Tag: Confederates

Rooms on Fire

Good morning! We made it to Tuesday, didn’t we? Yesterday was a bit off for me, not going to lie. But I’m up early, didn’t hit snooze more times than I should, and I am waking up slowly. We’re going to be extremely busy in the clinic today and I am, once again, working an almost full appointment schedule by myself. Heavy heaving sigh. But tis the trials and tribulations of one Gregalicious life, and all one can do is bear it and power through. I do feel less wrung-out than I did yesterday, which is, clearly, a strong and steady improvement over Monday’s horror. It really wasn’t bad, actually, I just felt kind of inside-out all day. Work was its usual, and I stopped to make groceries on the way home–amazing how what I got would have cost about fifty bucks last year but is almost eighty now. Sigh. But we have to eat, don’t we?

We watched another episode of His and Hers last night, which is a very interesting show. I don’t think there’s anyone in the show to root for–they all seem like pretty terrible people, and we are learning everything very slowly, which is interesting but also doesn’t really draw you in because you don’t completely understand. It’s more observing than actually watching, if you know what I mean? It’s very well done, and it’s always fun to look at Jon Bernthal (who should be a bigger star in my opinion). The Beauty drops another episode tomorrow night, so tonight is looking like another His and Hers episode or two. I have to run errands tonight after work–have to go all the way uptown to get the mail and some more prescriptions–and I need to do a load of dishes and a load of laundry, too. Stay focused. I also want to work on the short story I started this weekend. I have a great idea for a story for an anthology that was recently announced, I just have to write the damned thing now. I really need to write something fictional soon–the creative writing muscles are atrophying as I type this.

I was also thinking more about Judgment at Nuremberg and societal guilt some more yesterday–and the subject of “what do the everyday people think” that this movie kind of addresses. The short story–set in a slightly future dystopian Louisiana–has me thinking about all of this sort of thing. I had always believed, since childhood, that the South was utterly and completely racist–and whenever I read a historical novel set during Jim Crow and before Civil Rights that centers heroic anti-racist Southern whites I roll my eyes. (Don’t even get me started on the To Kill a Mockingbird nonsense.) But as I read more actual Southern history, and talk to my dad about it more, turns out the South really isn’t a monolith–there were Southerners who opposed secession and fought on the other side, which sometimes led to horrible atrocities–a distant relative fought for the North, came home on leave, and was skinned alive by the Home Guard (sometimes you supposedly can hear his screams late at night in the back hollers)–aka the Confederate version of the Gestapo. The power structures of the Southern states were in the hands of the racists and the Klan (the argument could be made that they still are) so whites who actually opposed Jim Crow were also afraid. (One of the many striking aspects of Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory was the white family who were in the Klan that the teenaged Black girl worked for; the daughter, who reluctantly helps her, knows Jim Crow is wrong but will only do so much out of fear.) So, were Southerners who opposed enslavement and secession but kept quiet out of fear for their own safety any different from the everyday Germans just living their lives under an evil regime, without the power or safety to do anything? Again, that brings up that morality question–does silent opposition matter when atrocities are being committed?

This is why reading Black authors writing about the South is so important. Progressives are so frequently told we live in a bubble and not reality; but people who don’t read authors from different demographics are also living in a bubble of supremacy and racism that bears no resemblance to reality. (As well as Due, read Wanda M. Morris and Cheryl Head, for a start–and S. A. Cosby is always a sure bet.)

I had a lot of laughs yesterday at the pathetic white people outrage as the casting of gorgeous Lupita N’yongo as Helen of Troy because “historical accuracy.” Just out of curiosity, how many ancient Greeks are actually in the cast? Or Greeks, for that matter? Were you there and can conclusively state Helen was a white woman? Her father was Zeus, who fucked her mother in the form of a swan, and she was hatched from an egg. How many Greek gods are being played by actual Greek gods? Just say you’re a racist piece of shit and miss me with your coward-ass dog whistling.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will be back tomorrow.

I will never stop being awed by how insanely beautiful Henry Cavill is….

Somewhere in the Night

Monday morning and the last few days of 2024; won’t be sorry to see this year end, but also remembering to watch 2025 with a wary eye. Bad years have often been followed by worse years before, after all, and there’s never a guarantee that the new year will be any better. It’s cold here in New Orleans this morning, which didn’t exactly have me leaping out from under my warm pile of blankets. I’ve pretty much decided not to shave until New Year’s, just to see how white my pathetic beard will come in now. Usually it drives me crazy with the itching, but so far so good. Yesterday I ran my errands, did some chores, and then watched Hysteria! on Peacock, which is very interesting and clever in how it’s done (more on that later). Basically, I took the weekend off from pretty much anything except chores and errands, and why not, really? I’m kind of glad New Year’s is in two days; it’s a clear line of demarcation, and I can revamp my life beginning then, while lazily sliding into the new year. LSU plays its bowl game tomorrow, and I imagine I’ll have the football playoffs on in the background on Wednesday while I do things. I don’t really care about them, mind you, but at the same time I have an idle curiosity. I don’t really care about any of the teams that are in the play-offs, nor do I care at this point who actually wins it all this year. My money is on Georgia, frankly, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s someone else. I don’t really care.

And of course, Twelfth Night is just around the corner and we can have King cake again! I’m not sure how much of it we’ll have this year, but I’ll definitely buy one to ring in the new season. Paul wants to lose weight in the new year, and it’s not a bad idea for me to try, either. One thing at a time, though–getting a normal gym routine in the new year is way more important than losing weight for me right now.

I was very sad to hear that Jimmy Carter finally passed over the weekend, at the age of one hundred. Carter is the first president whose term I really remember a lot about (I don’t remember much of Johnson; Nixon I only remember Watergate; Ford wasn’t around for long, so Carter was the first time I actually paid attention to what was going on in the country, and what he was doing as president); I remember his election and how wholesome he seemed. He was the only president about whom I can remember thinking his faith is absolutely real, and absolutely Christian. It was during the Carter administration that my own faith began to flail and fail, and it was also when I realized an actual practicing Christian’s faith isn’t the best thing for a president to have, because ruling through faith simply doesn’t work. I didn’t vote in 1980, the first time I was eligible to vote, and I’ve always regretted not voting that year–I didn’t even think about it, and really, my wasted vote didn’t matter to anything other than to me. I voted in 1984 for the first time, and I’ve not missed an election since. I always liked Carter, to be honest; he was one of the few presidents we’ve ever had who was actually a good, totally unselfish person–and he went on proving that for the rest of his life, dedicating himself completely to philanthropy (walking the walk, not just talking the talk). He also was responsible for the Camp David Accords, the only lasting peace in the Middle East (between Israel and Egypt). Who knows what he might have managed in a second term? (Don’t even get me started on the 1980 election.) So, of course, since Carter was a Christian whose values and beliefs guided his judgment as president, evangelicals despise him1. Go figure.

Not really a surprise there, is there? Evangelicals hate nothing more than Christ-like behavior.

The MAGA war goes on, with a lot of “I didn’t vote for this” takes left and right and everywhere you look…but au contraire, mon frere, this is exactly what you voted for. We tried to warn you for ten years, but…we’re just sheep, right? Or hate America? I don’t know what the latest insult MAGA’s love to hurl at the rest of us might be, nor do I care, but I do know I’ve been sneered and jeered at for decades by the so-called “real Americans”–who are actually nothing more than the rebranded Confederates. (One of the most interesting things to me about The Demons of Unrest was how much sympathy there was for the slave-holding South amongst the Union loyalists; which made me wonder about whether the stories about Union sympathizers in the South might be true and not just revisionist, we weren’t all horrible people after the fact apologia–and something I am going to write about someday.) Lots of leopards eating faces on the right over the last few days, for sure….but the one thing that is going to get me through the next four years (assuming everything doesn’t go to hell and the economy and the country don’t completely collapse) is knowing that no matter how bad things get, I didn’t vote for this, and the pleasure I will derive knowing that those who did are not only suffering the way the rest of us are but they also will have to live with the knowledge they voted for it, gleefully.

I feel so pwned, don’t you?

I was curious to watch Hysteria because I really liked the concept and thought it was clever; it plays off the old Satanic panics of the 1980s (which I really want to write about); the murder of a teenager in the town of Happy Hollow leads a small metal band in the town to pretend to be Satan-worshippers as a way to promote the band. Great premise, right? But there’s so much more to it than that, and Bruce Campbell plays the sheriff, and Julie Bowen plays the mom of the band’s lead guitarist. There are several different plots running at the same time, and the way the writers have the stories/plots cross and how those stories only serve to make the other ones seem real…it’s very, very clever, and hard to get across without spoilers. Part of the pleasures of the show is discovering, bit by bit, just how deceptively clever it actually is. We have two episodes left, so they could easily ruin the whole thing in the last two–but we’ll be watching those tonight and will be getting back to you about the show tomorrow, most like.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely New Year’s Eve Eve, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point, most likely tomorrow.

  1. Ironically, as a born again Christian who liked to talk about his faith, evangelicals originally turned out to elect him 1976. Republicans saw that, and went for the evangelical base–and the country has been the poorer for it ever since. ↩︎