July 4th -- Independence Day

Happy 4th of July.

Independence Day.

A day in which the United States celebrates breaking off from England to become our own country. At the time we were pissed off that we were being taxed but not getting a say in the way things were done. King George made the decisions and we paid taxes but had no voice.

This year there have been lots of voices raised as people feel like they're not being heard. They feel like they have legitimate complaints about the government of our country that they feel isn't fairly representing them or speaking for them.

From the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence, a declaration of war against our then legitimate rulers:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Our country wasn't founded by perfect men. Some signers of the constitution didn't recognize black people as actual people, but as chattel, property. And it wasn't until the 13th Amendment that slavery itself was outlawed. They weren't perfect. The country they built wasn't perfect and still isn't.

But it has, built into it, a system by which we the people, are able to make it better; not just better for us, but better for all of us. We are at our best when we are doing great things in the world. We went to the moon in under ten years. We fought a war on two fronts, and won with help from allies, chief among them, the country we had broken away from 200 years before! We are a country that builds things that are testaments to the human spirit. The Hoover Dam, The Twin Towers. Cape Canaveral.

We are at our best when we try and make things better for ourselves and for the world at large.

Sometimes we lose our way. Sometimes we hear that we aren't the best and we lash out at the person who says it. We get defensive of our country because we genuinely love her, for all her flaws. She's ours and we love her. And we can talk shit about her if we want to, but if someone else does... well... the gloves come off.

Sometimes though, sometimes, maybe we should listen. Sometimes it's okay to admit that while we're a great country full of great people who do amazing things every day... there are those among us who could do better. And we, as Americans, are at our best when we help people become better versions of themselves.

Independence day. It's about freedom. It's a celebration OF that freedom and why we have it. Think though, between now and next year's 4th... are we doing our best to help others be their best? I'm not saying we can't defend our country from legitimate attacks. I'm not saying Al Qaida has a point. I'm saying when enough American voices cry out that there is a problem... perhaps... as good Americans who love this country... we should do what we as Americans do best... perhaps we should try to make it better.. for everyone.

It's not unpatriotic to wish to do better. It's unpatriotic to tell those who are brave enough to tell us when we're falling short of our aim at being the best we can be to shut up and sit down. When we quit looking for ways to get better, when we quit trying to improve, we're done.

It's not about making America great again. It's about every day trying to be better people and a better nation than we were before. That's our job as Americans. If you don't leave your country BETTER than you found it you're doing it wrong.

She's given you a lot of opportunities here. We're a country of great wealth, great resources, and the freedom to exploit them in a way that can improve things for now, and for the future for me, for you, for everyone... but only if we make a point of doing it. Only if we value what our founding fathers valued... what they outlined in the Declaration of Independence when King George wouldn't listen to their concerns the founding fathers had this to say on July 4th, 1776...

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

We need to listen to these people who are unhappy. We need to pay attention to how we can get better and work to get better. It's what we, as a country, have done for generations. We don't do it quickly sometimes, and we don't do it painlessly sometimes. But we have been a nation of people who strive to be moral, honest, and to help ensure the freedom, liberty, and opportunity for ourselves, and for people all over the world.

We didn't do that by shutting down those within the country who expressed a dissenting opinion. Those times in history were not us at our best. McCarthyism wasn't our best day.

Don't take a criticism as an attack. Take it as an American duty to constantly be better than we were before. Take it as love for the country we all live in. It's okay to love something so much you want to help it be better when you think you can.

I know a lot of people won't like this post. It'll appear political and we, sadly, have reached a point in US Politics where disagreement is seen as unpatriotic, as treasonous, as "if you don't like it get out." That makes me sad. Women didn't get to vote. Black people were originally property, like a suitcase or a walking stick. But we saw that and we tried to be better. It's not unpatriotic to want to be better. It's American.

This picture was taken at my parent's house. I typically go there this time of year to sweat my ass off in Tennessee, see the flowers Mom has blooming everywhere, and eat delicious fried Southern food. I couldn't this year because of the Corona Virus. I wish I could be there. I wish I could have seen my nephew graduate from Navy Bootcamp in Chicago this spring. But, that's not where we are at right now as a world.

These opinions are just mine, they're long-winded as usual, and I doubt anyone will read them if you made it this far Happy Independence Day. Try and do better tomorrow and the next day at making our country better, more free for everyone, and a place the world looks to again for leadership and guidance, and inspiration. That's the America I fell in love with. That's the America I joined the Navy to defend.

Race in 2020 - RIP George Floyd

The country is on fire right now and...

We need to be part of something that happens, something that changes... there's something sick out there. There's something broken. There's something WRONG.

It's... I'm trying to figure out how to say it while I'm writing it instead of planning this out like I usually do. I'm sorry. (Also: Warning... will contain adult language and a link to a video that is definitely difficult to watch)

I grew up in the South. For my first few years of school, I was a minority, little toe-headed white boy. My best friend was Irna. She was black (I imagine she still is actually... it's not something that goes away). We moved to Germany and I went to High School on an army base there. The army is more racially diverse than a lot of America is, and less important than your color is your rank. Yeah, I know, it's elitist. But, hey, the Officer's Club had better video games. My best friend through high school was biracial, in Germany that definitely counted as black. It was pretty white over there then. I haven't been back for a while so I don't know what it's like now. Back in the thirties and forties they sort of got rid of the ones who didn't fit their interior decorating palette...

I went back to Alabama to go to college and Mom remembers me saying early in going back an observation about the cafeteria at the university. I was disappointed to note that there were clusters of colors. There wasn't a lot of mixing going on. That was in 1986. Everybody was self-segregating into black and white tables.

I got to be Supervisor down in Memphis years later, and I had no white employees for years. None, every employee I had was black. For about four hours I had a white lady working for me, but she went to lunch and never came back.

Something I've learned in all that time is that there are two worlds out there. There are two Americas. There's the one I live in where I and another white male middle-aged friend of mine can trespass, park a truck on someone's business property at night and watch fireworks and not get the cops called on us... and then there's the one where I could be on the news being killed because of what I look like.

That's not political. It's not hippie leftist thinking. It's a fact. And it's hard to watch. It's hard to see over and over again. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's a choice. It's a choice for those people who are doing the killing.

I see people saying, "BLUE LIVES MATTER!" during the conversation and I close my eyes and I close my mouth because there are no blue lives. Blue is a job. If you take off your blue shirt and go to the mall you're not blue anymore. You can live your life without being blue if you want to. You can't take off black. It's there. And it is such a different experience from being white.

Yes. It's better than it was. But that doesn't mean it's good. Better doesn't mean right. If you haven't eaten in 20 days and someone gives you a teaspoon of oatmeal a day, that's better... but it's not good. It's not enough.

Just because things are better doesn't mean it's good enough.

I KNOW you would never do something like this. If you would, you wouldn't be reading my blog. But there's more to it than that. I'm not telling myself "Well, I'd never do that so let's talk about the riots."

Fuck the riots. I could give two shits about the riots in this conversation. That's exactly what keeps happening. The trigger gets drowned out by the noise of what follows and we don't address the trigger. We address the noise.

What else can I do? What else can WE do, to help things continue to get better? Just waiting for the old racists who were raised to think "negro" was the good word so let's all just use that one and they can't complain to die isn't working. Our health care is getting too good. They're living too long. We can't wait for all the racists to die for things to get better. Because they're like gay people. Nobody knows why they keep happening but dammit! Every time I turn around there's another homo or racist sitting on the corner with some cause or another. What the hell man? Gimme a break. I just want to go to work, go to a restaurant once in a while, and go home and watch Survivor with my gay husband. Is that too much to ask? (He's the gay one, not me! Straight as hell! LoL)

The thing is, that's all the people who keep getting killed want. Maybe they want Skittles. Maybe they want help when their car breaks down. Maybe they want to go for a walk. Maybe they want to go for a jog. What they don't want is to live in fear of the police. They don't want to teach their kids to be afraid of the police. They don't want to be afraid they're going to be shot if they have a tail light out that they haven't fixed yet.

They don't want to lay on the ground while a police dog chews on them, LITERALLY CHEWS on them so afraid if they move at all WHILE THE DOG CHEWS THEM that they'll be shot. What world is it that we, you and I, have allowed to exist that they overcome literally every instinct to NOT BE EATEN because their fear of the police is worse than their fear of the dog that is literally chewing on them right then? How have you allowed that to happen? How have I? How have we? Because that's the reality for a black person in today's America.

So, what can we do to fix it? Literally, anybody who isn't trying to help in this situation, anybody who says, "Well, they just need to learn patience. Change takes time..." they're part of the problem.

If two poufs can get married when that was UNIMAGINABLE 30 years ago, then a black man should be able to interact with a law enforcement officer without being afraid he's going to die.

That's all I want. I want our police officers to be the good guys for ALL of us. Not just for my Aryan ass. ALL of us. Including my friends who have more melanin and less skin cancer than me and my family.

If you disagree with anything I've said, please unfollow me. I'm really distressed by all of this, more than I should be for as often as it happens. I should be numb to it by now but I'm not getting desensitized to it for some reason. I guess it's because I think it's important. I think it matters and I can't stop thinking about it.

A motif: A disturbing, atrocious motif

While doing some research on Isaiah "Teat" Dorman (The only black man to die at Custer's Last Stand) and Inkpaduta I came across something I keep seeing coming up when someone describes an enemy they want to make sure we, the reader, know is a vile and horrible enemy or that something is truly terrible.

• Inkpaduta is said to have dashed a baby's head out by holding the baby by the ankles and swinging it like a bat. Not all the sources say this is the case, the one I'm linking to, for example, doesn't say HOW the baby's head was dashed in with the stove wood.
• The Cankiri Tree was made by the  Khmer Rouge in Cambodia specifically for the soldiers to do the same thing to babies and small children of their opponents.
• I've heard, but can't find it online, where the Mongols were supposed to have done this as well during their rampage across Asia and Europe.
• Psalm 137:9 even mentions it: Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks

Why am I mentioning it? Well, it's a thing when researching something historic where the accounts are all anecdotal, from letters, from stories told by people instead of pictures or video, to be aware of. If you hear something once, at one place, it may be a thing. But when you hear it over and over again... maybe it's a thing. Maybe it's real, but maybe you need to dig a little bit and make sure you're not just reading something that sounds good.

Where does this fall in that for my Inkpaduta & Isaiah Dorman research? Well, I can't find a reliable source I'm willing to hang my hat on with it so I'm leaving it out. Everybody agrees the baby was beaten to death, but since most of those beat to death in the head were done so with the butt of a rifle it's just as likely that was what happened. Possibly while the infant was laying on the pile of stove wood. I'm not willing to say he swung the kid like a baseball bat.