LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2023 WEDNESDAY

Oh good! The drug dealer showed up at the office today!

Well, the drug-dealer’s box of freebies. About once a month some new cannabis-drink startup sends a box of stuff. The profusion of brands is remarkable, as is the innovation involved in the mild-disassociation intoxicant sector. The last batch contained small bottles of THC, something you can add to your sodas, I guess. This time it was all "sodas" with various combo-flavors. Dragonfruit-Kiwi. Mango-Marionberry. Whatever. I've tried a few, and they all taste awful, which is bizarre: is it that hard to make good-tasting soda, or does the additive override everything?

This may be the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen:

Each pretzel has 1mg. What is a natural and expected consequence of ingestion? The Munchies, as they were called. So the more you eat, the higher you get, and then you eat more, and before you know it you are trending tropospheric.

I suppose the target market can take 50mg.

Ha ha granny’s stoned, aren’t stoned old people cute

We discussed this a while back - the use of previous generations known for industry and probiety to sell these new products, like getting stoned is some squarejohn Greatest Generation cultural tradition. Then again, if Granny's 75 here, she was probably doing joints in the 60s, but she certainly wasn't do them regularly. Sorry: on the regular. Forgot the proper lingo.

(Reposted from another site I write for, because it seems apt.)

Everyone in the country who is not an indigenous American is a colonizer or settler, and hence illegitimate.

Latinx people are entitled to immediate access, residency, and benefits in the United States. When they come here from other places, they are not colonizing.

When the Spanish came in the 16th century, they were colonizing. When they defeated the indigenous culture, this was colonizing.

When the indigenous cultures of Meso-Americas warred and conquered, this was not colonizing, because it happened within the same racial group. Most importantly, no one had to cross an ocean to do it.

The introduction of Europeans into the North American continent was settler-colonization, and hence bad, because the entire land mass belonged to various groups of indigenous people. The presence of one small tribe, moving about as the seasons and the foodstuffs required, was sufficient to assert a permanent claim to vast undefined territories (demarcations being an invention of the legalistic Western imagination). If the tribe was expelled by another tribe, this was not bad because it happened within the same racial group.

If the North American continent had been eventually conquered by one particular tribe that subjected all others, this would be legitimate. If any North American tribe had fled south to conquer people in Central America to establish a safe haven, this would not be colonialism, as no Europeans were involved.

The colonizers who came to America extirpated the local cultures and imposed a set of Western values, Eurocentric concepts that center Whiteness in all institutions and cultural manifestations. One of these, obviously, is a notion of all people created equal by God. This established, at least in theory, a notion of civic identity that transcends tribe, and means that anyone can come here, and have the same rights as everyone else, regardless of your tenure (but dependent on your legal status.) But since this idea arose from settlers, it must be deconstructed and dismantled in the name of decolonization, returning the continent to the ideas, folkways, languages and customs of the indigenous people.

While this may seem to require the removal of all non-indigenous people, not just the Europeans, the process of decolonization can be achieved if a certain group of people, identifiable by skin tone, are decentered. The removal of the primary illegitimate element creates a moral state in which all other immigrants are absolved of their colonialism.

All non-indigenous people are required to participate in this process, the conclusion of which is the elimination of Whiteness. All other non-indigenous persons will be granted permission to shape the post-colonial society according to the proper theories, which come from a white male in Germany.

All forms of knowledge must be decolonized, as they impose Western ways of thinking. If not immediately decolonized, they must be presented as co-equal to indigenous ways of knowing, without any judgment that implies a hierarchy. The existence of a hierarchy is proof of racist thinking (Kendi, et al), even though the assertion of a value judgment about the existence of hierarchies in a society implies the existence of an ethical hierarchy.

A university that has been on North American soil for four hundred years must be decolonized, because it was founded by settlers. It may not have replaced an existing indigenous version of a university, but it was elevated in status above native “ways of knowing” by its importation of settler beliefs, ensconced in settler architectural forms. Ideally, the universities should be demolished and replaced with indigenous forms of architecture. Until that day occurs, it is necessary for vanguard members of the movement to have the office on the top floor with the corner windows.

All technologies of the West are illegitimate in origin, either from stealing the work of oppressed people, the labor of oppressed people through exploitative capitalism and imperialism, or both. Decolonization does not require the abandonment of these technologies, but it does require turning their control over to the victims from whom they were extracted.

Any failure of the technologies to thrive after decolonization is an indication that the process has not been sufficiently implemented.

Any representative of a colonized group has more moral standing in the society than a colonizer; hence, someone whose ancestors came to the continent in the 17th century has less legitimacy than someone who came here a month ago from a nation that suffered under British rule for two decades in the 19th century. Their particulars – class status, education in Western styles, etc. – are irrelevant. Their fleshly manifestation of colonialism’s victims provides ethical justification for undoing the existing culture into which they have transported themselves.

The previous definitions of colonialism that required crossing an ocean in substantial vessels are invalid if one takes a plane. They are also invalid if one is on a small boat making a perilous journey. In the latter case, the poor quality of the boat and the difficulty of the journey entitles one to residency wherever you land.

While this might appear to be colonialism of a different sort, that cannot possibly be, as the desired end result is Justice. But not in the Western colonialist sense of procedural inquiry and deliberative result, which is tainted by notions of objectivity and empiricism. Justice in this context is defined as “a predetermined alignment with historical forces that serves to displace and inhabit existing structures” and enables the State to rearrange resources according to one’s position on the intersectional grievance pyramid, preferably through bureaucracies and financial infrastructure wholly derived from Settler ideas and technology.

Until then, all are living in an unjust system of oppression, and all means to dismantle this system are justified. Since all institutions are systemically invalid and illegitimate, none will be spared in the quest to achieve justice.

Except tenure.

It’s 1924.

That’s a lot of green. Other rich guys’ tax bills were published, and the article goes on to note that there’s some doubt whether publication of the stats was legal. Apparently a law said the payments were public records, but whether newspapers could run with the info - well, that’s a chin-scratcher, that is.

Gee, the Mob’s getting pretty brazen!


		The Builders and Exchange building would be demolished at the end of the 80s, and the building where I work occupies the spot now. A fair exchange. Building-wise.

Uh -

What?

What?

They found a dead guy in the woods, chained to a tree.

Suicide. Of course, that’s how you do it. You chain yourself to a tree.

His name was Henry E. McHenry. Who has a last name of McHenry and names his son Henry?

The story doesn’t say that she was found by a fellow who said they’d had dinner the previous night; he was ten years older, and his profession was a “lather.” Some sort of construction / woodworking, I’d guess without googling. Described as her “Sweetheart.” He was promptly arrested, but released a few days later.

The story faded from the papers; nothing in 1925.

Also, “open your heart”

The Good Old Days!


		Read to the end, and consider what a free-for-all that must have been.

I take it the paper was in favor of Clean Government Floyd dislodging the Old Gang from the State legislature.

Notes from around the state: they fired an editorial writer for abrading the sensibility of the old fool who runs the rag.

I found a picture at newspapers.com, where he’s enjoying himself in 1947 at the Calhoun Beach Club.


		From what I can tell, he moved to Minneapolis, or at least Hennepin County, where he died at the age of 55 in 1948. (He was returned home for burial.) He left $48,000 to the city of Fairmont to build a youth center, which he named after his mother.