You're
Wrong
An
Irregular Column
by
Mykel Board
"What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland." --Abraham Lincoln
It's brother
against brother... looking at each other through gunsights.
Terrible... just a dividing line in the dirt... puts... FIZZ! BING!
A bullet enters his face, right at the right cheekbone. It tears a
small hole as it enters-- like a large wart-- then it tears through
the inside of the skull, coming out through the back of the head... a
baseball-sized hole, brain spraying gray matter before the expression
of surprise can leave the now-dead face.
“It's terrible.
Terrible,” says the president. “The nation is torn apart, but we
have no choice, if we're to preserve the union.”
Flash to Riverdale
in the Bronx. I'm at dinner with friends-- at a friend's house:
shrimp, macaroni with tuna, little pieces of herring with toothpicks
stuck through them, flatbread with all kinds of toppings. There is a
TV... bigger than my apartment... somehow fastened to the wall. On
the TV smiles some dork in a Tuxedo.
Goddamn! It's the
fuckin' Oscars. I was looking forward to missing the Oscars, like I
miss the Superbowl, and Obama's inauguration. Like I've never seen ET
or The Titanic. Like I can't tell Rihanna from Guyana. I live to be
as divorced from popular culture as that soldier's brain is divorced
from his head.
But here I am.
Stuck like herring on a toothpick in front of Hollywood Hell in all
it's stinking glitter. The guys on TV talk about some movies. Nothing
I've seen, of course. I don't like movies with white people in them.
There's one about
killing Osamu Bin Ladin, another about escaping from Iraq, one about
a colored guy and slavery and one about Lincoln. War movies all... in
their own way. I hate war movies.
I love gore movies.
Severed heads and still-beating hearts. I love to watch guys
screaming as their balls are ripped off. Gangster movies too: the
Chinese mafia taking out a rival gang... fists and bullets. Pow! Pow!
Achah! Achah!
But I hate war
movies. They're too close to the real world. I don't need movies for
what I get in the NY Times. Besides, they remind me of football.
And Lincoln wasn't
only in movies about the world of 1860. He's in the real world of
now. That soldier in the first paragraph wasn't from the Confederate
Army. He was from Syria.
That quote at the
beginning of this column? I lied.
It wasn't from
Abraham Lincoln. It was from President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria. The
two, however, are not much different.
"My paramount
object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to
save or destroy slavery.” That is a REAL quote from Abe Lincoln.
I bet Assad would
agree.
FLASH TO THE 1970s:
Marshall Tito is my favorite Communist. He's the president of
Yugoslavia and will be until 1980. He keeps the various ethnic and
religious factions together... without war. Today you have Serbia,
Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovco, and who-knows-what-the-fuckistan. Under
Tito, there was only YUGOSLAVIA. He organized the fight against the
Nazis. Everybody loves him. He keeps the new country together without
war... only with charisma and statesmanship.
Tito is the guy who
gives both Russia and the U.S. a big middle finger. Then goes off to
make friends with Egypt and India. After he dies, there is chaos and
half a dozen tiny fighting countries.
Are there other
Lincolns? You bet! A dime a dozen. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who kept
the Shiites and Sunnis in check and created a unified whole from a
melting pot of fractious groups. Also without war... until the Bushes
invaded and there was chaos.
More? Mao Tse Tung
was the Lincoln of China. The Tibetans, The Uigars. The Inner
Mongols. They want to secede. Make their own countries. Seek their
own destinies... the blue and the gray... It's a war that the current
Chinese Lincolns continue to fight.
Vladimir Putin, the
Lincoln of Russia, has been fighting the Chechnyan separatists since
he took office. And there are more.
You get the idea.
But what I want to focus on, with all this Lincoln hullabaloo, is why
I wish the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War. Fuck Lincoln and
his gold-plated Hollywood statues.
Imagine we have the
USA and the CSA, a ragged border between the two... following the
Mason-Dixon line... leaping upwards over Texas, and Oklahoma. Newer
regions join the USA or CSA. California and Nevada stay independent.
The relatively
small United States needs the relatively small Confederate States for
its cotton, bourbon, tobacco and oil. The Confederate States needs
the U.S. for manufactured goods and a few resources like salmon and
lumber.
Occasionally, there
are trade disputes. The South puts a tariff on paper from the North.
The North has a quota... or high taxes... on tobacco and booze.
Slavery disappears
in the Confederate States, like it did in the Caribbean, South
Africa, and Brazil. The government will try to keep voting WHITES
ONLY, and to maintain segregation. Like they did in the U.S. until
the 1964 or South Africa until 1990.
World pressure will
end all that, like it ended apartheid. By 1990, the world will
celebrate the first Negro president of the Confederate States of
America... probably before the first one up north in the U.S.A.
More importantly,
because what is now the US is in (at least) two independent pieces,
neither side develops the power the U.S. now has. The sides join
forces for WWII because of Pearl Harbor. The rest of North America
(Canada and Mexico) are anti-Axis as well.
Young Strom
Thurmond, the 40-year president of C.S.A, threatens to withdrawal
Confederate troops from the Pacific front if Truman goes ahead with
his plan to drop a new fangled ATOMIC BOMB.
“I didn't want us
to get into this war in the first place,” he says.
The bomb is never
dropped. Japan surrenders anyway.
There is no Vietnam
war. Although the U.S. wants to invade, the C.S.A wants no part in
the invasion.
“We suffered our
own invasion,” says C.S.A. president Strom Thurmond in 1966. “We
don't want to be part of another one.”
After WWII, the CSA
follows a policy of isolationism that would make Ron (or Rand) Paul
proud.
Over time, the
cultures develop along lines similar to the present. The CSA adopts
Evangelical Christianity as the official state religion. The USA,
following its constitution, maintains separation of church and state.
There are generally
friendly relations between the two countries. People bunch in the
North-- and in the new M.P.R.C (Mellow People's Republic of
California). Texas Oil lets the CSA thrive, though the destruction
left by the civil war, and the lack of advanced training of the
former slaves, leaves a greater gap between rich and poor.
Something
interesting also happens. Since the Civil War followed on the heals
of the Mexican American War. The newly independent CSA says they had
no beef with the Mexicans. The attack on Mexico was by the USA-- that
country up North. California is already independent, so it's lost to
Mexico. Arizona and New Mexico are just desert anyway. Who needs
those places? Give 'em back to the Mexicans, the CSA urges the USA.
We'll support Mexico until you do.
Thus a great new
friendship is established between Mexico and the CSA. Travel between
the two countries opens. No passports. No visas. As easy as crossing
into Canada to see Niagra Falls used to be.
After World War II,
the USA looks East, while the CSA looks South. Franklin Roosevelt,
already pals with Stalin and Churchill, embraces Russia in a Grand
Coalition. The USA continues to expand its welfare and social
services and Russia continued to expand its personal liberties and
access to pornography.
There's never a
cold war. No one attacks the World Trade Center because the US does
not have the power to wage the anti-Muslim wars that make Al Quaeda
want to attack in the first place. The world becomes a happy and
peaceful place from the end of the second world war, right until...
well... right until now.
It
all would have happened if it weren't were for fuckin' Lincoln. If
only John Wilkes Booth were a few years earlier. The Oscars be
damned.
ENDNOTES:
[email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com)
or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/)
will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your
zines, Cds/records, and... er... private
videos... can
and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street
Station, New York NY 10012]
-->Is it only
me? dept: ABC NEWS reports
that the U.S. census bureau is dropping the word NEGRO starting in
2020. Now, all that's left is me and the United
Negro College Fund. Quick, I'd better send a donation!
-->Jailbird pal
Kyle sent me an article about Samsung TVs. Their build-in cameras
allow outsiders to gain "root access" to the TV. Remember
in the book 1984, at the end, Winston Smith finds the camera
behind a picture in the wall of his apartment? Now, it's not only
that bedroom picture you have to worry about.
-->Oh no dept:
Could it happen in Scandinavia? Home of my favorite governments?
Well, according to the local paper, Iceland will "become the
first Western democracy to ban online pornography." Yep,
official government censorship... like in China. I fear it's the
beginning of the end. Watch the Republicans change their tune about
the evils of Scandinavia once those blonds ban porn.
-->My kind of city dept: On Feb 4, 2013 Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to pass a resolution against the domestic use of drones. It also calls for Congress and the state of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information from domestic drone use from being introduced into a Federal or State court. Furthermore, they want to prohibit drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, so people can not be killed remotely.
Hmmm, killing
people remotely, trial by missile, who'd want to do something like
that? It's hard to imagine, huh?
-->Legitimate
targets? Is that like legitimate rape? dept: Reason.com
reports that a US Army officer said Afghan children are “legitimate
targets.”
"It kind of
opens our aperture," said Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington.
"We're looking for children with potential hostile intent."
he added.
-->Ah
Michigan, how you've devolved dept: Progressive Magazine
reports that Michigan lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state's
income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their
twelve-week or older fetuses as "dependents." These same
legislators pushed to cut a tax credit that applies to actual
already-born children.
-->School?
Prison? What's the difference dept: Wired.com reports the
Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas,
suspended a student for refusing to wear a tracking device. It was a
leg bracelet similar to the ones used on probationed criminals. Since
the school's funding is based on student attendance, they use the
trackers to prove students are in class. As of this writing, a judge
has temporarily reversed the suspension.
-->Students
with balls dept: Censorship News (www.ncacblog.wordpress.com)
reports that the school administration of La Salle University told
the student newspaper that they had to run an unflattering story
about the school "under the fold." (That means the part of
the paper that's hidden when it's folded on a newstand or in a
newsbox.)
The newspaper, the
COLLEGIAN, printed the next issue with a blank top half, except for
tiny print instructing readers to "SEE BELOW." Ten punk
points guys!
-----------------------------
You can see Mykel's almost functioning website at www.mykelboard.com.
