The Golden Image

Well I see him on the TV
Preachin' 'bout the promised lands
He tells me to believe in Jesus
And steals the money from my hand

Some say he was a good man
But Lord I think he sinned, yeah.

Twenty-two years of mental tears
Cries a suicidal Vietnam vet
Who fought a losing war on a foreign shore
To find his country didn't want him back
Their bullets took his best friend in Saigon
Our lawyers took his wife and kids,
No regrets

In a time I don't remember
In a war he can't forget
He cried forgive me for
What I've done there
'Cause I never meant the things I did"

And give me something to believe in
If there's a Lord above
And give me something to believe in.

~Poison, Something to believe in.

I've been reading since yesterday about this "Nashville Statement" released by a bunch of Southern Baptist bigwigs regarding gender and sexuality issues. This morning, I downloaded it and read the .PDF file. Let's take this a piece at a time:

"Evangelical Christians at the dawn of the twenty-first century find themselves living in a period
of historic transition. As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian, it has
embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being. By and large the spirit
of our age no longer discerns or delights in the beauty of God’s design for human life. Many
deny that God created human beings for his glory, and that his good purposes for us include our
personal and physical design as male and female. It is common to think that human identity as
male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, but is, rather, an expression of an
individual’s autonomous preferences. The pathway to full and lasting joy through God’s good
design for his creatures is thus replaced by the path of shortsighted alternatives that, sooner or
later, ruin human life and dishonor God."

That's according to your interpretation, bro. Other people have different understandings of God, or don't believe in the same one or the same interpretation of Him, or don't even believe in any gods at all...and that's fine. The same United States Constitution that allows them to believe thus also protects your right to believe what you believe and release silly declarations. The world is complex, deal with it.

This secular spirit of our age presents a great challenge to the Christian church. Will the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ lose her biblical conviction, clarity, and courage, and blend into the
spirit of the age? Or will she hold fast to the word of life, draw courage from Jesus, and
unashamedly proclaim his way as the way of life? Will she maintain her clear, counter-cultural
witness to a world that seems bent on ruin?

What I want to know, is WHY? Why does this age have a "Secular spirit?" Could it perhaps be, because a nationally-known Prosperity Gospel preacher whose "Church" is a 16,000 seat former Basketball arena had to be damned well shamed into opening his church-stadium to provide shelter for hurricane victims in a flooded city? Could it be because American Evangelical Christianity not only has been consistently on the wrong side of people's freedom and rights, but has aligned itself with a President that's so low-class he can go to a disaster area...and talk about himself and how big the crowd is?

The sheer "Fuck You" attitude of these rich people makes me very angry. I hope that whoever came up with the idea that wealth equals righteousness has a special place in hell.

I'm just saying, when your religion is known for shamelessly grubbing after money and political power in vain attempts to remake the country and the world in it's own hair-gelled, spit-shined, gold-plated, vacuously banal feel-good man-centered get-rich-quick-because-Jesus theological image, ya'll might have a fuckin' problem. When ya'll support greedy businessmen and politicians and systemic racism and wars and ignore what your own Prophet, the very Son of God told you to do...ya'll shouldn't be surprised when people either go out and find a different interpretation or maybe, just maybe, abandon your religion altogether.

American Christianity has become self-congratulatory bullshit for conservative white people, that treats the Bible as a self-help manual and accepts spiritual leaders who act like car salesmen and fortune-tellers.

You have to look to the Black Church for somebody that's speaking Truth to power, rather than lies to the powerless. Don't take my word for it, look for yourself.

I don't have to guess what Jesus would say about that, because the Word tells me exactly what He DID say:

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. ~Matthew 21:12-13

Got that? Good.

Meanwhile, as water flows like the sea over freeway interchanges...there are people, of all creeds, colors, races and religions, lining up not for aid...but to volunteer to provide it. They *Ain't* wearing their religion or their politics on their sleeve to be seen by Men in doing so.

I fully expect that a lot of these Cajun Navy good ol' boys with their air boats and fishing boats, if asked, would self-identify as conservatives. You know what? Unlike the Trumps, who could've both showed up in practical work clothes, started handing out blankets and bottled water and diapers and food along with American Army National Guardsmen, Baptist aid workers, Mexican Soldatos, both native-born and immigrant Muslim Imams and other volunteers from every walk of life, worked up a sweat and done an honest day's work and right or wrong, probably been lifted up as heroes and generated weeks worth of positive coverage and both approval points and ratings bumps in doing so...except that they declined the offer. Unlike the Trumps, the Cajun Navy good ol' boys are out there busting their asses doing dangerous work and doing it with their own boats, on their own dime and on their own time.

...And they ask for no glory in doing so.

Hey, church people, you want respect? You want the "Spirit of the age" to bend back your way? Get out there and get wet and dirty helping the people of Houston rebuild and rescuing old people out of flooded nursing homes. Respect is earned, Leadership, is earned. Every action, every day. Integrity above all, service before self, excellence in all that we do. It really is that simple.

We are persuaded that faithfulness in our generation means declaring once again the true story of the world and of our place in it—particularly as male and female. Christian Scripture teaches that there is but one God who alone is Creator and Lord of all. To him alone, every person owes glad-hearted thanksgiving, heart-felt praise, and total allegiance. This is the path not only of glorifying God, but of knowing ourselves. To forget our Creator is to forget who we are, for he made us for himself. And we cannot know ourselves truly without truly knowing him who made us. We did not make ourselves. We are not our own. Our true identity, as male and female persons, is given by God. It is not only foolish, but hopeless, to try to make ourselves what God did not create us to be. 

Would somebody please explain to me when the FUCK modern conceptions of gender and sexuality became central tenets of Christianity? Or are we just reacting negatively to social change, yet again? I'm gonna put it down as being the latter.

Also, believe it or not, nobody in America owes God (or ya'll) anything of the sort. According to what *I* was taught starting out as a Baptist, allegiance and praise and thanksgiving are to be given by one's own choice and of one's own free will or it doesn't count.

You have to believe it because you want to believe it. Now, social group dynamics and this and that or the other thing may play a part in that choice for each person, for good or ill...but at the end of the day no person can be compelled in their own heart and mind to either give or to owe God anything. Either we give our Belief freely because we desire to do so...or, in effect, we do not give it at all. Again, it comes down to respect, to trust, to faith in something greater than what can be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands. True belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as one's Savior and the Redeemer of sins and the Son of God may never...never...be compelled.

Ya'll might be able to get people to act all religious when you're looking, but that's about it.

We believe that God’s design for his creation and his way of salvation serve to bring him the greatest glory and bring us the greatest good. God’s good plan provides us with the greatest freedom. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it in overflowing measure. He is for us and not against us. Therefore, in the hope of serving Christ’s church and witnessing publicly to the good purposes of God for human sexuality revealed in Christian Scripture, we offer the following affirmations and denials.

I'm serious, I think these people spend way too much time thinking about sex, especially sex that other people are having. Sorry, but the Christianity and conservatism that I was raised with included minding one's own business as part of the deal...and that's hard...but even the Good Book says none of this is supposed to be easy.

Let's get started:

WE AFFIRM that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church. WE DENY that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship. We also deny that marriage is a mere human contract rather than a covenant made before God.

WE AFFIRM that God’s revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage. WE DENY that any affections, desires, or commitments ever justify sexual intercourse before or outside marriage; nor do they justify any form of sexual immorality.

Oh, horse shit, the divorce rates, closeted gay praise-and-worship band members, Pastors on the Down-Low with their Grindr profiles and teenage and young adult technical virgins in your own churches...and the fact that all this stuff is known to and tacitly accepted by anybody who knows what's really going on in American church culture...put the lie to this crap. The fact that I can think of people who I know who make me think that goats have more dignity and self-respect and sexual morality than at least some Christians do tells me that whoever wrote this is full of crap and knows it.

Tell me something, if marriage isn't a human construct, why are humans the only creatures that get married?

WE AFFIRM that God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female. WE DENY that the divinely ordained differences between male and female render them unequal in dignity or worth.

WE AFFIRM that divinely ordained differences between male and female reflect God’s original creation design and are meant for human good and human flourishing. WE DENY that such differences are a result of the Fall or are a tragedy to be overcome.

Might want to explain that to your own believers, and do so using smaller words...because some of them don't get the parts that you are denying. Such have been part of Fundamentalist belief...for as long as there has been Christian Fundamentalism.

WE AFFIRM that the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God’s design for self-conception as male or female. WE DENY that physical anomalies or psychological conditions nullify the God-appointed link between biological sex and self-conception as male or female.

WE AFFIRM that those born with a physical disorder of sex development are created in the image of God and have dignity and worth equal to all other image-bearers. They are acknowledged by our Lord Jesus in his words about “eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb.” With all others they are welcome as faithful followers of Jesus Christ and should embrace their biological sex insofar as it may be known. WE DENY that ambiguities related to a person’s biological sex render one incapable of living a fruitful life in joyful obedience to Christ.

WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture. WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

First, science says you're wrong, and second, my own personal experience of interacting with LGBT people or even an asexual person (Maybe I should try out one of those longer acronyms?) tells me that this interpretation is wrong. No one wakes up in the morning and decides to "adopt" a gay or lesbian or bisexual or asexual or transgender "self-conception." You are what you are, and due to cultural, religious, social and various other factors some people might even have a hard time figuring that out.

That sucks, but it's the truth. I've seen people struggle to accept themselves.

Hell, I knew at least one dude who didn't figure out that he was gay until he was 70 years old and his wife of almost 50 years had died. In hindsight, you could see it in some ways. Fun fact, dude was a conservative and a Republican and very active in his church. We all pretty much rolled with it, when he figured it out. Maybe we didn't like it, necessarily...but he kept his private life private and that suited him and us church people at the time. When he died, every last one of us in the Bible Study group shook his partner's hand and offered our condolences. We all agreed that we felt we owed that to our brother. He'd been there for us. At his funeral his partner of several years...who was a church-going Polish Catholic and he got more shit from some of us Baptists about that than being gay...was right there along with his family and those who had a problem with that just didn't show up.

Maybe not everybody agreed with it all, certainly some things were said that might not be said today (and that they were said was accepted, with only occasional offense) but we had enough respect for him to accept his choices and enough respect for ourselves not to freak out and act like idiots.

We affirmed that we're all human beings, and not one of us was free from sin. We denied any claim to judge another man lest our own sins be held up against us.

WE AFFIRM that people who experience sexual attraction for the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through faith in Jesus Christ, as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life. WE DENY that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God’s original creation, or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel.

WE AFFIRM that sin distorts sexual desires by directing them away from the marriage covenant and toward sexual immorality— a distortion that includes both heterosexual and homosexual immorality. WE DENY that an enduring pattern of desire for sexual immorality justifies sexually immoral behavior.

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

I'm just going to say here...that I'm starting to wonder if the people who wrote this crap have ever interacted with actual human beings? Again, you don't have to like somebody else's choices, but as I long ago did...you do have to recognize that other people's choices are simply not yours to make.

If you want them to make different choices, live the teachings that you say you believe and provide an example...be a "Light in the darkness" like we used to say...and hope and pray that your efforts have an effect. It may not be what you want. but if you want to lead someone to live a Christian...or more Christian...life then it might be a good idea to accept that a gay Christian is still a Christian and if they are to be judged then it's not for you to do the judging.

After all...you're not Christ. You don't know what that person has been through or what their brain chemicals tell the rest of their body and it's just that simple.

WE AFFIRM our duty to speak the truth in love at all times, including when we speak to or about one another as male or female. WE DENY any obligation to speak in such ways that dishonor God’s design of his image-bearers as male and female.

Here, I will most strenuously disagree. We have an obligation to respect other human beings, and if that means addressing them by whatever pronouns they prefer or picking the neutral ground of they, them, their, then that is what should be done. You cannot win somebody over to your point of view without common courtesy, decency and respect nor without establishing the comfort level and trust needed to have an open, honest conversation.

You have to talk TO people, not AT them.

I'm serious.

WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin. WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or female. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God’s revealed will. WE AFFIRM that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners and that through Christ’s death and resurrection forgiveness of sins and eternal life are available to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Savior, Lord, and supreme treasure. WE DENY that the Lord’s arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach.

Again, that's all fine and good that you want to affirm things that are basic Christian theology...but you might start with explaining this stuff to the average homophobe sitting in the pews, and making sure that they understand how it applies to The Other and that yes, indeed, it does apply.

Otherwise, all this has been is yet another patronizing exercise in self-congratulatory bullshit

Without that last part, and without that being emphasized, and without treating all those other people in all those articles like human beings and maybe accepting the fact that they're gay and that's not going anywhere...ya'll just wasted a lot of time and got yourselves blasted on social media for nothing.

My friend Tim calls that "Talking because you have the capability to talk."

Now instead of claiming that ya'll are persecuted and the "Spirit of the age" (whatever that means) is against you, consider this?

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?

Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

~Daniel 3:14-18

In this time of our Basketball-stadium churches and our gold-plated President with his gold-plated toilets and overactive social media blabber-mouthing, where worshiping statues is apparently not out of the question at least for some people...ya'll might want to give some real thought to who really is holding up the golden image here, and who really IS representing the Truth.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O King...they were ready to die for the Truth, because they knew it was the Truth. Can you say that? Those men didn't need...didn't have...bright lights and glamour and TV to persuade them one way or the other. In fact they saw the equivalent of it in their own time and they rejected it, out of hand. They stood apart from the culture in which they lived, rather than trying to control and dominate it.

Might not be a bad idea to give that some consideration

Old rich white guys don't give a fuck about you, and they don't give a fuck about Jesus either. Every. Single. Time.

And Everything that Trump touches, dies.

Every. Single. Time.

Give that some thought...

Ghosts, Part II

Mine eyes have seen the glory 
Of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage 
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
He has loosed the fateful lightning
Of his terrible, swift sword
His Truth is marching on.

I was screwing around on Twitter this morning, waiting for my friend to get done at the Dentist...when I saw this:

'Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday defended President Trump's claim that "both sides" were responsible for the violence that erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend, comparing Confederate memorials to those put up to honor the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.'

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

(While we're at it, I can think of few ideologies that might be more worth dropping a couple of fully-fueled jumbo jets on than the idea that one human being should have the right to own another human being, but I digress.)

I have seen Him in the watch-fires
Of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar
In the Evening dews and damps
I can read His righteous sentence
by the dim and flaring lamps
His Day is marching on.

Maine.

Of all the fucking places...

During the battle of Gettysburg on July 3rd of 1863 the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, held the far-left end of the Union line and repulsed multiple attacks by two Alabama regiments of the Confederate Army. Their ammunition was exhausted, and knowing...knowing...that the Enemy was coming back and there was no way his spent troops could withstand another assault...he ordered his men to fix bayonets and, executing some freewheeling, complex maneuvering to get the regiment back in formation...he ordered a damned-near suicidal downhill bayonet charge straight into the face of the oncoming enemy. In the process, one Confederate regiment was overwhelmed and captured...and with the men, their powder and shot...and another was broken and picked apart by a company of Union sharpshooters from another regiment that were under Chamberlain's operational control.

I have read a fiery Gospel
Writ in burnished rows of steel
As ye deal with my contemners 
So with you my grace shall deal
Let the hero born of Woman
Crush the serpent with His heel
Since God is marching on.

That takes balls, damned suicidal courage and nerves of steel to give an order like that. But more importantly, it takes bone-deep respect and trust...because those men went when and where they were ordered. That speaks to the character of the man himself, because respect is earned. Every action, every day. No mistakes. It's moments like that when you find out what you're made of. Respect, either you have it or you don't. His men? They didn't just go down that hill. By God, they did so with sufficient ferocity that they literally ripped victory from the jaws of certain defeat. Many historians credit Chamberlain and the 20th Maine with preventing a Confederate flanking maneuver and in so doing, saving the Union.

Joshua Chamberlain would go on to fight in many more battles, be severely wounded at Petersburg, resume command of the regiment...and ultimately receive the surrender of and order his men to render honors to the Confederate infantry at Appomattox. Thirty years later, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the battle of Little Round Top.

Joshua Chamberlain would go on to be elected Governor of Maine (As a Republican, back when that meant you were something other than a bigot.) He would serve as President of Bowdoin College and serve in a variety of other government and charitable capacities before ultimately dying of his wounds over fifty years after he sustained them.

I had to look it up. Dude literally should not have even survived. He should have died at Petersburg.

Joshua Chamberlain made his state and the world a measurably better place while living on borrowed time and there are statues of him aplenty in Maine...and deservedly so.

Go ahead, tell me what Robert E. Lee or Thomas John "Stonewall" Jackson did that is comparable. I'll wait.

As I mentioned the other day, I've *Been* to Gettysburg. I was a little kid at the time, but I was there. I think it was 1979, my Dad's gray 1978 Jeep CJ7 was still pretty new...and for much of the trip I was sandwiched in the back with all the camping gear and stuff. It was a warm summer day under a clear, cloudless blue sky. We hiked around the park. We visited a number of sites that my Dad...all serious with his books and maps in his backpack...compass in hand and a notebook-which he used up most of by the end of the day-and pencils in his pocket...wanted to check out. We were there for a couple of days...the next day we drove more places, and walked less. The whole time my Dad thoroughly enjoyed his time in what had to be the equivalent of Disneyland for an amateur historian of the War Between the States. As I would be a decade later in Wyoming, that day...my Dad was feeling the ghosts, hearing the shouted orders and smelling the scents of black powder and blood on the wind, carried across time by his imagination.

I still have that notebook, and another that went with it, plus some papers left over from a talk he gave to members of his Civil War reenactment group.

I am steeped in this history. I have been studying it since I could read. Hell, a huge part of why I was a Republican or stood for the values of checks on the power of the State (because slavery or any other racist system cannot exist without the support of the State) international engagement, limited government, personal freedom, respect for the Constitution and the respect for diversity and tolerance that all that stuff entails are *Because* of people like Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass and Joshua Chamberlain and Robert Gould Shaw.

He has sounded forth the trumpet
That shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of Men
Before His judgment Seat
O be swift my soul to answer Him
Be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on.

Paul LePage wouldn't have been fit to hold Joshua Chamberlain's hat while he took a leak...And this goddamned motherfucker wants to compare the removal of the statues of fucking Traitors to the United States of America to the September 11th Attacks?

No. Just. No.

It doesn't work like that.

You know why I left the Republican Party? Because over the last nine years the Republican Party has ceased to be the party of Lincoln in any meaningful way. It has even ceased to be the party of George Wallace, who eventually became a born-again Christian, publicly and privately repented of his racism and appointed record numbers of African Americans to government positions in Alabama. No, the Republican Party...due to racism, stupidity, and just plain yellow-eyed hatred of Barack Hussein Obama...has pushed the refrain of "I'll never be out-niggered again" to the point where I honestly think the hate and the racism and the overall situation has even gotten away from Donald Trump...who is of course, too stupid to realize it. His own statements regarding Charlottesville appear to be continuing to do more harm than good.

Like I said, to hear these people tell it the primary value of America is and should be racism. If they can't own other people, damn it, they want to at least memorialize having once had the right to do so.

Yeah, about that...

So, Instead of Republicans being out of control, we have...well, Nazis, existing in the first place in the United States of America...and not being dead yet.

There can be only one solution to that problem.

As I feel certain that the ghost of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain would tell us to do...

...Fix bayonets, and charge. Fight, speak, Prophetically. If you want a better nation, be better citizens. If you want a better world, be better people. If you want people to act in accordance with the Word of God and the Truth as you understand it...do so yourself. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

In the beauty of the Lillies
Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in His bosom
That transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy
Let us die to make men free.
While God is marching on.

For those who don't know, the Battle Hymn of the Republic draws heavily on Apocalyptic themes from the Biblical Books of Isaiah and Revelation, and is rich with End Times imagery. It quotes and paraphrases a number of Bible verses and was written in a time when the use of Christian idiom and imagery was common in most spheres of life. In the hands of an artful speaker it could be and was used to powerful effect. As such, it was a common sentiment on (yes) both sides that the Armies were the forces of Revelation, defending against (or protecting, depending on which side you asked) the agency of the Anti-Christ. These currents still ebb and flow through American Christianity today in the struggles for civil rights, LGBT and racial equality and religious tolerance. The song was also quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. in his last public speech:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live - a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

...And it wasn't just Black people he was talking about, it never was. It's all of us.

Ghosts, Part I

Ghosts, Part I.

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they've always done before

Look at the hate we're breeding
Look at the fear we're feeding
Look at the lives we're leading
The way we've always done before

My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights
And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can't deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

~Guns & Roses, Civil War

I've been a few places, I've seen some stuff. Thankfully...owing as much to the time in which I came of age as anything else, I never had to go to war. I've seen a little of its after-effects though. Ironically, none of that stuff stayed with me so much as when I went to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana with my Mom on a gray, windy day in July of 1989. Not the first such place I'd seen, as a kid I'd been to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and the Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia. My Dad was a Civil War reenactor, such places were important to him. But, for me, being a kid at the time it was just a big adventure...though being steeped in Civil War history from such a young age would go on to greatly affect my thought process as I got older.

As a young adult though (and several years after my Dad passed away) doing more serious things (for example, I drove off and on, on that trip, which would take us to Seattle and all the way down the West Coast to San Diego, a big deal for a 15-year-old kid with the ink on his permit barely dry, looking forward to getting his driver's license the following November) this time felt a lot different. Looking out across those low hills, and the gravestones, under that vast gray sky...I could almost feel the ghosts...

What must it have been like, for the Native Americans, or the Soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry? The desperate fight for survival as arrows and bullets zipped through the air, the pain of wounds, the blood...the cries of the dying or the wounded? Did the Soldiers know, or care, that they were dying for some rich man's bullshit ideas about "Manifest Destiny" did the Native Americans consider that even a great victory might buy their lifestyle, as they knew it, only a few more years? Or was everybody just trying to survive the engagement in one piece...as is usually the case with such things?

War is hell. It doesn't matter which side you're on.

We didn't say much, I got a couple of small books at the Visitor's Center that I kept for many years. I think both of us were pretty quiet for a good couple of hours once we got back on the road, too. I drove, lost in thought, until it started to rain hard...big raindrops that spattered hard against the windshield of my Mom's dark blue 1988 Chevy Cheyanne pickup truck, and made it hard to see. Not to mention the winds that pushed the trailer around and forced me out of my reverie as I struggled to hold the steering wheel steady. I still remember pulling over and getting damned near soaked as each of us got out to change drivers...there was a cooler full of stuff on the bench seat, as I recall. Once on the passenger side...recently having given up my habit of reading in the truck for a tendency to watch the road ahead...I settled back into my uncomfortable thoughts and peered ahead into the deepening grayness of the evening storm.

So it's been the last couple of days. I've thought a lot, I've wanted to write a lot on this subject but I've been unable to articulate my own thoughts to any degree that I thought adequate.

Like most people (and more aware of World War II-era history than many others are as well) I watched the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, with a combination of bemusement and mild irritation at the Tiki-Torch bearing, Sweater-vest-wearing Internet Nazis on Friday night. What a joke these people are! I mean, come on, Tiki torches? What is this, Triumph Of The Will meets late August Wal-Mart rollbacks? Are you kidding me? That'd turn to anger and horror by Saturday afternoon when a car driven by one of these loser Nazi dumb asses deliberately and with malice aforethought, plowed into a crowd of nonviolent protesters, killing one young woman and injuring 19 other people.

I found out about it many minutes after the fact, on Twitter. I'll remember seeing that video for the rest of my life, just like I'll remember the Invasion of Kuwait, the start of Desert Storm, the start of the Yugoslav wars, first hearing of the Rwanda genocide (and sitting there watching that rec-room TV in the dorms and wondering why we weren't on our way to try and stop it) or arguing with my ex-wife on Yahoo Messenger right before finding out about the (then-ongoing) 9/11 attacks.

Some things, they just stay with you, I guess.

The chants, the Confederate flags, the guns, the racism, the Swastikas...all that crap didn't really matter after that. The situation turned into a brawl and I watched one video where some fucking White Supremacist got repeatedly interrupted by some old guy shouting "Indict for murder now!" Then  he got beat up and run off and had to be rescued and escorted away by police. Not long after that, the Governor declared a state of emergency, citing the fact that most of the white supremacists were apparently from out of state, and endangering his citizens. The rallies were dispersed and riot police were called in.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, among others, correctly called the vehicular homicide an act of Domestic Terrorism. Many various people on both Left and Right have also called that shit out. I've found myself agreeing with people that normally I'd check if they told me the sky was blue.

It's been a long time...since the end of the Indian Wars, in fact...since conflict has come to this country, on land at least.

Oh, sure, there have been plenty of conflicts other than war. Not least the long struggle by African Americans to gain the full Civil Rights that our Constitution says they are due...and that one is still not over. Do you think the ghosts of Rosewood, of Tulsa, or of individuals from Emmett Till all the way on down to Mike Brown and Philando Castile rest easy? 'Cause I sure don't. Most of the time though, we resolve these conflicts without mass bloodshed...or at least we have since the Civil War and the end of the Indian Wars.

A different kind of conflict is coming. One doesn't negotiate with Nazis, one destroys them. It may take a war...or given the weak nature of most of these idiots, a hell of a lot of punches to various young, white faces is more likely. We cannot reason with people who don't think the rest of us have a right to exist. This situation is made worse by the fact that all too many Americans cannot conceptualize the idea that some people would rather kill and steal than live, or that some people would rather hate than eat. These people are the reason I say we need to bring back the ass whuppin' here in America.

Look at the shit-fest that is social media most days, and all the evidence is laid out before us.

Our own history is much the same, only a lot more bloody at times.

We look out into the world, and judge...but we've had our own Concentration Camps here in America, and we've done our own ethnic cleansing...and we did it without no damn Nazis. In point of fact as a friend of mine who is Alaskan Native will tell you, we did it to her ancestors at the same time as we were defeating the Nazis and liberating the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Not even a full decade after that, as African Americans stood up and demanded their Civil Rights, with bus boycotts and court cases and protest marches...the racists stood up and said that Black people were destroying America. Never mind the century of abuse and discrimination and murders and terror that had gone on since those people were supposed to have gotten their rights in the first place! Black people are destroying America!

Fuckin' seriously?!?!?! Where did these people come up with that shit?

Christ, you'd think to hear the racists tell it...that the sole purpose of America is to perpetuate racism and protect their white privilege.

After all, don't most "Conservatives" these days, constantly bitch about how gay people, liberals, minorities, something something George Soros blah blah blah DESTROYING AMERICA!

Yet, if you look at the conduct of most of the Republican Party, not to mention the Trump Administration, vs. the decisions made by the previous administration, the courts, and people in general...it's not hard to deduce that right-wingers have basically decided that if they can't have America...and have it their way...they'll burn it down or sell it to the Russians for thirty pieces of silver before they'll see Black folks, or liberals or Muslims, or even their own poor white voters get their fair share.

Remember, these are the people who call this logic:

'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it', a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. (Quoting war correspondent Peter Arnett)

But no, it's everybody else that's "Destroying America."

As I've said many times, being anti-liberal is not the same thing as being conservative. Blaming other people for your bullshit or your problems doesn't make them go away.

I'm quite sure that if you could go back in time, and ask one of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, or Sitting Bull, or some poor Sharecropper, or Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, or the ghost of a murdered voter-registration worker in Mississippi "Are you intent on destroying America" they'd honestly tell you No. I'd further be willing to bet that if you asked them what they did want to do...most if not all of them probably just wanted to live life as they knew it, better themselves if possible, and help others along the way as needed.

Thankfully, in the history of this country a lot of people have stood up for what's right. A lot of others stood up for the wrong thing...and I'll bet that an awful lot of those people knew it was wrong, too. They just didn't care.

You know, one thing I consistently find appalling...in these recent events as much as the more distant past...is that white people refuse to recognize not only the basic dignity or humanity of African Americans (and other ethnic or racial minorities) but even their Christianity...the one thing that if we actually went by the Bible...should unite people. But of course, it doesn't.

Likewise with religious minorities...Jews and Muslims believe many of the same things that Christians do, and we all believe in the same God. I've never heard of a Buddhist, or a Hindu or a Sikh in this country going out of their way to hurt anybody else where it wasn't for a reason.

What makes all these white idiots think that everybody else is out to take their Jesus away?

(...Unless of course, the answer is that their "Jesus" is an idol made in their own image that would evaporate like rain from a Wyoming hillside if it were exposed to the Truth...)

All too often, people who've been handed an easy life care more about what makes them feel good about themselves than they do about doing the right thing. People will chase after ideological unicorns, follow after the dumbest conspiracy theories...and in general go to an amazing amount of work just to avoid doing the (often, easier if you think about it) work of facing down our bullshit and doing what we should have done in the first place.

Things, they're changing. The United States of America is becoming more diverse...and continues to do so no matter the political machinations of Fascists and Nazis and racists and Republicans. Hell, the social fabric of our country has changed in the last seven months, with a majority of people now saying that things like health care are a right rather than a privilege. People are sick of income inequality, and wars, and the various social problems that mostly are tolerated in this country because some old rich fool makes money off of them. As regards people? If you look at whole regions of the country...not to mention human beings under the age of about twelve or so nationwide...the demographics have already changed. Roland Martin said on his show this morning, that we should be ready for 30 years of conflict...until we hit the point in 2044 or so where no one group will have a majority nationwide.

Personally, I think we'll hit that point sooner than that.

On a more general level I think with all this Trump bullshit and the fact that they've appointed idiots as their champions, right-wingers are gonna go down faster and harder than that. Once that happens, I doubt that many people will be bothered by ethnic or racial diversity. I don't doubt though, that there will be a long period of conflict. Some are already saying we're in a period of Cold Civil War.

When someone consults the ghosts of my generation, I wonder what we will have to say? For me, I'll say that for one thing I've always thought that diversity was kind of the default setting of life...and I started out as a conservative. I've always thought that education, the environment, history, and maintaining the things we as a people...all of us...have, were important, and so is progress and people bettering themselves. Would I die for those ideals? Hell yes. I wouldn't want to live in a world without them.

Creationists don't build starships, and while the Nazis built excellent rockets, they decided they'd rather aim for London than for the Moon.

The horizons of such people are always too close.

I claim the right to master my fear and reach for the stars.

All people have to have the right to do that...or none of us do. We are all free, or none of us are.

We still have a long way to go.

When are we going to get there, and how much blood will be spilled by those fighting for decency and equality and progress vs. those fighting against it? Who can say.

Ask the ghost of Heather Hayer. The spirits of the dead are unfettered by the shackles of time.

...

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. ~Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley.


Ghosts, Part II