It’s all stolen land

Someone posted this story on facebook – the TLDR is that cooperation is better than competition if you want to survive in dangerous circumstances.

But of course then the incels had to chime in that no way dude would they ever want or need or ask for help from another person and that it’s so much better just to be on your own, like the cowboys and the ranchers and that the dadgum government had never given them anything and they were and are indeed Rugged Self-Sufficient Individuals.

One commenter – let’s call him Bob – claimed that’s the life many live today in Wyoming. None of those darn government subsidies.

how about you actually go somewhere that was built on ranching and has been part of the culture for generations. If you come to wyoming you will find that not only was the west built by cowboys and frontiersmen, but cowboying is still a way of life today. I’ve known several who make their living without relying on government subsidies and the like. It ain’t easy, but it’s possible.

To which I replied, “How did they get the land, Bob? How did they get the land?”

You all know what I mean. Who did that land belong to before?

Bob, however, did not understand or chose to ignore what I was really asking, and got mad at me.

depends on the ranch. Many ranches started during the farm crisis of the 1980’s, and they simply bought the fucking land. In the late 1800’s they had homesteading laws, so they loaded their shit up in wagons, moved out and homesteaded the land you unfrosted fucking poptart.

How dare I challenge his myth!

(Also is being an unfrosted pop tart bad? I like unfrosted pop tarts so I am very confused.)

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We know who the land belonged to before.

It’s not what we were taught in school. We were taught that this land was empty when the Europeans arrived.

But it was not empty.

It was full of people who had been there since before the Common Era, but then the Europeans wiped out, via disease and murder, according to some estimates, more than 90% of the population.

And most of us know that now.

If you don’t know it, well, welcome to the knowledge.

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I thought I was so smart asking Bob where the land came from.

And then I thought about the farm where my mom grew up. It had belonged to her great-grandparents, then her grandparents, then her parents.

The great-grandparents had cleared the trees and turned the forest into farmland.

I never once questioned the story.

I had never once thought, But who owned the land before them?

Where did the land come from, Texan? Where did the land come from?

Yeah.

It’s a sobering realization.

(Also do men use their real names and share their home addresses on dating apps? Because women sure don’t.)

Mr T was agonizing over how to respond to a potential buyer for some car stuff on facebook marketplace. The buyer – let’s call him Big B – had asked Mr T for our address.

We were about to go out of town for ten days and Mr T couldn’t find much information in Big B’s profile. What if Big B was just casing the joint?

(Not that we have anything worth stealing. Yes, we have a big-screen TV, but it’s 16 years old and heavy and I don’t think there’s a big market for old TVs. And we have old computers that Mr T buys refurbished. And I have some pearls and a pair of diamond earrings, but does jewelry even have any street value these days?)

(What if the thief would want our coffee? Coffee prices have gone up with the trump tariffs.)

(Who knows what a thief wants? I have some nice Spanish boots. Maybe those?)

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Anyhow.

Mr T had sold some stereo equipment (don’t get excited – he got a bunch of my mom’s old stereo equipment and says he is in the process of consolidating but even with the sale, we still had a net increase of stereo equipment in our house) to a guy on marketplace.

But this guy had a detailed FB profile and it turned out he lives just up the street.

In that case, Mr T was willing to tell the stereo buyer where we live.

But Mr T was concerned about giving our address to Big B and I shared that concern.

What I did not share was Mr T’s approach.

Me: Just tell him you will meet him at the city hall parking lot.

Mr T: But he asked for our address!

I shrugged: You are answering the real question.

Mr T: That sounds like a politician’s approach.

Me: OK whatever.

Mr T: He asked me a direct question!

Me: Just because someone asks you a question, you do not have to answer it.

Mr T: But – but – but – not answering a question when someone asks you a question is RUDE!

Me: No it isn’t.

Mr T: Yes. It is!

Me: I don’t owe answers to anyone. They can ask, but I do not have to answer.

Mr T: If I ask a question, I want to be treated the way I would treat them. I want an answer or an explanation of why I am not getting an answer.

Me: And I don’t care why someone is or is not answering my questions. Just because I ask does not mean anyone ever has to answer me. Nobody owes me answers or explanations. Nobody owes me anything.

There’s a reason I was not taught the whole story about witches and suffragists and Harriet Tubman and other difficult women in school

Here’s how I remember learning about the Salem witch trials and the executions when I was a kid: They were bad because the women were not actually witches.

My memory might be wrong, but I am pretty sure the moral of the story was “Don’t be a witch” instead of “It’s bad to burn anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to put anyone to death and it’s also bad for the legal system to take accusations without any supporting evidence seriously.”

Like – what if I had been taught at an early age that the death penalty is something horrible and that the state should not have the power of life and death over people?

What if I had been taught that for someone to be convicted of a crime and sentenced even to prison, much less to death, the state should require solid evidence, not just gossip?

What if I had been taught that the main reason so many of these women were accused of witchcraft was because they were independent women who somehow challenged the system at a time when women had few, if any, legal rights?

What if I had been taught that these women should be an inspiration, not a cautionary tale?

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What if I had been taught something more about the suffragists than “They protested and then they got the right to vote,” like, “They went on hunger strikes. They set bombs. They marched in the streets?”

What if I had been taught that one of the main reasons women in England wanted the vote in the 19th century was because they wanted laws that made it illegal for men to have sex with children?

What if I had been taught that the Temperance Movement wasn’t about a bunch of cranky women who didn’t want their husbands to enjoy a well-deserved beer after work but about how the taverns had first dibs on employee pay – where if a man wanted his pay, his employer would deduct his bar tab and give that money directly to the tavern? What if I had learned that women wanted their husbands’ checks so they could feed their children and themselves?

What if I had learned where the phrase “Rule of thumb” comes from?

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What if I had learned when I was in sixth grade that the law did not require a bank to give my mom a credit card without a male signer?

What if I had learned in fifth grade that my teacher might be fired for being pregnant?

What if I had learned about Marie Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt and Francis Perkins and Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell and Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks and Katherine Johnson?

What if my college art history textbook had included one. single. female. artist?

What could I – could any of us – had accomplished if we had known it was possible for women to do great things?

So are sidewalks, fire departments, roads, highways, public schools, and parks

At a talk at the Milwaukee Public Library, Dr Eric Klinenberg (who told us to call him Eric) suggested a thought experiment.

Suppose, he said, you pitched this idea to the governor.

Let’s build palaces in the middle of Milwaukee and Madison. In the adjoining neighborhoods and in every town, we will build ordinary structures.

We will fill those palaces and structures with books, magazines, newspapers, movies, music.

We will offer classes and makerspaces and clubs and talks.

Anyone will be welcome – anyone. It will be free to enter. Anyone can come in and sit and use the bathroom and relax.

And anyone can take anything home, for free, on the honor system.

Do you think such a concept would be funded today?

“Which governor?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Eric said.

I whispered to the woman next to me, “There’s no way Scott Walker would have approved it. Evers would want it but would say we couldn’t afford it.”

Still, a few of us raised our hands halfway.

He laughed. “I was just in Florida and nobody raised their hands. So I guess this is better.”

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What happened to the rich people who were scared of the poors and the state of their souls so they tried to rehabilitate their reputations by donating a lot of money to public causes?

That is, what happened to the Carnegies? What happened to the men and yes I mean men who spent most of their lives accumulating wealth by any means possible and then having a degree of shame or at least of eternal damnation that made them give some of that wealth away?

Now the rich just want to get richer and screw everyone else looking at you Jeff Bezos and that guy who started facebook.

Where are the Bezos Cancer Research Centers?

Where are the Zuckerberg playgrounds?

Where are the Thiel scholarships for first-generation college students?

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(I do know where the MacKenzie Scott scholarships and endowments are.)

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But also, what happened to the public thinking, “You know what would be a good thing for all of us?”

“Fire departments.”

Like – do those anti-tax people think that fires and medical emergencies happen only to other people? It’s not even like there’s a rich-people only fire department. There’s only *a* fire department.

And they don’t want to pay for it.

Wait. It’s not even rich people sometimes. It’s ordinary people who move outside of the town boundaries because they don’t want to pay the property taxes and then they get all pissed off when their house burns down because it was outside of the fire department’s range.

“Couldn’t they just put out the fire and charge the homeowners later?” I have seen people ask.

I do wonder how the people who lost their house because they didn’t want to pay taxes voted.