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William Farrar's avatar

This is off topic, but I just received this in my email:

The iconic photograph from 1945 by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press of U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, sat for years on a Pentagon web page honoring the contributions of Native Americans who served in World War II.

Earlier the Air Farce removed, then replaced, the Tuskogee Airmen,

But it has hit home this "war on DEI" is about erasure and white supremacy. MAGA is setting about erasing all history of non white heterosexual male Christians. Period

This is indeed 1933 redux, only in 1933 Germany was in economic doldrums, We are a consumer power house (but not for long,not for long).

Here is the email source: https://www.signorile.com/p/for-trump-erasure-of-history-is-part

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Steward Beckham's avatar

I loved this article. Thank you for sharing.

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William Farrar's avatar

I haven't thought about daydreams since I was a teen, then I would sit bored in class, look out the window and daydream, about what I cannot remember. I wonder if kids today day dream or are they so addicted to the tiny screen that they think about nothing else,except the next DM or tweet.

Of nightmares I can remember nothing, but I can remember dreaming of flying, but that was a half century or ago, maybe earlier.

One thing you said, struck home. Nightmares, we are living in one, as everything around us our institutions, are rights, our safety and security and that of the world of other peoples who live so far from us are suffering and will suffer more.

This makes me wonder if this god so many believe in, is not some kind of psychic vampire

for which Earth is a garden of pain, anguish and misery off which it feeds, not only human anguish, fear and pain, but the cattle that walk into the abattoir, the antelope taken down by the lion, and even the mouse that is killed by my cat.

I wonder.

How can that which is supposed to be merciful, kind, loving and just be so cruel,unkind, unloving and unjust.

I wonder.

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Steward Beckham's avatar

A benevolent god hasn't always been the default for human experience. In so many cultures, gods are viewed as indifferent and even cruel. The presence of pain is what makes joy so valuable. In this country, we are experiencing a period of sadness, change, and cruelty. Periods like these make the stable and more inspiring periods of national life so unique.

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William Farrar's avatar

Thus the longing for the good ole days Steward. However one can tell much about a person when one finds out what they consider the good ole days.

Our government, hence our society is now in control of people who long for the good ole days when queers were invisible, Asians existed only in China town and Chinese Restaurants, Hispanics were in the fields picking fruit and veggies and went home to Mexico every winter, black, brown, and female people knew their place.

Then they experienced joy, the absence of pain., and for them to once again experience joy, they have to inflict pain on those whom they perceive as the source of their pain and which deprives them of the joy to which they believe they are entitled.

But you can experience joy in the presence of pain, For instance the joy of childbirth.

The joy of seeing the face of a loved one, while laying on the sick bed.

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Steward Beckham's avatar

This is a beautiful sentiment, and thank you for sharing. Understanding the need to find joy in such perilous times is crucial. It is the only thing we have. It is also the survival tool all of our ancestors have relied on in precarious moments throughout history. And yes, the above point about dangerous nostalgia is also spot on and my young age makes it difficult for me to understand the power of the environment for people who lived in the immediate postwar decades and how that has created the problems we face today. I mean that for good faith but still destructive nostalgia. Obviously nostalgia for racial exclusion can not be excused or apologized for.

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William Farrar's avatar

Myself I don't believe in the good ole days. The 1950's, 60's and 70's were a horror. It was segregation Jim Crow and worse, Women had no identity of their own. I married in 1960, my wife couldn't even get a credit card without my signature (just like in Muslim countries today), women were expected to be demure housewives running around in pinafore, barefoot and pregnant making sure that Daddy had his favorite hot meal when he came home from doing what ever he did, Probably drinking and carousing.

Folks like you, well you were invisible. Amos and Andy was a popular radio show, and then TV show with men in black face. The actors on the radio talking blackish, were white, and it wasn't even blackish but a stereotype, and queers, well they were way deep in the closet, dead or in prison.

When I joined the service their were WAF's WACs and WAVES and women were either clerks or nurses, Now they are chopper and fighter pilots, but Hegseth is going to ruin even that

That famous flag raising on Iwo Jima photo is being taken down by the Marine Corps because it is "DEI", one of the men in the photo is a Navajo by name of Ira Hayes. The photo of the Bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima has been taken down because the pilot named it for his mother Enola GAY, Black and Female Generals and Flag officers are being fired and replaced with white male toady's.

Transsexuals, post operative, are being cashiered from the service, anything that is not white male hetero normative is being disappeared, probably won't be long before there are -17s's flying over the ocean with a cargo of humans then pitching up to unload, like the Argentinians did with their disappeared.

To your point though, There was one good thing about the immediate post war environment, and even, especially much older than that, was the sense of communiy among minorities, and I mean all minorities, but as they got wealthier, and ecnomically,if not socially, integrated that sense of community has dissipate. it has become every man for himself,

Genetically I am predominantly Irish, both sides, names like Sisk, Neil, Whitehead, Connolly, McCann, McClary,some came here as indentured servants or even white slaves (Oliver Cromwell sent 50,000 to the colonies as slaves), but there was an influx before and during the Civil War because of the potato famine and because Lincoln had recruiters scouring Europe, for recruits for the war.

The Irish and Italians were not considered white by the Nativists and were discriminated against, until they lost their Irish brogue.now sad to say so many descendants are racists like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and something you won't remember the Boston bus boycott riots, when the schools were being integrated in Boston.

Today's Youth even consider the lynchings to be archaic past and irrelevant, but should be aware that they could be the future as well.

In America anything past last month is ancient history, In the mid east, they talk of and remember the crusades as though it was yesterday.

George Santyana was correct: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," emphasizing the importance of learning from history to avoid repeating past mistakes.

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