Into the Woods  

The “conservatives” here in Krakkerland are arguing about who is more “conservative.”  It’s like living in an episode of Dumb and Dumber.  We got a guy who thinks the Girl Scouts are a Communist plot.  He represents my neighborhood.  Lots of hide-bound Brit catholic families who made a fair amount of boodle mixed in with the Amish.

I am an old agnostic Dutchman with a fair amount of English.  Out here out on the compound we have chickens and stuff.  But we are legally the knife-edge of the city.  We are the left flank.  It ends here.  God bless you, Colonel Chamberlain.  Ricky tic tic it is 1914.  One hundred years ago.  Guess it is about to go down again.

The Amish and the English generally don’t mix here.  Meine spreche ist schlect, but I speak german to them sometimes with fun results.  I can pass for a German, so generally not regarded as “English.”  I was raised as a Methodist boy, so I can pass for a Christian too sometimes.  But the thing about god, well, it’s complicated.

I grew up in the city.  It was and still is a small town.  But parts of it are city just the same, like Chicago or New York or anywhere else that’s dense.  It’s dense out here, too, just not as much traffic.  God is a question with most of my neighbors.  They understand god about as well as they do war.  One must get along with the neighbors.

The neighborhood of my youth was country back during the Civil War.  Abolitionists we regarded as crazy.  But my family was not here yet.  They came over from Hesse in 1880.  It looked like they were going to be fighting for the Kaiser forever. Enough of that.  My neighbors are in awe of the warrior class, as they have been taught to be.

Gettysburg is a microcosm of what has been happening for the last 200 years, which stretches most of our historical perspective.  In Gettysburg the neighborhood is still pretty much intact, And like my neighborhood, the war perspective has colored most of their view, and for a white man, I am about as colored as you can get.

English language has been our trade for three generations. German was never spoken in our family.  My father grew up speaking up very little, and I grew up speaking none.  I had to learn it later to understand what made the Nazis the not-sees.  We did not know.  Americans should have their nose rubbed in Gettysburg like a bad kitty should.

A magnificent sight it was, too, if it had not been so incredibly stupid.  Since then, “Patriotism” has been taught as a virtue.  Waffen SS were “patriots” too, by jingo, and you have to admire that.  God damn that all to fucking hell.  In polite and public conversation, that is about as close to god as you can get.  Bad kitty!  Bad kitty!  Stinking cat pudding pew.

They sit inside their churches wallowing in this shit.  War is an abomination stinking in the nostrils of any god that has a nose, and that is the problem.  Isn’t it?  Nicht wahr?  They herded people into vaults and gassed them with cyanide, but they were patriots and that stinks like smokestack lightning striking Cemetery Hill.

It started a pandemic brush fire of memes.  My neighbors understand metaphor about as well they do god or war, and one must get along with the neighbors.  These men were not dew-eyed “patriots” as much professional laborers well-practiced at the work and getting along on the job. If they had controlled the means of production, it would not stink today.

So let us explore the flip-side of glory that should have been left in the litter box.  Much of it was, but we are still stepping in it- why is that?  “Conservatives” like to make up something to conserve.  Those boys on the hill in the summer of 1863 were not thinking much about conserving anything except maybe ammunition when they were about to run out.

Now they are all abortion or terrorists or crime or Mexicans all of witch is sure enough real.  The witchcraft is getting them to think it is bigger than it is, Meanwhile global warming is not even on their screen because they can “believe” in an invisible man more than physics.  What is that smell?  Patriotism.  Witchcraft is getting them to raise a stink.

We here highly resolve that these dead should not have died in vein.  And we mined it like crazy and sold it as patriotism which is nothing more than nationalism in drag.  Send in the clowns because the right flank is giving in.  Clowns will make balloon animals for the kids while responsible adults get drunk and make passes at each other.

That should clear up a few things around here. 

Ammunition is toilet paper.  So make yourself a spear here and use literature. That is what you tell people while you are stashing hoards of ammunition and ass paper.  See a pattern here?  Metaphors are becoming flash and dwell among us.  They are cleaning off the shelves so run and get some for yourselves. Not too surprising when the warrior class says write about what a hero I am or I will kill you.

Yassa Boss Massa,. Old Chitlins got that colored perspective with lots of practice.  So they filed in and started throwing banana cream pies. The suffering and death at Gettysburg is framed in terms of bananas throwing banana cream pies.  There is humor in that witch somehow falls flat.  Like throwing shells toward Coontown.

We did not know.  Elizabeth Thorn will become a new hero of Gettysburg like the bananas in the pie fight using ram rods and hand spikes against furious Louisiana Tigers. Rose has the story I want to tell.  Like Otzi, she has transcended time. Like Elizabeth, her mother and teacher appears like a mountain goat.

What is she doing way up here?  

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