I am not a Jewish American but for anti-Semites, tribal wranglers, and the boundaries of my own concessions.
I am not a German American, and not a word of it.
I am not a Polish American although I may appreciate the Polish tradition in tea cup and pot design.
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I am an American who admires and appreciates the world, its myriad cultures, races, and religions but returns always to a pale-to-black nation separated from alliance with any one acknowledged church, life way, or god even though I may acknowledged the presence of an All that becomes the idea of God.
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I am an American free to watch baseball or porn, to catch the world’s news or none at all, to reflect on my nation’s Constitution — or not worry over it, for it’s a strong thing by itself, and I am free and secure to fall asleep beneath clouds or stars, to read or write as spirit moves, to seek company or seclusion as my self sees fit.
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I am an American aware of the effects of American Natives, the currents of European history, and the presence of ruthless and sadistic Puritans on the cultural outlines within the spacious boundaries and potentials of the now modern state.
E Pluribus Unum. Our Founders wrote far ahead of their own circumstance in the creating of an unbiased democratic constitution. They set out ideals for later generations to realize. As a blogger, I have found Medieval Absolutism v Modern Democratic Distribution of power thematic.
I don’t know if the groups and leaderships attending what the SPLC might refer to as “Neo-Confederate” and “Neo-Nazi” are authentically homegrown perennials or stylish annuals that keep seeding themselves from year to year, but it has occurred to me that world always moves on around its hotheads, especially the archaic and romantic who may wish to hold on to what they believe they once had. So from the awesome conversation with the world at my desktop, here’s a note on all of that.
From the Awesome Conversation
I would think the Southern Far White Right in part the great-great grandchildren of settlers and the last of the pioneers, invariably white and looking for their place in the developing New World and who bore with them from one generation to the next the legends of the settling of the west. Farms, ranches, railroads, trading posts, towns, cities, dirt tracks, and highways. Where are they now? Ill-educated, some; overrun, for sure, and no longer the law and the outlaw with a few Mexicans around for decoration. They’re working for their hires; the children of slaves are bosses (some, I’m sure); John Wayne’s a foggy memory; Denzel’s more the memory for America’s middle aged; Bond’s partner is a black woman . . . .
The cities may be cool or mildly restive with all while the rural lanes, whether real or just winding through the heart, may be still what they were and now surrounded by an alien colorful all-inclusive all-tolerated multi-gendered multicultural powerful hypermodern New American political and lifestyle culture.
Bureaucracy, law, and technology may support American domestic security, but it sure can’t solve cultural issues involving birthrights and expectations about how the world should work. It’s understandable that we would have some disappointed-struggling sons of old white sons for whom official favor might seem (by themselves) deserved.
Addendum
Who would stop history?
The processes attending conquest and the establishment of sovereignty across geopolitical space and time give way, inevitably, to periods of Administration either, Genghis style, for sustained plunder or, alas, for The Good, i.e., for renewed husbandry, shepherding, and stewardship of all that may be valued in peace. These days, bloody expansions needs must give way to community care, development, and trade, mere avarice proving insufficient for the defense of sustained new wealth.
My correspondent accused me of holding hackneyed views in relation to what I’ve labeled the “Far White Right”, a term invented for Donald John Trump’s not-so-colorful base. Members of the FWR, I was told, were also highly educated and wealthy and enamored of the American Dream, so I was told. My response –>
If “They both believe in and live the American dream”, wherefore the racial angst and want of (renewed) privilege?
Wherefore the want of racially-based political ascendance and dominance?
I’m inclined to publish my own words, but, as always would be interested in seeing what a true political topology looks like for those now deeply resenting the darker hues along with Jews.
Here’s the thing about race and white boys and black boys and girls and all the shades and stances between –>
As a species . . . .
Hitchhikers thumbs, cars, old shoes, planes, ships, and trains and legions of defenders, traders, and raiders — we sure do “get around” and have gotten around, and there’s nothing to undo it.
The mentalities of criminals and extremists seems always archaic, self-adoring, and self-aggrandizing as if humiliation and mortification somewhere near has compelled repair and some former perceived noble state of affairs may be found forward with an heroic defiance of the future.
Among the slashed and burnt of The Great Liar’s One-Term Presidency, John Bolton stands out for greater backbone, discretion, experience, and integrity.
I believe Bolton when he suggests he leveraged his experience in national security to participate in the Trump Administration in order to produce his — not Trump’s — brand of guidance. As Trump required greater sycophancy, Bolton would also leave the malignant narcissist’s den.
The Republican Party, once the Party of the visionary Abraham Lincoln, has in the 20th Century seen equally embarrassing and shamefully self-centered days. That has become something for critically reasoning and independent Americans to take into consideration as the West with its ideas about compassion, freedom, goodness, and real human productivity faces an anachronistic, feudal, and implacable enemy in Moscow and, in post-Cold War association with it, Beijing and Tehran as well.
Tehran, worn by its own conflict-promoting behaviors over time and by sanctions, has shown no signs of retreat in relation to its nuclear missile and warhead programs nor its will, repeated with dulling frequency, to see Israel and the west destroyed for its own marauding and politically absolute ends. Where has the Republican Party (with its increasingly familiar white supremacist attachments) really stood on the Moscow-Tehran relationship? Where has it stood with regard to the rise of the proto-fascist New Nationalism in the United States as well as within NATO (have a look into authoritarian and feudal urges in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey)?
Parochial and rapacious _reactionary_ conservatism were very much part of the past too. https://t.co/0zJrDyZEUG Roosevelt had to defeat the America First Party and related supporters (like Lindbergh) to align with Great Britain (https://t.co/xlfBpl6cxf).
Here is a junction in time in which the United States, once leader of the free world — the modern open democratic world, either stands firm against politically retrograde but technologically sophisticated states or slips backward itself into some system of immense power and wealth lording over a hapless constituency whose political voice becomes so much noise to those working the levers for their own enrichment according to class and degrees of ruthlessness.
I’m not inclined to leap far into conspiracy-think. However, wind turbine technology appears engineered and manufactured by transnational corporations and firms well aware of freezing weather, so this nonsense about renewable energy failing in Texas (why not on the North Sea? Why not in Germany?) just doesn’t hold ice water.
Super conservative angst, disinformation (received or sent), and viciousness get in the way of the public’s more cool-headed gathering and perception of variables contributing to disasters. That discomforting aspect of our collective national psyche notwithstanding, I would ask news (and weather) editors and readers to simply consider the full suite of possibilities in the unfolding of dramatic stories. In this one, finger pointing at wind-generated energy overlooked frozen instruments (!) in other energy systems. Well Whisky Tango & Foxtrot, where is Homeland Security on the Big Dallas Freeze? And may the investigative journalists be all over the possibility, just that (!), of external meddling involving massive critical — and technologically delicate or vulnerable — systems.
Of course, there are other possibilities, much including the architecture and engineering in a region better known for heat than cold and successive building generations in a political environment resistant “global warming” the potential for coming extremes in the known environment.
Still, has the drama been only about old engineering and new weather?
I may be tilting at windmills.
Maybe not.
While some wind turbines did freeze, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as renewables, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference on Tuesday.
Frozen instruments at gas, coal and even nuclear power stations were among the main problems, Ercot director Dan Woodfin said, according to Bloomberg.
Last March—if not before, as a report by the threat-intelligence firm ReversingLabs suggests—a hacking team, believed to be affiliated with Russian intelligence, planted malware in a routine software upgrade from a Texas-based I.T. company called SolarWinds, which provides network-management systems to more than three hundred thousand clients. An estimated eighteen thousand of them downloaded the malware-ridden updates, which were embedded in a SolarWinds product called Orion. Once they did, the hackers were able to roam about customers’ networks, undetected, for at least nine months.
For the American President’s navigation: the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain; the development of an expansionist imperial Japan; polarization in the United States between the forces of self-serving fascist sentiment related to business and popular interest in the Far Left answers to abuses generated in Far Right circles.
Add the global Great Depression.
I have not yet reached the middle of this eye-opening and insightful history, but the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “working the issues” rings clear and sound for this day.
I have made much and will continue to make much of the tensions between politically medieval and modern worlds, and my own energies and hopes are with the modern world, its potential great breadth in personal freedoms, and its obligations as steward of the earth and humanity.
Whoever you may be and wherever you are in the world — and whether you enjoy or have to make yourself do this kind of reading (smile) — this volume will set the benchmark for understanding the United States and the western civilizational project in the appreciation and defense of humanity.
“To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand,” he wrote. “Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA [the VA’s Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance]. Any blame rests with them.”
Sgt. Somers served two tours in Iraq and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD upon returning home. He lost his life to suicide in 2013. After Sinema learned of Sgt. Somers’ story, she worked with his parents, Howard and Jean Somers, to introduce and successfully pass the Daniel Somers Access to Care Act, which ensures veterans who worked in classified jobs can receive behavioral health services in an appropriate care setting. Now, Sinema is working with the Somers to expand their network of support concept.
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) will be Arizona’s first female senator. The lawmaker is not new to making history, especially when considering the very conservative state that launched her political career, but identity was not a dominant narrative of her historic campaign.
The former Mormon was the first person sent to Congress to claim no religion. After winning her congressional seat in 2012, she was sworn in on the Constitution, forgoing the Bible chosen by Christians — the dominant religion for members of Congress, especially those from Arizona.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
