Bow Down

I was vocal in my opposition to the first of the Bush Wars, and I lost track of the number of people who came up to me and professed to agree with me, "but… don't tell anybody."

I lost my job because of it. The office manager wanted everyone to sign a document expressing "support for the troops," and I refused. I thought it was splitting hairs to say I opposed the war but supported those waging it.

And that's when a campaign of targeted harassment started. I would come to work in the morning and find my desk vandalized. My name came up "randomly" for drug testing every single week. I was written up for "wasting company resources" when I forwarded a harmless joke on email.

And all the people who professed to agree with me stood silently and watched it happen.

And that's the fatal flaw with East Texans.

Most of them are not the cruel loudmouths and politicians you see on television. Most of them will pull over to help you when your car breaks down, and show up with a covered dish when someone you love passes.

But they also will stand silent when groups or individuals are targeted by the people in power.

These are people who knuckle under to petty authority without a fight.

Fucking useless cowards.

Ahmoud

Last year the house across the street from me caught fire, and over the summer it was rebuilt.

Something that caught me by surprise was the sheer number of people who wandered through the construction site just to have a look around.  People driving by would stop their cars to get out and satisfy their curiosity.  

I wasn't brought up that way.  Wandering around somebody else's property is completely alien to me.  But apparently here in East Texas it's considered socially acceptable to poke around in somebody else's home.  Nobody tried to hide it, nobody behaved as though they were doing anything out of the ordinary.

When I first read that Ahmaud Arbery was seen looking around a construction site, that seemed a bit off to me.  Now I know that, at least in the South, it's pretty common and not a big deal.

But I did know from the start he hadn't stolen anything.

Almost everything on a construction site is simply too big to steal.  It's not likely anyone is going to wander off with a two-by-four or a piece of sheetrock. Construction workers take their tools home with them at the end of the workday, but even something like a drill or a hammer would have been easily seen in a jogger's hand.

His three killers knew he hadn't taken anything.

This was all about power.

The South, for all it's talk of individual freedom, is extremely authoritarian.  They're anti-union because you're supposed to do what the boss tells you to do.  They're anti-abortion because you're supposed to do what the preacher tells you to do.  When football player Adrian Peterson was charged for whipping his four-year-old child bloody, he had a lot of defenders here because a child is supposed to do what his parents tell him to do.

Ahmoud Arbery was killed because he was supposed to do what the rednecks told him to do-- and disobedience is not tolerated.

It shouldn't have mattered anyway.

After 9/11 happened, the company my father worked for sent out a memo saying they would no longer use a local motel.  They said it was owned by Arabs who refused to fly the American flag.

My father stopped by this motel on the way to work the next day, and saw the American flag flying.  He went inside and talked to the manager, and discovered this motel was owned by an Indian gentleman.

He reported these things when he got to work that day.  The motel was flying the American flag, the motel is not owned by Arabs.

But the company never rescinded the memo, and they never used that motel ever again.

Bewildering

"The people of the United States are a strange and occasionally bewildering mixture of the enlightened, the superstitious, and the plain ignorant. In certain backward sections, notably but not exclusively in the Southern states, a form of religious dogmatism has perpetuated doctrines and prejudices which other sections, on a higher intellectual level, have rejected as no longer tenable by intelligent minds. In this 'Bible Belt,' as it is called, where the Bible is still interpreted literally and any conception contrary to such a literal interpretation is regarded as blasphemous, the Darwinian theory is anathema." ~Hermann Hagedorn, in Americans: A Book of Lives ©1946.

I didn't realize how long the South has been noted as a singularly backward area of the country.

 

Hobbit

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Hobbit was a regional favorite at the end of the 70s, back in the days when radio stations were locally owned and disc jockeys could play what they wanted.

As you can probably guess, most of their songs were Lord of the Rings themed.

Their (derelict) website is HERE.

Drug of Choice

I don't know what it's like in other places, but here in East Texas the anti-abortion activists are quite a spectacle.

They begin by creating a tiny fake cemetery alongside a busy road, with foot-tall wooden crosses painted white. Then they kneel down in the center of it and begin to wail, to cry, to scream, to rage, to "pray." Then they pack up their signs and go home.

They say their beliefs are based on Science™, but that veers towards the absurd. Science is not in a position to determine the moment that inanimate matter becomes animate, or life becomes sentient.

They say their beliefs are based on religion, but that's not quite true, either. Their bible, although oddly specific in some respects (they can't eat lizards, for instance), doesn't bring up the topic of abortion. They're taking a few verses and extrapolating them out to get the result they want. Other people, fooled by Satan no doubt, extrapolate out and get different results.

And the thing is, they've already won. Christian terrorists murdered a few doctors and torched a few clinics, which scared most doctors out of the business, and legislators have made the process so onerous and expensive that it's virtually impossible to get an abortion in Texas. There are no clinics at all in East Texas. Republicans have packed the court with partisans, so soon they'll be able to outlaw abortion openly, but that's just awarding the trophy after the contest has been decided. It doesn't really matter anymore.

It's not really about the issue, anyway. What this is really all about is their addiction to Outrage. They get high from Righteous Indignation.

Once Roe v. Wade is overturned, they aren't going to go away. They're going to pick a new issue to dwell on. My money is on The Homosexual Agenda, but they may have a go at restoring mandatory prayer in public schools. We'll see.

They're going to talk about science, and they're going to talk about religion.

They should be talking about dopamine and serotonin.

Pillars of the Community

"To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral."  ~Abbie Hoffman

The city in East Texas where I live has over 100,000 people, but we only have two grocery stores to choose from: Walmart, and Brookshire's.

Brookshire's is ungodly expensive, and I believe that has more to do with the local social strata than anything else. There's a saying here, only partly in jest, that if you're less than third-generation then you're still the new kid. Brookshire's customers are willing to pay more not because of better quality or better choices, but simply because the higher prices keep out the riff-raff.

So those of us in the working class don't really have a choice. We have to go to Walmart because it's the only place we can afford.

The local Walmart recently remodeled, and only have three manned checkout lanes now. All the rest are self-checkout. The cashier told me that the last remaining three are going to be phased out, and everyone will have to scan and sack their own groceries.

I asked about my 88-year-old father. She said he'd have to learn to do it himself. I said he can't. She said he'll have to.

Walmart is one of the most profitable chains in America, and they're going to lay off their most underpaid workers.  They are counting on their customers to do their work for them, for free, so the stockholders can enjoy larger dividends.

Be super careful as you check out your own groceries. You sure don't want to make a mistake.

The East Texas State Fair has instituted a tough "no tobacco" policy.  Beginning this year, patrons will literally be searched at the gate, and if they find a pack of cigarettes they will confiscate it.

You will be relieved to know that they still allow handguns.

Where have all the flowers gone?

We tried to go to a Bellamy Brothers concert last night.

The evening began with a rousing tribute to our brave and glorious troops, after which the crowd burst into spontaneous applause because they, too, love our brave and glorious troops.

Then we were compelled to rise and recite the pledge of allegiance (I declined), after which the woman next to us, grinning from ear to ear, shouted "AMEN!" Several men, overcome with emotion, pumped their fists in the air.

Nobody but me seemed to notice that there wasn't actually a flag present.

Over an hour later the band still had not taken the stage. We looked around at the stone-faced polyester stretch pants and western shirts mindlessly contemplating their cell phones, and decided to call it a night.

We're giving up.

In the future, we'll drive a little farther to attend concerts that are more focused on music than some weird political/religious litmus test.  East Texas is not for us.

---

Pete Seeger used to host a famous Strawberry Shortcake Festival in New England. It was purposely, decidedly non-political. He just wanted everyone to come, have some strawberry shortcake, and enjoy singing songs and each other's company.

I miss Pete.

As If

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Mona and I went to see a David Phelps concert at a nearby church last week. It didn't go well.

I'm not Christian, but I was raised Catholic so I know all the stories. I enjoy devotional music of all faiths, and like David Phelps in particular. I have a few of his albums.

But from the moment I walked in, I felt a very bad vibe. I stood out, and not in a good way. I have long hair and a long beard, and my t-shirt had a picture of Pete Seeger on it. I found myself surrounded by clean-shaven men with very short hair, polo shirts tucked into their belted waistbands. I was the only one wearing sneakers.

A lady sat down next to us, smiled, and said, "We're a very inclusive church here. We even have some Negroes and Chinese!" She considered this for a second. "They might not be Chinese. I don't know what they are."

If I could digress for just a second here: Madalyn Murray O'Hair didn't set out to file a lawsuit ending mandatory prayer in public schools. Before taking such a drastic step she had gone to the school and explained that, as an atheist, she simply wanted her own child to be excused. The school agreed that he wouldn't have to pray, but insisted that he would still have to stand, bow his head, clasp his hands, and move his lips as if he were praying. They considered this a reasonable compromise.  (She disagreed.)

And that's pretty much the East Texas definition of inclusiveness: we'll allow you to exist, all we ask in return is that you believe the things we believe, do the things we do, say the things we say, and look the way we look. If you can't do that, well, it's a free country-- and by that we mean you're free to go, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I could see the sideways glances direct my way, and I wasn't happy about being the local sideshow freak, but thought that once the lights went out and the show started, we'd be fine.

Unfortunately, the show stunk. You would never believe these were professional musicians. They seemed intimidated and confused by the instruments in their hands. The mix was all wrong-- every time the bass player plucked a note, the lead singer was completely drowned out.

We gave it a few songs, hoping the engineer would notice and fix it, but he didn't.

So, we called it a night and snuck out early. The ushers glared at us.  One literally shook his finger at me.

I briefly considered giving him a finger of my own, but didn't.

I was in a church, after all.

All sense of proportion

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Via Ron Davison, who maintains a blog HERE.

I have a knee-jerk reaction against the term "political correctness." In my life, I've never heard anyone denied their right to say unkind things-- but I've heard a lot of people say unkind things followed by "I guess I'm not 'politically correct,' hur-hur, hur-hur," apparently believing that the suffix converts them from bigots and bullies into Fearless Defenders of Free Speech.

I gave this a chance because I trusted Ron's judgement, and I'm glad I did because it's brilliant.

(He also pointed out that I've been mispronouncing "Cleese" for my entire life.  It's not pronounced the way you think it is.)

"Other than the burning eyes and cancer, it's quite safe."

From the Tyler Morning Telegraph:

This month's water bill comes with some added reading material - a glossy four-page color pamphlet explaining recent issues with the city's water supply and assuring residents the water is safe.

Apparently, this is some new definition of “safe” that I haven’t heard before, because what the pamphlet actually says is that the water can irritate our eyes and increase our risk of cancer.

The pamphlet goes on to suggest that if burning eyes and cancer are unacceptable to us, we should buy and install filters to remove the haloacetic acid.

Golf

That seems oddly specific to me.

I wonder what the golfers did that raised the ire of the Village Elders?  Was it the pants?

Are there cons doing hard time on a golfing rap?

Interrobang

Here in East Texas we get a lot of weird comparison arguments.  Maybe everyone does:

"How can you be concerned about the Cowboy's running back situation when MILLIONS OF BABIES ARE ABORTED EVERY YEAR!?"

How can you be against the wars when OBAMA PLANS TO CONFISCATE THE GUNS OF LAW ABIDING CITIZENS!?"

How can you be upset about a lion in Africa when THERE ARE COMMUNISTS IN THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT!?"

And my response is always the same:  "All that is very well, but let us cultivate our garden." (source)