Why In Hell Do I Write Like This?
Friday July 09th 2004, 2:43 pm
I’m a big fan of Dave Neiwert’s Orcinus, and, when he says people should read something, I’ll be more than happy to trot over and check it out. Dave’s right on the money with his pointer to “Defining Dissent Down,” by Rob Salkowitz.
It made me wonder: have we ever been a civil society? I’ve just started David McCullough’s John Adams, and the parts that talk about the first meetings of the Continental Congress and Adams’s riding the court circuit make it sound like America has always been a bunch of people who think that the people in the next town over are a bunch of freaks. Adams thought that New Yorkers “talk very loud, very fast, and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again-and talk away.” Sounds more like a meeting of LA Industry People, but what the hell. See? Even there, I think there’s a group of people who are freaky because they’re different than I am.
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Well?
Friday July 09th 2004, 9:45 am
Who’s up for some Johnocracy?
The last time we had an all-John ticket was 1824 when John C. Calhoun was veep to John Quincy Adams, though, if faulty memories of AP American History serve me, Calhoun the runner-up and got the job by default. Anyone remember when we started having actual tickets instead of the veepstakes as a consolation prize?
There haven’t been any other prez-veep bunches where they shared the same first name, though, dude, we’ve had some veeps with awesome first names. I think it’s time they made a comeback into the American consciousness. Names like:
Hannibal Hamlin (1861-65, served under Abraham Lincoln)
Schuyler Colfax (1869-73, served under Ulysses S. Grant)
Alben W. Barkley (1949-53, served under Harry S. Truman)
…and, George Clinton was veep to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Paint the White House black, baby!
And…
Sunday July 04th 2004, 2:54 pm
I do believe you’ve laid a curse on North America
A curse that we now here rehearse in Philadelphia
A second flood, a simple famine
Plagues of locusts everywhere
Or a cataclysmic earthquake
I’d accept with some despair
But, no, you sent us Congress.
Good God, sir, was that fair?
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Remember This?
Sunday July 04th 2004, 2:50 pm
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. (more…)
