Small Town Iowa - Know Your Enemy

Just a day or two removed from our trip to Iowa for the holidays. A good trip, cold, but family was nice. And I didn't get in any awkward conversations about religion or politics with the in-laws. I played nice. Wanted to get over to Chi-town to see some of gang, but unfortunately it was not to be. Weather, health and time conspired to prevent it.

I got quite a bit of reading done, Hitch 22 by Christoper Hitchens (review soon to come) and Zero History by William Gibson.

 I went walking around town just about every day. Osceola is not so different from where I grew up (Red Oak) or any other small Midwestern town. The small town checklist? Less than 5,000 people, little industry, a ridiculously large Wal-Mart, Indian gaming, decaying but interesting old buildings:

Largely white populations (Osceola 95.73%), a sinking economy with little hope for the future. Deprived of a longtime enemy,

they are forced to look for new ones. But, instead of looking at that Wal-Mart or casino on the edge of town ... those things that emasculate the community and render it generic and dependent ... they look elsewhere. Iowa, at once encouraging because of the law to allow gay marriages, at the next moment discouraging because of the drive to repeal the judges that made it happen.

And small town Iowan looks at immigrants. You don't have to go far to hear the phrase "damn Mexicans". (I didn't have to leave the house). It's too bad, but perhaps destined to happen. Osceola is named for the Seminole of the same name,

. Osceola was captured under a truce flag and died soon after,

To quote BSG, "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."

"From a certain point of view our real enemy, the true troublemaker, is inside." -- Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama quotes (Dalai Lama, b.1935)

W.M.A.

dbackdad: Weird, but not scary, feeling being only white person on train back from downtown LA. More whites need to step outside their "safe" cocoons.
2:23 PM Jun 25th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

W.M.A. by Pearl Jam

he won the lottery when he was born
took his mothers white breast to his tongue
trained like dogs, color and smell
walks by me to get to him
police man
police man
he won the lottery by being born
big hand slapped a white male american
do no wrong, so clean cut...
dirty his hands, it comes right off
police man
police man
police stopped my brother again ...
jesus greets me...looks just like me...

"He pointed at me and said, 'that one won't stand up.' The two policemen came near me and only one spoke to me. He asked me if the driver had asked me to stand up? I said, 'yes.' He asked me why I didn't stand up, ... I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. So I asked him: 'Why do you push us around?' And he told me, 'I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.'" -- Rosa Parks

Free enterprise as morality?

John Stossel on FOX News this week:

"[I]t's time now to repeal" the Public Accommodation section (of Civil Rights Act), "because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

"What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history." -- Ayn Rand, "Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal"

Bill Moyers on Fresh Air:

"... I think the most important thing that we can do is to continue to treat Americans as citizens, not just consumers. If you look out and see an audience of consumers, you want to sell them something. If you look out and see an audience of citizens, you want to share something with them, and there is a difference.

Libertarians need to stop praying at the altar of Ayn Rand. Do you honestly believe that businesses would stop discriminating because the market told them to or because it was right? Even William F. Buckley didn't agree with this, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow," Mr. Buckley said in 2004. "I was wrong: federal intervention was necessary."

William F. Buckley Jr., in an essay written in the 1960s, directly confronted the libertarian/Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. "The conservative's distrust of the state, so richly earned by it,"Buckley wrote, "raises inevitably the question, how far can one go?" He went on to warn against those "whose passionate distrust for the state has developed into a theology of sorts, or at least into a demonology; to which they adhere as devotedly as any religious fanatic ever attempted to adhere to the will of the Lord."

Political Song of the Day - Prejudice by Soulfly

Shame of all nations
What seeds do we plant in an infant's mind?
Seeds of destruction
And don't you trust their kind?
This hate is deep-rooted, get rid of the weed
Destroying the harvest
Of peace that we need

Prejudice
Shame of all nations

We got to live in the same neighborhood
When you take a man's life it don't mean that you're good
Same blood runs through your veins
Your hate proves youre insane
See a man's face but you can't see his heart
Don't even know him but you tear him apart
Them kind of things, they're just killing off the Earth
Madness, mayhem, we must desert...

Prejudice
Shame of all nations
Breeding hate, don't need no segregation

If dirty people are all I can see
Then in their eyes the same dirt covers me
Take off the blindfold, it's time to enlighten
Come out of the wickedness, step out of the night
One man's agony is another man's joy
For self satisfaction we're prepared to destroy
One man, one earth and one destiny
To kill Satan and give God the glory...

Prejudice
Shame of a nation
Breeding hate, don't cause annihilation

For real

Aryan Outfitters

I saw this photo essay on Mother Jones' Magazine's website (click image or link to view):

Aryan Outfitters


I know it's not right to draw a larger meaning out of something that is anecdotal and not necessarily representative of our whole society. But at the very least, the photos and the people represented in them are illustrative of a few things:

- There is no apparent understanding of irony by these people. How do you perform the selfless act of caring for a disabled grown child while also actively supporting an organization that preaches hate and has in it's past preached violence and even killing?

- Religion gives a cloak of righteousnous to those who preach hate. They feel the bible both instructs them and supports them in doing this. The pictures of "Mrs. Ruth" blessing each robe is beyond the pale.

- Raising your children to hate is borderline child abuse.