Ephemera

• Review: Going Postal # -

  

  By Mark Ames

  Why do they hate America? Because there is a lot there to hate, says Mark Ames. Going Postal connects a lot of far-flung points to show the creepy similarities that exist between school and workplace rage killings and early American slave rebellions. Among them is that each and every slave rebellion was led by a certifiable crazy person. When the cruelty and hatefulness of American society is invisible, you'd have to be a lunatic to see it. It may be that the rage killers were crazy *and also* that there is something very very ill about American society that they are reacting to, just like old John Brown. Not entirely convincing on every point, but a good read for an emigrant to remind himself why he left.

  Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion, from Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine

• Illegal Business # -

  ... Controls America.

  Proof emerging that the DEA cooperated with the Sinaloa Cartel to allow drugs into the US in exchange for intelligence against other cartels.  Which has got to figure in to why HSBC only got a slap on the wrist for laundering a billion dollars for them.

• American Nations: Review # -

  Colin Woodward traces the origins of settlement in the United States to demonstrate that American attitudes, values and politics are highly regional and perpetuate over time. This basis for this is the "Founder's Effect", a recognized phenomenon whereby the original settlers of an area have an outsize effect on culture across time. Looking at patterns of immigration and internal movement, Woodward shows the existence of 11 different regional cultural blocks. The unsurprising North vs South is certainly visible, as is the Red State vs Blue State divide of more recent times, but the book's major revelation is that there exist multiple blocks within those broader divisions that are regional in nature, persist over time, contain their own political and cultural visions and agendas, and are capable of shifting allegiances in pursuit of those goals. It didn't touch on race specifically or on more fine-grained immigrant contributions but in a way that allowed it to more starkly illustrate the differences among the multitude of white people that whiteness encourages us to gloss over. Regionally based, with different dominant churches, different dialects, different cultural values: It is not much of a stretch to say that America consists of 11 different emerging ethnicities that whiteness and other national myths render invisible.