No; that doesn't mean that I've started reading this thread: I still make a conscientious effort not to read things even from people I respect if there is even the _slightest_ chance that these things will end in an argument.
I am here for the same reason that I always come here: Concern that what I am about to say may be taken politically. Generally, my concerns are social, but for the past twenty years, I have found fewer and fewer people are able to make the distinction, so why take the chance, right? This is where politics is allowed, within limits, and I think I can stay within those limits.
As all previous posts in this thread, it's going to be a hit-and-run thing: I still don't read this thread; I just really, really want to get this off my chest.
I used to reference "as my grandfather taught me" or "as my grandfather used to say." I don't do that as much in recent years: he's been gone for decades now, and I have my own kids, and I spend my time doing my best to teach them-- and a lot of what I teach them is what he taught me.
I want to preface all of this with a caveat: Do _not_ mistake what I imply when I do share something he taught me. By all accounts-- my own included-- he was an absolute crapfest of a human being: vulgar, abusive, and hateful to his last paranoid breath. By the time I came along-- my father was the last of his kids to have kids-- well, he hadn't mellowed out, really. He got older and slower, but even into his nineties, he was a pretty big man. He just kind of burned out. The southernism is that he started "buying his ticket to Heaven." It's not entirely accurate in the case; he was an atheist his entire life, though despite what I hear from atheist friends and acquaintances, it didn't make him one whit less of a ass than any Christian I have ever encountered, either, and he didn't have the fallback of "this is what my religion demands of me" to fall back on.
All that being said, he really did teach me quite a bit (particularly dodging: a good head weave really comes in handy when someone six-foot-six tries to sucker punch you. Good thing age slowed him down enough for me to learn that without too much ill effect.
One of the most important things he taught me-- I didn't know it then; Hell, I wouldn't know it until... well, let's say "recent events" peeled back a lot of veneers on a lot of people in positions they have no business holding, okay?
it was something he didn't talk about often; I suspect it's because he learned in in World War 2. He talked about a lot of things-- even Korea-- but he didn't talk much about World War 2. This is the image that got me thinking about it today, tough given my work schedule, I'm sure you've all seen it already:
This image is from Canada (I am so sorry: I thought you guys could be safely inoculated from our special brand of entitlement. I guess "polite" doesn't always mean "nice," does it?). All these flags were hung up in protest of mask mandates an in support of a small group of man babies in something called the "Freedom Convoy."
My grandfather and I had made the trip to Fairbanks (it was a regular thing to do in summer-- resupply and shop, etc, while you could drive out instead of having to rely on the bush pilots). We had stopped somewhere (I really don't remember: I wasn't very old, and I was more interested in looking around and seeing stuff than haggling for bags of flour, cans of lard, and coffee). I was staring at a motorcycle in the parking lot. The back seat had an extremely tall sissy bar on it, and it featured a plate on the back that was essentially the Maltese Cross. The fuel tank had a pair of swastikas on it and there were little chrome ziggurats screwed on to various parts of the bike.
My grandfather had finished loading the truck and come to collect me. He stopped next to me and just stared at the bike for a long time. He went so long without yelling at me for something that I was actually getting a little uncomfortable.
Finally, he stabbed one massive finger at the swastikas on the tank, arm straight and rigid as if he were attempting to cast out a demon. "You know what the means, Boy?"
"No, Sir."
He never looked at me. He just kept looking at the swastika. His finger never wavered. "Look at. Look at it for a long time. Burn it into your brain. Never forget that symbol."
After an eternity, he let his arm drop back to his side.
"What's it mean, Gramp?"
"It means you're wrong!" he bellowed- not his usual bellow, but absolute venom vomited from somewhere deep inside him. He paused a minute, and I could see in my peripheral vision how stiff he was; even at his side, his fist was clenched and his arm was flexed tight. Whatever was playing out in his mind finally reached its conclusion and he continued speaking again. "It means a lot of things, Boy, to a lot of people, and to the worst of them, it's a Goddamned holy symbol. but don't you ever forget that what it means more than anything else is that you are as absolutely, completely wrong as it is possible to get. It represents and inhuman level of stupid, Boy-- a level that shouldn't be allowed to exist. I don't care what you ever learn from me, or your parents, or from any school teacher you ever have, what you had damned well better remember any time you pick up a cause-- if this symbol is on your side, you are so goddamned wrong that you need to walk away, change sides, and figure out what's what. If you can't change sides, then you need to spend every day begging whatever god there might be that he kills you, fast, before whatever the Hell is wrong inside you spreads. If you're lucky, it'll be quick and painless, but if you ever agree with anyone using that symbol, quick and painless ain't something you are ever going to deserve."
Sure. It sounds stupid, and it tells a lot more about my grandfather and my "formative years" than I am typically comfortable sharing, but--- well, I don't know that it was ever possible to do him proud, to this very day, at the age of sixty-one (sixty-two in March! Damn, where did my life go? I was supposed to have achieved.... something.... by now), I remember that conversation every single time I see a swastika (even the Native American "good one"). Obviously, today, I know what it means. No amount of prying got any more detail out of my grandfather-- not that there was much; that was never really a safe thing to do, but today... Well, I know what it is; I know what it means; I know who rallies behind it.
And I have to say that while he was right about most of things he taught me, I don't think it is possible to be more right about anything than he was about this.
I weep for the damage that unbridled hate and stupidity is doing to the human race.
Worse, the uncontrolled and unplanned way in which states were added has built in a ridiculous gerrymander, which is a feature rather than a bug, from a certain perspective
