The Past we Know

The Past we Know

White is Black, or … is Black White

The Allies

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

            Golda Meir, 1969

            The Past we Know

            In truth, the only place Aunt Jemima pancakes may have been eaten was somewhere other than home or at the homes of grandmothers. Nothing was ever made from a box. It was always from scratch and it was always better than anything you could buy. That included cakes or cookies or anything else baked.

            That’s not to say we didn’t know her, though.

            In all honesty, her image of long ago didn’t have any underscored impression other than she came across as pleasant and matronly. She fit the part of the kitchen, but so did my grandmothers.

            Her recipe must have good enough for somebody to try to copy and sell to the city folks who didn’t have country grandmothers. In fact, her image did a whole lot more to assure us that we were all of the same God than anything we have ever witnessed on these tortuous TV coverages. Warm kitchens that smell good tend to disarm reasonable folks.

            It brings them together, too.

            Why would anybody want to corrupt something that has become not just a pleasant image, but a historically significant brand name? Even Aunt Jemima’s great grandson sees the whole current rumble similarly.

            This is an injustice for me and my family, said Larnell Evans, Sr. several days ago. And, to erase my great grandmother’s history … it hurts.

            The same general impression and regard can be said about Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth. There must be family members somewhere who feel at least some pride in the fact their ancestors cast a wide and wholesome image across a wide swath of America (and elsewhere).

            Are we missing something? Is there another pathfinder event or marquee success that elevates them higher in their mere mortal existence on this earth?

            Most of us think not. This is all prescribed bedlam that has roots much older than the game plans and CliffsNotes of the resident community organizers of the current American street violence.

            The Allies

            There is an interesting read out that chronicles the interactions of the Big Three leaders who successfully oversaw the prosecution of and concluded the hostilities that we now know as World War II. Two of the three were socialists of which one openly called himself a communist.

            Stalin ultimately enslaved 60 million peasants that could be considered the higher achievers among the farming class of Russia. Under the Czars sixty years earlier, they had been serfs. Under Stalin, those that weren’t killed essentially became slaves of the state, a faceless, uncaring behemoth.

            It was no secret of what was happening. Lady Astor, visiting Russia with the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, asked Stalin outright, how long are you going to go on killing people?

            Stalin’s answer was an unabashed, for as long as necessary.

            He kept his word. A Soviet paper later estimated that that era of killing ended around the 20,000,000 mark.

            He needed chaos and terror to install his concept of the Marxist system.

            In that, he did something that we have become all too familiar with in this COVID-19 debacle. He attacked the supply chains generally controlled by the capitalists. That action not only wrecked the economy, but laid waste to the social structure of what was left of the country.

            Training and indoctrination were at the core of his goals. Education is a dangerous weapon, whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands, and at whom it is aimed, he maintained.

            He killed and educated, he killed and educated, and … he killed and educated in the name of and the defense of the state.

            White is Black, or … is Black White

            There are no good words that make all this seem logical.

            There is no good story that ties the societal revolution that we observe growing shriller and more dangerous to this day observed as Father’s Day. Surely, the cards will be sent out and the niceties will be attempted, but our country is in deep danger.

There is a boy crisis in our land just as there is a father crisis.

Men in general and straight white men in particular are being ridiculed and denigrated. It has been that way for more than two decades. Name one television show that elevates a father into a respectful and historically fatherly role. He is either a clown or he doesn’t exist in the context of the plot.

The men that are present in this post fatherly, electronic world are remote from the family pursuing their responsibility of shooting lasers or something worse. It is hard to make an interesting story line with fatherless homes, higher crime, and other dad deprivations. As a result, America is losing its way in knowing how to raise children to be happy much less productive and responsible.

The COVID-19 debacle has not helped, either.

Those who profess all this has brought the family together are not the unfortunate half that have lost their bimonthly checks. It is easy to wax philosophically about all this when the transfer of ongoing funds is automatically posted in the bank balance.

Indeed, we are all in this together makes perfect sense when bad dreams don’t wake you at night in sheets of sweat worrying about how the next demand will be met. The fact is WE are not all in this together.

The worrisome thing about it all are the eerie similarities of the revolution implicit hereinabove. The divisive game plan is in play and we watch and assume our situation is different when it isn’t. We are in the throes of an expanding civil war. It isn’t yet a hot war, but history has demonstrated that, too, will likely come.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.