Just Finished This

It took me three months off and-on to read through Vincent Bugliosi's 'Reclaiming History'  If I had dedicated all of my spare time to it I probably could have made it through in a month.  I would occasionally break off not because I disliked the book but because I do have other things in my life on some occasion.  I highly recommend it as a matter of fact and I'm anxiously looking forward too the "Parkland" movie which I'm told is something of a Cliff-notes version of it. 

the best parts of the tome are easily the 'straight histories'.  The opening 'Four Days in November' section and extensive biography of Lee Harvey Oswald and a chapter on Jack Ruby's murder trial.  The sections where Bugilosi tears down the various JFK murder conspiracy theories do get a little priggish and even bitter.  Bugilosi describes himself as a 'very serious person' towards the end of his book long after this has become very clear.  A fiction writer with a more humane love of absurdity like Wallace or Eggers could have made some real gold shredding into say rumors of Ruby and Oswald being boyfriends or Jim Garrisons theory of a dozen elite shooters lining up at three or four different angles and than missing their target completely on half of their shots.  Bugilosi makes some smart-alack remarks that mostly fall flat and in the main is too aghast that the holy historic record has been distorted to have any real fun.  This is understandable and even admirable in its way but still a buzzkill.

It's been noted that conservatives are more likely than liberals to buy into conspiracy theories.    I would guess that conspiratorial thinking serves a similar function for the right as Christian or constitutional fundamentalism; to delegitimize the more multicultural, urban, communitarian path we're evolving towards as an artificial distortion of our true natural form.  'New World Orders' are perfectly routine folks.  Always have been.   

And I think the left's embrace of JFK assassination theories is at least partly inspired by similar motives;  to delegitimize the setbacks that followed the loss of an effective liberal politician.  To place such things as the Vietnam war, the importance of stabbed-in-the-back-theories regarding our failure there in fueling the Reagan-Bush coalition and all the lingering meanness and inequality wrought by that as all something that by natural right shouldn't have happened and therefore is not really truly of us.  Well sorry folks; but it is.  The rise of the right-wing at the end of last century probably would have happened with or without Jack Kennedy.  (He was, after all, in Texas for a probably doomed effort to hold off the defection of Southern Conservative Democrats)  It is a rise brought about by internal bigotries and great-power arrogance that had always been within us and that mid-century liberals had only danced around, ignored or even incorporated for their own ends.

Bugliosi is the rare creature of politically liberal prosecutor.   He is also damned old, to state it plainly.  A throwback to the Kennedy/post-New Deal era when liberalism was still the polite establishment norm. (Though mind you this was hardly a golden age when everyone was happy to help everyone.  A liberal establishment is still an establishment and this one was rather more militaristic and dismissive towards ethnic and sexual minorities than modern progressives could stomach.)  This is probably why he takes Very Serious Offense to the New-Left style fantasia of JFK murder conspiracy theories, and while it isn't much fun it is in the main a great public service.  Come on now people.  This was a flesh and blood man who was murdered, no symbol of this or that.  And it is provably obvious that his murder was nothing more epic than the act of one wife-beating wannabe communist  asshole.  Conspiracy godfather Mark Lane is a provable fraud.  Jim Garrison was the sort of tyrannical abuser of innocents that every good man of the left should despise and Oliver Stone is a greasy creeper with a messiah complex.  (Platoon is still really good though.  Don't get me wrong.)  Isn't it about time we got well and over this thing now?

I'm Reasonably Certain

That I just saw Sylvia Plath staring me down while sitting in a red Mercury car and smoking.  It might have been Gwyneth Paltrow in wardrobe as Sylvia Plath.  But I know that it did happen.

Also this. 

And Some Soccer News

I know that the results have come largely against nations with fewer people than the town of Chicago, but the 'someday' when the US national team finally becomes more than a plodding, flailing World Cup bubble team just might be, just might be, finally at hand.  The boys are playing good football, bracing and confident, and Landon Donovan looks like he could play for another ten years.  I'd like that. 

Of course, Panama are good enough to beat us so; we'll see.  Though I must say that while Klinsmann has been a good coach for us I'm not terribly concerned about his-maybe suspension for the final.        The utter ghettoness of CONCACAF that's produced his Shrodinger's fate is an issue that should be dealt with; really it should just be merged with CONMEBOL.  But as for the game itself?  It's soccer, not some authoritarian bludgeon fest, a real team shouldn't need a coach to play well. 

Warning

The secret Muslim Brotherhood plan of conquest apparently involves having Arab women get married to philandering Jewish Yankees.  Thank you, Andrew McCarthy, for openly expressing these deeply rational and common sense concerns that the liberal media doesn't want us to hear. 

Somewhat of an Addendum to Previous: But not Really.

The Onion is a long-term cultural institution now isn't it?          I mean yes; of course it is, but it's something I just realized as I was drinking last night.  I remember being a teenager wondering high around Silverthorn Colorado when this hipster skier chick introduced me to 'Our Dumb Century' and I was as if baptized with this cool subversive thing that I knew about before my friends.  Now I'm fucking old. :---


Well, at least there are people like David Icke to make the Onion Crew still appear to be meta-geniuses. 

Fuck The British Royals

Fuck the make-believe queen.  Fuck the frat-house racist ass make-believe princes.  Fuck the baby.  Fuck the baseball team too.  Perhaps especially. 

That is all. 

'..... And Became a Monster'

 

 

                          

If that's not a slavering show of approval than what is right?  I knew those sick bastards at Rolling Stone were up to know good from the beginning. 

Seriously though it's clear that Fred Clark's AKBC brigade is marching in full song here.  Some people out there want to believe that it is rare and exceptional to be anti-murder anti-terrorism exceptional and that they are elitely brave for being these things.  Well of course it isn't; and of course they are not.  Yes Virginia, it is a given that everyone save the bombers themselves is against blowing up joggers and that no one is under any obligation to prove this with a ritual show of condemnation and rage.  One is not, by the way, 'really truly' anti-terroist only if they support whatever theatricaly sadistic 'true penalty' you may loudly demand for this young Caucasian.  And you know what?  If  Tsarnaev records an album in some genre I enjoy, like some heavy golden-era sounding funk or King Crimson style jazz-prog I wouldn't reject it out of hand.  I would definitely give it a listen.  Can you handle that? 

For honesty's sake  I must admit that I am suspicious if this thing is really that much of a controversy or if the news networks are trying to pump it up into one as part of getting through the summer loll.  I suppose you could mark me among the suckered on account of this post if that's the case.  Oh well.

This is What Happens When you Fuck death

Coffin birth. 

Coffin birth. 

Coffin birth. 

And yes, of course it's used as a metal band name. 

I am a White Man. I Have No Intention to Use My License to Kill Black Teenagers With Impunity.

I have a reasonably educated familiarity with rap music.  I know for a fact that no less than 20% of all rap songs are about something other than murdering people.  For those of us Americans of whatever race, class or geographic region who came of age in the 1990's there is nothing about hip-hop culture that has ever been Alien, Other, or menacing.  It has only ever been a routine part of our own culture.  I am reasonably certain that a photograph of my own adolescent self posing shirtless with twenty dollar bills still physically exists somewhere out in the wilds of western Nebraska.

I understand black slang with near-standard level clarity.  Mind you that I take no particular pride in this; as 'their' slang follows perfectly familiar American idioms and I'm reasonably certain that you Mr. Real America are only pretending to not understand it just for the sake of having a laugh at Those People's fantastic gutter language.  

But anyway I've already said too much.  I originally intended this post to be nothing more than the headline.  Something much pithier than what you see here. The white men of my family tried to instill in me a feeling that I was by right of birth a figure of great power and authority; a great defender of damsels and decency against a hostile universe, that we must have the same freedom to employ violence towards that end as the great organs of State power have always had, that the great organs of State power like us have always had.  But It didn't take, and I have no intention to use my license to kill black teenagers with impunity.  That is all. 

Another Thing that Happened When I was Away

I saw 'The Lives of Others' like two and a half times in a 24 hour space.  I've seen it before but its one of those that just gets better and better every time you watch it.  "Timely' I suppose with everything that's going on with the NSA and what not but that wasn't my intention.  I would seriously consider striking up a relationship with some political radical I don't actually because right now I find the thought of government agents listening to me have sex much more arousing than the thought of sex per se.  That's probably just me. 

Well Good on Johnny depp to Help Out Here

Bling bling, after a fashion.


I'm not going to say that's it's inherently wrong for 'the White Man' to own Wounded Knee.  In my eyes that's not the crux of the issue.  Surely everyone would be uncomfortable if say, the Round Tops at Gettysburg were privately owned, and said private owner was using this power as a manipulative cudgel.  Everyone would agree that this would be tawdry and wrong and there'd be no talk of political correctness or anything like that.

I've heard that Depp's turn as Tonto in his latest movie is truly awful.  Haven't seen it myself.  Truly though he is far past the point of being the lovable generation X eccentric and is now just another entitled A-lister who can cause a small nations worth of economic damage with any random stupid whim he might have.  More's the pity.  But his interest in Native affairs seems mainly unaffected and good all the same.

Dickishnesh in the State Penis

Governor Heineman met with the president of the Ogala Sioux yesterday.  It went poorly.

It seems clear that Heineman went in with the expectation that Brewer would attempt to pin sole blame on White Nebraskans for his 'own people's' social problems.  And so the gov acted defenseively in what he percevied to be a zero-sum game of moral prestige. 

There is no need here to engage the phony dichotomy of blaming only either the society or the individual for poverty addiction or what have you.  Everyone accepts as obvious the fact that society influences individuals until that moment when some part of society they identify with is associated with something bad.  Then comes the time to righteously lecture on personal responsibility.  But never mind all that.  The important thing here is that the governor had a job to do.  That job was not to defend the innate innocent goodness of 'his people' but to actually talk to this man.  On this matter of his own personal responsibility he has unquestionably failed. 

I Nearly Zooslaughtered a Family of Racoons Last Night

They were eating roadkill along eastbound US 34 between Aurora and York.  Of course they gave no thought as to how their free prize came to be dead, and even when they were in my headlights they didn't seem to understand just how much danger they were in.  they scuttled in some slight worry but didn't make a run for it.  I had to jerk quickly into the opposing lane and then qucikly back again as a semi was approaching.  I hope that some part of them feel gratitude towards me. 

There was some storm weather that formed over the Sandhills and paralleled me to the north of the Platte River/I-80 aorta all night.  From my van I saw lightning strikes around St. Paul, Central City.  I could see that it was moving in a straight line for Omaha but I don't know if the city was hit.  There were a couple water spots on my windshield that may have been wildly astray rain or just dead bugs.

The lesbians along fourth street in midtown Grand Island are terribly good people.  I wish that I could have joined them with their frozen Sunny D bottle of vodka and lemonade but I had more driving to do.  

My Stepdad Bought This for his Office

You may argue amongst yourselves dear readers whether or not American dogs are aware of being American somewhere deep inside themselves, or whether 'true heroism' is possible without full rational knowledge of one's own mortality.  I do know that my mother's Australian Shepard (so you know, not all that foreign.) once bit an eight-year old child on the back of his leg in a truly courageous fashion.  

Independence Day in North Platte

The compensatory rain this year has been a blessing.  I mean that literally as in the spiritual sense.  Along the old 2-lane route into town from the east, near Brady Nebraska,     sits a riot of sunflowers within a decadently green field.  I would have stopped to take a picture that I could show to you here; but I was driving naked in order to save on air conditioning and gas and also; well also for its own sake too.

The niece that I helped babysit as a toddler is here from Sacramento, living with my parents for the summer and sixteen now.  She doesn't like Nebraska water. The hell now?! Nobody doesn't like Nebraska water.

The problem of finding something to do here... same as it ever was.  I suppose I'll engage in some writing along with some mild to moderate drinking....    

Remember

You have the right to feel good about yourself only in as much as you are dominating others or pounding 'The Rules' down upon them from above. Life is a harsh and cruel test of how harsh and cruel you can be.  Let no one dare suggest that there are moral values more important then strength, toughness, and real manliness, amen. 

 

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If I myself were given the choice between theocracy or military dictatorship...  FUCK :(   I'm going to go set a flag on fire with a roman candle then get drunk and buy porn in the afternoon because I can.  This is exactly how I marked my eighteenth birthday but hey that's alright.  

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An Olympics on the Great Plains would actually be very cool, matter of fact.  The culture here does tend to view sports rather seriously, and when I say seriously I mean as in honestly perceiving victory in sports as proof of superior moral virtue just like the Greeks intended.  We love the Olympics.  America mops shit up in the Olympics.  Still I think that Tulsa is being overly ambitious by far here.  A joint Tulsa-Oklahoma City bid might be more tenable.  Matter of fact I'm pretty sure that both Oklahoma and Kansas City have the stadium capacity to hold a a full scale Olympics right now.  Seriously though we are really fucking big into sports like I said.  Or if even the medium-large cities aren't big enough for the world there's always; well, Dallas.  I assume the marathon would be routed somewhere away from Elm Street. 

But anyway the main reason I can't support Tulsa's bid is that one of them just had to go there. 

"The larger cities aren’t truly representative of what the real America is said Jennifer Jones of the Tulsa 2024 bid committee."