i don't think you understand

[click image, video playlist, documentary, not exactly comprehensive, still too fairy tale, 45 minutes]

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This guy, Spotted Eagle, was a Sans Arc chief who helped Crazy Horse and Gall and Two Moons thump Custer at Greasy Grass. Most people believe the fairy tales about that battle, "Custer's Last Stand". Sitting Bull didn't fight in that battle. He was sort of the head chief of the encampment—and arguably of the various branches of the tribes—no longer an active warrior. All those tribes were camped together there—some who had stayed free, and some who had left the reservations because they were being starved—in defiance of orders from Washington to clear them out, keep them from bankrupting any more railroad barons. They were there together to hunt, but knowing there would be troops trying to stop them. The pig Custer went for their women and children, intending to use them as shields so as to force the men not to fight.

Bad move.

We can't be blamed for having it wrong about the Little Big Horn, even if we should have known the history books were bullshit, because accounts of the battle by the victors disagree with each other wildly and then when you add in all the fanciful ideas of the people trying to chronicle it... yikes... a mess. But I guess all the forensics they've been doing on the battlefield has started to clear up some of the confusion. There may not have been a "last stand" at all, just thousands of warriors rising up as one and overwhelming the troops. Chasing down and killing the ones who were fleeing.

I guess I'm so interested in mentioning this because I want you to think about what you would do when they came to herd you into a concentration camp, keep you from costing the plutocrats, interfering with their profit. It's been on my mind. And it's even heavier on my mind now that the Senate has dumped so many people off unemployment benefits. First they dump you out of your job and then they dump you off any means to even eat. Don't give me the bit about food stamps, because try using them to fill yer belly when you don't have a kitchen. Not impossible, but practically so, close enough to being entirely too hungry too much of the time. Seems to me the situation is just about parallel. Who are the true humans? The troops? The people herded? Or the warriors who feed their families, despite being ordered out of the means, and kill who comes to harm them?

Our little sort of half a supermarket, here in bumfuck nowhere, has just taken to locking the doors on one side in the evenings because of the huge uptick in thefts. Little kids are coming in and trying for liquor and cigarettes, items that can be sold, no doubt by their parents, for the most return on their efforts. Little kids don't go to jail for stealing from the grocery store, but adults do. The store owners think this will funnel all activity past the checker nearest the other doors, lower the take. First they padlocked the cigarettes for real, so you can't just grab them and bring them to checkout yourself, and now this. Next they won't be leaving the huge bins full of produce out all night when they're having their big sales. They never bothered to haul them all in at closing time because nobody took them. I think this is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better... everywhere.

People need to start thinking about WHO they are. Wasichu? Victim? True human?

Don't lie to yourself.

And start thinking about the real American heroes. There were very many with their priorities on straight. One of them is staring out at you from some hundred and forty years ago. They did not just lay down and let the barons railroad them with their hired killers. Sitting Bull may not have fought in this one, but he fought off many, many wasichu for many, many years before guys like Spotted Eagle and Crazy Horse and Gall and Two Moons came out for their last great victory. They are still alive. Everyone knows who the murderating fucks were and who the heroes were... and everyone knows what happens when you don't defeat the murderating fucks.

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