Culture

Contra BLM Up North

The gentleman is Willard. “Just like the name of the rat” in the old movie, he boasted. He gave me permission to take his picture and tell his story. He lives Up North and always has.

He had heard on the radio (propagandists everywhere are always happy to pass counterproductive news) there was going to be a BLM rally, of all things, downtown at the park circle at 2. So he made himself a sign, got there early, and sat up by the sidewalk to chat with any and all.

It was curious because just a little before I met Willard, I saw somebody getting into a black SUV that had hand-painted “BLM – Black Lives Matter” and “Reparations Now” on its windows. I hurried along because I didn’t see exactly who got into it and wanted to.

I said, as I neared the open passenger-side window and saw who it was, “Ha! A white guy. I knew it.” Young white kid, twenties, long hair but well groomed, obviously well off, playing at politics. He heard me—surprisingly, I am not a quiet man—looked at me, did an illegal U-turn and vamoosed. Downstate stickers. Not a local.

Willard said only a couple of people showed up for the BLM “event”. They milled around on the lawn for a bit. Attracted no attention, and gave up. It had already dispersed. It must have been one of the remnant I had seen. Willard outlasted them.

He said, “Do you know who the first slaves in America were? Irish. I’m Irish. Do all Irish get something? Do I get reparations, too?” I ventured they could pay him back in beer, and after he said he didn’t drink, I volunteered to manage his share.

“What about blacks who were never slaves? Do they get paid?” It is funny seeing Al Sharpton private jet from here to there with his hands out pleading poverty and lack of privilege.

“Nobody gave me anything. I had to work for everything. Why should I pay? I’m tired of all the gimme gimme gimme.” He worked up north all his life. Let’s say he didn’t get rich. And now he’s being asked to give his hard won money to others because their skin color differs. He’s not too happy about it.

He said he and his wife were now listening to Gone With The Wind on tape, which he had never read or seen before, but which he had ordered after he heard it was being purged. “You know the main character in that book, Scarlet? She was all me me me me. She learned.”

Passersby had been friendly, those that paused to look at him anyway, and a few stopped by to chat. Nobody from the BLM “rally” came over.

I asked him why he came out. Willard said, “I just had to do something. I couldn’t sit and not do something.”

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Categories: Culture, Fun

24 replies »

  1. Thanks for that Briggs. We need more like Willard—ordinary folks with a message of truth.

  2. Up North and Downstate sounds like Michigan to this MI girl. Is that Charlevoix? Thank you for all your informative posts, especially the Christian ones ?

  3. Wow!

    You really needed “Up North”!

    We ALL needed YOU to have the rejuvenating experience of “Up North” . Are you there for the week? Or was it just the weekend?

    You’re gonna need that for tomorrow. It looks like we’re “redoing” June, but no real indication of a “spike”.

  4. The great irony is that only about 1% of Americans ever owned slaves
    and you can easily guess which 1% that was. Another great irony is that
    a large proportion of whites now calling themselves Americans, prior to
    1800, came here as indentured servants which is merely a euphemism
    for slaves. These indentures were primarily for ships passage and Old
    World debt.

    They were indentured for seven to fourteen years which often was
    extended by corrupt courts when landowners claimed they had not
    fulfilled their indentures. The figure given in “They Were White and They
    Were Slaves”, by Michael Hoffman states that between fifty and eighty
    percent of the white population prior to 1800 arrived here under these
    conditions.

    This system was replaced by that of poor white sharecroppers and tenant
    farmers that existed through the 1950’s which popularized dirges like
    “I owe my soul to the company store”. So shake your family tree you too
    may be entitled to reparations.

  5. My great great grandfather came from the same area of Scotland as the Trump clan.

    He emigrated to Detroit in the 1840’s after his Master set him free. Unfortunately, malaria had broken out in Detroit so he moved to Canada.

    Does anyone know if I am supposed to apply for reparations in Newcastle where he was enslaved, in Detroit, or here in Canada?

    Thanks for any help,

    Angus Cragg (my slave name)

  6. Fredo

    Thanks for the link

    (It bothered me that there was no copyright)

    Searching, I found two copyright dates 1991 and 1992
    The “official” book is 157 pages, your link is half the pages

    Makes me wonder if your link is the 91 version part of an anthology or text book and later expanded on for full publication?

    But thank you!

  7. jb:
    No problem I read this almost twenty years ago and just duckduckgo-ed
    it. Lots of footnotes and references throughout the text. It’s some of that
    inconvenient history academia has tried to bury for years now. It may not
    be the complete text but certainly gives you a flavor of just how bad things
    were for the ‘lower classes’ the upper strata fed on.

  8. I’m already against the next war.
    I’m already against the next outrage from the cancel mob.
    I’m already against the next woke demand.
    I’m already against the next virus safety precaution.

  9. Maybe would be even better to say Every Life Matters. That way each person is particularly noticed, especially the unborn and just born. One sees the unborn child in utero, and says Every Life Matters, even yours.

    All Life Matters leaves things a bit open as to honoring and saving lives, but as many perceive in the cases of killing the unborn, their lives matter, but mine, the mother’s life, matters more.

    And, prejudice against people whose skin color is different than one’s own, must end.
    God made us, and who are we to think and behave as if He was in error.

    God bless, C-Marie

  10. “Slavery and the Slave Trade”, W.O.Blake ( Colombus:J&H Miller, 1858) Since there are being mentioned books and accounts of slaves, I came across this recently through a footnote. It is available online in PDF. Beginning at page 370, slavery comes to North America. I read about the laws enacted to govern slaves and the trade, the growth in the colonies, and the turning of sentiment against it. Applying the laws from Moses, it wasn’t long before regulation became license. Greed was the motivating factor, not charity or evangelism. Neither conversion or baptism brought liberty. Men went further and deeper than our ancestral Crown ever did. It was selfishness and racism,pride and callousness.
    There were people who fought against it from the beginning yet, I suspect, the preaching of the first Great Awakening changed the hearts of the Founders to recognize the principles of the Declaration, and to work for its end.
    None of this is to create sympathy for BLM, but it is a sure warning to not confuse our desires for what is right.
    (BTW by 1715, there were more slaves in South Carolina than free. By 1776, 287,000 slaves had been brought in. I am unsure of the amount of enslaved Indians. My point is that slavery was not a minor thing. To take the other hand, if 99% had none and were opposed, they failed to crush it. The numbers aren’t important. It is the arrogance of the matter.)

  11. Fredo

    Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886)

    a fictional account of real-life historical events that took place in 18th Century Scotland

  12. JB:
    Yes Hoffman mentions that and the only reason that it saw print
    was the usurpation of a title by the uncle who sold his nephew into
    colonial slavery. The nephew eventually returned to Scotland to
    reclaim his title receiving wide attention in the press which Stevenson
    later fictionalized the book. If you read Peter Williamson’s account he
    was persecuted when he tried to circulate his story of enslavement upon
    his return to Aberdeen. It’s also a very good account of the French and
    Indian Wars.

  13. Briggs : Theory of Large Numbers Redux

    Back in 1980 saw the PBS/WNET Production of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven

    Read the book a couple of times thereafter (not easy to get through)

    The movie was released and I eventually purchased it. Showed it to some friends and neighbors a year or two ago. Last week my neighbor talked about borrowing the book. I reread it over the weekend. It read differently this time, so this evening I rewatched the movie.

    It starred Bruce Davison.

    Bruce Davison was Willard.

    Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

  14. Fredo

    Connections
    connections
    more connections

    As they would have it – the theory of large numbers

    (Re: Bruce Davison, the only reason I checked up on his bio was that his acting in LofH reminded me of Mark Hamill

  15. JB:
    I need some brave little boys and girls who aren’t afraid to live
    outside the laws of gravity….people who want to live in tubes and
    press buttons. FST

  16. Fredo

    Whoops – disconnect

    That sounds like dialogue from a Robert A Heinlein novel (I’m that old)
    When I “searched” on the words, got some “interesting” results but nothing that fits

  17. John Cross Fisheries just happens to be one of the stepping stones to the center of the universe. Lemon pepper from the Alden Millhouse really isn’t that far out of the way. Broiled for 12 minutes. “It’s not what you know or who you know. It’s who you know that knows what you know.” Well, now you know.

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