit and extreme sensations… destroy the working people.” Refusing to live under German rule, he fled to Moscow, met Lenin and other Revolutionary leaders, and concluded the revolution was on a revolution “on paper.” What he witnessed there he labeled “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
I’ve spent a lot of words on this man, and only scratched the surface of what made him a revolutionary. A great deal of controversy surrounds him, and except in his own home town, he is not held universally to be a hero. Even the Russians don’t know what to do with him, whether to label him a Hero of the People, or a villain on par with Hitler himself. His name is fourth on the list of the people awarded the “Order of the Red Flag.” Yet his wife was held as a war criminal after his death, and was only freed from the Gulags after the death of Stalin.
Makhno did not live that long. Nor did he die as a revolutionary. He died as a taxi driver in Paris. I will leave two posts for those who wish to read more. I’m not trying to pick a side here…Ukraine or Russia. But I think if we are going to be making statements in this current war, we have to have some vague idea of what transpired in these nations a century ago.
The Flag of the Black Army that followed Nestor Makhno
Oh yeah…and I nearly forgot! Makhno was used as a character in a Michael Moorecock (famous in D&D circles for several fantasy works, but mainly for The Elric Saga) novel, The Steel Czar.” I have not read this novel, but it is an alternative history where 1) the South won the Civil War, 2) the First World War and the October Revolution never happened, and 3)the protagonist is commissioned by the fictitious “Steel Czar” to drop an atom bomb on Makhno and his Black Army, but instead drops it on the Czar himself. So we owe our freedoms to Chthullhic chaotic forces.
And again….a video to link all of it together. Please let me know if you like the videos….I find that a lot of people I hand the posts to read the post, but don’t bother with the videos at all.
And yes…I know…I’ve only scratched the surface of this story….
Ukrainians flee Kiev following missile strikes. I know it looks like Detroit in 2008, but no, its Kiev.
Russia invaded Ukraine yesterday, February 24. I know by my title and my snarky comment in the image some might think I don’t take this seriously, but I do. My youth was spent honestly believing that the US and USSR would wipe our species off the map. Then I spent twenty five years thinking that at least nuclear war between the two Superpowers had been avoided. Now I feel like we are right back where we started. If I sound flippant, its because the dynamic has been changing since Putin came to power, and it seems as though we are playing a losing game of chess with nations as the pawns, and billionaires as the rooks.
The Russians are legendary chess masters. Are we playing our game at the same level as Putin?
This really is not a new conflict. Just this latest version of it actually started in 2014, when Putin forcefully annexed Crimea.
Russia has been fighting for Crimea for quite some time. The Crimean Khanate was annexed by the Russian Empire in April of 1783, just a few months before the official ending of the American Revolution. Fast forward to 1853, and you have the Crimean War, famous for being the first major conflict documented with photographs, and for Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. Russia lost that conflict to the allied French and Turkish Ottoman Empire. Before the First World War, this was the conflict that most demonstrated the confusing stupidity of war. But it was a massive loss to the Russians as they lost their naval bases in the Black Sea, cutting their naval access, and thus slashing their prowess, power, and mercantile capacity. It would take Russia decades to recover. I will leave a link for those who wish to read more. While this conflict is roughly 170 years old, the long memory of the Russians likely has never gotten over this.
Butler, Elizabeth Southerden Thompson; Scotland for Ever!; Leeds Museums and Galleries; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/scotland-for-ever-38645. This painting is often mistakenly called The Charge of the Light Brigade, and often accompanies text book listings of Tennyson’s poem in which “tis not ours to wonder why, tis but ours to do and die.”
It is often forgotten that there was a Ukrainian-Soviet War from 1917 through 1921. In the West we mostly talk about the First World War, the Spanish Flu, and the beginning of the Red Scare. The turmoil of these times in the East (what we consider the East), mainly comes to us as images of an angry Lenin, an angry Santa looking Karl Marx, the struggles between Trotsky (about whom the average American knows nothing) and Stalin (if you are lucky you know him from his youtube duet with Hitler, Video Killed the Radio Star).
“Father Makhno” Anarchist-Communist leader of the Ukrainian revolution.
By 1922, Ukraine had signed on as one of the original constituent “Republics” of the USSR. It was likely the second most powerful of all the Soviet “Republics,” three different Soviet leaders were either born or raised in Ukraine: Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Konstantin Chernenko.
Ukrainian discontent with Soviet rule came to a head in the late eighties and early nineties, due to the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Northern Ukraine, social and economic stagnation, and a belief by many that the Gorbachev reforms of the eighties were not being implemented swiftly enough, at least in the Ukraine, to satisfy a populace hungry for change. When a failed coup attempt in August of 1991 brought the Russians together in a populist revolution, the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine declared their independence. A referendum of the people voted 92.3% in favor of independence. And since then, Ukraine has been the second largest European nation.
No wonder world leaders are afraid of him…..
Putin has been the plot complication to this fairy tale ending. The failed coup that led to so much liberty also led to a great deal of confusion. The man who defeated the coup with a megaphone, Boris Yeltsin, appointed Putin as the head of Russia after his own tenure ended. And Putin has effectively made his position a permanent dictatorship. He has been rattling sabers since he rose to power, becoming a hero at home for his hard line against Chechnya rebels, but also telegraphing to anyone watching what the rest of his rule would be like.
It’s taken me a couple of days to write this post, mostly because life has been busy. Ukraine is taking a beating, but is fighting back harder than expected. Guerilla fighting is keeping this from being the one sided battle expected. Only time will tell how this will come out. What do you think about the conflict? Are there any good guys in this, or is it just the typical ball of confusing crap? Please leave your comments.
Here we have a historically accurate portrayal of Washington brooding over the slaughtered zombies Britain sent across the Atlantic to subdue the colonies. What? Fact Check dinged us again….why?
George Washington: From Hero to Zero
When I was young, I was taught to venerate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I was taught that they were the models by which all Americans are measured. Like Superman, or Batman, like St. Peter, or my Dad, these two men could do no wrong. I’m afraid even as an adult I still suffer a bit from Hero Worship (though not to the visionary extent of Napoleon Hill, who would have actual visions of Lincoln and Napoleon discussing Hill’s dreams for his life). When I was a teenager there was a mini series that I never saw, claiming to show a more human side of our Founding Father (you sure use a lot of Capital Letters Curtis….are you sure you wanna emphasize things so drastically?). I have grown up enough to realize that my heroes were women and men with human frailties. My relative Ben Franklin discovered Congress with “low women” and Thomas Jefferson fathered a child on one of his slaves. Mother Theresa gave cigarettes to the poor, and pretty much every leader ever has made some embarrassing mistake that, if focused on, would lead one to despair of humanity.
Controversy in Washington’s Lifetime
I was raised to venerate Washington. He had a place in my mythos just behind Jesus and the Apostles. But even during his life time there were critics.
Praise for Washington was almost universal amongst the victorious revolutionaries. But once he was elected President, some newspapers started to criticize him. Part of the dynamic was that the number of newspapers in the young republic exploded from under fifty in 1776, to over 250 in 1800. More voices statistically meant more chance of criticism. Also, political parties were developing around him, which is likely why he was so adamant in his farewell address that political parties were an evil. On one side you had Alexander Hamilton jockeying for a stronger government and a stronger economy, on the other Thomas Jefferson striving for an agrarian, rural based economy with the least government possible. Jefferson wrote to James Madison, his right hand man: “the President, tho’ an honest man himself, may be circumvented by snares and artifices, and is in fact surrounded by men who wish to clothe the Executive with more than constitutional power.” Perhaps his worst contemporary critic was Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and The American Crisis. He was furious that the American government allowed him to rot in prison during the times of the French Revolution Terror, and he turned his vitriol on Washington unsparingly. Some suggest this may have been a large part of why Washington chose to retire after his second term in office. To quote Paine: “Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interests of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud.”
Thomas Paine was fiercely critical of George Washington, he felt, like Rambo, that he had been left in prison to rot.
Modern Disdain for the Indispensable Man
Obviously, Washington’s reputation was more than restored in time. After his rather untimely death, many who had spoken ill of him changed their tone, and lauded in death the man they deplored in life. History books written often chose to focus on the strengths Washington elicited, sometimes totally ignoring his failings, and evolving apocryphal stories about him, like the cherry tree story that has entertained so many children. More and more in modern days, he has been criticized as a despotic slave owner, someone who lied and cheated his way to the top, and is deserving of admiration only in a Machiavellian sense. A lot has been written about this by the New York Times and other papers who wish to shed light on the horrors of slavery, and who for good or ill have rewritten the narrative of our Founding Fathers in the belief that the entire Revolution centered on the fulcrum of continuing the execrable practice of slavery. I will leave some links for those who wish to read more and make up their own minds, as well as my own previous post about Lincoln and the 1619 Project:
In the end, I’m not here to tell you what to think about George Washington. All of us stand before the same Judge in the end, and I can only hope that Judge will be merciful to me. My opinion is that Washington was a great man, though like all of us, badly flawed. I don’t mean to stir the pot of anger that boils over on both sides. But I wonder…..if Washington had never been born….would slavery have ever come to an end in the world? Or would someone as heroic, or even more so, have stood up and taken up the mantel of Liberty?
My sixth favorite President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. “We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or make it the last.” For good or ill, we did neither.
Happy President’s Day ya’ll! This is the day we celebrate the leadership (or lack thereof) that has been so instrumental in making us the nation we are today. In order to celebrate, I thought I’d list my six favorite Presidents, my personal (not always logical) reasons why they are my favorites, and some random thoughts on the kind of President we need today.
Sixth is John F. Kennedy. He has slid some in my estimation as I’ve grown older, but honestly, not much. As a twelve year old I might have listed him fourth or fifth, but then, all I really knew was he had made great speeches, faced down the Soviets, and challenged America to go to the Moon. The geek in me will always love him, if only for the Lunar Landing Challenge.
Fifth (and I have liberal friends who will hate me for this) is Ronald Reagan.
He said so many eloquent things, but my favorite lines of Reagan’s come from this speech in 1976, recognizing his defeat in the election to Gerald Ford, talking about a letter he was writing for a time capsule that would be opened in 2076: “And suddenly it dawned on me: Those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They will know whether we met our challenge. Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, “Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? Who kept us now a hundred years later free? Who kept our world from nuclear destruction?” And if we failed they probably won’t get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it.”
Ronald Reagan was the president through most my teenage years, from the time I was nine, till I was seventeen. I remember well the deep malaise of the seventies, and Reagan was the voice of hope. Democrats likely see it differently, and that is ok, I know he made some pretty profound mistakes. But his eloquence (whether he wrote his own speeches, or just had the best speech writer since Kennedy, the man could produce a speech like nobody else in my life time) stirred us, made us proud to be Americans again when we had learned from Vietnam to be ashamed. He stayed strong to his principles, yet he called the Democrats “our friends across the aisle.” And without irony, he meant it. He knew that the average Democrat loved America too, they just had a different perspective. He wasn’t into the demonizing and villainizing that have become the name of the game today. And I can never forget his speech to Gorbachev, “tear down this wall.” I never thought I’d outlive the Cold War. I fully expected to spend my last days on Earth coughing out my last breaths in agony from a nuclear war. But I think few will argue that at least a part of the Cold War ending was Reagan’s strength of character, and his willingness to stick to his principles, even in the face of sometimes harsh criticism.
Number four was a hard choice for me, but I decided on Teddy Roosevelt.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Likely this will seem (hell, maybe it actually is) a logical contradiction of my basic belief that ceteris paribus, government intervention is usually at best bungling, at worst tyrannical. But while I’m largely a capitalist, I am no laissez–faire capitalist. I don’t trust humanity enough to believe that most of us are willing to put the well being of all the other people over our own greed. Some government regulation is necessary. The crux of the argument is, how much is necessary, and have we over reached that necessity?
The three reasons I place him so highly in my esteem, first, he led us into becoming a world power. Before him the talk was always “some day in the future, when America is a great power.” During his presidency we entered the present tense. We still weren’t “the” superpower, but we had become “a” superpower. His presidency gave credibility to the progressive movement, which arguably has gone too far today, but at the time was badly needed to improve the lives of average citizens. He was not afraid to stand up to big business on our behalf. My great grandfather’s brother died of botulism from badly packed sardines. Had he eaten that tin ten years later under the Roosevelt administration, maybe that tragedy wouldn’t have happened. He strengthened our navy, he spearheaded the Panama Canal project, he negotiated peace between Russia and Japan, becoming the first President to win a Nobel Prize. And finally, the Teddy Bear. We wouldn’t have Winnie the Pooh if it weren’t for Teddy Roosevelt.
Two of my top three have been in the top three all of my life. When I was young, Lincoln and Washington were the hero’s of the nation. They were the confirmed models for what a President and a Man should be. While I now know as a grown man that neither man was a Saint, I still hold they were “Great Men” and the current controversies baffle and sadden me.
The three reasons I love him as a President, one he was so different from the average politician, especially in these dark days. He had a humility that you just don’t see in these times. Could you imagine Trump leading the country through the Civil War? “We’re going to send the biggest cannon, I tell you these are the most incredible cannons ever made. My stove top hat is the biggest….look, nobody in Washington has a bigger stove top hat. Those Southerners, we love them. Especially the uneducated ones. But if they try to shoot my stove top hat then we’ll send the mother of all bombs, and we sill secure the airfields of the Continental airports”…..I can attest from personal experience that the world hates humility, but like Christ, Socrates, and Washington, Lincoln actually found a way to be humble and make it work. Second, he did his level headed best. He started the war knowing virtually nothing about modern warfare. Carl Sandburg documents his own journalistic journey with the president. At the beginning of the war he felt the man was a hack and a clown. By the end of the war he felt like he was in the midst of a hero, and Lincoln’s assassination affected him with the same haunting sorrow we usually reserve for the loss of spouses or children. The nation (even the South) felt an outpouring of grief like we had never felt before, and it wouldn’t again until the death of Kennedy. Last of all, his personal spiritual journey, especially as it pertains to the freeing of the slaves. He was always a Christian, but in his last years, faced with an entirely unique set of catastrophes no President before or since has had to face, he deepened his spirituality, seeking answers not just from military or economic might, but from an All Mighty who he felt was offended by the sins of the nation. And few national sins compared with slavery. To say that we based our beliefs on Christian charity and the dignified freedom of all was a cruel mockery in the face of slaves whipped, dehumanized, worked to death, raped, bred like animals, owned like cattle. People criticized him for not knowing that before, but let’s be fair here. How many of us spend more than a token word about the child sweat shops of Nike? How many have even written a letter to Amazon or Wal-mart to protest their inhumane treatment of workers (of which I have personal experience, so please don’t try to tell me it doesn’t happen)? Yet we want to get on to this man because it took a Civil War to awaken him? How many of us will never awaken, even though the prophets come back from the dead and tell us the truth?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” The last words from his second inaugural address. Some of the blood shed to pay for the sin of slavery was his own, yet we want to label him now as a “white supremacist.”
My second favorite has always been in my top three. Here we have a painting of George Washington with his men at Valley Forge. I had an ancestor there, a Sergeant Pope. “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
What can I possibly say about Washington that has not already been said? I had an ancestor serving at Valley Forge, and while it is likely Washington wouldn’t have known the man from Adam, I can’t help but feel pride that the same blood flows in my veins that froze and suffered and struggled and fought so we could be free. Washington is known as the Father of our Country, he led as as Commander in Chief in the most difficult struggle we have yet had (with the possible exception of the Civil War). Against impossible odds, leading a rag tag army of largely untrained volunteers against the greatest superpower of the day (though I don’t doubt France and maybe even Spain might have taken some exception to the title), Washington actually won. Then he led the convention that forged our Constitution, then was elected twice as our first President, and the only one that received unanimous votes from all of the Electors. He could have been King of America, but he chose instead to help forge a government based on Democratic-Republican premises of liberty. I wonder if we will ever see his like again? Or is it possible for his like to rise to the top in this corrupt, derelict age?
Betcha didn’t think this would be the guy?
I know it is strange. And frankly, until I read a Biography about him a few years back by Harlow Giles Unger called The Last Founding Father, all I really knew about him was that he was the dude who originated the Monroe doctrine. But he also fought personally under George Washington in the Revolution. He is in the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware holding the flag, and in Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, he is portrayed wounded for the cause, laying in agony behind victorious Washington and other commanding officers. Monroe took a bullet to the lungs, and still recovered. Talk about tough as nails. I learned about his amazing career, in which he had the greatest variety of posts of any man that ever served as President. I learned how he was instrumental in acquiring the Louisiana Purchase, nearly doubling the size of the still young nation. He led the rescue, fire brigade, and led some of the few troops to actually fire back on the British when they burned Washington D. C. in the War of 1812. While the commander in charge at the time could not rally his troops, Monroe did rally the forces he could, one of the few government figures (he was Secretary of State) to put up any competent action. He rallied a stand that cemented his fame as a hero, and led the efforts to repair the damage and to feed the refugees. Madison ended his presidency in disgrace (this is all but forgotten now) and Monroe was elected in the second biggest landslide in Presidential history. Both terms, he was one vote shy of a unanimous election, and that only because both times an elector felt only Washington should ever have that victory. He was also the last American President, and only one of two, that ran unopposed. He spearheaded and signed national road improvement bills that would impact our growth for the next century.
So….we live in pretty dark times, and none of these folks are alive to help. We need the leadership of a Washington, a Lincoln, a Monroe, we have crises that only such people could lead us through, and I’m not so sure we even have the leadership to deal with a candy bar theft.
We need the honesty of Washington, the bravery of Monroe, the humility of Lincoln, the industriousness of Roosevelt, the communication of Reagan, the vision of Kennedy. Instead we have cowards who are full of themselves, who don’t have any vision, or know how to communicate it. Without a vision, the people perish. Welcome to the Apocolypse.
We need the corrupt talking heads to fall, and a hero to take their place.
I have a love/hate relationship with the PMA movement. I think Daffy Duck sums me up well…..
A friend of mine suggested I have been doing too many serious posts and that I should do something more light hearted. Something uplifting. And what could be more uplifting than bras?
Adidas released an ad on Twitter with faceless breasts of various shapes and sizes, basically to show that they had a sports bra for everyone.
My first comment…..who the hell has a face on their breasts? Is this a common thing? Some new trend I didn’t know about? Are we evolving a new breed of superwomen? If so, I’m behind it 100 percent. Finally it will come naturally for a man to look a woman in the eyes. It is a brave new world.
Who knew….it’s a tv show…I wonder if Rick Astley is in it…?
The first artwork we have of a bra/bikini top is from 14 bc Minoan art. It is said that King Minos invented the bra shortly before he got the ability to turn objects to gold with his touch. He was quoted as saying, “We must help keep Minos beautiful.” He was also slapped a lot for being too handsy. “Honest….I’m just trying to turn them to gold!”
Wikipedia tells us that the “proto-bra” was developed by 1400 AD. I have no idea what a “proto-bra” is. I wonder if it is anything like the “co-bra”? Maybe the bra is what is behind the bad guys GI Joe is always fighting.
Around the time of Shakespeare, the corset becomes the fashion accessory of the wealthy and powerful. I believe the first draft of Romeo and Juliet had the balcony scene start with Romeo saying, “But soft! What light through yonder corset breaks! It is her tits, and her cleavage is vast!”
Shakespearian actresses celebrate the invention of the bra.
Ok…ok….I should have some taste. I should show respect. Maybe I should say something serious about how this begs the question of censorship. I stood up for Joe Rogan, should I not stand up for this? The right for women to communicate by showing their breasts?
With the possible exception of D&D, the best RPG ever created
It seems to be less controversial though. What I mean is, Joe Rogan seems eager to have conversations, and I have yet to meet a woman who was eager to show her breasts. Maybe they are and just aren’t telling me. But let’s just say it seems to be far less likely that a woman is going to flash me than that Joe Rogan is going to say something someone out there won’t like.
Oh wait….my well paid assistants are suggesting maybe I should actually share something of substance. Fair point…..Adidas shared a lot of good points, so I should at least share a couple. Here are two websites where you can read about this controversy:
Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term ‘goddess’ also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The ‘Snake Goddess’ figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake’s close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses…..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess
Seriously, it is a good question. Was the Adidas ad (which I frankly have not even seen yet) a liberating action that empowers women, or was it just a sleazy, exploitive click bate stunt? Of coarse different people will have different answers for different reasons. I don’t think the argument that there is nothing sexual about this holds weight. It is pretty nearly universal that men are sexually aroused by breasts, that is the whole reason why cultures decided to cover them up. It is the same logic and reasoning behind why we cover our private sexual organs, and our butts. Whether that is right or reasonable depends on whether we think society is right or reasonable. I personally don’t see society as either, but to me…..I have been thinking about a million things, but this question I haven’t considered since I was seventeen.
I’m not here to tell you what to think though….what do you think? Is Adidas helping or harming women with these ads?
Some folks are about the booby, others about the booty. I just love everything about my girlfriend and her dog.
The earliest know photo of Abraham Lincoln. Called a “daguerreotype,” this was taken in 1848. He looks like a kid here, but he would be in his late thirties.
I remember a time when Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was a holiday. But every year fewer and fewer people took that day off, and fewer and fewer calendars even had the day of February 9 listed. This year blazed by and I didn’t even think about it till Monday. I look on my calendar, it isn’t there. I ask a coworker about Lincoln. I’ll paraphrase, “I used to think he was a good man, but now I don’t think so.” How did Lincoln go from being a national icon to being a nonperson?
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to document the man, trying to create a national dialogue about who Lincoln was and what he meant to this nation. I believe it highly likely that nations need heroes. This man was the classic American story. Born in a log cabin to poverty, but rising to the highest office in the land, leading our nation in a tragic Civil War that he hoped to avoid but could not, leading the Union to victory when many felt there was no hope, declaring the slaves free in the face of opposition even from Northern states, and ultimately dying to set slaves free. These are the things, right or wrong, that my generation was taught. I know the dialogue has been changing, and that is the way of things. But what are the things being said about him now, was I lied to when I was young, and is the next generation being better informed? To paraphrase Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” Once more into the breech.
This photo is the iconic, classic Lincoln photo. Somber, haunted eyes, the face of a man worn with care, lines that speak of hours spent trying to lead the Republic in the darkest hour. Hours spent alone in prayer with a God who seemed to be judging our nation.
To begin my quest for truth, I do a web search about what is being taught about Lincoln today. Almost the first thing that pops up online is something called “The 1619 Project.” The first time I had heard of this was some weeks back when I (likely foolishly) decided to write about Martin Luther King Jr. For some blog fodder, my best friend shared a powerful social media post where the controversial founder of the movement, Nikole Hannah-Jones, had made a speech at the Union League Club, wherein she had made strong statements against racism, poverty, and war mongering, and then half way through the speech, announced that all of her words were direct quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. The words from that post were stirring, and she did a great job of pointing out how the image of Martin Luther King has been, in her words, “whitewashed.”
Lincoln was not universally loved in his lifetime. Like all Presidents since Monroe, there were plenty of voices willing to criticize him, whether fairly or unfairly. This cartoon would need little alteration today, the same complaints about politicians still arise….just make it be Biden or Trump.
So the premise of the 1619 Project is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the American narrative.” This according to the Wikipedia page. And to me, this sounds like a laudable aim. Slavery is terrible, and should neither be forgotten, nor allowed to creep back in some subtle form. What does the Project say about Lincoln? Frankly, I’m finding it infuriatingly difficult to find the answer to that question. Wikipedia talks about “controversial statements” “taken out of context.” But I can’t find what they are. A scholar makes a claim that the Project unfairly declares Lincoln was a white supremacist. First I try to confirm on what I think is the official website of the project…but I find nothing about Lincoln on that site whatsoever. The site itself, by the way, is well worth your time to look at.
The iconic statue of Abraham Lincoln. So many from my generation and some from the one before have a veneration for this man and this monument. In Robert Heinlein’s science fiction book Citizen of the Galaxy, the main character grows up a slave and through his own struggles and the friendship of other poor folk, he becomes free. When he finds his way to Earth, he sees this monument, knowing nothing of its history. He looks into the wise eyes of the sculpture, and tells his companion, “This man freed slaves.” I’ve never forgotten….
Thus far the best thing I can find is historynewsnetwork, which offers criticism of the book, which criticism is rebutted, and the rebuttals rebutted. I will simply send the interested reader there, you should form your own conclusions of whether Lincoln is fairly treated by Nicole Hannah-Jones.
The two things I will say is 1) let’s assume we have found some dirt on Lincoln. Does that mean we should deny and discredit the good he did? J. Edgar Hoover claimed there were tapes of Martin Luther King Jr. having sex with women other than his wife. Even assuming that is true, does that mean we should ignore the good he did? William Wilberforce, the great British politician that led the movement to free the slaves in Britain, was good friends with John Newton, the man who penned the song “Amazing Grace.” Before Newton penned that song, he was a slave trader. Does that mean that we must forever deny any good they did? Working on that assumption, not only are no slaves ever freed, we all become the slaves of centuries of hate. Is that really the society we want to live in? 2) the scholars in the History News Article get into a debate over whether slavery was a product of capitalism or aristocracy. I don’t wish to get too deep into this debate, since likely both sides are being a bit pedantic on their definitions of capitalism and aristocracy, and the angels I count can’t fit well on the heads of those pins. But when I read their comments I am minded of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That book, combined with my own experiences of abuse, were seminal in my foundational belief that slavery is a fundamental evil, and that if there is a loving God, that God can be no lover of slavery. But I think it interesting that the points being debated in this article were written about in Uncle Tom, but Harriet Beecher Stowe had the Southern Aristocratic slave owner, Shelby, treating Uncle Tom profoundly better than the Capitalist Yankee owner Simon Legree. To me there is a huge difference between the two, and while I have no science to back it up, if I must have masters, I consider that a Noble at least in theory earned glory from being a shepherd and protector of the people, whereas Capitalism admits no loyalty of a business to its employees, all that matters is exploiting them for profit. Oversimplified, but right now I see it thus. I know the phrase of Uncle Tom has become a term of derision, and I get it. But the twelve year old Curtis was in awe of Uncle Tom. The fact that he took so much abuse, and remained Christlike till the end humbled me. I know in my heart that man was profoundly closer to Christ than I can ever be. Perhaps that is why he is now hated.
In the eighties we see a more lighthearted view, not just of Lincoln, but of history in general. The Christ like Lincoln who dies to set slaves free is now a somewhat wise man who can party with the best (the best being Napoleon, Socrates, and Genghis Khan).
All of my life I have been hearing people make claims of revisionist history. Typically we say our opposition is perpetrating it. We are the honest good guys, the protectors of the bastions of TRUTH! Our opponents are liars and hypocrites, we cannot believe anything they say. We hurl ad hominem attacks at them, and act as though that has discredited the opposition. How can you believe (CNN, Fox News, the Tired Blogger What Blogs at midnight)? They believe x, y and z, while we believe a, b, and c. On one hand, I really don’t intend (though I may be failing in my intent) to be overly critical of Nikole Hannah Jones. Far less do I want to be critical of the actual 1619 project as presented on their website. Hopefully I can be forgiven though, if I am cautious about taking all she says at face value. Staying on focus with Lincoln….I do believe we need to be honest about the man and his flaws, but when I feel the memory of the man is insulted….I just don’t see how the cause of the Black is furthered by diminishing Lincoln. I don’t see how it makes it easier for the Black to vote. I don’t see how it gives the Black any hope. All I really see (and it may be an unfair blindness of my own) is an angry person lashing out against a white man. And likely we have it coming.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Was this the real version of the man?
In summary: 1) us White’s have to be careful of dismissing the Black. They are our brothers and sisters too, and they have been treated with unconscionable cruelty. And while I wish I could say “that was all in the past,” it isn’t so. There are still terrible things that are happening that have to stop if we are ever going to get to the Promised Land. 2) I mean no disrespect, but frankly….the Blacks will never find freedom while they indulge in hate. Hate is a far worse master than Simon Legree, though I have to admit, it can make you feel strong. And maybe for a short time it will. But in the long run, it will burn you alive. 3) The same is frankly true of all races, but I do see some unnecessary (side note….when is it ever necessary?) hatred aimed at Blacks, Jews, basically any non WASP out there. I say the same to you as I say to the Blacks. Hate won’t help you. It will not make you free. If every non WASP in the world were gone today, your life will not be any better. You’ll just need to find someone else to blame all the stuff on.
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 