Behind the Bastards

According to Haudenosaunee mythology, as recounted by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braden's Sweetgrass,

the mother goddess Sky Woman came to the land as an immigrant from the heavens, but became indigenous by listening to the land, learning from other species to understand how to live on it, giving as she received, and caring for the earth and its keepers for the sake

of those who would inherit it when she passed on. In their view, the land is identity. It is ancestral connection. It is pharmacy, it is library, and it is home, the source of all that sustains, and the sacred

ground upon which those would observe their responsibility to the world.

According to Haudenosaunee mythology, as recounted by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiden's Sweetgrass,

The mother goddess Sky Woman came to the land as an immigrant from the heavens, but became indigenous by listening to the land, learning from other species to understand how to live on it, giving as she received, and caring for the earth and its keepers for the sake of those who would inherit it when she passed on.

As a young man, Roosevelt had been ridiculed for his high voice, tight pants and fancy clothing, and derided as a weakling and a pumpkin lily. But Roosevelt wanted power, determined to reinvent himself.

He went west, rechristening himself the cowboy of the Dakotas. It was on the frontier that a new masculinity would be forged, a place where white men brought order to savagery, where men served as armed protectors and providers, where violence achieved a greater good.

If the Wild West could mold the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt into a rugged, masculine specimen, perhaps it could do the same for American manhood generally.

When the war came to a close, no amount of patriotism could obscure the fact that it had been fought at great cost and with little apparent gain. Roosevelt's model of masculinity had been found wanting.

The war, it seemed, had presented Americans with the horror of having myths about blood and fire and mutilation and blindness come true.

As a young man, Roosevelt had been ridiculed for his high voice, tight pants and fancy clothing, and derided as a weakling and a pumpkin lily.

But Roosevelt wanted power, determined to reinvent himself. He went west, rechristening himself the cowboy of the Dakotas.

It was on the frontier that a new masculinity would be forged, a place where white men brought order to savagery, where men served as armed protectors and providers, where violence achieved a greater good.

If the Wild West could mold the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt into a rugged, masculine specimen, perhaps it could do the same for American manhood generally.

When the war came to a close, no amount of patriotism could obscure the fact that it had been fought at great cost and with little apparent gain.

Barbara Tuckman, who is a historian, who wrote a book called "The Guns Of August," that's a history of World War One, that describes kind of the machinery that got set up and marched everybody into that situation exploding like sleepwalkers, right. Like this system has been set up and the people are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that everything's just kind of marching with a sense of inevitability towards a worse and a worse end point.

The Guns Of August is a history of World War I...that describes kind of the machinery that got set up and marched everybody into that situation exploding like sleepwalkers right...like this system has been set up and the people are kind of so unwilling to see where it's leading that everything's just kind of marching with a with a sense of inevitability towards a worse and a worse end point and that's that's what scares me most about this.

My favorite was The Velveteen Rabbit.

My favorite was The Velveteen Rabbit.

Author Adrian Raffel, who wrote the book Thinking Inside the Box, Adventures with Crosswords of the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them, wrote in the Paris Review in 2020, quote, If you're a piece of artificial intelligence software, you might have a hard time solving a crossword.

You'd have to separate the puzzle into two separate strands of problems to tackle the issue. How to figure out what a clue is saying, or rather, what it's precisely not saying, and how to fill the letters in the grid in the way that makes the most sense.

Crosswords force the brain to cross wires and solve both these problems at once, balancing the visual spatial part of the brain with the logic run part of the brain.

This is part of the reason why even the best crossword solving AI in the world isn't yet better than the best human. The AI can fill in the grid pretty quickly, but in terms of resolving that grid through riddle logic, humans are still a step ahead.

The most innovative aspect of the crossword is that, through braiding together tasks the mind already wanted to do, it created an itch we didn't know we had. And yet, we've always been primed to solve them.

Author Adrian Raffel, who wrote the book Thinking Inside the Box Adventures with Crosswords of the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them, wrote in the Paris Review in 2020, quote, If you're a piece of artificial intelligence software, you might have a hard time solving a crossword.

Crosswords force the brain to cross wires and solve both these problems at once, balancing the visual spatial part of the brain with the logic run part of the brain.

The most innovative aspect of the crossword is that, through braiding together tasks the mind already wanted to do, it created an itch we didn't know we had. And yet, we've always been primed to solve them.

In her 1861 book, Victorian Enigmas, author Charlotte Eliza Capple attributes the Windsor Enigma puzzle to Queen Victoria.

In her 1861 book, Victorian Enigmas, author Charlotte Eliza Capple attributes the Windsor Enigma puzzle to Queen Victoria.

From a passage from The Private Life of the Queen by quote one of Her Majesty's servants written in 1897, quote, Her Majesty Queen Victoria takes delight in a clever riddle or rebus.

From a passage from The Private Life of the Queen by quote one of Her Majesty's servants written in 1897, quote, Her Majesty Queen Victoria takes delight in a clever riddle or rebus.

In Charles Dobson's or Lewis Carroll's 1880 book, Doublets, a Word Puzzle, there are examples of this, where he says to quote, drive pig into stye, raise four to five, make wheat into bread.

In Charles Doxon's or Lewis Carroll's 1880 book Doublets, A Word Puzzle, there are examples of this, where he says to quote drive pig into stye, raise four to five, make wheat into bread.

It's by Isa Blumi called Destroying Yemen, which is about like a lot of the factors that start the war in Yemen.

There's a very good book about this. It's by Isa Blumi called Destroying Yemen, which is about, like, a lot of the factors that start the war in Yemen.

There's actually a lot of what I was thinking throughout this episode had to do with an interview on a recent episode with Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, who was harassed and doxed for weeks and like an entire summer by Rush Limbaugh back in the day and then went on to be harassed and doxed by Jordan Peterson fans just a couple of years ago.

She wrote this book called The Sexual Politics of Meat.

Historian Dagmar Herzog, who wrote that book Sex after Fascism, that again, if you're going to read one book on sex and Nazism, that's the one, describes how absolutely widespread this thinking is among postwar leftists.

It would be wrong to hold the view that all of what happened in Auschwitz was typically German. It was typical for a society that suppresses sexuality.

Brutality and the lust for destruction become substitutes for bodily pleasure.

In the fascist rebellion, the energies of inhibited sexuality formed into genocide.

Sex after Fascism, which is an amazing book, very well worth reading, Dagmar Herzog writes, other grounds for divorce could be found in failure to engage in sexual intercourse and thereby fulfill one's marital duties, in the use of contraception, and in childlessness.

There's a book called Blind Man's Bluff about the kind, but it was like Soviet and American subs basically playing chicken to try to force the other to surface.

I'm going to quote now from Kevin Cruz's book One Nation Under God, how corporate America invented Christian America, quote, In February 1948, journalist Kerry McWilliams wrote an acidic cover story on it for the nation with Save Christianity and the Save Western Capitalism chants becoming almost indistinguishable.

A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America, he began. For the most part, the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies.

But now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors.

Such a movement is spiritual mobilization. McWilliams explained to his readers the scope of its operations, noting that it now had nine organizers working in high rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and had distributed hundreds of thousands of pamphlets by pro-business authors for free.

But no one knew who was funding the operation, McWilliams warned. There had only been vague statements from Fifield that non-ministers who have a common stake in the America and Christian traditions cannot contribute service and that it was only natural that they give substance instead.

I'm going to quote now from Kevin Cruz's book One Nation Under God, how corporate America invented Christian America, quote, In February 1948, journalist Kerry McWilliams wrote an acidic cover story on it for the nation with Save Christianity and the Save Western Capitalism chants becoming almost indistinguishable.

A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America, he began. For the most part, the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies.

To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the Fourth of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of freedom under God.

These words are the stones upon which man built history's greatest work, the United States of America. Remember them well.

These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS's national radio network. Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars.

its sales were surpassed only by Uncle Tom's cabin.

its sales were surpassed only by Uncle Tom's cabin.

Everybody should read True Believer because it gets into all of this, and it's a real short book, and the death of democracy.

Everybody should read True Believer because it gets into all of this and it's a real short book.

based on a sworn affidavit Bobby filed in Westchester County's New York Supreme Court on September 16th, 2011. He had been victimized by Mary for many years to the extent that physical abuse was involved.

He testified that early in his marriage to Mary, the two had a blazing argument over his continued friendship with his first wife, Emily, during which Mary hit me in the face with her fist. She was a trained boxer and I got a shiner.

Her engagement ring crushed my tear duct, causing permanent damage.

He testified that she asked him to lie to her family about the cause of his black eye.

He is a demon. He is a demon.

He is the most evil kind of man in the world.

Everything he does is evil and a fraud.

He's a philanderer, an adulterer, a sex addict.

Mary had always been a lonely person.

It was so different from Jack's death. There had been a coming together. Uncle Bobby had seen to that in a strange way. We'd felt even more like Kennedys than ever proud at what Jack had been determined that our time would come again. But once uncle Bobby died, there was just this sense of splitting apart.

After we did our bit, Ethel would get calls from everyone in town complaining about it. At first she used to say my kids were home asleep last night. I don't know what you're talking about. But one night she waited up and sure enough, she caught me, Bobby and David jumping out of one of the second floor windows of her home. She chased us all over the compound in the middle of the night in her nightgown and bare feet, finally losing us somewhere on the stretch of beach.

We'd shoot off firecrackers, deflate people's tires, stick potatoes in the exhaust pipes of cars, turn over trash cans, mess around with girls, all sorts of mischief.

One prank had the boys playing in busy Hyannis Port tourist traffic only to have one kid fall to the ground while another smacked the back of a car making a loud noise. Then they would all gather around their fallen chum and shout hysterical sentiments at the driver such as, you've just killed another Kennedy.

In many ways Lim was a father to me and he was the best friend I will ever have.

I released my debut novel.

It's a sci-fi fantasy magical realist memoir in the sense that you'll barely know that it's about my life because there's robots and spells and shit.

It's called The Climb.

There will be a free three hour sample coming out, probably out by the time this drops on the Small Beans feed, which is my own podcast network.

You can find that just by pointing your podcast app at Small Beans and looking for The Climb, or you can get the whole thing over at patreon.com slash smallbeans slash shop, where you can find the audio book version, which I imagine most people will want.

So if you've liked me on Cracked or even if you happen to have encountered any of my fiction before, I finally finished a novel that I've been working on since I was 14. It's an epic fantasy sci-fi memoir.

I'll just describe it as like Karlin Ellison meets Vonnegut meets Douglas Adams.

Robert Brockway called it hilarious heartbreaking shit like that.

Next from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger.

We're a group of people who have completely lost confidence in the ability of the White House to conduct our foreign policy.

And we have come to tell you so.

We are no longer at your disposal as personal advisors.

for these men publicly breaking with Kissinger with journalists briefed in advance about the breach was a form of self-exculpation, not to say an insurance policy.

Next from Niall Ferguson's Kissinger.

Ferguson goes on to note that these guys were kind of full of shit.

They are all Washington insiders.

They have Schelling advised LBJ to massively escalate violence throughout the war in Vietnam.

Ferguson continues, and this is his explanation of what they were really doing.

There's books like All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson, whose book led one white school board member to call the police on her own district's librarian for keeping it in stock.

All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson

All Boys Aren't Blue

All Boys Aren't Blue and and other sex ed books.

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness