Because you know reality does not count when politicians and rightwing media smell a creatable issue, in light of this past weekend, might I point out:
While there will be those who claim after this past weekend that the military was safer under Trump, 65 American service members died in combat while serving Trump from January 2017 to January 2021 or, put another way, there were fatalities every year of his presidency, 45 of which were combat deaths reported in Afghanistan alone.
Trump has claimed that under him for the 18 months in Afghanistan,
“we didn’t lose one American soldier,”
He went further to claim,
“This attack would NEVER have happened if I was President, not even a chance. Just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the War in Ukraine would never have happened, and we would right now have Peace throughout the World. Instead, we are on the brink of World War 3.”
Along with the three service members killed this weekend and the 13 killed during the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, the numbers so far would contradict Trump.
Tom Cotton wants a war and in condemning Biden for not dropping bombs, he accidentally revealed that to him, the military are just things that fight wars and are expendable saying,
“It seems like the president wants to go out of his way to avoid Iranian casualties. I would target Iranians who are operating in Iraq and in Syria. I would also send a clear message to Iran if these attacks don’t stop immediately, then we’ll begin to threaten their assets.”
And only the Iranians will suffer “casualties”, as the United States has never lost anyone in war, like it was during the Trump Years unless we find it useful for Trump and Cotton to count them as casualties under Biden.
I came. I saw. I conquered. Now I am getting erased.
I have no idea what it is, but it seems to the present young generation that history only began 30 years ago, and this is a problem.
By way of illustration:
I have attended talks by people who were inside and out on the street the night of the Stonewall Inn Rebellion who, after speaking of their experience that night, have been corrected on some details that did not match what an audience member had been sent by a peer of the same age in a text.
My own history was sanitized recently to a point to remove all possible triggers that would make certain facts uncomfortable for present day young readers who might be offended by the terms that were used and the attitudes expressed twenty years ago so that when I read my own history, I was a minor player in an event in which I was the main one. Restoration of facts and vocabulary, no matter how unpleasant to today’s sensibilities, restored me to my own story.
In my living room I have a framed t-shirt I designed for an AIDS Walk in Oklahoma City in 1994, some thirty years ago now, along with a button and key chain that were part of the fundraising, but read recently that this year will be the 25th annual AIDS Walk, according to a new committee, erasing the five walks that would make it actually the 30th and removing from the Community history the people who had faced the worst of the AIDS Pandemic’s early devastation in the 1980s, and had begun the Walks.
A simple inquiry on a visit to Long Beach California recently revealed that, although the Gay Men’s Chorus of Long Beach had existed from 1984 through around 1994 and was very well known, the young people at the reception desk at the GLBT Community Center, which should have its finger on the pulse of the Community, past, present, and future, had no idea such a chorus existed showing that the men who had given their time to the Community during the early years of the AIDS Pandemic have been erased. Making it worse was this same lack of knowledge on the part of the person in charge of the Center at the time I visited who presented a bad example to those who have taken on caring for the Community in all its aspects. They only knew about the chorus begun in Orange County in 1992.
To guarantee to myself and anyone who might assume I have reached that age where fantasy and reality blur their boundaries, although I could find no reviews of the GMCLB’s performances, I did find notices of its upcoming concert dates in the local paper, The Press-Telegram, for those years.
Although the Center would welcome anything I might have related to the chorus, there seemed to be little interest in correcting the history.
In looking for information online since anything I had was lost in 1992 with the Rodney King Riots reaching where I had materials stored, I wrote to the local newspaper in Long Beach and was referred to a local LGBT Community newspaper that might be useful to my research and found it had recently celebrated its anniversary, claiming to be the first LGBT Community paper in Long Beach.
I know this claim to be false because, among my involvements in the Long Beach Gay Community, I was the cartoonist for the original paper from 1985 to 1992.
That was the year I spent the summer in Greenwich Village in New York having coffee occasionally with many people who were at the Stonewall Inn that night, holding the Ashes of Marsha Johnson at coffee in Mr. Wicker’s antique shop the day before I attended both her funeral and the party after where the Drag Queens were fierce, and got to hear the stories of the behind the scenes that may shock those whose history is all lollipops and rainbows and which they would dismiss out of hand because truth triggers the easily offended.
I have spoken with many who did the heavy lifting since Stonewall, and what they have experienced in large numbers is seeing the history of which they were a part and a shaper being modified to taste like history is a recipe and themselves being written out of their own lives and replaced with tag-alongs.
Some of the saddest words I heard came from an older activist, “No one knows who I am anymore,” when many owe her a debt.
As a teacher, whenever an unpleasant historical event came up there were always the students in the class who boasted that had they been there, things would have been different, ignoring the reality that things in the past were not like they are now and could have been better or worse than they are presently. Whereas, now you might be able to storm into someplace and make your displeasure known because times allow for that, trying that in the past might have you shot just stepping in the door depending what part of the country you lived in and what color your skin was.
When a group of us elder Gays were discussing changes over time while sitting at a bar on Pride Day, we were admonished for expressing jealousy of the young kids who have the freedom to do what we only could dream of and worked for, with the reminder that if we had only worked harder we would have had our rights sooner when this twenty something was born Years after the state had passed its equality law and might have some difficulties now, but not those as well as what had to be experienced before.
When things like marriage equality came along it was, to this young person and his friends, just part of the natural progression that went along with what we had been given in the past because, apparently, it was not through the hard work of the activists in the Community but because of the largesse of the greater society that extended our rights to us that we now have them.
A Transgender friend is given the cold shoulder by young Trans people who ignore what her transitioning entailed as a decorated cop in a red state capitol and do not invite her to participate in things because they have decided that all cops, regardless of anything, are bad, and she is equally guilty of any police oppression regardless of her treatment by the police force post gender alignment.
If I have seen this much erasure in these many places in just those things with which I had a close relationship, it has to be happening in a lot of places and we need to stop this erosion of our history.
I saved my history as I wrote an important part of it in a book and that, my artwork, and legal papers from OKC are archived and, regardless of any future treatment, my truth is on file.
Although it has been 30 years and only one visit in that time, I am endeavoring to restore the GMCLB and the original Gay newspaper to the historic record.
I am proposing that anyone who was a Gay activist, who gave their lives to the fight, who experienced any part of Gay History, write your personal experience down. Do not leave it to others. They will not be looking you up especially if your history goes back more than 30 years.
Write down your personal experience, the role you played, referring only to others as they play into your story. You are the star, they the extras and supporting cast. It will happen that way with their tellings so there will, in the end, be singular and group inter-twinings.
This is your official account of your story, the one that, regardless how anyone else might twist it, will exist as your truth.
There are various places archiving Gay History.
My Oklahoma History is at a university in that state and there are Gay History sites on the internet. You can write it up on a self publishing site so it is preserved.
It used to be that we were erased by those who did not want us in the histories because we were different. Histories were rewritten to credit others with our work and pronoun genders were changed to deny our love for each other. It was bad enough when we had to protect our history from others, it is horrendous that we have to save our history from self-revision from within.
“What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. ” Thomas Paine
Phrases like “Family Friendly” were historically used to exclude.
Not wanting to be seen for what it was, a ban on Gay people being somewhere because that could lead to litigation, playing off of stereotypes, this phrase meant that as Gay people had no self-control while lacking any idea of social skills, we would show up and camp the event up with weird sexualized behavior. It was to everyone’s benefit that we not attend.
Anyone who has ever had to fight for their rights with which they have been endowed by their creator, rights all people had because it was just so self-evident that we are all created equal, has had to face those euphemisms that bar the door, and prosecution because a law’s wording was carefully crafted to appear broad when the intent is to artfully target.
During the book banning attempt in Oklahoma City 20 years ago, the books to be banned were those with “Homosexual Themes” which are whatever the banner defines that as. Sometimes the publicity for the attempt to ban a book was the actual object as it opens a door to ignite any number of conservative pontifications.
The chaos this approach would create was as self-evident as the truth about equality because all books could be reassessed and evaluated with a more jaundiced eye and many acceptable books could be shown to have “Homosexual Themes” by simply assigning symbolism to names, colors, places, actions, and then re-interpreting simple scenes as the veil that blurred what was actually there.
This was useful as the majority would have little interest in what others lost or never got, so with the us/them set up, they were content to be protected from us, and the system seemed to have the expected benefits.
But those who have had to fight for their rights are very aware of slippery slopes as recognizing our rights, the rights the creator already gave us, was constantly referred to as the slippery slope that would end up having everyone’s rights recognized, not just those of those who benefit by the division.
Back when Ron DeSantis began his anti-Gay jag and knew he needed both the ostentatious, politicaly advantageous actions and the ones more subtle because, being broad, they would appear to be universally applicable, while they would only be applied to one group of people, Bill O’reilly, assuming he was still relevant, supported Florida’s book banning law because,
“there was abuse going on in Florida. There were far-left progressive people trying to impose an agenda on children, there’s no doubt about it.”
Now, out of fear, school districts are erring on the side of caution, afraid some overlooked book will become someone’s major issue and way to Jesus. They are obviously casting a wide net that supporters of book bans did not realize could entangle them.
Bill O’Reilly, who accused school teachers and librarians of wanting to “impose an agenda on children” while he wrote a series of book about the “Killing of” the witches, the Legends, the killers, the Mob, Crazy Horse, the SS, England, the Rising Sun, Reagan, Patton, Jesus, Kennedy, and Lincoln, showing an odd fascination with a negative, politically explained obsession and, perhaps finding beginning each book with the words “Killing” is somehow being poetic, has found he has been removed from a school district’s libraries perhaps, because of the killing thing or as part of removing indoctrination from the schools.
Years ago, Nancy Reagan opposed stem cell research to combat Altzheimers supporting the idea it promoted abortion because the the stem cell supply used in research had originallycome from aborted fetuses. That was until such research might help Ronnie in his waning years and mental capacity.
It became okay of a sudden.
AIDS research was purposefully slow because others were dying. When it was found that it wasn’t limited just to them, things changed.
And, now that Bill O’reilly has been swept up in what was supposed to be a cleverly disguised law targeting a specific group of people while appearing to be applicable to everyone, he wants specifics which he will not get because that would reveal the actual intent of the law and the specific segment of the population being targeted.
“Things are getting crazy with book banning in Florida. “Killing Jesus: A History” and “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” both were pulled pending a review to see whether they ran afoul of a new state law passed by the state’s Republican-led Legislature and signed by DeSantis.
Depending on how any action he might take turns out, O’Reilly may be showing other authors of banned books how to get their books put back on the shelves in Florida having declared.
“We are investigating and are seeking comment from (DeSantis). This will not stand.”
What bothers him the most and what is so objectionable to him is that while he supported DeSantis’s book ban laws when applied to others, not to those like him, he has realized that “The state has an obligation to protect children. But the wording of the law was far too nebulous in Tallahassee.”
The story is that Escambia County School District removed 1,500 books from it libraries pending review, a process which, while following the law, deprives students in the district access to all those books, even the ones that will eventually be returned to the shelves either before graduation when they would be useful or after when unneeded.
Tiffany Justice, a leading voice against “inappropriate” books in school and co-founder of Mom’s for Liberty, reeling itself at present because, while they were going after controlling what other people’s children could read, they were too distracted to notice one of the founders had taken too much liberty, complained about schools doing this because
“They’ve got bloated administrative budgets, they’ve got people doing all kinds of things. If they don’t have the time to vet the books that are in the libraries then they have no business being in their jobs.”.
The two things she ignores are that this removal of books is not what schools want to be doing but the law she supports forces them to do, and that the books were vetted by professionals but it did not go the way she would have liked because it was done out of her control.
The cooler heads at the school district explained,
“The 1,000+ books … have not been banned or removed from the school district; rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation. Our school district, and especially our dedicated media specialists, remain committed to adhering to all statutes and regulations, while also providing valuable and varied literacy opportunities for every student.”
The only viable solution to Bill’s problem according to his own charges would be for Florida to specifically list which citizens Florida is targeting.
