Skip to main content

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.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more