…Be this guy.
I didn’t come up with this. It’s from a meme, and it is one of the best. More timely now than ever.
…Be this guy.
I didn’t come up with this. It’s from a meme, and it is one of the best. More timely now than ever.
Excuse me a moment while I alienate all the southerners reading this blog….
This is General William Tecumseh Sherman on scenic horse ride through Georgia–I got in a bit of a kerfluffle with a southern stranger on Pinterest last year after I pinned the image to the right on the photo saving site, along with a favorite Sherman quote, one I find continually compelling, particularly in light of the penchant for many passionate southerners to look back on the history of the time through the rose tinted glasses of “northern aggression” and all that revisionist bullshit. If nothing else Sherman reminds us that the South started the war.
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.”
I have no love of the man, whose reasoned barbarism in the civil war was surpassed by his cruelty in the “Indian Wars” that followed–but I found the woman attacking me to be intolerable.
It’s Valentine’s Day. Give someone a kiss.
We got hit with about 5 inches of snow yesterday, after meteorologists promised 1-3, the bastards–I’ve got a rant coming about them! Early dismissals for Mrs. Junk and the Junkettes, and the postponement of their final varsity swim meet of the season from last night to tonight–which also means the cancellation of Ma and Pa Junk’s romantic night out. No big deal, though–the team is going to clinch another Section Championship tonight, and it’s Senior Salute. A couple of nice kids I’ve known a long time, who’ve been good role models and better friends to my kids, will be graduating this year. It’s great to see them move on–everyone is headed to good school, with grand prospects, but I’m going to miss them. It wasn’t so long ago they were a bunch of tiny, pudgy, scrawny little things…
And now they’re young men and women, kicking ass and taking names. It’s a pity that the state of the world dictates it’s best for all of us to maintain privacy–I’d love to give them all a shout-out.
We can always go out to dinner another night, right? As for the gift thing, mentioned in an earlier post, I think that I’ve got it covered.
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“If you had ANY idea whatsoever of what he and his men did to many southern families and their children, you would NOT admire this man at all! He and his men were nothing shy of satan himself! He and his men raped women while their husbands were off fighting. They raped and molested the children while they made the mothers watch. They stole our things and shipped them up North via railways and rivers and the ocean. War is horrible enough, but he and his men made it HELL!”
“…because slavery wasn’t cruel? Approximately 10 million captive slaves were killed in bondage in North America, another 1.2-2 million died en route, and as many as 6 million died as an indirect result of the slave trade in Africa. I contend that the numbers of enslaved families were far greater, and the crimes perpetrated upon them far more heinous than the experience of the average southern family. I understand that southern history books teach differently, but Master raped and molested far more efficiently, and far frequently, than did the soldiers in Sherman’s armies. I’m sorry your things were stolen and shipped north–maybe your ancestors shouldn’t have stolen people’s children and sold them. I never see that goddamned rebel flag, the emblem of hate and murder and greed and racism (not a signet of some misguided idea of idyllic, romanticized “southern pride”) that I don’t feel sick to my stomach. The glorious south perpetrated feudalistic genocide and got what was coming to them.”
Opps! Wrong photos.
Yeh, I couldn’t resist that, even though it dilutes and distracts from my argument. What I’d like to see, next time Obama steps off the chopper, is him dramatically throwing his styrofoam cup to the ground, then fervently salute the Marines before grabbing them on the shoulders and kissing them, one after the other, euro-style, first on one cheek then the other. Of course, he’d then not only have all the usual trolls riding him, but the Sierra Club would be all over his ass for the litter.
I learned not so long ago that “you’re either for us or against us.” I can deal with that. I can get behind that. My earliest relatives arrived here in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century from England, Scotland, and Alsace, and as far as I know none of them ever looked back. I certainly don’t fly an Alsatian flag on my lawn, or stick one on the bumper of my ILUV (impractically large utility vehicle). Of course, given the proud martial history of Alsace, I’m not sure it would intimidate anyone, but oh, the beer….
The other thing that occurs to me is that the glorious armies of the Confederate States of America totally and unequivocally got their asses handed to them on a plate…and yes, perhaps they didn’t run, but only because they were left to stumble home shoeless, starving, bloody and broken. Indeed, the fact that southern cultures exists at all is owed to the decision, made by the Northern leadership, to try to repair the nation rather than treat the south as, perhaps, it should have been treated: as the hostile, former homeland of a conquered and bitter enemy–like the way Israel treats Palestine. I mean, if you’re not going to be grateful….
Just remember, this juxtoposition is inherently flawed. The two flags, and two mindsets, are incompatible. One cannot have it both ways–the two are mutally exclusive. Or, as a not all that wise woman liked to say, “America, love it or leave it.”