I was going to talk about juggling babies or some such nonsense today, but I noticed that it was on this day back in 1995 that the Oklahoma City bombing took place, killing roughly 169 people and injuring very many more. I remember in the early 1990s that conservatives, libertarians most especially, were very upset about Ruby Ridge and Waco. And there was a lot of loose talk about armed revolt.

At the time, I felt that the Waco siege had been mishandled. I never had a great deal of sympathy for Ruby Ridge, probably because of its association with white supremacists. I always thought that reaction of people was a bit extreme. This wasn’t exactly Nazi Germany. But regardless, after the Oklahoma City bombing, most of that loose talk of rebellion stopped. Things got very real.

Looking back, I think that had Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols not gotten around to the Oklahoma City bombing, some other pair of “patriots” would have done something similar. But the quiet and reasonableness that this horrific act brought to conservative movement was short lived. I haven’t made a study of it, but you can hear this kind of loose talk any day on The Alex Jones Show. But you will hear the same thing in a less extreme manner from Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh.

Everyone is guilty of loose talk. Children say they want to kill their parents when they get angry. But there really was something different about things in the early 1990s. There was very much a feeling of, “They raped our queen, so we raped their city, and we were right!” But in this case it is hard to see who “they” were. If McVeigh had decided to assassinate Janet Reno (and I certainly heard people talk about that), it at least made some sense; you could argue that she was culpable. But what the hell did the people who happened to be at or near the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building do that deserved death?

But that’s the problem with loose talk. When you live in a realm of theory, people become like chess pieces on a board. It’s like that kid who killed those people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: he thought he was going to start a race war. Those people were just pawns in his grand plan. Ultimately, people have to trump any kind of high ideal — regardless of how great you think it is.

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

— Martin Luther King Jr
Letter from Birmingham Jail
16 April 1963

On this day in 1922, the Senate investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal started. I probably wouldn’t even bring it up, except for the fact that three years ago, 74% of Republicans polled said that the Benghazi “scandal” was worse than the Teapot Dome scandal. I’m pretty sure that almost none of those Republicans even knew what the Teapot Dome scandal was. And really, how could it ever be worse? There was no television at that time and thus no talking points to get wrong. Remember: the Benghazi “scandal” had nothing to do with the attack itself; it was all about what Susan Rice said on the Sunday morning political talk shows. That is the extent of Republican thinking on such matters. (It was only later that things were added as it became obvious that the Republicans were just scandal mongering and didn’t actually care about the attack.)

The earlier scandal is nothing that special. Teapot Dome in Wyoming was one of several oil reserves held by the US Navy. When Warren Harding became president, he issued an executive order transferring control to the Department of the Interior. The secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil rights to a couple of different oil companies for great prices. There was no bidding — it was typical corruption. What is interesting is that this was not illegal.

What was illegal was that the oil companies gave Fall a few million dollars (in today’s currency). He was eventually jailed for a year. Interestingly, however, the man he was convicted of getting a bribe from, Edward Doheny, was found not guilty of bribing a public official. Sort of typical American justice, if you ask me.

What I think is very interesting in this case is that this 1922 act of public corruption is still the only thing that Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts thinks constitutes bribery. And of course, this isn’t how it works at all today. In general, these oil tycoons wouldn’t have to write checks to politicians; they would just write checks to super PACs who support the politicians. So John Roberts and the other crooks on the Supreme Court have simply defined corruption out of existence.

So there will be no more Teapot Dome scandals. We’ve sold honest government away so we can have anti-choice justices on the Supreme Court. Until they’re born, American humans will be the best protected in the world. After they are born, who cares? Certainly not the Supreme Court. Certainly not our politicians. Certainly not most of the American people. But at least the Teapot Dome scandal makes a good polling question. Is the Iran deal worse than the Teapot Dome scandal? I don’t know for sure, but I’ll bet 74% of Republicans would say yes.

Happy anniversary Teapot Dome scandal!

On this day in 1846, the Donner Party set out from Springfield, Illinois. They went on to famously eat each other. As a result, I’ve never been that much interested in it because when I’m hungry I’ll eat anything. So it doesn’t much matter to me. But I bring it up today for a totally different reason.

I had been out of touch with my friend Will for a number of years. I think we managed to independently marry different women on the same day. But when I got back in touch with him, I found that he had become obsessed with the Donner Party. I remember one evening coming over to his place and his idea of the proper way to spend the night was to listen to a lecture on the Donner Party.

Now, on the one hand, I greatly admire that. And I can always use it when Will tells me that whatever I’m currently obsessing about is boring. But it is a little creepy. You haven’t seen a guy for years and all he wants to talk about is cannibalism. I’m not saying Will is a cannibal, but he is very picky about exactly what taco trucks we eat at. Just saying.

The one thing I learned about the Donner Party is this wasn’t the case of people getting stuck and then starving. The whole thing went on for a year. People went off looking for help, leaving others behind. The whole thing seemed very much preventable. If only other people had cared more. But hopefully, Will will notice this post and fill us all in with a comment.

But as I indicated: it just doesn’t seem strange to me that starving people would eat the flesh of dead people. I don’t see the big deal. In fact, I don’t see any issue at all. It is a totally rational decision. Any other decision is just standing on ceremony.

On this day in 1873, the Colfax massacre occurred. As you can see in the image on the left, it is referred to as the “Colfax riot” by bigots. The end of “carpetbag misrule” was really the the new beginning of white rule by terrorism. That sign was put up in 1950.

This is what Ian Millhiser wrote of it in his book, Injustices:

Led by Christopher Columbus Nash, an ex-Confederate army lieutenant who was also the Democratic candidate for Grant Parish sheriff, Democratic forces marched on Colfax on April 13. Though the approximately 150 black men defending the courthouse slightly outnumbered Nash’s men, the Republican forces were massively outgunned. About half of Nash’s men were Confederate veterans, including four officers. Each of them was well armed, many of them with multiple guns, and they had even brought a small cannon to Colfax on a two-horse wagon.

Think about the Colfax Massacre in a modern context. This is what you get when you take a “forgive and forget” (one president might say “look forward as opposed to looking backwards”) attitude toward misbehavior. I’ve discussed this issue many times. I recommend that you check out, Let’s Destroy Laudatory Confederate Monuments. It includes the amazing statistic that although the people of Kentucky stayed with the Union and overwhelmingly supported it, the state has 72 Confederate monuments compared to only two for the Union.

Rewriting the Colfax Massacre

When you allow people to pretend that they did nothing wrong, you allow them to rewrite history. Looking at monuments around the United States, you would think that the Confederates had had some great injustice done to them. They were traitors. They committed treason. General Lee should have been put to death by the mores of the time, not allowed to ride away on his horse with his sword.

I think the same thing about torture. Now we have Dick Cheney going all around talking about how great torture was and how it kept us all safe. Now there’s a man who should have died in prison long ago. But instead, he’ll continue to live to the point where he is all machine and no flesh. There is absolutely no great new life extending technology that won’t be put to use for this most vile of men.

On this day in 1947, the Journey of Reconciliation started. Eight black and eight white men who road interstate buses into segregated states. These would later be called “freedom rides.” A year earlier, in Irene Morgan v Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court (in the 6-1 decision), found that segregated interstate buses were an “undue burden on commerce.” But the southern states refused to follow the law, and these sixteen men were protesting to get the states to follow the federal law.

This is one of the many funny things about libertarians. They have this idea that if you just leave people alone, everyone will get along just fine. Well, the federal courts can determine one thing, but if the local governments don’t follow along, nothing happens. It is just might makes right, which is why African Americans were stopped from voting for such a long time. But if only there were no government, then the mighty would respect the rights of the weak, right?

Anyway, the men were abused and arrested various places. In particular, some of the men were arrested in North Carolina. At sentencing, the good Christian Judge Henry Whitfield told the defendants, “It’s about time you Jews from New York learned that you can’t come down here bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days, and I give you ninety.” I can’t find out anything about this judge, but you can depend upon the fact that he had a good life and never had to rethink his bigotry.

Anyway, 69 years ago, the Journey of Reconciliation started. It lasted for two weeks. The struggle for freedom is a slow and difficult one.