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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: "Doin' Right Ain't Got No End" When I was in college I lived in an old two-story frame house, built in the 1890's. It was a co-ed house with 13 people in it, and ha ha! I was the only renter who had a room to himself! Because I got there first, before everyone else, that's how! Downstairs was the family room, or living room, or community room, or throw-all-the-beer-cans-in-it room, or whatever you want to call it. It came with a TV, which finally disappeared into some cokehead's car and was never seen again. The year that we had the TV, it brought in three things: the only broadcast channel in town, which had a newscaster who would change his coat when he went from news to sports; another channel from 35 miles away, and a cable channel from who knows where. I think it might have been Chicago, and don't ask me how we got it. This was a good ten years before everyone else got cable, and I didn't have a clue how it worked. It was just there. The whole setup was pretty pitiful, which was probably the reason we drank so much. Or maybe it was because we were in college, and that's what college kids do instead of studying, which I didn't do in high school or middle school, and I sure wasn't going to start in college. That cable channel did nothing for a year except play the same two movies, over and over: The Ultimate Warrior, with Yul Brenner, and The Outlaw Josey Wales, with Clint Eastwood. Brenner, who had no hair at all, was offset by Eastwood, who looked like the inside of a horsehair mattress. My roommates and I saw those two movies so many times (perhaps 50) we memorized the scenes and the dialog ("Right here is where Josey plugs two guys and spits on one's forehead"). Even though you might think we got bored with just two movies, we never did. It was a ritual, a rather comforting one, to watch and rewatch those movies. Especially, in my case, with Josey Wales, which even at the age of 21, I realized was a great film. It was one of the first movies I bought, when they began to appear on tape. I still have it. I haven't bothered to upgrade to DVD yet. Certain scenes and dialog are more vivid in my memories than others, although all the scenes are permanently bound in my brain. Someday I might end up being 99 years old and not knowing what I had for breakfeast, but I'll still be able to tell you what a Missouri Boat Ride is ("BLAM!"). One scene that is stuck is the speech Wales gives to the Indian, Ten Bears, who's wondering if he should rub out Wales and everyone with him: Josey: Governments don't live together. People live together. Governments don't give you a fair word or a fair fight. I've come here to give you either one. Or get either one from you... I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another... Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues. "Governments are chiefed by the double-tongues." A world of truth in seven words. They should be taught in kindergarten, engraved on stone tablets in town squares! They should be added to the Bible, taught in church! Another scene that has stayed with me is the discussion between Fletcher and the mass-murdering leader of the Kansas Redlegs, who is the Union officer who killed Wales' family -- even though neither Josey nor his family ever owned slaves. Both of them are hunting Josey, who, after his tragedy, turned Missouri Confederate (I suspect from the Ozarks, because I hang out in that area and know what it's like): Fletcher: We get [kill] Josey Wales and it ends. Union officer: Doin' right ain't got no end. "Doin' right ain't got no end." That sentence is the motto of every tyrant -- indeed of most rulers -- in the world. That belief is ancient: both Jesus and Aesop noticed that tyrants always call themselves benefactors. As it is with rulers (who are the most prolific killers of all), it is with murderers: all must justify what they do, rationalize it to themselves. Murderers do their crimes for their own selves; rulers always claim it is for the greater good. "I'm from the government," goes the old but scarily true joke, "and I'm here to help you." You may think you are, but, no, you're not! The story of The Outlaw Josey Wales is a simple but well-known one: a man who wishes to live peaceably with his family sees them slaughtered by agents of the government. So he seeks violent revenge. (By the way, does anyone in the government understand how that eternal truth applies to Iraq? Hello? Hello? Anyone?) Here I inject an aside into the Josey Wales story. His Celtic last name has the same root as the names "Welsh," "Walsh," and "Wallace": "wealh," originally meaning "foreigner," and later, to the English, signifying "slave" or "serf." You'll soon see what this means. There are three other movies I admire that tell the same story as The Outlaw Josey Wales: two of Mel Gibson's films, Braveheart and The Patriot, and the Liam Neeson vehicle, Rob Roy. All have the same story: peaceable men who have their families and lands attacked and taken from by those from the government. The result? Murderous revenge, of course. It always is. It's a law written on the human heart. There is something else all four films have in common: they tell the story of the conflict between the English and the Scots/Irish/Welsh. In Braveheart the attempted English genocide of the Scots is shown; in Rob Roy it's the Irish; and in the case of The Patriot and The Outlaw Josey Wales that conflict has been mapped onto the United States, especially, in the case of Josey, as it showed in the War Between the States. (This same English/Celt conflict transferred onto the U.S. as the North/South conflict is also the basis of what is probably the Great American Novel: With With the Wind.) Each film also very clearly zeroes in on the villain: the English. In the United States, these people, roughly speaking, transformed themselves into meddling, murdering East Coast Ivy League WASP Puritan Imperial Yankees Neoconservatives (yeah, I know it's a mouthful, but it's a fun mouthful, ain't it?) They're still around today, and are not only still meddling in the United States, but have, since their invasion of the Philippines in 1898, expanded their meddling throughout the world. Their motto: doin' right ain't got no end. No matter how many people die, no matter how much is destroyed. That motto is how the world ends up with the hallucinations of someone like Richard Perle, who said, of Iraq, "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now." Say what? People like him believe that the Josey Wales of the world would offer a drink to their invaders for "liberating" them, or the women would show them their breasts and throw flowers at them. Uh huh. Since two of the films have been made by Mel Gibson (which is a Scottish name), I'd say it's pretty clear that Gibson does not have a high opinion of the English, especially since, being Catholic, I'm sure he knows about how Cromwell (who styled himself "Lord Protector") caused the deaths or exile of up to one-third of the Irish population (most of them Catholic), and of the Lowland and Highland Clearances in Scotland, when many, many people were burned out of their homes, including mine own ancestors (somebody owes me a lot of money and land). Such butchery and theft was, of course, lauded as "progress," as it always is. Cromwell was the first and only military dictator in England, and after his death he was treated as a traitor -- his miserable but unfortunately dead body was dug up and drawn and quartered. Boy, that is a lot of dislike ain't it? No that's not right -- it's downright hate. Even today, he is hated in Ireland, and no wonder -- he rubbed out one-third of the population. As Jimmy Cantrell asserts: "...the English Empire began not around the globe but with Anglo-Saxons slaughtering Celts [featuring massacres of civilians that were all but unheard of in European warfare] and stealing all their wealth, the Yankee Empire began with the slaughtering of Southerners and the purloining of almost all Southern wealth." Wealh, remember? Propaganda has taught us the English are our allies, and the Germans, who are supposed to be genetically genocidal, are not (here's food for thought: about 90% of English are Anglo-Saxon, i.e. German). Silly me to believe that not only is England not our ally, but that no country is. The English were just as guilty as the Germans in World War I and World War II, probably because both are blood brothers joined bloodily, Siamese-twin-like, at the hip. The U.S. came in on the side of England in World War I (when the combatants were exhausted and ready to quit) and won the peace, a peace which imposed crushing reparations on Germany. There's no fight like a family fight, huh? Those reparations led to WW II. We came in on the side of the English, again against the Germans, and this time delivered the whole of Christian Eastern Europe to atheist Communist Russia, for over 50 years. What did we get out of all this? Hundreds of thousands of casualties, and just about nothing else. I consider movies to be modern-day myths, and like all great myths, they tell us great truths. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth ten million. The four movies I've just listed tell us that when governments (which always call themselves protectors) slaughter families and steal land (for the greater good, of course), the outrages are never forgotten, even after several hundred years, and, invariably, bloody revenge is sought, as surely as night follows day. There are no "cakewalks," no flowers thrown, no naked grateful babes, no booze offered. Just death and destruction. Countries don't have friends, just shifting alliances. What's that old saying? "With no justice, there will be no peace"? And it's true, no matter how many centuries -- or millenia -- pass.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
1) With no justice, there will be no peace. 2) TANJ. Therefore what is? Struggle, as Marx said.
... now with Solium™!
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