{"id":140461982,"date":"2024-01-17T13:30:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T13:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=140461982"},"modified":"2024-01-17T13:30:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T13:30:31","slug":"a-question-of-tactics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=140461982","title":{"rendered":"A Question of Tactics"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&#8220;Our vices and our degradation are ever arrayed against us, but our Virtues are passed by unnoticed. From the press and the pulpit with have suffered&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; Editorial Board of &#8216;Freedom&#8217;s Journal,&#8217; 1827<\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/shipwreckedsailor.substack.com\/p\/the-internet-is-a-nazi-bar\">Nazis unwelcome: here\u2019s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon<\/a>. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@hamish\/note\/c-45811343\">Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie<\/a>. I might forget\/get bored and stop. Not today though!<\/em><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is becoming abundantly clear that these posts, if they are to have any coherence and be of any readable length, are going to leave out a lot. I happened to read the Dunbar-Ortiz and half of the Kendi\/Blain and wrote 90% of what follows \u201cjust to get my thoughts out.\u201d These are dense and vital texts, please know that everything I write while reading feels woefully inadequate. But whaddayagonna do, Corlew? Stop now? <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/shipwreckedsailor.substack.com\/p\/a-little-history-project\">Part One<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/shipwreckedsailor.substack.com\/p\/friday-links-god-said-we-could-put\">Part Two<\/a><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read This Week<\/strong><\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/47d8400a-049c-4a0b-8e69-c7f22cb2da8d.heic\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A People\u2019s History of the United States <\/em>by Howard Zinn: \u201cAs Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs,\u201d \u201cWe Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God,\u201d \u201cSlavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom,\u201d and \u201cThe Other Civil War\u201d<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Four Hundred Souls<\/em> edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Part Six (1819-1859) and Part Seven (1859-1864)<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>An Indigenous People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: \u201cFour: Bloody Footprints\u201d and \u201cThe Birth of a Nation\u201d<\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Thoughts<\/strong><\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Better Git It in Your Soul\" width=\"790\" height=\"593\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E7hoX7golZI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first chapter in Part Six of <em>Four Hundred Souls<\/em> is by Robert Jones, Jr., and focuses on another name we should all know: Denmark Vesey. A quiet carpenter who had purchased his freedom and a man \u201caround whom white people felt safe. So safe, in fact, that he rented or owned a house in the heart of Charleston\u2026,\u201d Denmark noticed that Black people made up 77% of the Charleston population. This was the early 1800s. He also thought, after white people shut down the AME church he belonged to, that Black people could \u201craid the banks and artillery storages and leave almost everyone of its white citizens, young and old, massacred in the streets, then escape to Haiti.\u201d He recruited nine thousand people to this cause, but was betrayed and executed in 1822. <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second chapter is by Pamela Newkirk, who writes about the U.S.\u2019s first Black-owned and -operated newspaper, <em>Freedom\u2019s Journal<\/em>. You might remember them from the epigraph. Independent newspapers back then were kinda like today\u2019s blogs, and I am grateful to live in an era where I don\u2019t have to make my five-year-old hand-deliver these missives to you all every Wednesday and Friday. But it\u2019s impossible to overstate how important a Black newspaper in the 1820s would be. Two dozen similar publications popped up in the next couple of decades. In their lead editorial (which the epigraph is taken from), they explicitly challenge depictions of Black people in media, even from well-meaning progressives: \u201cMen whom we equally love and admire have not hesitated to represent us disadvantageously, without becoming personally acquainted with the true state of things, nor discerning between virtue and vice among us.\u201d An early volley at Dr. King\u2019s \u201cwhite moderate,\u201d and an important reminder that representation is not enough. People need space and audience to tell their own stories.  <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here we have two tactics against white supremacy: violence and persuasion. Bashing skulls in or winning hearts and minds. Now, being a family man with a blog and three figures in my checking account at most times, I know where I\u2019m at. Writing is my chosen field, which means I happen to believe in its power. I believe literature\/pop culture\/movies\/etc play an underrated role in molding our imaginations, as does news coverage (no matter how much or little you follow the news). Movies and Kurt Vonnegut influenced me to believe I am unfit for combat, for instance. Anyway. That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m against <em>all<\/em> political violence. It\u2019s just, of all the <em>Big Lebowski <\/em>characters, I\u2019m probably Smokey. It\u2019s fine, I sleep very well with my pacifism and emotional problems.  <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Big Lebowski (clip8) - &quot;You&#039;re entering a world of pain&quot;\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1BbOZkwWYY0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then again, as I was reading those early Part Four chapters of <em>400 Hundred Souls<\/em>\u2014buried under a blanket on my couch in -7 degree weather, a reminder of my material comfort\u2014I was also reading this <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/01\/14\/magazine\/andreas-malm-interview.html\">New York Times <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/01\/14\/magazine\/andreas-malm-interview.html\">interview with Andreas Malm<\/a>, the Swedish author and climate activist. You\u2019ve read before that it\u2019s generally the policy of this blog not to engage with the <em>Times<\/em>, but exceptions are made for Wordle and interviews with people who write books called things like <em>How To Blow Up A Pipeline<\/em>. He argues in favor of things like property destruction and direct assaults on fossil fuel company operations as a moral good. And how can he be viewed as wrong, when <em>the fate of the planet <\/em>is at stake, and money\u2019s still the loudest voice in the room? <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What about people like Nat Turner and John Brown, what about the Quakers, what about the endless independent newspapers (the 16th-20th century version of blogs), what about all the people who <em>at the time<\/em> opposed slavery or expanding the U.S. beyond the Appalachian mountains? When the soul of a nation was at stake? Well, money was still the loudest voice in the room. Hey, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/W_MwfSAq9Kw\">Quincy<\/a>. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Soul Bossa Nova - Quincy Jones Sweet Charity 1969 #soulbossanova #quincyjones\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6EKspREtVZQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How does a pacifist (a citizen of the state) respond to the state (those with a monopoly on violence) acting immorally? Will South Africa\u2019s U.N. case against Israel and the U.S. have any enforceable action (let it be said that I hope so)? Is it necessarily true that the biggest guns always win? Chapter Four of the Dunbar-Ortiz, \u201cBloody Footprints,\u201d traces the lineage of European colonialist through the Crusades, the Reconquista of Spain, the colonization of Ireland, and the colonization of the Americas. Does the enemy only respond to violence? The Biggest Cheerleaders Of Western Civilization On X Formerly Known As Twitter will tell you that they have empire-building perfected, honed to a sharp practice over centuries. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/b87e03fc-f6ba-4aee-b42d-1b65df9031e8_294x171.jpeg\" alt=\"Emperor Palpatine's return in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, explained -  Polygon\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking of railing against empire, Zinn also talks about how leading histories mostly use newspapers as sources when they say things like \u201call of the US cried out for war with Mexico\u201d or whatever. Think about the <em>NYT<\/em> manufacturing consent for Israel\u2019s genocide or Claudine Gay\u2019s removal today. There were working people\u2019s riots against the annexation of Texas in New York, Boston, and Lowell. Guess these were the days before unions, because \u201ca convention of the New England Workingmen\u2019s Assocation condemned the war and announced they would \u2018not take up arms\u2026\u2019\u201d Horace Greeley, writing for <em>The New York Tribune<\/em> in 1846 penned this banger: \u201c\u2026we can conquer and \u2018annex\u2019 their territory; but what then? Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such extensions of empire by the sword no lesson for us?\u2026<strong>Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?<\/strong>\u201d Bold there mine, because, I mean, yeah. Life sucks and we\u2019re all going to die, do you really want to make war? We have guitars and kayaks and movies and legal weed and <em>you want to make war?<\/em><\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/36407ff8-a477-479c-b0f6-9a5ca0ba1554_2740x3809.jpeg\"\/><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Other Highlights: <\/strong><\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"DJ Shadow - Nobody Speak feat. Run The Jewels (Official Video)\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NUC2EQvdzmY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><p>You\u2019ll notice I don\u2019t talk much about the Civil War in this blog. I grew up at the site of the Battle of Stones River, I am <em>tired<\/em> of talk about the Civil War. Zinn\u2019s pretty good on it, though. Blew right by it in the Kendi\/Blain\u2014the conflict reduced to one chapter by the excellent Jamelle Bouie. I sincerely appreciate this approach. We do not need to re-litigate the causes of the US Civil War, nor is there a shortage of spilled typeface on the subject. Reconstruction is a significantly underrated story in this country\u2019s history, in fact, I\u2019d argue the whole period between the end of the Civil War to the Great Migration (1865-1910ish) is underrated in popular imagination. <\/p><\/li><li><p>Mitchell S. Jackson\u2019s essay on \u201cOregon\u201d in <em>Four Hundred Souls<\/em> is excellent. Prompted me to go back and re-listen to this <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323\/episode\/part-one-oregon-is-a-bastard-30217960\/\">Behind The Bastards<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323\/episode\/part-one-oregon-is-a-bastard-30217960\/\"> on Oregon being founded as a white supremacist paradise<\/a>. I think that history got lost with the popularity of <em>Portlandia<\/em> and then <em>violently<\/em> remembered from like 2016-present. <\/p><\/li><li><p>If you, like me, have a slightly-better-than-AP-high-school-level-but-not-<em>much<\/em>-more grasp of pre-20th century U.S. history, you might have the phrase \u201cTippecanoe and Tyler Too\u201d running through your head sometimes without much context. Please know that it was an encroachment by settlers\u2014Kentucky and Indiana rangers especially\u2014to dismantle a growing pan-Indigenous movement led by Tecumseh (conveniently-for-colonizers away, organizing other tribes) and his brother, Tenskwatawa. White people dug up Indigenous graves and mutilated corpses. <\/p><\/li><li><p>If you, like me, are enough of an NBA sicko to know the Indiana G League team used to be called the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, please associate that name with Major General \u201cMad\u201d Anthony Wayne: a man who George Washington thought was an unreliable alcoholic, yet knew that would make him perfect for the \u201cunconventional war\u201d of the Ohio territory. <\/p><\/li><li><p>George Washington, by the way, was an unequivocally evil person. So we\u2019re clear. <\/p><\/li><li><p>It cannot be underrated that by winning independence, the U.S. both 1) cut off Indigenous access to potential European allies and 2) showed itself to be wholly unready to expand as much as it wanted to. Without, y\u2019know, resorting what we would totally call \u201cwar crimes.\u201d<\/p><\/li><li><p>Howard Zinn basically sums up why I\u2019m doing this project on pages 128-129: \u201cThe leading books on the Jacksonian period, written by respected historians (<em>The Age of Jackson <\/em>by Arthur Schlesinger; <em>The Jacksonian Persuasion<\/em> by Marvin Meyers), do not mention Jackson\u2019s Indian policy\u2026school textbooks in American history\u2026will find Jackson the frontiersman, soldier, democrat, man of the people\u2014not Jackson the slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians.\u201d<\/p><\/li><li><p>It\u2019s sort of a clich\u00e9 to refer to alcoholism in Indigenous populations today, but I think we underrate how much alcoholism is a <em>disease<\/em>. When we talk about smallpox blankets, we should refer to booze the same way. <\/p><\/li><li><p>\u201cThey want us divided\u201d alert\u2014settlers in Georgia were slick enough to offer some society treats to a small elite of Muskogees. This privileged class embraced slavery and became planters, marginalized insurgents within their own people, and you\u2019re not gonna believe this one: \u201c\u2026the federal government increased grants, and the wealthy class of Muskogees established trading posts, making whiskey cheaply available to impoverished Muskogees.\u201d<\/p><\/li><li><p>In 1831, Mississippi made it a crime for a Choctaws to discuss the Indian Removal Act amongst themselves. White supremacists love \u201cfree speech for me but not for thee.\u201d<\/p><\/li><li><p>Zinn highlights the weird norm of Andrew Jackson being referred to as \u201cyour father\u201d and Indigenous people as \u201chis children,\u201d so if you\u2019ve ever made fun of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2023\/09\/donald-trump-mike-pence-january-6-cassidy-hutchinson\">That Cuck Mike Pence<\/a> for calling his wife \u201cmother?\u201d Pour one out (of something repulsive) for Andrew Jackson, too. <\/p><\/li><li><p>On the hawkish buildup to the Mexican War and the beginnings of Manifest Destiny, Zinn says: \u201cAccompanying all this aggressive was the idea that the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and democracy to more people. This was intermingled with ideas of racial superiority, longs for the beautiful lands\u2026and thoughts of commercial enterprise across the Pacific.\u201d Masterfully constructed sentences. We move from \u201caggressiveness\u201d to \u201cblessings of liberty\u201d and \u201cracial superiority\u201d to \u201cbeautiful land\u201d like a Mariano Rivera two-seamer, and reach our final destination of more \u201ccommercial enterprise\u201d as snugly as a catcher\u2019s mitt.<\/p><\/li><li><p>\u201cJohn Wayne Niles \u2026 .&#8211;\u2026&#8211;.- \u2026\/ &#8211; &#8212; Ermias Joseph Asghedom\u201d by Mahogany L. Browne is my favorite poem in <em>Four Hundred Souls<\/em> so far. <\/p><\/li><li><p>I am a direct descendent of John Sevier, the settler-ranger who led the charge into Tennessee. I\u2019m not special, he had 18 kids. Here\u2019s how Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes my ancestor: <strong>\u201c[Scots-Irish settlers in Tennessee] hated both the Indigenous people who they were attempting to displace as well as the newly formed federal government. In 1794, a group of North Carolina settlers, led by settler-ranger John Sevier, had seceded from western Carolina and established the independent country of Franklin with Sevier as president. Neither North Carolina nor the federal government had exerted any control over the settlements in the eastern Tennessee Valley region. In the summer of 1788, Sevier ordered an unprovoked, preemptive attack on the Chickamauga towns, killing thirty villagers and forcing the survivors to flee south. Sevier\u2019s actions formed a template for settler-federal relations, with the settlers implementing the federal government\u2019s final solution, while the federal government feigned an appearance of limiting settler invasions of Indigenous lands\u2026Sevier and his rangers invaded the Chickamaugas\u2019 towns in September 1793, with a stated mission of total destruction. Although forbidden by the federal agent to attack the villages, Sevier gave orders for a scorched-earth offensive. By choosing to attack at harvesttime, Sevier intended to starve out the residents\u2026A year later, Sevier demanded absolute submission from the Chickamauga villages lest they be wiped out completely. Receiving no response, a month later 1,750 Franklin rangers attacked two villages, burning all the buildings and fields\u2014again near the harvest\u2014and shooting those who tried to flee. Sevier then repeated his demand for submission, requiring the Chickamaugas to abandon their towns for the woods, taking only what they could transport\u2026in squatter settlements, ruthless leaders like Sevier were not the exception but the rule. Once they had full control and got what they wanted, they made their peace with the federal government, which in turned depended on their actions to expand\u2026Sevier went on to serve as a US representative from North Carolina and as governor of Tennessee.\u201d <\/strong>Hey, he\u2019s not the first family member I\u2019ve disowned. <\/p><\/li><\/ul><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"No One Owns Anything and Death is Real || DEAD PIONEERS  ||  Music Video\" width=\"790\" height=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ec_SilIzznI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sorry you got an email, <\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chris<\/p><div class=\"subscription-widget-wrap-editor\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/shipwreckedsailor.substack.com\/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}\" data-component-name=\"SubscribeWidgetToDOM\"><div class=\"subscription-widget show-subscribe\"><div class=\"preamble\"><p class=\"cta-caption\">Thanks for reading shipwrecked sailor! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p><\/div><form class=\"subscription-widget-subscribe\"><input type=\"email\" class=\"email-input\" name=\"email\" placeholder=\"Type your email\u2026\" tabindex=\"-1\"\/><input type=\"submit\" class=\"button primary\" value=\"Subscribe\"\/><div class=\"fake-input-wrapper\"><div class=\"fake-input\"\/><div class=\"fake-button\"\/><\/div><\/form><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Our vices and our degradation are ever arrayed against us, but our Virtues are passed by unnoticed. From the press and the pulpit with have suffered&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; Editorial Board of &#8216;Freedom&#8217;s Journal,&#8217; 1827<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140461982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140461982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140461982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140461982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140461982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140461982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140461982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}