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Deliberate Ignorance and a Southern Strategy

When first we moved into this house, Coyote came through the draw behind our house, probably just to see how things were going.  When I saw him, he turned south and a bit east, along the other side of the hillside, keeping his own counsel. 

 Tradition says that when Coyote the Creator meets Coyote who goes through the arroyo, they address each other as "Big Brother" and "Little Brother".  
*   *   *

 The Church of England--you know, the Anachronistic Stuffiness that is the Soul of England--met in counsel with Itself and God, a day or two ago, and Itself decided that women should not become Bishops, because the Big Brother in the Sky did not really approve of Uppity Women.  

 The Bishops voted yes, and the Clergy voted yes, but the Ordinary Coyotes in the pew recited Scripture and voted no.  

 Beep!  Beep!  One for the Big Coyote!
*   *   * 

It is odd, but I am old enough to remember what Norway was before oil was discovered in the North Sea.  It was the Poor Little Coyote of Scandinavia.  It was my family.  Today it is the most expensive place to visit in the whole world.  A hotel room?  Taking friends to a restaurant?  It is like a large ACME safe falling from the sky.

Beep!  Beep!

Coyote the Trickster.


*   *   *

 Once upon a Civil War, the people in the American South, who were--shall we say--"understanding" of the cases for slavery, were Democrats.  Abraham Lincoln was one of those new-fangled Republicans.  But than, in the 1960s, Richard Nixon realized that all of those "Dixiecrats" could be enticed to become Republicans--his "Southern Strategy"--and ever since it has been so.  

 So, today, the people who, even if they are not actually in favor os slavery, still have some "understanding" of the Confederate Cause, speak of "States Rights", and of "local self-determination, and of "that man in the White House" (that UnAmerican, Kenyan-born, Black man).  It smells of something rotten, and it is.  It is the ragged shreds of racism.  It is the pretense of racial superiority.  It is what is left of what used to be.  

 It is like the sexism of the church.  
It is like the Norway my ancestors emigrated from.
It is like Colonial America, and all those "Great and Sovereign States",
and like the ocean front before all the crap we dumped into it,
and like the air before all the chemicals we pumped up and away.  

 It is like Coyote the Creator before we knew what we really know to be true.  
*   *   *

The earth is very old.
The universe is even older:  billions and billions of years older.
It was not created in six days or six anythings.  
And racism, and sexism, and dog-eat-dog economics is savage.
And everyone ought to have health care.  

It is deliberate ignorance that ought to shame us.  

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