Mississippi, Goddamn it (Their Meme-Lord And "Savior," Two.)

We're fighting bulls of the Buffaloes,
Git a goin' – git a goin'
From Kansas' plains we'll hunt our foes;
A trottin' down the line.
Our range spreads west to Santa Fe,
Git a goin' – git a goin'.
From Dakota down the Mexican way;
A trottin' down the line.

Goin' to drill all day
Goin' to drill all night,
We got our money on the buffaloes,
Somebody bet on the fight.

The Buffalo Soldier Monument at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It honors the African-American Buffalo soldiers and those who led them.

Pack up your saddle and make it light.

Git a rollin' – git a rollin'.
You are training fast for a hard fight;
A rollin' down the line.
Untie your horse and boot and gun,
Git a goin' – git a goin'.
Shake out your feet or you'll miss the fun,
A rollin' down the line.

Goin' to drill all day
Goin' to drill all night,
We got our money on the buffaloes,
Somebody bet on the fight.

It's Troops in line for the Buffaloes,
Git a movin' – git a movin'.
Then Squadron mass when the bugle blows'
A movin' into line.
Pull in your reins and sit your horse,
Git a movin' – git a movin'.
If you can't ride you'll be a corpse;
A movin' into line.

Goin' to drill all day
Goin' to drill all night,
We got our money on the buffaloes,
Somebody bet on the fight. ~The Buffaloes (Regimental Song of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, US Army; AKA "The Buffalo Soldiers" sung to the tune of The Camp Town Races)

I saw this a couple days ago.

Some dumbass racist frat boy at Ole Miss dancing around and making "monkey noises" near a Black pro-Palestine protester. And Mississippi's honkey-ass governor called that shit "heart warming."

What The FUCK?!?!

And he did it while wearing a paid of American Flag bib-overalls that made his ass look like Bozo the Clown. Fuck off, dude.

I'm so sick of this goddamned bullshit. This is not acceptable in our modern world. It's done been that way as long as I've been alive. Try something like that in the military, and you'll be looking for a new career...if you don't go to jail first. As it is, that video is probably going to follow that kind around some and nobody's gonna want to hire him...unless he gets a job in the Republican Party, I suppose.

And, I mean, if so...in 20 years they'll likely run the little shit as a presidential candidate, if there is a Republican Party then.

Who the fuck teaches their kids this kind of shit?? I got my ass beat for doing far less than any of this crap when I was a kid.

And now? There's Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz saying the Jews "killed Jesus?" I haven't even heard that kind of language quoted since I was a kid and I'm 50 years old! I mean for fuck's sake I have a church background and I've read the Lord's Word. Somebody was going to have to kill Jesus, because that and the substitutionary atonement for Man's Sin was the entire alleged point of Him coming to Earth in the first damned place! For fuck's sake, the Cross was a Roman instrument of death by torture.

Of course, we already know Republicans don't wanna be Saved. Their entire worldview is based on Death and Wealth, the works of the chthonic Roman deity Dis Pater (Later appropriated as a Christian demon) and on Power and Revenge, the basic workings of the Roman Empire for much of its existence.

People like Matt Gaetz and MTG imagine Jesus in the same way modern far-right Jews imagine their own Messiah...as an Earthly ruler, a Caesar...and they see their "religion" as an ethnic creed. There is no Salvation. There is no need for such because the State and the Tribe become God. There is no "My Kingdom Is Not Of This World" and there sure as hell is no "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."

In other words, these motherfuckers miss the entire goddamn point of spirituality in the first place, much less of Christianity.

They'd just as soon call Donald Trump god, indeed, they have.

Because their whole fucking bit is "Anything but Jesus Christ."

Anything but America.

Anything but "Love Thy Neighbor."

Anything but "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

And these fucking people call themselves "Conservatives??"

Oh, bullshit.

The only thing these fucking people are trying to "conserve" or more accurately to regain...is some imagined "right" to call Black people "N*ggers" and face no consequences for it, and I suppose, to use other racial slurs...along with the "right" to abuse LGBT people and children and women.

Listen up, yo, none of those things are rights.

Being "White" does not make you some magical kind of special person with some kind of supernatural powers.

And Mike Flynn was a US Army General, he should damned well know better than this shit...not least that racism has been illegal in the military since Truman desegregated it. Simply from experience and knowing the costs of things; States and other sub-national polities most often simply cannot afford the costs of modern warfare (Unless one's idea of "War" is AK-47's and Technical trucks.) What this dude is basically advocating for is the effective dissolution of the United States of America, and for what?? So much for Preserving, Protecting and Defending the Constitution of the United States Of America, eh?? 

That Constitution has always reserved the powers of Foreign policy to the Federal government.

And as my choice of pull-quote should goddamned well illustrate, even if one does believe in bullshit like Privilege and racial Hierarchy...by definition shouldn't Black people, among others, have earned your fucking respect by now?? How much fucking blood do people have to shed, and spill, for your dumb ass to accept them?? Even during the absolute nadir of global and US race relations, Black men volunteered for military service in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population!

Why?? Because they understood, right or wrong, that's what they had to do to get respect. It's the same reason Moe, my roommate of several years never went to Church or an important event without a suit on. You want respect?? Be respectable!! There was a time when the Church was one of few places Black dudes could get respect or show pride in themselves without risking getting murdered!

These people have been contributing to America since before it was America! When I served in the Air Force as a Security Policeman, a bunch of my friends and a couple of my squad-mates...one of those later a fellow Sergeant...were Black. I was a conservative Republican rural white boy at the time, and I held a number of beliefs that would not be considered "Woke" today...and those people earned my respect.

The same with Black folks I went to church with after my military service abruptly came to an end because of my accident. Those people helped me on my path to getting Sober. Same with the Jamaicans I worked with in the food service industry working 14 hour days like it was nothing, same with LGBT people being resolute yet decent in the face of absolute bigoted stupidity, same with the Native folks I worked around and with for 20 years at the casino...all people have good and bad traits, many do strive for the good to outweigh the bad. 

As regards those Native people in particular, an absolute shitload of them were veterans for the simple reason that well up into the 1990's the one sure way to get off the Rez and make something of oneself was military service! Also many of those Native folks had Latino names because for a long time in a racially divided America it was preferable to be seen as something other than Native American in America. So they intermarried heavily with the Latino migrant workers who shared their agricultural labor niche. Think about that shit for a second! This kind of stuff is what people like Trump say they want to go back to when they say "Make America Great Again."

Native Americans were not welcome in their own country, and there's nothing "Great" about that. Native Americans were...as many signs and stickers they have in their homes point out...here first.

My roommate for several years, Jon, was a Navy veteran. As a member of the Ogitchedaw Warrior Society...the Tribe's veterans group...he had a position of legit societal respect in the community, which came with laws of conduct for him...and also for me since I was his roommate. I'd have to walk the dogs at a certain time on certain mornings so he could Smudge first himself, then the drum that he was Keeper of. It was no big deal to me. 

Dude paid his share of the rent without no trouble. We helped each other out...it's what people are supposed to do.

Listen up, White people. Other people have culture and Humanity and societies just like you do and theirs demands respect as well.

And it's not going to be long before racist-ass White Republicans start resorting to terrorism because they don't want to face that.

Well, I still have weapons if it comes to that...and so do a lot of other people like me. I faced the facts that a lot of These Fucking People were garbage years ago when people that I knew started talking stupid about Obama.

And the rest of us are under no obligation to tolerate White, right-wing terrorism based on reasons like bigotry any more than we would be required to put up with radical Islamic terrorism or any other kind. It's just that simple.

You either believe in equality and freedom, or you fucking don't.

Being a better class of slave than some of the other slaves don't make you free. Proximity To Power does not make you NOT be a Slave.

Freedom isn't free, sometimes you have to fight for it. Other people know that. A whole hell of a lot of White people are gonna find that out, too.

Because when these assholes start attacking visible aspects of our government, blowing themselves up for assholes like Trump, and murdering random people...there won't be any such thing as "White Enough" to be safe. These people don't give a fuck about themselves. 

When COVID-19 came around, they believed so much that the disease should be used as a biological weapon against somebody that when nobody else stepped up, they became Antivaxxers and died.

Once these motherfuckers get a taste of blood, they're going to want more, and they won't care whose it is.

Not even if it's their own. Anything to preserve the social meme of bigotry...even if it means they have to strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up.

These motherfuckers would rather wipe their ass with the Constitution and the Flag and burn America to the ground than see everybody be equal and this nation live up to the promises enshrined in its own Constitution...a document a lot of these idiots will in the next breath try to say was divinely inspired.

I can't make that shit make sense.

You want to win? You have to care more about your freedom (And that of your neighbors) than they do about their hate.

So get after it.

Слава Україна!

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

One

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran