Not Legends, Facts (American Revelation XXII, Twelve.)

Hawkeye: My father's people say that at the birth of the sun and of his brother the moon, their mother died. So the sun gave to the earth her body, from which was to spring all life. And he drew forth from her breast the stars, and the stars he threw into the night sky to remind him of her soul. So there's the Cameron's monument. My folks' too, I guess.

Cora Munro: You are right, Mr. Poe. We do not understand what is happening here. And it's not as I imagined it would be, thinking of it in Boston and in London...

Hawkeye: Sorry to disappoint you.

Cora Munro: No, on the contrary. It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been. 

~From the film The Last Of The Mohicans.

...

Ira Hayes

Ira Hayes

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war
Gather 'round me people
There's a story I would tell
'Bout a brave young Indian
You should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix Valley
In Arizona land
Down the ditches a thousand years
The waters grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Til the white man stole their water rights
And the sparkling water stopped
Now, Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war.

~The Ballad of Ira Hayes, by Johnny Cash.

...

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

I saw this garbage last night.

So-called "Christian" "Conservative" Eric Metaxas trying to say that the Founding Fathers were all some kind of "Fire-breathing" Fundamentalist Christians.

No, They were not. This stuff is not legend, it is not mythology. It's not Religion! These guys wrote down what they believed, and there's whole groups of people and government agencies that have preserved it, books upon books of this history all written down. It can be read and investigated and measured and tested and compared with other historical documents from the time.

God endowed you with a mind, you can look at that and decide based on the evidence, for yourself.

I've read a hell of a lot of it. 

Whatever these idiots are trying to "Conserve" it ain't America.

Also I think what he really means when he says we'll do it like they did it in the Sinai? I think that's the part where they worship the Golden Calf, Moses throws down the Ten Commandments and storms out and then smites them with plagues called down from the Lord.

But there's more to it than that, way more.

Disgraced "Pastor" Mark Driscoll tried to say that the Founders were all young men in their 20's and shit (They were not) and say that "Young men need to marry Girls, build businesses and fight."

So Mark here idolizes sex, money, violence and youth? Sounds creepy. Also "Girls" not "Women." Creepy. Check The Hard Drive Creepy. These guys look like they've all seen each other naked creepy.

But more to the point, it's a lie. It's a lie that I know is a lie because of my own experience with the history. For one thing, as a kid I went to Christian schools and Christian schools love them some colonial-era history. While I'm at it, I've been to Fort Necessity. It's an actual, still-extant place, preserved and restored by the US National Park Service. I went there in 2009.

I had a Native American roommate for like five years (2008-2013) a US Navy veteran and member of the Ogitchedaw Warrior Society, and because for a decent chunk of the time he was my roommate, he didn't have a car...well when the Ogitchedaws were invited to participate in a historical event at Fort Necessity along with the Warrior Societies of some of the other Great Lakes Anishnaabe tribes and he was trying to figure out transportation. 

I was like hell, why don't we both go?

Event happened to be on a Sunday. It got me a 3-day weekend my boss couldn't argue with, at least.

See, back when George Washington was a junior officer serving in the British Army fighting against the French in the Seven Years War in 1754 (22 YEARS before the Declaration of Independence!) the ancestors of today's Great Lakes Tribes, then called the Three Fires Confederacy, were allied to the French and sent warriors to fight the British. Among those who went to fight were actual ancestors of some of the guys I knew. The Tribe I worked for sent guys to fight George Washington, stop and think about that for a second.

The Three Fires still exists, less as a nation then as a compact between a bunch of tribal governments. This is a living history, I've written about some of these men that I knew, although in my own life it tended to affect my job specifically a few times a year because Serve Safe and all the other training we had to do was conducted jointly through some of these inter-tribal orgs.

And there's a reason I used the Ballad of Ira Hayes, US Marine and Iwo Jima flag-raiser, whose mother was a Sunday School teacher in an Assembly Of God church and whose father was a WWI US Army veteran who literally bought Citizenship for his people with his own blood, sweat and tears.

Guys like Donald Trump, Eric Metaxas and Mark Driscoll don't give a fuck about that.

The Founders were not young men, most were middle-aged, experienced Combat Leaders, diplomats, soldiers, statesmen, in the ways of the time...they wouldn't have been there otherwise. 

This is not mythology. I have been to places where these men walked, I've visited the church George Washington attended. I have touched the walls of that reconstructed colonial fort with my own hands. I've carried a weapon in the service of my country my own self! This is not legend, you can test it!

I get what guys like Eric Metaxas and Mark Driscoll are trying to do. They want to take what is literally Our story and steal it and make it about themselves.

But because I have a fucking conscience and I have read the Lord's Word and I've walked in some of these same spaces and served my damn self, I also know why what they're trying to do is Wrong.

A free person has a duty to the Truth.

Period.

Truth is the only floor most people will ever have to stand on to push back against Power.

Remember that.

Because if they'll lie to you about this crap, what else will they lie to you about??

Either you believe in freedom or you don't.

Either you're willing to fight for it or you're not.

And you need look no further for the inspiration to do this than our own literal, preserved history.

They have to make up fables and legends to convince people of their point of view.

We. Don't.

Remember that, too.

Because the day's going to come, soon, where it isn't a choice anymore and we're going to have to fight.

These are not legends, they are not fables, they are facts.

They sure do, and that's why they're lying about it.

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Eleven

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

...

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X.