====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
These three quite related posts -- on Flags -- go back some years -- but not, sadly, to "another time" in the qualitative sense. The Afghan War, of course, is still with us -- now much expanded into Pakistan and the cost in human lives has been massive. The Iraq War, vastly costly in human life, continues. Today, I briefly watched Barack Obama, having long ago repudiated virtually all of his glowing campaign representations, speaking to the graduating course at West Point, news media pointing out that virtually all of the new grads would be going into our endless Middle Eastern blood-baths. So my mind went back to the bare beginnings of this decade and these three posts. The first on this page is a very early in 2003 update. The next one -- October 31, 2001 -- is Flags #2. And the third -- September 17, 2001 -- is the first Flags post. I see virtually no flags these days on any vehicles in and around our Idaho mountain town. I don't hear much talk about the Wars or even "terrorism." I do hear much on the local and regional ramifications of our broken United States economy -- including mounting unemployment and very recent major cuts in all of the school budgets in the Gem State. [H] UPDATE NOTE [1/26/03] HG The American Flag Thing still lingers pluckily here and there on some vehicles in this general Idaho setting. But this afternoon, down in Pocatello, I saw a big ole pickup flying a huge, flapping Jolly Roger -- the traditional tribal Skull & Crossbones of the outlaws of the sea. As it sailed along the rocky street, it personally warmed my heart since I was president of our Pirate Club at age eight or so [though the nearest ocean was regrettably 'way beyond our reach and ken.] But far more than that I knew I was today seeing Honesty Incarnate -- someone with something candidly and very intricately reflecting the current national policies of the reincarnation of certain notorious water rovers of yore. FLAGS 2 / October 31 2001 This is a couple of things: a repost of my Flags piece of many weeks ago [we have a great many new people on this list], preceded by this brief up-dating. There have been a number of very positive comments on the piece. But we've heard nothing further from the vitriolically angry shirt-tail ["in law"] kin -- not an American Indian, by the way, who -- because of that and related things -- had angrily e-mailed me: "I can hardly stand your spews on America, on Bush, etc. . .Give me Bush, Ashcroft, Powell and all the other men and women of the present administration any time. I thank God each and every day for them. . . You and I are related through marriage, but in no way can I see eye to eye with your hatred for U.S.A. Yes, I can understand how you feel about the treatment of the American Indians, the blacks, etc. but U.S.A. is still the best place. Why not go and live elsewhere, in some other country. . ." I'm sure many of us have heard this sort of thing [and we've had a few of the usual crank calls.] For my part, I have plenty of blood relatives -- and many consistently friendly in-law ones as well. I can always lose a relation or two. The small flag that was placed in our yard in this 'way far-up "frontier" area -- one of a multitude carried and implanted by well-meaning folk -- slipped very early on, as I noted, into the weeds, and disappeared long ago. Locally -- in this small city Idaho setting -- many and perhaps most of the flags have now faded from the scene. The not-always-friendly daily newspaper gives front page coverage to "War" events and the latest "Official Warnings" -- but the spread is no longer garish. My Jeep did encounter the pickup, two days ago, of a still frightened acquaintance who ages in the past -- long, long before September 11th -- cut off all contact with me and flees whenever he sees me anywhere in the vicinity. Neither I nor the other family members riding with me were especially surprised to note that a large and obviously just dry-cleaned Flag was hanging in his vehicle's cab. Much more importantly, our monitoring/rights network involving many individuals and the communities of color [Native, Chicano, Black, Asian, a relatively small number of North Africans and Mid-Easterners] has detected no physical violence [although there has been ugly verbal stuff.] The local cops and state police [ who are certainly among the most negative we've encountered anywhere outside of the Deep South], have been essentially restrained -- so far. And again locally, fear and hysteria have subsided -- somewhat. There isn't even -- although planes have been told not to fly over it -- much apparent unusual concern about the nearby [an hour or so away] Idaho National Energy and Environmental Laboratories -- a Federal facility which processes nuclear waste for "disposal" in various Western locations. There is a great deal of very justifiable concern about the quite recent, abrupt closure of Astaris -- a locally-based phosphorus mining and refining operation. Almost 450 workers are out -- unemployed --and an estimated 500 others will probably be so pronto as a result of their employers' now failed contracts with Astaris. This follows other dismal economic news on various local and regional -- and, of course -- national and global fronts. And now, as super high winds [50 to 60 mph] sweep across our region, and heavy, welcome rain falls from the sky to our still drought-stricken forests and range lands, increasingly gargantuan bombs are thrown [ostensibly from under "our auspices"] on a tortured and long lethally-disastered land, far far away -- in a blood-drenched sacrificial ritual which, by comparison, reduces to a very small hill one of that general region's Great Monsters: Tamerlane [ca. 1300s] and his huge pyramids of skulls. I should add that Halloween is alive and well. Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear] October 31, 2001 FLAGS / September 17 2001 Personally, I don't see Flags generally as being a heavy issue deep or high -- but they can be -- and the matter has arisen on other lists. It's all worth some comment. I've never been a Flag Man. Perhaps most Indians never really can be -- I like a feather or two and I have a bear-claw choker that I wear on special occasions. [In addition and from another dimensional perspective, I have many Canadian roots.] The American flag has always tended to make me wary: George Custer to the John Birch Society come immediately to mind. I can live with the American Flag [I did as an Army trooper ] and it often showed up in the front of even very Left unions. But, even in settings where the American flag was, at a particular place and point in history, anathema -- e.g., Mississippi in the early '60s -- I could never really find comfort in it. [ And I should, say, too that the Flag of the Southern Confederacy makes me very, very wary indeed!] I was not surprised when, a few days ago, young people from a local realtor firm, trooped up to this far far corner of this Idaho town, with a heavy supply of small American flags which they dutifully planted in or near each yard -- including ours. They do this just before every Fourth of July -- small flags in every lawn or what passes for a lawn -- and, when the smoke of the firecrackers fades, the flags disappear. This time, the flags have stayed around in most cases. I don't feel threatened by this -- I just feel primarily oblivious to this particular ritual and these particular flags. [But I am greatly troubled in another way -- and more on that in a moment.] Our neighbors are -- in almost every case -- very friendly and pleasant people [there are a couple of other Native families right near us, and several Chicano families and two Black families not all that far away.] I know the man who heads the flag-distributing real estate firm to be a gentle person and, like many in this region, a Mormon [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.] I should add that I've always been a bit surprised by Mormon patriotism. I grew up in a Northern Arizona setting where, in addition to many Catholics, there were also many LDS people. The great grandfather of a good Mormon high school buddy had been shot by a US Army firing squad. As a rule, I tend to get along well with grassroots Mormons. And I'm aware that there was once a time when their leaders were lynched and their churches burned and when they finally found a place in the Salt Lake Valley, built their Zion and established their Land of Deseret, the Gentile forces [land and mineral hungry capitalists backed by the US government and US Army] attempted to use the polygamy issue to smash the Mormon Commonwealth and seize all of its resources. Those were the days, 'way 'way back in the 19th Century, when the Mormon Battalion was formed to resist, in the high mountain passes, the forces of the United States; and when the great Mormon gunman, Porter Rockwell, guarded Brigham Young [the prophet was himself personally armed also] against possible assassination via Washington, DC. [In his fascinating autobiography -- Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood, 1929 and many subsequent editions, must reading for radicals -- Big Bill, born in Salt Lake City in 1869 [an Episcopalian by birth], opens with the chapter, "Boyhood Among The Mormons" and has kind words for the Saints and a very good word for then rather old, and kindly, Porter Rockwell the gunman. [And, BTW, how many people are aware that Butch Cassidy [George LeRoy Parker] was a Mormon boy -- as was much of his Wild Bunch?] But, anyway. In time, part of the Mormon world grew rather conservative, patriotic -- even as the theology has slowly liberalized to some extent [but the West abounds with Mormons who are very good and militant, and sometimes very radical, union labor activists. ] So I didn't find these flags of the other day -- coming 'way up here to us -- unusual. I don't find them directly threatening. There are, of course, plenty of instances where flags do signal reactionary violence -- but most Americans flags don't. So why am I troubled by this Flag Situation? Because to many people -- especially in this moment of high crisis for all of humanity -- flags are a pallative, a mind-soother. If, on the one hand, flags -- like prayer -- can somehow make this hideous tragedy a little easier to live with, flags can also block cognizance of the massively grim and lethal storm clouds that are now coming in upon us and much of the world from the very Four Directions: War, hideous war; the gutting of our democratic civil rights and civil liberties; a rising racism against darker-skinned people. And flags, and all of the other pallatives, and rationalizations and transferences, certainly help bury, again and again, the crying and compelling need for social justice -- a very full measure of social justice -- for everyone, everywhere in this world. They help bury it deep. But it does not stay buried and it never will. Our little flag fell over yesterday, into some grass and weeds. It still lies there, fallen. Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Our Hunterbear website is now more than ten years old. It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See Two Pages On Our Violently Attacked Jackson Woolworth Sit-In: http://hunterbear.org/Woolworth%20Sitin%20Jackson.htm And See Hunter Bear's Movement Life Interview: http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.htm See: The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father] and its accompanying essay on Minority Adoptions and Native Land and Resources: http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
