Monday, November 6, 2023

All the Cool Kids are Genocidal This Year - essay

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

All the Cool Kids are Genocidal this Year

 

In 1925 some 30,000 KKK marched in our nation’s capital to bully the government and the people by demonstrating their increasing power. We read the newspaper accounts of the time and view the film footage and wonder why such an un-American display of hostility to humanity and to the Constitution was permitted by the local, state, and federal authorities who were expected to protect the people.

 

From 1936 to 1948 the German-American Bund perpetrated the same racist and anti-American racket. In 1939 they filled Radio City Music Hall with some 20,000 village idiots yelping and sieg-heiling in obedient, unthinking unison. Nazis appealed to a twisted concept of the First Amendment to cover their demands for tyranny and genocide.

 

Those uniformed and booted thugs who pretended to love this country were, as was known even then, funded, organized, and backed with propaganda through pamphlets and scripts from Nazi Germany’s Abwehr. The American Nazis were so influential that some Hollywood studios allowed themselves to be censored by a foreign power that meant to conquer the world. Again we ask ourselves how this could have happened.

 

More recently we have seen the streets of our capital and other cities infested by yet more racists openly flying the flags of foreign powers determined to destroy the free nations and conquer the world while our weakling Merovingian government entities do little but yap at each other as if they were on The Five and collect their generous salaries and perks. Our streets have been blocked, citizens menaced, historical monuments vandalized, and attempts made to breach the perimeters of the White House for malign purposes. And, like their predecessors, they expect that their demands for genocide will be permitted “peaceably” under the First Amendment.

 

On Monday the contemporary racists blocked access to the Statue of Liberty (how’s that for freedom of speech), and more have closed seaports along the West Coast. Hamas, an organization specializing in the mass murder of innocents and enslaving any survivors, appears at the moment to be in charge of America.

 

Violence, racist threats, vandalism of public and private property, denial of freedom of movement, and hostility to real Americans are sometimes defended as free speech recognized by the First Amendment to our Constitution.

 

This defense is invalid.

 

The First Amendment clearly connects freedom of speech with “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The constitutional convention understood this and for over two centuries thoughtful and well-intentioned people of all nations have understood this too, and honored America for it. It is only in our time that wicked beings have twisted and perverted noble words for the destruction of free people who are sheltered by those words.

 

We the people may and should peaceably assemble at school board meetings, on the courthouse steps, in the streets, and in the assemblies to point out to the authorities whom we have elected our grievances at what we purport to be their failures and requesting that they stop fooling around and get on task.

 

We can stand outside the White House (although the incumbent is usually absent on perpetual vacation) and hold up a sign that notes the fact that the President is usually to be found not in the Oval Office but napping on a beach.

 

These rights are given by God; they are recognized by the Constitution.

 

But when the bullhorns, the spray paint, the rocks, the bottles, the obscenities, the threats, the flags of hostile foreign powers, the violence, and the racist taunts contaminate the free air, then the perpetrators have broken the peace.

 

In a direct line of succession from the Ku Klux Klan and National Socialism is Hamas. Hamas is a racist, genocidal, sexist organization oppressive to women, oppressive to Palestinians and murderous to anyone who disobeys.  Hamas employs hostage-taking, rape, and the murders of children as weapons, and punishes even a hint of same-sex relationships with immediate death.

 

Naturally all the cool kids wear the keffiyeh (for sale on Amazon.com) and hate America. They are blithely unaware of the slavery the Hamas doctrine, which they will never read, has planned for them.

 

Notes:

 

Ku Klux Klan in Washington, 1921-1925 - HistoryLink.org

 

American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund - The Atlantic

 

Pro-Palestinian marchers push against White House fence, vandalize national monuments during protest - Washington Times

 

Doctrine of Hamas | Wilson Center

 

-30-

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Being a 'Possum Must be Rough - an amusing little poem about a 'possum and a dachshund

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Being a ‘Possum Must be Rough

 

A Dachshund’s Night Patrol

 

Being a ‘possum can only be rough

Dragged all over the yard by a dachshund

A furious dachshund half its size

Until it collapses into a faint

 

And unconscious cannot see the absurdity

Of this old man chasing the dachshund all over the yard

Explaining that the ‘possum is a beneficent species

Demanding obedience, and receiving none

 

It’s not at all biblical, but even so

I command the dog to let my ‘possum go

 

(No ‘possums were harmed in the making of this minor marsupial motion picture)

Short Shrift, Long Shrift, Everybody's Gotta Shrift - nonsense

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Shrifts, All Sizes

 

One hears of someone getting a short shrift, of course

But where does he get a shrift? At Amazon?

And are there any long shrifts available,

Fashioned in Sri Lanka or Honduras?

 

I have never felt the need for a shrift

Pajamas are just fine for me, thank you

But if I had one it would need to be

A long shrift, please, since I am rather tall

 

On the subject of shrifts

 

I don’t mean to be a bother or a bore

But can I buy one cheap at the local shrift store?

Saturday, October 28, 2023

The October Squirrel Festival - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The October Squirrel Festival

 

For Jerry Nobles, of Happy Memory

Our Town Pharmacist and a Joyful Friend

 

Squirrels!

 

They’re up the trees; they’re down the trees

They swarm each other just like bees

They’re up the oak; they’re down the pine

They really need a traffic fine

 

Dachshunds!

 

Our outraged pups – they yap and bark

While chasing squirrels all over the park

Dachshunds are usual merry and curious

But with squirrels they are fast and furious

 

But not fast enough

 

Cats!

 

Tuxedo-Cat, all proper and prim

Watches the others with a face all grim

Common Morning Glory

 


Taking a Stab at Cultural Appropriation - a brief essay

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

mhall46184@aol.com

 

Taking a Stab at Cultural Appropriation

On the morning of 28 October I happened to see Crystal Greenberg reporting the news via MSNBC. I noticed on a shelf behind her what appeared to be a Roman gladius, a short military sword.  The handle seemed in appropriate condition for its age but the blade may have been a wooden or plastic replacement to demonstrate the appearance of the original. I infer that Miss Greenberg has a fondness for studying history and was given or legally purchased this ancient Roman artifact. This speaks well of her varied interests.

However, given the political / cultural disagreements of the past few years the question must now be asked: is this an occasion of cultural appropriation? Can Miss Green document her Roman ancestry in order to possess this artifact legally or at least ethically? Is this gladius a looted artifact that should be returned to the descendants of the long-ago people who manufactured it?

Yes, I'm being snarky. Miss Green appears to be professional and ethical in her reporting, and I very much appreciate her obviously good care of an ancient artifact. Indeed, I am somewhat envious; I would like very much to have a gladius in any condition.

But as St. Thomas More says to the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons, "I show you the times." Our country's museums were quite wrong in collecting the remains of First Nations peoples, and although perhaps originally well-intentioned in their displays of clothing, domestic appliances, horse trappings, blankets, and tools it is quite right that now all these things should be return to their proper custodians.

But everything that is manufactured is the product of a culture or series of cultures, a time, and a place. Many pocketknives have been excavated among other debris at the Little Bighorn, evidence of Custer’s soldiers desperately using them to extract the jammed soft-copper shells from their overheating rifles. The presence of these knives in an American museum is just right, but what of a pre-historic bone knife found in a dig in, say, Syria. Whose is it? Who decides? What about a rusty British army pocketknife plowed up in a field in Belgium? What is the cutoff date for determining rightful possession, and what are the geographical borders and boundaries?

Should Turkey return Constantinople (which they are pleased to call Istanbul) to the Greeks?

Indignant accusations of cultural appropriation has become a self-destructive fashion reflecting jealousy and insecurity, and the illogic of the very concept eludes many people. Eyeglasses, for instance, can be argued as having been invented in China or one of the Italian states (Italy didn’t exist until the 19th century) around 1300, and possibly by our busy Romans 2,000 years ago. It does not thus follow that no one but Chinese or Italians should be permitted to wear eyeglasses.

Cultures blend; the dialectic of thesis / antithesis / synthesis is what make civilization dynamic. Without the interplay of music, art, science, literature, engineering, medicine, and all the other practices of cultures enriching each other we would decline into a series of isolated museums of unimaginative peoples clinging to a closed loop of non-progress.

I am happy that Miss Greenberg owns an ancient Roman gladius (the length of whose blade might be illegal where she lives). It is because she is not a Roman that she is more empowered to share another culture around the metaphorical table at which we all may feast.

-30-

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

This Bird in the Hand is Also the Bird in the Bush - photograph of a stunned cardinal, and there is a happy ending

The spouse-person found this poor thing semi-conscious on the front porch. Apparently it had bashed its head against the glass door. I took a pair of gloves and rescued the bird, placing it gently in a rose bush.  The bird did not want to let go of the glove and so I left glove and bird in a safe place.  Apparently the bird recovered, for an hour later it was gone.




"LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt" - poem

  Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   “LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”   Hyperallergic: Sensitiv...