asfoxseesit

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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Politics and BBQ in Upstate SC, and OJ

    What I really want to talk about is the indelicate term ratfucking, Joseph Morgan and the Torch in light of the new book by Daley of that title How the GOP Turned America Red. Joe helped Mike Hubbard in the Alabama campaign. First chapter is fascinating about the legacy of South Carolina's Lee Atwater, Carroll Campbell and Janowski a College of Charleston  and USCarolina law grad.

    But first the Cue, the BBQ and the Upstate. Ive been up here for about a month now and had BBQ four times. Was going for a 5th tomorrow but enough is enough. Once at Henry's in Simpsonville, twice on Woodruff Road, and the sacred journey to Red Bridges in Shelby North Carolina with my brother June 14. Was supposed to have my picture put on their facebook wall but they didn't come through as promised. If the Cue wudn't so damned good I'd never go back. Ha, that's a lie cause it is good.

   Up there we talked to a third cousin of Earl Scruggs who is the band director in 2nd year at Crest High School where David Thompson played Bball; and on Tuesday talked to a Mormon wife from Utah on way back to Sacramento who has been to the home of the Celtics Danny Ainge. You start talking to people you never know what you will find out.

  On June 30 rode over to Liberty South Carolina after pickin up a Skins hotdog all the way in West Easley. Did some shoppin at a grocery store where I struck up a conversation with the fish man. Turns out he has his PHD in business and statistics from Clemson after a life in the military and 20 years retired in Pickens county. Family from Upstate New York and Morocco. Gonna teach at Western Carolina this fall. And he said make the acquaintance of Ron Rash after my strong recommendation.

    What about them Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. I went on the Championship Facebook this afternoon and gave em a congrats and told them the story of Dom DiMaggio and Leon Culberson.

    Had a good phone chat with Fletcher Smith yesterday.

     Saw my brothers grandsons. They have charisma but how coutd they not with me and Uncle Fremont and Uncle bill in the bloodline. Read Little Billy a story about the Shivers and gave Mac 35 cents for his bank. Told Timmon about how is name came to be, and went to hear nephew Andrew at EFBC at end of his choir tour where he saw Marcia Dean at Gettysburg.

    Got my picture taken and posted on facebook with three Furman theologians and Bill Whitfield, saw all ten hours of OJ Made in America, many episodes twice and watched Marcus Willis and Federer at Wimbledon this morning.

   At the Barnes and Noble after my third Henry's Tuesday I found the Calvin Trill memoir with the NY Times Jackson 1965. Great story there of a flight from Atlanta to Jackson that year in the heat of the Civil Rights era. King and some of his entourage, mostly King struck up a conversation with a White Mississippian who called himself a Christian. Quite civil conversation where the white fellow had most of the talking points of your average Baptist deacon of the day likely this one a Rotarian. What about the Communist influence, couldn't King do it without stirring up violence and marching, didn't the Bible call for order first etc. King bobbed and weaved and of course had the upper hand in the exchange all along but the white fellow never got it. What Robert Parham talked about today with the Illumination Project and the CBF re the Orlando statement Im convinced is a whole different matter. Even Sandy at baplife dot com gets it better than some of the tattoed millennial Baptists of the Ellen Jimmerson stripe. But it is an interesting world, always has been. Wasn't it Kierkegaard who said every generation has to start all over and learn for itself; or maybe that was the Sheriff in No Country for Old Men goin on up ahead cause he knew his Daddy would be there waitin for him with that fire in the horn, in all that cold and all that dark.

   Little Dawg Nine and Cody McAteer's boy are goin to state finals in Prattville to win the Dixie youth of 8 year old title for Collinsville. they got a Mexican and a colored boy on the team. I wish them well

   So who needs Disney World, I mean really

   I'm just getting started. come back for more on July 5 or so

Friday, June 03, 2016

Political science for Rick and Bubba Bammers and Yellowhammers Too

  The hardwiring of Rick and Bubba to Yellowhammer News and Alabama Baptist Convention is of some concern to me to put it mildly. Here is hoping Auburn University Democacy and David Matthews Center for Public life can take up this remedial education cause. Rise of Far Right parties Internationally should google easily for the June 1 chat on diane rehm show, drshow.org. In meantime here is a primer for Rick and Bubba and other functionally illiterates of the mass products of the educational system in Alabama and some from other states.

From the  Transcript

David Rothkopf, I think our listeners and many of our Facebook commentators would like some definitions; nationalists, populists, neo-Nazi, fascism. How do these terms have similarities and how are they different?
  • 10:21:39

    ROTHKOPFWell, I mean, there are differences between each and every one of them. We tend to lump them together. We had the Nazis who are national socialists, which, you know, seemed paradoxical since they were a right wing party and embraced the term socialism. But, you know, essentially there is fascism which are political movements in a country with an authoritarian bent and a nationalist bent that draw on the roots of fascism that were seen early in the 20th -- in the mid-20th century from people like Mussolini or Franco or Hitler.
  • 10:22:19

    ROTHKOPFNationalists have existed in all countries at all time and have tried to play in the heartstrings and patriotism of countries to achieve their goals. I think it's very, very important here to be careful about our language, but having said that, you know, you take a case like Trump, and when people call Trump a fascist, there's a lot of pushback and you said, well, he's not as bad as Hitler in that respect or in this respect. I think we can all agree on one thing, strip away the labels, you get a leader like Trump who is unqualified for the job, is using racism, misogyny and kind of desire to scapegoat the other as his campaign platform. And that's just horrible.
  • 10:23:07

    ROTHKOPFSo don't call it fascism, call it horrible, call it inappropriate to become president of the United States, call it inappropriate to have a place on the political stage, call out the media for legitimizing a candidate who should be repudiated from his resume onward to his actions, but don't, you know, get too hung up in the kind of academic debate about labels, because I don't think it's as important as the imperative of stopping a candidate like that from gaining power.
  • 10:23:38

    REHMRobert Paxton, you've studied fascism. Define it for us in your terms.
  • 10:23:48

    PAXTONWell, I wrote my book, "The Anatomy of Fascism," partly to avoid or prevent the facile use of the term, because practically everybody has been called a fascist sooner or later, ranging from parents who take away your toys to the dean of your college to a politician you don't like. And I think the term needs to be used with great precision. And we take Mussolini and Hitler as the models. These are mass nationalist movements that build upon a sense of decline or defeat in a country that's been humiliated. I think you have to have a defeat or humiliation to discredit the existing leaders.
  • 10:24:28

    PAXTONThey feel that there's an illness inside the country, an internal enemy who needs to be rooted out and who's linked to an external enemy, and so the populations are mobilized in astonishingly effective ways to march off in ranks behind the leader. And finally there's the recourse to war, which is the ultimate aim of these people. They want to overturn an international system, and so it was unfavorable to them. These were all very dramatic, and there's hardly been anything equally dramatic since 1945. And so some people would say we shouldn't use fascism at all for movements in our somewhat less extreme times.
  • 10:25:11

    PAXTONNevertheless, I think we must admit that Mr. Trump, whether knowingly or whether simply by some kind of instinct, is using language and even facial gestures that recall those of Hitler and Mussolini. He plays on the theme of decline. He's virtually invented a scenario in which this country, even though we're -- has the most military in the world and have the strongest economy in the world, are somehow seen as declining because indeed there are intractable problems like ISIS that nobody can deal with. And he has the same appeal to racism. He defines an internal enemy that has to be rooted out, whether it's immigrants or Mexicans or whatever.
  • 10:26:02

    PAXTONAnd his techniques, the arrival by plane, it was Hitler who pioneered that. No one had ever seen a politician arrive by plane. It's enormously exciting. But the most profound differences at the same time, the fascists were -- the fascists intended to unite a country that had been fragmented and their idea was that the individualism needed to be subordinated to the community interests. And the term fascism that Mussolini invented referred to a Roman symbol with an axe and rods bound around it that stood for the power and the unity of the country. We're not dealing with movements toward national unity. We're dealing with runaway individualism. Everybody's supposed to do what they want with a minimum of government regulation.
  • 10:26:59

    PAXTONIt's not -- the profound energy here is away from the forced unification or the fascist movements