Yesterday, I made my morning pilgrimage to Sticky Fingers, and bumped into a character (who will go unnamed for now) I used to do organizing with. He was rather polite and friendly with me; odd given that he'd been central to a number of efforts to insulate to local A-circling anticapitalist youth ghetto from accountability for its often overt racism and nakedly racist and colonialist subtleties -- usually by slandering, attacking, and silencing yours truly (or others) when challenges to said practices were mounted.
Yesterday, he was sporting a tshirt in support of Daniel McGowan, an environmental activist from the Pacific Northwest who recently plead out on federal charges resulting from an "ecoterrorism" sting. Granted, the FBI raids on these people and the movements they're a part of are dubious, overzealous, and nearly indefensible given that they're explicitly non-violent, and given the very real violence of the industries they're often targeting (carbon wasn't declared a federally regulated substance for nothing, kids).
But given the low level of confrontation in our morning encounter, I wanted to ask, "So, I'm curious... How many shirts do you own supporting Arab political prisoners? Or Latino detainees? For that matter, can you name an Arab or Latino political prisoner?" But I bit my tongue, opting instead to evade playing into what I'm sure is the caricature such people have constructed of me.
Nonetheless, it begs certain obvious questions. One can nearly hear George Galloway's now infamous Scottish-accented "What a silly person you are!", and his outrage at a SkyNews anchor who publicly mourned Israeli casualties of the invasion of Lebanon last summer, while not being able to name a single member of the Palestinian family that had (just weeks prior) been shelled by Israeli tanks, during a beach picnic in Gaza. The equation is the same: Certain bodies weigh more heavily on our collective conscience than others. You can scour the Brian Mackenzie Infoshop, and you won't find a "Free Dr. Sami Al-Arian" shirt, anywhere. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone there who knows who he is.
Days ago, police uncovered what is being described as the largest weapons cache in "years" in the southeastern US, in the hands of a rightwing militia that Democracy Now! reports was planning attacks on Latino immigrants. The charges brought against these (white) men? Conspiracy to make a firearm, and being a drug user in possession of a firearm (entailing a maximum five-year sentence). Lucky for them, there is no Guantanamo for white people. Were they not white, they'd be hooded, diapered, and air-bound for some Black Ops facility in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia right about now (likely to be tortured and held incommunicado for years), and we wouldn't be reading about it on Yahoo! News.
In this discourse that is so inviolate and sacred for anticapitalist youth-culture, one is sort of left wondering where our similarities stack up... With the Sami Al-Arian's of the world? Or the white-supremacist insurrectionists counting their lucky European genes that they're not buried in some Egyptian dungeon, water-boarded? Either it matters or it doesn't.
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Raids that resulted in the arrests of six alleged militia members and the seizure of hundreds of hand grenades and bullets were "much ado about nothing," a defense lawyer said Friday.
A cache of ammunition that was confiscated — 2,500 rounds — wasn't that large, and the scores of homemade hand grenades that agents seized could be made with powder from fireworks and components readily available in military surplus stores, attorney Scott Boudreaux said.
Even prosecutors say the ragtag group called the Alabama Free Militia had no intended target and was simply stockpiling munitions, said Boudreaux, who plans to meet this weekend with his client, Raymond Kirk Dillard, 46, of Collinsville, a supposed major in the paramilitary group.
"Frankly, I don't think that's a big deal," said Boudreaux. "It seems to be much ado about nothing."
Jim Cavanaugh, regional director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the raids eliminated a huge threat. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremist organizations, said the weapons seizure was the largest in the South in years.
"The arrests and the seizure of such an enormous arsenal are a compelling reminder that extremist groups continue to operate in otherwise peaceful communities filled with law-abiding citizens," said Bill Nigut of Atlanta, ADL regional director.
Five men were jailed without bond on federal charges of conspiring to make a firearm after the raids, conducted early Thursday in four Alabama counties. They included Dillard; Adam Lynn Cunningham, 41; Bonnell Hughes, 57; Randall Garrett Cole, 22; and James Ray McElroy, 20.
A sixth alleged member, 30-year-old Michael Wayne Bobo, was charged with being a drug user in possession of a firearm.
Don Colee, an attorney for Hughes, said all six men were due in court on Tuesday for a hearing where a federal judge will determine whether the government can keep them in custody.
Dillard lived in a small camper without electricity or running water in northeast Alabama, and neighbors said McElroy lived in a makeshift tent nearby. Bobo lived with his parents in an upscale subdivision in suburban Birmingham.
A court document indicates Dillard, unknowingly met with an ATF informant at a flea market in Collinsville about four months ago, told him he was organizing a militia and later accepted him into the group as a sergeant major.
The informant was at the home of Cole, an alleged militia lieutenant, about two months ago when he saw grenades, according to the document, a sworn statement by ATF agent Adam Nesmith. Investigators found more weapons as they monitored the group through the informant and with video and audio surveillance, Nesmith said.
During the raid, agents recovered 130 hand grenades, a grenade launcher, about 70 hand grenades rigged to be fired from a rifle, a machine gun, a short-barrel shotgun, 2,500 rounds of ammunition, explosives components, stolen fireworks and other items.
U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said the fireworks used to make the grenades were commercial grade, not the type sold in retail stores in Alabama.
"Even to possess these fireworks without a license is a felony in Alabama," she said.
[Actual story here]
10 comments:
Joshua,
For the record, the BMI has organized benefits for both Dr. Sami Al-Arian and other arab detainees. There has been posters and flyers on his case in the shop often -- and it would be fantastic if anyone could point the shop in the right direction of info on other arab, or any other political prisoners cases for that matter.
Right now your right, it lacks info on a lot of different arab prisoners. Has some good books on the subject and alot of flyers on various on Black, Native American, and Latino political prisoners.
It's something that you choose to make caring about and working to end injustice a fucking contest - a contest of who is more anti-racist, anti-this, anti-that, pro-this, pro-that then everyone else. You've always done this... and have just as much as a reputation for it - as the reputation you've given the person you saw in Sticky Fingers. This struggle is not a fucking contest, once and for all get it through your head. If you think someone is missing a connection - help them along, help them see the bigger picture, but don't fucking insult and berate them for it.
The thing is you bring up an interesting subject - could more work be done to link the different communuties dealing with state repression? Could the eco-prisoner support community do more work to link up and highlight communities bearing even more of the brunt of political repression? Yes, they could. You have a point. So, why not suggest that - and help suggest some tangible ways to make it possible, instead of just using it to smear someone, to make yourself look better informed - to be honest you just sound like a snob. And people expect it from you, so you keep giving them what they expect.
You know, you think you could just appreciate that someone who you do have a rocky past with was giving you the benefit of the doubt -- and being friendly to you -- maybe try to be friendly back - with out posting on the internet and shit talking being their back.
And lastly, you know where this person comes from - when you met them they were doing solidarity work for Native American Political Prisoners, they still do that work, and have done that work for years... You know that. So, don't sell them so short.
And again, stop making this a contest.
Oh yeah, and thanks for blogging about who you saw in sticky fingers wearing a t-shirt - when you could have been educating all of us about the very very important cases of all the arab prisoners you profess to know about.
I want to take this as seriously as I can. That involves taking seriously that the BMI (or any of the mafia that runs it) itself takes seriously the themes you've touched on; a charitable premise, as far as evidence is concerned. I say that with really zero judgment, hard as that may be to believe. But for the sake of fairness, we can suspend reasonable scrutiny of the manner in which anecdote and unqualified claims have routinely supplanted actual practice where overall characterizations are concerned, here.
Certainly, as far as my own claims are concerned, it's not a contest. A contest both implies and necessitates contestants; a versus. I've deliberately (and repeatedly) used the word we in virtually every arguably indicting claim I've made. Now, that doesn't per se rule out the antagonism that would characterize a contest. However, the fact that the we is not set against a they or them... Well, that does tend to describe something altogether non-competitive. This is especially the case, given that dear friends of mine staff the BMI on a weekly basis.
I realize that's much more complex and thus more difficult to pick apart or squeeze into a pre-shrunk caricature, but that's not really salient, now is it? Or is it? After all, I've been painted just shy of arguing we should eat the poor as finger-food, for suggesting that perhaps a critique of colonialism entails something more nuanced than simply rubber-stamping "anarchist" on every cultural practice (indigenous or otherwise) we'd like to (wait for it...) appropriate. You know, "anarchist"... "heathen"... Apparently, the operative colonialism is not the act of representation, or supplanting our vocabulary for theirs (or the rich European history, therein). It's (yawn) instead disingenuously decried in opportunistically playing on the illiteracy of self-styled contemporary anarchists and referring to 19th century Ukrainian Jews and Slavic nationalists as "dead white guys" (nevermind that when the Third Reich came knocking, both the aforementioned were on the list).
I mention such things because they foreground a rather glaring contradiction you omit (perhaps deliberately): The folks responsible for such crass practices and declarations (which constitute far more of a crude and competitive reductionism) live and breathe, in your midst.
Fact is, what anyone in the scene in which such things matter enjoys in the way of a reputation is utterly arbitrary and contingent upon the given interests of whoever's invoking it at that given moment. One of the most celebrated coveted "identity radicals" in said scene once (with a straight face) criticized Bakunin for failing to articulate a politics around transgender identity or the experience of the disabled... And said character wasn't laughed out of the room, despite that it's about as earnest and reasonable (not to mention grounded in some semblance of historical chronology) as me denouncing Fanon for failing to have an opinion on the second Terminator movie. Self-congratulation is the modus operandi of a dizzying cast of proverbial "stars" in this loose peer group, and it goes unnamed 99.9% of the time. And 90% of the time, that's down to the average person lacking the ability to actually read (or discern even the most nakedly obvious of details) with their lips so firmly planted on someone's ass.
At the Providence Anarchist Bookfair, I chatted up one of the coordinators of a panel there on the Green Scare, and was quite candid about the manner in which the entire discourse therein draws into relief the racial character of solidarity in self-identified anarchist communities; I pointed out that more troubling than the lack of concern for actual Arab and Muslim prisoners is the overwhelming implication that we have nothing to learn from them and their experience. Even in the context of an organized campaign that takes ownership of its limitations, and struggles on the behalf of specific individuals, experiences, or whathaveyou... It seems intuitive that other communities facing similar (indeed vastly more concerted and brutal) State repression might have some insight or perspective to offer. The Green Scare discourse nearly categorically rejects this assumption, in a manner that is nothing if not (perhaps passively) arrogant and typical.
DC's participation in this dynamic is particularly egregious, given that in many of the most high-profile examples (Gitmo, ICE raids on Latinos, extraordinary rendition, etc) people on the business end are being defended and represented by huge, high-profile organizations (Amnesty, ACLU, etc) who have headquarters in the District. In fact, there are anarchists working as anti-Patriot Act organizers for the ACLU and Gitmo lawyers at Amnesty -- people who attend things like NCOR. And no one's ever approached them about contributing to a Green Scare event. No one's invited them to give a talk. No one's attempted to bring them into the fold of the conversation -- despite that they're not hard to find.
How do I know? Because these people are friends of mine. When I began seeing flyers for Green Scare and SHAC7 events in DC, I asked them if anyone was hitting them up. Their answer was "Silly Kadd, if it isn't happening to white people, it isn't happening." I guess it's a competition for them, too.
Again, I realize conjecture is convenient at these points. It's easy to invoke the tyranny of what "everyone knows." Of course. I've "always done this... and have just as much a reputation for it." Given that the people actually working in these movements are the ones who highlighted this pattern of foregrounding white prisoners for me, whether or not I so much as exist is pretty moot. Whether I bother to get out of bed today, this is the feeling of people doing the work.
During my conversation in Providence with the Green Scare organizer, I offered to tag-team with them on setting up a panel for the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, which would feature Green Scare organizers, alongside intensely qualified and experienced organizers on State repression of Muslims and Arabs -- the idea being to explore what these movements might have to offer each other. The offer was met with (at least a token) enthusiasm. I never heard from them again.
In the summer of (I think) 2003, a number of District children were turning up in ER's with lead poisoning, due to astronomical lead content in the tap water being pumped into their homes. A subsequent inquiry determined that the District water authority knew about this problem, and ignored it to save less than half a million dollars. An EPA employee had even been canned for blowing the whistle on the issue, well over a year before. It was the headline issue for a few months, around here. At that exact same time, a new "anticapitalist" group was forming to organize around specifically economic issues in DC; usually holding their meetings in the livingroom of the house in which I lived. I noted to a few of the folks involved that the lead issue was a homerun; they could go to community forums and submit op-eds and be as radical and explicitly anticapitalist as their little hearts desired, and no one would discount them, because it was exactly the analysis being applied (in spirit) anyway. And they would've been embraced by the community at large. Instead, they completely ignored the issue and opted to give away dumpstered food outside the Safeway on Columbia, to discourage people from "buying food."
Similarly, when transgender activists I'm quite close to queried me about why the BMI table at NCOR featured tshirts reading "Make Up is Ugly" (they found it shockingly crass and insulting), I brought it up with the collective, as I was still a member. It was roundly dismissed. And in fact... They very character I was describing in my last post here said (I remember it quite clearly), "Well, half the women who say something about it are into it, and half are opposed. It's just not that simple, you know?" -- My response was to point out that he'd just totally erased trans people from the equation (who had brought this issue to us, to begin with) and that the Civil War was a 50/50 split, as well.
When (just a few summers ago) community groups in Shaw were coordinating a "Shaw Freedom Day" that involved workshops on what gentrification for the neighborhood will mean, how to fight it, and what the economics of it look like at a church two blocks from the infoshop, my best friend was still seriously involved in the space. So, I queried him about whether or not the space was sending anyone to it (much less flyering for it). His response was that no one there knew about it, and it wasn't "on [their] radar." Wasn't on the radar. You know, the radar that picked up the Wild Roots anti-civilization tour.
So much for my eschewing all the hand-holding and constructive engagement you refer to. While we're at it, so much for it being a matter of insufficient follow-through on the part of local anarchists; it's rather a matter of an extraordinarily warped and meticulously insulated set of priorities and discursive boundaries. Again, and again, and again. As to what labor I undertake to build bridges between the communities I encounter in my work, and the anticapitalist youth culture from which I've been a common-law ex-pat for well over two years now... You know precisely zero. Perhaps it's down to the work itself eating up the time it would require for me to advertise such things. More than likely, it's down to something that proves my point entirely: How resonant is this "reputation" you speak of with Palestinians or other Arabs I work with (or anyone in working in those movements)? You don't know. And the reason you don't know is that (whether you acknowledge it or not) these people are beneath you and the characters/institutions you defend/whitewash. Their experience speaks precisely nothing to you. Their voices add nothing to the stories you're so eager to repeat (or tell yourself). They offer too little in the way of bolstering your standing with those whose approval you compete for.
Fact is, when our mutual acquaintance chatted me up at Sticky Fingers, I was perfectly polite and congenial (if less than enthusiastic about conversation with a guy who publicly slandered me when it suited him and just a month or so ago publicly threatened a woman at NCOR who got in the way of his assclownery). But you know... Who would ever think that a guy who co-manages a rather lucrative client-based business knows anything about tact? All of a sudden, the narrative upon which your entire comment rests appears rather selective (you know, like leaving out that the events for Sami Al-Arian at the BMI were coordinated by outsiders, who needed a space... not young Carhart warriors with their finger on the pulse). But the story as you'd like to tell it has me spitting in someone's face, on account of my being out of the loop on how earnest the local sandbox is.
My original post wasn't lobbing an accusation. It was asking a question; examining the volatility of a particularly troubling ambiguity and an evident (sub)cultural reality. What I was taking to task were reference points, consciousness, positionality... Things that indicate an orientation, and the nuances of that orientation when cast in a larger context. More importantly, I was honing in on an ambiguity that can be clarified. I don't see any reason to believe any die has been cast or that it's doomed to remain what it is. One could (in theory, at least) recognize the (sub)cultural patterns at work, and seek to rework them to better approximate the best intentions you discern therein. But if it's a matter of waiting for the right angel to descend and set everyone on the right course, I'd advise against holding your breath.
And for good reason, I included myself in that ambiguity.
Let me just take a moment to remind you of how many people in this city would love to beat the shit out of you.
Let's hope that happens soon. I'll hope for it. You watch your back.
Wow: REading through this post I was thinking "gee, there really is something on both sides of this". I think the tendencies Kadd is on about are real, are important, and need to be taken far more seriously on the anti-authoritarian left than they are. At the same time, I thought there might well be a point in saying that Kadd's post on this was less than helpful, a bit snarky and unproductive.
Then ANONYMOUS threatens to beat him up! (Or suggests that some group will.) Could there be a better reduction to absurdity of the caricature anarchist youth than this? Ludicrous macho posturing that is too fucking cowardly even to threaten under their name? Wow.
Of course it would be patently unfair to paint everyone with the brush of this pathetic shit. The first Anonymous may have been ignoring things, as Kadd says, but certainly tries to engage with real issues, to talk about how to do work in a more constructive manner. So I'm not condemning any subculture on the basis of this outburst.
But here's what I am saying: we all know that there is much too much fetishizing of macho posturing and violence on the anarchist left. And we also know that this post is the sort of thing that deserves to be roundly, unequivocally, and openly condemned by anyone who is remotely serious about building a better world. So while I'm not condemning anyone other than the shit who posted, I am pointing out that anyone in this community now has a new responsibility. Real radicals watch out for each other and Kadd has quite a community of radicals who care about him. Anyone planning on actually engaging in violence should take that into account.
I'll await the critique from within and a good measure of my respect for various groups will depend upon that critique.
Mark Lance
(The cops know who I am, so you might as well also.)
Well since Mark stole my thunder and hit most of the obvious and reasonable points...
I know imagined violence makes for a nice vicarious fantasy camp. And I realize it's easy to bandy about such chest-puffing, loaded phraseology when that's par for the course and generally endorsed in a world so painstakingly insulated from actual violence; one in which real physical force exacted on the body is so mystified that the sensory and material realities of it factor nil into the spectacle erected in such vocabulary. Just as we often assume that the people around us are not walking wounded, carrying traumas we speak of only in the abstract, it's likely just as simple to speak of violence in certain abstract ways, assuming that its currency will not be undermined by its transmission to someone for whom it is not an abstraction.
So, allow me to offer a bit of demystification.
Just ten years ago -- after confronting a HC "crew" (that hovered around the then newly opened Jinx Proof Tattoos) over their sexual harassment of my housemates, their use of baseball bats on fifteen year old kids at shows those women had booked, the threats of physical violence (very similar to yours) left on our answering machine, and the gift of a decapitated, disemboweled dog left on our porch...
I was jumped by about ten guys, in a well-planned, coordinated ambush that involved stationing fellas to prevent anyone from pulling them off of me. One of them was taking axe-swings at me with a metal crutch. As the last of them was dragged out of the room (a known gun-toting dealer), I was threatened with my life. I walked out that night with a broken rib, and a reddish-purple camouflage covering the entire lefthand side of my body (which hung around a good month - I used it to produce a rather creepy nude self-portrait for my photography class).
Less than two years later, in Chicago, a tourmate and I were jumped by four large thugs. Pushing myself up off the ground, I took a steel-toe hiking boot to the underside of my nose, and probably would've seen much worse were it not for two bike couriers that rolled up. I played the remaining shows with a bloodied, skin-cracked, swollen face.
Two years after that, I was hogtied for 10-12hrs at a time, subjected to cold-cell torture, and lightly beaten by Philly cops (others got much worse) during the week I spent in jail on the heels of the RNC protests.
I spent the first half of last summer walking dogs and enjoying a fairly vigorous sex life, with a fractured collar bone. And in the second half, I helped stage a massive funeral procession to the Israeli Embassy just hours after taking out the rear passenger window of a car with my lower back; replete with bleeding glass lacerations, bruised ribs, and a lower back injury that's still with me.
So, whatever you think I ought to "watch [my] back" for, it better be good. Cause the (thus far) fully banal qualities of physical pain have not thrown much of a wrench in my game. And despite the best efforts of an alcoholic wife-beating stepfather, the DC Barfight Crew, Wicker Park thugs, Philly's Finest, and motorists down on their turn-signals (none of which entailed any self-defense on my part)...
I'm still here. Apparently, pissing in your sandbox.
In fact, if the backlash such an act would assuredly invite would hasten the decline of circling the A in "assclown" around here, I'd happily take one for the team.
It's frankly embarrassing to ponder that such unrepentant stupidity lurks in this end of the local political spectrum, with apparently zero self-consciousness, and only a negligibly greater modicum of accountability.
Kadd, I am very sorry someone has threatened you with violence. No matter what differences you have with people the threat of violence is NOT acceptable. This saddens me very much and I hope no ill will finds it's way to you.
I hope whoever wrote this realizes that violence is painful, sad and spiritually bleak. I am very sad that you would wish pain on your worst of enimies rather then hope for their well being and enlightenment.
I wish all of you peace and love and the calmness of heart and mind. Despite our differences we are all responsible for the peace of every living creature and we should work towards that peace.
Personally, as a bitter as fuck latino who does not have much trust nor faith in white activists, I think more white people should be in prison so that there is no more room for minorities (I'm kidding, but only in part. Naive yes, because they would just build more prisons for space.)
White people should "sacrifice" their freedom more often, it seems to bring much more media attention and society seems to be "affected" on a greater degree when an "angelical" looking white man is sent to prison for some mickey mouse action like setting an SUV on fire, chaining his skinny ass to a tree or dressing up in black and thrashing a predominantly latino and african american neighborhood whil protesting a G8 meeting taking place thousands of miles away.
As Kadd said, if that wack job who showed up at Malcolm X park had been middle eastern or asian, or black, or latino he would have been shipped off to Guantanamo, no questions asked, no fox 5 coverage, no trial.
As for the asswipe who wants to beat some one up for having a difference in opinion... why not do something useful with your rage?
Like go fight Dick Cheney, that would make for some great primetime coverage. Maybe you'll get lucky and his pacemaker will give in and he won't be much of a match, otherwise you better start training 'cause that Dick looks like he can throw. You better pray to Kropotkin his daughter doesn't step in, she's tough.
Actually, better yet, why don't you engage in some meaningful work with the immigrant and minority communities in D.C.. Those raids are not even close to stopping and you stinky dreadlocked crass-patch-on-the-ass activists are no where to be seen.
Kadd, he's just a dude who rides his bike and walks dogs for a living. Dick Cheney man, he's a "real" menace.
Get a life, pinche cabron
Joao,
I'm moving to Dupont come June 1st. We need to hang out, fool. Like, regularly. There will be coffee, there will be bike rides, and there will be dick and fart jokes.
I miss your goofy ass.
Wow! Can't say that I miss the usual batch of politically correct, sanctimonious radical politics that so dominates D.C. and East Coast activism. I'm so glad to be part of a community that values all of the contributions of its members and doesn't go around dismissing the interests and actions and activities of activists because of their color or whatever.
It's extremely silly to make generalizations about anarchists or local activists who are involved with Green Scare solidarity activism. If these people are like others that I know who are involved with the same activism, they are probably involved in support campaigns for a wide range of people, doing everything from working with support groups to writing letters and wearing t-shirts. It's a bunch of bilious nonsense to dismiss Green Scare activists as a bunch of white anarchist deadheads.
I don't know who is currently involved with the BMI, but it's ridiculous to assume that the infoshop volunteers are going to know about every event happening in the community. I'm pretty plugged into various communities around Kansas City, but I'm always finding out about new events and groups. I can't attend all of these events for some basic reasons: I don't always have the time or the gas money to get to these events. Now if BMI volunteers weren't involved in ANY neighborhood events, you might have a point, but I suspect that this isn't the case.
Colonialism? WTF?
Chuck Munson
Le Sigh
Straw men, and their relationship to the proverbial Idol of the Tribe... Has there really not been a thesis done on this, yet? Lordy.
Really, if one can go on record that there's a blanket dismissal of Green Scare activists anywhere in anything I've said, then one lacks any substantive self-consciousness about supplanting what is with what is convenient to a particular (and evasive) argument. And to bolster such a self-referencing strategy with one's suspicion about what people over a thousand miles away are doing just makes it all the more embarrassing for the reader.
And again, since you seem to have overlooked it entirely the first time I wrote it down -- Organizations like the ACLU, Amnesty, etc. aren't obscure little upstarts holding meetings over Turkish coffee in some back-alley off North Capitol. Given the profile of said groups, and the prominent role they've played in defending and advocating for Gitmo detainees and victims of CIA rendition (for example), the argument that one can't have one's finger on the pulse of every worthy project under the sun doesn't really cut it.
Of course, all the effort that's gone into speculation, insult, conjecture, and even outright threats of physical violence over some blog no one particularly cares about... Instead of (say...) substantively examining the contradictions at hand (and perhaps actually lifting a finger to do something about them) only serves to prove my point about priorities; to say nothing of the highly racialized quality of the frontiers at which they quietly fizzle out.
Honestly, at various points, even conjuring the will to argue these things in the company of people with such a naked disdain for that little thing we've come to refer to as evidence tends to bare a creepy resemblance to taking up an argument about homosexuality with someone whose position begins and ends with "God said so."
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