RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,245
(happy birthday lorna doom)
I'm of the age that can still
remember, and distinctly, the
two different days for Lincoln's
and Washington's birthday.
There was a time when each
was marked, if not 'celebrated'
with their own day. Today, of
course, the average, modern
idiot wouldn't know the difference,
and who celebrates that crap
anyway? 'President's Day' is
now just another union-induced
day off; a three-day weekend
for the usual schlubs - teachers,
civil-service scalawags, and the
rest. Celebrating an 'American'
holiday while 'working' for the
Government which strips both
tax-money and, of late, rights,
from others, in order to supposedly
be advancing the 'broken system'
of American 'Democracy' is a
big non-starter for me. We were
never supposed to be working
for the Government, in this
country, especially the one we
have now - a bloated, rude,
erroneous and proud monstrosity
that, like a mad Chia-pet just
keeps on growing and then
demanding more pots to grow
in. That was East Germany, I
thought.
-
Feb 12 was Lincoln's birthday, and
Feb. 22 was Washington's. Everyone
was happy with that once, in the
sort of understated elegance of a
very soft and understated American
observance, with somehow some
idiot-fest called Valentine's Day
thrown in in between, for the real
honey-drippers among us. Cherry
tree to cheery tree, the tales of
heroics and romance always worked
together. But, alas, all false. All.
-
What happens now is diatribe, and
I'm going to induce it. Apparently
now, any accounts of any triumphal
beginnings for the USA are gone.
Once slavery put its stranglehold
on the nascent American system,
the days of pretending at justice
and even-handed equality for all
were thrown out. The basis for the
capitalist system was, instead, the
invisible presence of exploitation
and economic piggy-backing which
was advanced constantly by the
nasty debauchery of slavery. If the
foundational institution of American
capitalism was slavery, what other
invalidation do we need? Washington
and his ilk, Founding Fathers and the
rest, were slaveowners. Lincoln was
a 'settler-militiaman,' at first, and for
the remainder of his life remained
committed to ethnic cleansing. He
developed a winning strategy for the
Republican Party in which slavery
was opposed mainly because it
competed with the economic
interests of white farmers and
laborers. His first priority was to
deliver a whites-only frontier to
the 'white supremacist, imperialist,
and removalist Republican base.
Anyway, that's pretty much the
controlling social ethos of society
today, for better nor worse, and it
can probably be debated all day long,
if you were to find two people with
brains enough to elucidate their
stances in sensbile manner and not
in the dumb-ass, catch-phrase form
of nitwit-speak that passes for
discourse now.
-
When I lived in Columbia Crossroads,
I had a job - one of a few at one
time to make ends meet - taking
car of the local schoolhouse. The
office lady there, a Mrs. DuBois,
who acted as a combination of
office staff, registrar, nurse, and
general mother-hen, was married
to the presiding Minister of a church,
Baptist as I recall, in nearby Troy,
PA, where they lived - a church
house or their own, I never knew,
but it was a grand old structure and
near to the church building. There
were few if any blacks up that way,
in the 1970's anyway, and the local
Baptist churches were of the Southern,
'white' Baptist variety. Mrs. DuBois,
to be sure, had a sense of old-line
'White privilege about her, yes. I
recall well one year for their vacation
they went to St. Louis, to see the new
St. Louis Arch, which back then had
just been completed.
-
White basis to society? In 1803, St.
Louis, MO, had been a small French
outpost at the confluence of the
Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It
became part of the U.S. in that year,
because of the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson then put into motion the
Lewis and Clark expedition, which
set of from there in 1804. To explore
and map the new lands of the Purchase.
Today's reading, however, of any of
that has it as more of a 'staging area'
for the brutal taking of the American
West, and subordinating it to a racially
fundamentalist understanding of the
world - 'red, white, and black), and
the politics of white settler imperialism
and ethnic cleansing.' In 1820, the
Missouri Compromise admitted
Missouri to the Union as a slave
state, and Missouri's new constitution
both restricted the rights of black people,
and prevented free blacks from settling
in the state. A nice place to visit, Mrs.
D., but I wouldn't want to live there?
-
All that's like black water under the
bridge, and who cares? What I want
to know is: How in the world have
we gotten from that to what we have
today? Much of today's most broad
and misbegotten premises of race
and society and rights and equality
have been sold and turned over to
the corporate goons and tribal
henchmen who are running - nay
forcing down our throats - the
stupid society that's around us.
The 'illustration' accompanying
this chapter ought to tell you
something. And it ought to shame
you, disgust you, and get you
angry, all at the same time - and
angry enough, goddamn it, to
see that something is done about
it. You think these corporate goons
know or care about any of you
outside of YOU as consumer of
their pathetic products, portraying
you as dancing fools to turn coin
from? You think when they raise
the 'inclusivity' banner and the
equality and fairness subject, that
they really give a shit? You're crazy,
and this country is rancid - because
this is the sort of thing - for profit -
that has been allowed to take over,
to run riot with the Senators and
Representatives, put them in their
pocket and teach them to mouth
the same for-pay bullshit they do.
-
I'm not going to belabor this; it
makes me ill. These are bottom line
people; crooks parading as bleeding
hearts. They need profit and growth,
and they will take over everything
they can to achieve that. What their
process is is to ridicule, prod, or
abuse their 'customers' and those
very people who they expect to
'buy' their product - to advance
their profit, to bolster a bottom-line.
Abraham Lincoln was born on
February 12. George Washington
on Feb 22. When were you born,
or have you not yet been?
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