Iran, Coming to a State Near You

The Missouri lead GOP legislature finally recognized

the danger of unregulated arms in their state.

They, therefore, decided to pass new legislation,

saying that female legislators can’t expose their arms.

Yes, Republican men are taking away the right to bare arms.

In Missouri you can openly carry a firearm,

designed to kill or maim, without a license. 

But if a female lawmaker exposes a bare arm

she just might see the business end of a firearm.

This follows a Montana GOP lead legislature

which also forbid bare shoulders on female legislators.

These conservative legislatures lost their minds

over the suggestion that they should wear masks

during a pandemic to respect the safety of others.

are now focusing on what women must wear.

Remember the uproar over Michelle Obama’s arms?

Which was odd after conservatives said that Obama

was a Muslim who would impose Sharia Law,

that would make American women wear burkas.

The Missouri ‘Murrikan Talibangelicals have now made

The Show Me State the, Don’t Show Me Your Bare Arms State.

The conservative legislature fears bare arms

might just lead to evils such as dancing.

If you think this is all about controlling women, 

you certainly have hit the male on the head.

This is patriarchy attempting to reestablish itself.

These conservative men want woman barefoot

and pregnant and back in the kitchen.

These men won’t control themselves,

so, they try to control everyone else.

Bare arms is just too much sexy for them.

Them wimmens also need to cover their hair and ankles,

lest some Republican man becomes aroused.

These Red States supported a man for president

who bragged about groping women’s private parts.

Now, they claim to find bare arms objectionable.

GOP lawmakers in Missouri and Montana have time to worry

about women lawmakers attire instead of passing actual laws.

That happens when your party has no platform or future vision.

These Freedom Caucus politicians talk about ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture’

but the irony is lost on them as they are the ones

 banning books, woman’s rights, unions, and healthcare.

Missouri should spend time creating some gun control laws

 as just last year, fifteen mass shootings happened in the state.

If you didn’t see shit like this coming after Roe

was struck down, you’re just not paying attention.

Republicans have decided to use Orwell’s 1984 as a manual.

These conservative legislators aren’t going to stop at dress codes.

They’ll go full MAGATaliban if they get their way.

Don’t be a complacent American who looks back and says

“First they came for the bare arms. I did nothing, for I wear long sleeves.”

Women need to organize Lady Godiva protests throughout Missouri.

It is after all “The Show Me State.”

“Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principal, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparations for the future.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli

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Rewarding Shameful History

You Get a Fort, You Get a Fort and You Get a Fort

Confederate General Robert E Lee was willed 189 slaves by his father-in-law. The will stated that they would be set free in five years. Lee did not honor the will. After the Civil War, Lee told a congressional committee that Black people were “not disposed to work” and did not possess the intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics. Lee also said to the committee that he hoped that Virginia could “get rid of them,” referring to Black people. He was known to use violence against his slaves. In 1917 he got a fort named after him, Fort Lee in Prince George County, Virginia.

Confederate Gen. Benning declared that he would rather be stricken with illness and starvation than see African Americans liberated from slavery and be given equality as citizens. The Confederate brigadier general was widely known as a “vocal advocate” for secession. He said that the white race, is superior in every aspect. Some Historians say he was “devoted to slavery.” He did after all own eighty-nine slaves. In 1918 he got a fort named after him. Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

Confederate General John Brown Gordon had slaves on his plantation. He held white supremacists’ views on race, his whole life. He opposed Reconstruction and endorsed violence and restrictions on freedoms to preserve white-dominated society. He is believed to have been a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. In 1917 he got a fort named for him. Fort Gordon in in Augusta, Georgia.

General Bragg owned a sugar plantation with 105 slaves in Louisiana. In 1918 he got a fort named after him in North Carolina. Fort Bragg is the largest military base (by population) in the world.

General George Edward Pickett of Virginia owned forty-two slaves. He fled to Canada after the war. He was avoiding prosecution for the hanging execution of twenty-two captured Union Army soldiers. The soldiers were from North Carolina but chose to join the Union Army. After Pickett’s death in 1875, his widow, LaSalle, spent the rest of her life promoting her husband’s role in the war by lecturing and publishing three books on his career. She was a leader in the “Lost Cause” movement that romanticized the Confederate army and worked to obscure slavery’s role in the conflict. In 1941 he got a fort named after him. Fort Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia.

Lt. General Leonidas Polk a cousin of 11th US President James Polk, is thought to have had as many as four hundred slaves on sugar plantations in Tennessee. In 1941 he got a fort named after him. Fort Polk in Vernon Parish, Louisiana.

Confederate General Edmund Rucker was responsible for enforcing martial law in east Tennessee, punishing people who attacked Southern troops and forcing others to join the Confederate Army. Rucker was in General Forrest’s cavalry at the time of the Fort Pillow Massacre in 1864 when hundreds of African American troops were killed by Confederate forces. In 1942 he got a fort named after him. Fort Rucker in Dale County, Alabama.

Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood was a career military man and did not personally own slaves, but he freely admitted slavery’s role in the conflict. “Regardless of all other causes of difference,” He said in a speech after the war, “slavery … was the secret motor, the mainspring of the war.” In 1943 he got a fort named for him. Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was born on a sugar plantation outside New Orleans. He grew up in a slave-owning household and later rented slaves for himself while in the military. He started the Civil War with an attack on Fort Sumpter. He got a fort named for him in 1917. Camp Beauregard in Pineville, Louisiana.

Confederate Lt. General Ambrose Powell Hill owned eleven slaves. On one occasion he gave orders to procure thousands of slaves – demanding the ‘services of 4,000 negroes’ for his army. In 1941 he got a fort named for him. Fort A.P. Hill, Bowling Green, Virginia.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a plantation owner and slave trader. He was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He played a leading role in the massacre of several hundred Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, most of them black. The slaughter of the soldiers has been called “one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history.” Troops under Forrest’s command slaughtered the union soldiers who had surrendered. After the war Grand Wizard Forrest used violence and the threat of violence to maintain white control over the newly enfranchised former slaves. The Klan, with Forrest at the lead, suppressed voting rights of blacks in the South through violence and intimidation during the elections of 1868. From 1942-1946 Forrest had a fort named for him. Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, Tennessee was the largest training camp during WWII.

The Army did not name any posts after Confederates until 1917, an era of American involvement in Europe’s ‘Great War’ that coincided with a resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Southern newspapers, were all for the naming of forts after Confederate war leaders. They felt it restored Southern pride. It was stressed that there were good people on both sides. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

It is hard to understand why Southerners would feel proud of these Confederate leaders.

After all Lee was commander of the Southern Army when the South lost the war. Hill was criticized for his ineffective performance during the first two days of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. In 1864 he was leading Confederate forces in defense of Atlanta against Sherman. How did that work out? Not very well. Polk, blundered by ordering troops into neutral Kentucky. That made border state Kentucky ask for Northern help and brought it closer into the Union fold. He was famous for disobeying orders. So, why would you want to name a military base after someone who disobeyed orders? Military historian Steven E. Woodworth described the shell that killed Polk as “one of the worst shots fired for the Union cause during the entire course of the war”, as Polk’s incompetence made him far more valuable alive than dead: “Polk’s incompetence and willful disobedience had consistently hamstrung Confederate operations west of the Appalachians. Why would you name a fort after Bragg who is considered among the worst generals of the Civil War? Most of the battles he engaged in ended in defeat. Bragg was extremely unpopular with both the officers and ordinary men under his command for his poor battlefield strategy. His own men tried to assassinate him twice. The losses suffered by Bragg’s forces are cited as highly consequential to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.

Pickett is no military hero. His charge at Gettysburg was a disastrous bloodbath for his men. More than half of his troops were killed, wounded, or captured, including his three brigade commanders and all thirteen regimental commanders. Pickett survived because he positioned himself well to the rear of his troops. Forrest and his massacre of surrendered Union soldiers was major news in the Union press. His inhumanity strengthened the North’s resolve to win the war. As you can see the South really does not know its own history. This is just more US history that should not be hidden. It is history that should be taught in every school. It is way past time to speak truth to power when talking about history.

Also, Ft Benning should be closed as since 1984 it has trained death squads for Third World dictators. That training helps make the Third World “friendly” to US and Global corporations. Never mind, the rapes, torture, and murders of those countries’ citizens. Seems to me when people flee those countries and come to the U.S. that we owe them citizenship.

It is way past time that we get rid of things commemorating the Confederacy. They are symbols of racism that we should not allow in public places.

‘I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.” ~ General Lee when asked about a Gettysburg memorial.