Uncle Sam Says

Not on my watch

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I’m fresh off two furious weeks on the road (it’s like a rock tour without the rocking), followed immediately by another week of furiously reviewing the copy edits to Becoming Little Shell and organizing and formatting the end notes and, and … and I sent all that back to my publisher yesterday. Next up, if I did it all correctly, is the typesetting for the galleys. It is kind of exhilarating but also exhausting and doesn’t leave a lot of energy for much else. Now, as I write, I am less than an hour away from throwing all my gear into my truck and heading out to Yellowstone for the better part of a week, which I am certain will also be equal parts magnificent and exhausting. This is me checking in before all that happens….

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I was driving home last night through the darkness and fog, just ahead of the surge of #grizdrunk fans expanding across Missoula in the wake of the triumphant University of Montana football Grizzlies’ nail-biting playoff victory against the North Dakota State Bison, assuring the team the opportunity to travel somewhere sometime soon to face another squad in vying for some form of national championship. Bless their hearts.

Meanwhile the hellmouth church at the top of the hill just past the roadside convenience store very near where Missoula got its start 150 years or so ago (also where some vigilantes brought to ground and hanged some dastardly villains) was staging a “live” nativity scene. I’ve heard of such but never witnessed one … if passing such a curiosity at 35-40 mph can even count as “witnessing.” There were people in costumes and various animals under a little wood-frame structure just off the road, all somewhat obfuscated by diffuse light blazing through the thick mist. I admit it looked kind of cool but that’s the kind of thing that catches my fancy anyway: people dressing up and doing bizarre shit. I feel for the animals, though. The donkey with his ears laid back was clearly broadcasting an attitude of, “Every … friggin’ … year….”

I was mostly happy to see those church folk were taking a break from frothing at the mouth over bizarre conspiracy theories, verbally assaulting school board trustees, and compiling and re-compiling books-to-ban lists. Especially deep in the heart of list season as we are. I’m pretty good at making lists to keep myself organized too. I wish I was as good as them at getting around to checking the stuff off them.

There’s a lot of talk around the newsletter-verse about Substack profiting off Nazi publications. I really haven’t had time to read much of anything about it but I can say I agree it sucks. I also know it’s next to impossible to participate in anything in this soulless society that doesn’t see our money propping up something despicable somewhere. That doesn’t justify it. We don’t have enough individual hands to hold all the simultaneous conflicting truths that we are forced to just to get by. I’m not happy about either, but I’m less aggrieved that a few thousand of my dollars a year are helping Substack profit off hate speech than I am that tens of thousands of my tax dollars are being used by the United States to funnel more money and weapons to Israel to allow them to continue actively practicing murderous genocide. The world wants it to stop and Uncle Sam says, “Not on my watch!”

I want both things to stop. Substack will crash and burn long before this American hegemony does, though.

Finally, If you think my feelings about what the Israeli government is doing makes me an anti-Semite, then please comment accordingly: there are about 10,000 readers here who need to know how dumb you are. Same goes for my assessment that there is no greater an organization for terror than the US government. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long, and governments bend toward cruelty until they collapse under the weight of their own evil deeds; and every step of the way lovable, and loving, people suffer for it. That is heartbreaking and writing here is one of the few places I feel I can do anything about it. I’ve never punched anyone in the face in my life. I’d happily start with a Nazi.

I admit to bitterness. I did an event in Miles City last week, in Custer County, both named for men who dutifully engaged in the practice of genocide and we just kinda shrug about it. This is the world we’re in.

I won’t be connected during the Solstice and I hope you have a happy one. I’ll be fireside, I hope, in conditions that, while still cold, will likely be about 50° warmer than they were last year.

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