Auriga

When the house of cards began falling down around Richard Nixon, some Republicans felt like, "This is our guy; we have to protect him!" while other Republicans felt like, "We don't want the world to judge us by what this guy does!"  

As the case developed, there came a secret meeting among senior Republicans in the Senate about whether or not they would prevent Nixon's removal from office should he be impeached, which seemed like it was almost certainly going to happen soon.  For the good of the party and the good of the nation, they sent a message to Nixon through Kissinger: The Senate GOP would not protect him.  48 hours later, Nixon resigned.

Better legal minds might feel differently, but to my way of thinking, what happened on Jan 6 was vastly more serious than when Nixon was president.    The difference is how the rest of the GOP responded and how the president himself responded.  Nixon could have fought it.  He could have done everything Trump is doing now, but, in the end, Nixon was the better man.  

I honestly admire Nixon.  I always have.  He was every bit as great as he was broken.  After Nixon, there grew a strong feeling among Republicans that they had made the wrong decision.  That feeling grew, especially when Carter beat Ford.  That's when Reagan came up with this idea of "Never speak ill of another Republican."  That philosophy is dominant now.  No matter what a Republican does, their party won't turn on them.  

Ultimately, I'm not a party kind of guy.  Adherence to your party, no matter what they do, might work for football fans, but it's a very bad idea when it comes to governance.  There have been, and are now, some really shit Democrats.  I'll be glad to talk to you about them.  For the most part, though, I'm still going to vote Democrat when it's a decent guy because (right now) their platform is better for Mississippi.  That could change, but right now, it's overwhelmingly clear to me that Mississippi, my home, is better served by what the Democratic party brings.  

When a great man rose in Rome, and he took his triumphant chariot ride through the masses singing his name, there stood a man behind him, a slave called an "Auriga" whose job it was to hold a wreath of laurel above his head, but whisper in his ear, "remember, thou art but a man."  We could use some of that today.  

The White Boy

When I was a baby, people who were a different color from me wanted the same rights as me.  None of that would change my rights so I agreed. Many people didn't.  I was a baby, so maybe I was wrong.

When I was a boy, people who loved differently from me wanted the same rights as me.  None of what they were doing involved me, so I agreed.  A little later, women wanted the same rights to control their body that I had.  It was their body, not mine so I agreed.  Lots of people didn't agree.  I was just a boy so maybe I was wrong.

Now that I'm old, some people aren't happy with the gender they were assigned at birth so they want the right to change it.  They want to change their own assigned gender, not mine, so I agreed.  Lots of people don't agree.    I'm old now though, so maybe I'm wrong.

From birth to old age, nobody ever tried to limit what I could be, so maybe I just don't get trying to do that to others.

Toilet Trouble

 Before he went to Millsaps, my grandfather had never used a toilet before.  Founder's Hall had one.  (They would install a ladies' room before they tore it down.)  The KA House had a single-seater that I'm sure they kept as pristine and clean as the ones in the KA House now.

Where he came from, people didn't have toilets.  They had outhouses and chamber pots.  When we went to homecoming in the seventies, his little Methodist church in Hesterville had a port-a-potty where the outhouse used to be.  The only one willing to use it was my cousin Libba Wingate, who had trouble holding her water after childbirth.  Delta women act like they're frail as lace and require our constant protection and supervision.  It is a lie.  They've been climbing trees and shooting doves since they were four, and any man who falls for that trap deserves what they get.

In those days, there weren't that many buildings in all of Mississippi that had toilets.  Pretty soon, though, indoor plumbing became common, and every public building had bathrooms for three genders: Male, Female, and Colored.  If you think it causes a commotion now when somebody uses the wrong bathroom, try letting a white woman use the colored toilet in 1940.  They would have found a way to send three black men to jail for that.

After the sexual revolution of the seventies, people who had different ideas about how to express their gender started to feel like they had more freedom to do so.  Some people feel very threatened if they start to lose control over gender expression, and almost immediately, they become uncomfortable with the sexual revolution.  

A few years ago, internet trolls decided that if there was anything they hated more than transgender people, it was furries, so they started spreading the story that elementary schools in California had to install "litter box" bathrooms in all their schools for students who identify as furries.  It's not true, of course, but the trolls had a grand time watching guys with MAGA hats spew their nonsense on YouTube.  If you think about it, I'm sure you know somebody who has heard this story and believes it.

So, where does all this gender ideology and multiple bathroom business lead?  Where does it end?

A few days ago, in Iran, a sixteen-year-old girl was beaten to death by the "morality police" because she dared to uncover her hair on the train.  It's not the first time this has happened.  In Iran, women covering their heads is part of their gender ideology.  

It's so easy for us to hold ourselves as morally superior to Iran, but fifty years ago, they were the country in the Middle East that was the most like us.  They had a very popular, democratically elected prime minister, who made the mistake of trying to Huey Long, the British Persian Oil company, so the CIA had him taken out and replaced by a puppet, and they changed the name to British Petroleum and pretended like nobody did anything.  Twenty years later, the puppet government we installed was taken over by the Islamic Brotherhood, and an awful lot of law-abiding, peaceful Persians had to move to the United States.  

This girl was sixteen.  All she wanted was to express her gender identity in her own way, and she died for it.  She died because the adults in Iran believed they had to control these things, that it was madness to let a sixteen-year-old decide for herself whether or not to show her hair.  

I'm not saying that's where it will end in this country, but these things are a spectrum, and we're on the spectrum.  We like to think we're so very different from Iranians and so very different from them, but are we.

There are two kinds of people in the world.  Those who believe all cultural matters must be tightly regulated and controlled, and then there are people who believe that bacchanalia can sometimes be useful, that you have to let people express themselves in their own way, or it ends in tragedy.  

Story Idea - Time Travel

 I have this idea for a story. It borrows from other stories so, we'll see. The details are likely to change.

In the late 40s a boy named Tommy is ten years old and a student at Duling Elementary School in Jackson, MS. His teacher is Miss Becker. She's twenty-three and beautiful. Tommy's father died recently, and he stutters so he's extremely shy and has no friends. Miss Becker befriends him and tries to help him feel better about his situation.

One day, Tommy says "Miss Becker, I don't know what I'd do without you, when I get as old as you I'm going to marry you!" Miss Becker laughs

One night, there's a huge flash of light and Tommy wakes up in a room with glowing white walls and strange figures are around him. The figures are from the future. Their bodies look strange because humans no longer use their physical bodies. They've expanded his mind so he can understand what they say to him.

In the future, humans can travel in time, but they can only observe. They can't make any changes. Time travel is a device for their historians. Their machines can visit any point or place in time, before the date the machine was turned on. As their machines pass through time, their machines pass by unnoticed by the people living the regular time line, but one in a billion will become attached to the machine as it goes by, and Tommy was one in a billion.

They don't have a way to return Tommy to his body so he can live out his life, but they can return his mind to bodies of people who are moments from dying, and he can live our their lives, or a part of their lives.

There's a flash, and Tommy wakes up in the body of a twenty year old. Miss Becker is now seven. Realizing their roles in time have changed, Tommy gets a job at the school as a custodian. He watches Miss Becker grow up, but tries not to ever have her notice him.

When he turns thirty five, there's another flash and Tommy wakes in in 1969, he's a sophomore at Murrah High School, and Miss Becker (Now Mrs Thompson) is the principal. She has a husband and children.

There are a few more flashes, and a few more changes of age and relative ages between them, and one day he's at a facility like St. Catherines. Tommy is eighty-nine with COPD. Miss Becker is 92 and has progressing alzheimers.

Miss Becker can't remember the present, but she can remember the past. She and Tommy become friends. They are in different parts of the facility, but he visits her ever day. Because her mind is disjointed and floats around in time, Tommy is the only one she can really communicate with. Tommy is the only one who knows he's shared all these experiences with Miss Becker, but in different bodies.

One day, Miss Becker says her friend Tommy promised to marry her. It becomes all she can talk about. Her daughter asks Tommy if he actually has asked her to marry him, and he says he hasn't, but another boy named Tommy did, a long time ago.

Miss Becker starts to get upset if anybody tries to tell her she's not going to marry Tommy. She doesnt' recognize Tommy in this new body with a new name. Finally, Tommy says, he can't legally marry Miss Becker because of her illness she can't give consent, but if it will make her calmer and happy to pretend to get married, he'll do it.

The doctors are unsure about this idea, but they know she may not remember it the next day, and even if she did, neither she nor Tommy had very much time left.

The nurses push the wheelchairs together, and they have a pretend wedding with Tommy and Miss Becker holding hands. When she says "I Do", she looks at Tommy, for the first time, and realizes who he is, and how he's always been with her, but she's too weak to talk about it. That night, both Tommy and Miss Becker pass away in their sleep.