So, a high-school peace group is being denied the right, peaceably, to organize. Honestly, how else would they?

The group of students wear yellow ribbons. They don't say anything against Bush, or for Democrats. They just wear shirts that proclaim peace. Peace signs, the word "Peace," that kind of stuff. They followed the rules with a written application, and an official statement of purpose & principles, and an adult sponsor. The administration rejected their application, and is preventing them from posting anything related to peace on their lockers.

The whole school is in an uproar, with students united behind a common cause. Now a huge number of students are wearing shirts with the same theme, holding their ground in this battle of ideas.
That newly-popular theme, though, is not a peace symbol, but a Confederate flag. Yep, the majority of students side with the administration (school and national), and want this group of dissenters to be silenced. And wearing the old Stars and Bars is the least they can do to show their support...for...their, um...country? Uh, and for the President...of the, um, Union.

But peace advocacy can't be allowed, because it's disruptive and nigh-upon treasonous. Best to stick with safe, patriotic themes...like that group who rebelled against the US government and eventually became symbols of slavery. No controversy there, no sir.

I stole the above link from Ran Preiur, who says: "Ordinary Americans, post 1980, are probably the only population in history to be generally pro-war." But I think Spartan citizens would have also swung pro-war. I hear that the government of Sparta declared war on most of its own, non-citizen population on a regular basis, using a ballot by a representative body. This meant most of the work within their borders was done by enemies of the state, allowing more-powerful Spartans to ignore what little civil rights protections had been developed at that time, and treat their workers worse than an Athenian would have treated a slave.

You may have seen 300, in which the Spartan protagonist (a young prince, natch) is sent out to live off the land, the way soldiers do. He makes a spear from a sapling and kills a giant, slavering CG wolf.



This is kind of historically accurate, if we remember that this cartoon wolf is actually symbolic. Soldiers don't live from the earth the way hunter-gatherers do; that would require some sissy expertise with a digging stick, and less time for manly spear-play. "Live off the land" is a euphemism for "steal from the locals:" Spartan youths weren't cast out on their own to dig for grubs and tubers; they were forced to join street gangs, and get first-hand experience of, as Terry Gilliam would put it, the violence inherent in the system. Having to choose between starvation and armed robbery was their rite of passage, and the slavering wolf represents the threat of an empowered lower or middle class, like the phantom menace faced by Marie Antoinette. He slew that wolf, alright...and got food, clothing, and status in the bargain.

Anyone who couldn't find a place in the hierarchy of thugs would be left in the cold, to be killed by an angry peasant if hunger or exposure weren't enough...but I'm sure that didn't happen too often. People are good at fitting in, whether they're in an ancient Greek scouting troop, a Prussian-style public school, or a Bentham-Foucault inspired prison system.

It occurs to me that the bulk of agricultural workers in this country are in a similar situation to their Spartan forbears: they're economically necessary, but legally forbidden. In my neighborhood, citizen "rat packs" have formed to exploit this situation. Like Sinatra before them, they've found strength and wealth in organized crime. Like young Spartans, they target members of the laboring class, because "Illegals" tend to be frozen out of the banking system, so they often carry cash on payday, rather than a checkbook or ATM card. And they can't go to the authorities, for fear of deportation.

But the plumbing for deportation is getting a little clogged, and prisoners are backing up faster than they can be drained from our borders...so they're staying in prison longer. And with shortages of agricultural labor in the parts of rural America with the toughest immigration enforcement, they've started using chain gangs to harvest and care for crops. Like illegal aliens, inmates don't need to be paid minimum wage.

The current political situation raises many small concerns, each little more than a drop in the bucket, or a grain of sand on the beach. They all add up, though, until I can't go along with it, and can barely even keep my temper. If I weren't such a peaceful fellow, I'd have the urge to kill the messenger. By...oh, I don't know...kicking him into a well, or something.


Here's your moment of Zen...unless that phrase is a registered trademark, in which case it's a moment of Taoism or Yoga or something: