{"id":1037,"date":"2017-09-03T11:24:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T16:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1037"},"modified":"2017-09-03T11:42:01","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T16:42:01","slug":"camouflage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1037","title":{"rendered":"Camouflage"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been seeing posts on Facebook and Twitter this weekend saying things like \u201clook at these heroic redneck guys who are rescuing people! But next week, media will be back to calling them Nazis and KKK.<\/em>\u201d Tell you what: if anyone in \u201cthe media\u201d is randomly accusing guys with pickup trucks of being Klan members or of being Nazis, then they should be dragged through a metaphorical mud pit.<\/p>\n

But I haven\u2019t seen that happen. I have<\/em> seen guys holding swastika flags accused of being Nazis. I\u2019ve seen people dressed in KKK uniform shirts accused of being KKK members.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t difficult. No sensible observer is calling you a Nazi or accusing you of being a Klan member just because you\u2019re a white person (if someone does that, they\u2019re a troll, plain and simple). However, if your cousin is nice to you, but he dresses in a white hood and goes to Klan meetings on the weekend, guess what. He\u2019s not a nice person.<\/p>\n

\u201cRural white gun owner\u201d isn\u2019t a hypothetical or mythical group for me. I\u2019ve hung out at shooting ranges with these guys for years, and lived among the New England variety. I\u2019ve participated on their gun forums.<\/p>\n

Most of these guys are upstanding citizens, many of them are military veterans, and most of them would give you the shirts off their backs if you were in need, or work half a day helping you get your car out of the ditch.<\/p>\n

I also<\/em> know a sweet-looking grandpa who interrupted a funny story about his granddaughter to point out the \u2018mud puppies\u2019 who had just walked into the restaurant where we were having breakfast (a young couple with their biracial children, if you\u2019re not up on racist nicknames for people).<\/p>\n

He once told me how much he wanted to move back to a farm in Virginia, where he could set up a firing range where he could shoot \u201cdarkies.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if you look at the larger view, some 80-year-old guy\u2019s racism and bigotry isn\u2019t the hugest problem. He\u2019ll be dead in another couple of years. As hideous as his attitudes are (and as much as they\u2019ve been on display in the news recently), I think (and hope) that they\u2019re gradually becoming less common, less accepted.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another reason that I get angry at the reactionary attitudes of my rural compatriots: They give cover for people doing even worse things. They’re used as human camouflage by industries and corrupt politicians.<\/p>\n

The heroic veteran hauling his flatboat from Louisiana to Houston to rescue people makes great fodder for propagandists. They haul out photos of Buford or Cleat pulling people out of the flood and say \u201clook, these guys just want jobs and to go fishing, but your regulations are killing their way of life.\u201d Of course, Mr. Propagandist drives a Beemer and lives in a high-rise luxury apartment or in a gated community. He likely has a degree from a nice college and wouldn\u2019t hang out with Cleat for good money (though he might hire him as a local guide on his annual luxury fishing trip). This marketing guy might work for a giant oil refinery which is fighting regulations because following those regulations would shave 0.0012% of profit off their balance sheets. Or maybe he works for a developer who can build housing estates a lot cheaper if he can do it in an area with no building codes.<\/p>\n

Then you end up with a city like Houston, with refineries plunked down in poor neighborhoods where the residents don\u2019t have the political clout to get the pollution stopped. A city where there\u2019s so little permeable land left that there\u2019s no chance for rain to soak into the ground before running into the streets.<\/p>\n

Think about it. Most regulations aren\u2019t enacted out of some spiteful attempt to throttle profit. Most of them come about because we\u2019ve seen cities burn to the ground, so we come up with fire codes. We\u2019ve seen people poisoned by water systems so poorly designed that the designers should be up on manslaughter charges. We\u2019ve proven that cars with seat belts and airbags save lives and reduce injury. We\u2019ve looked back at the early days of the packaged food industry and decided that \u201cno, we don\u2019t want contaminated ketchup on the shelves\u201d (read up on this period if you want a really hair-raising experience; you\u2019ll never look at food regulations the same way again).<\/p>\n

Yeah, there are regulations that are monumentally stupid. Regulations that exist as protectionism. We should clean those up. But if an expert in urban flooding tells you that building a city in such-and-such a way will lead to massive flooding (and has strong evidence to back up her claims) yet your city fathers ignore that and build a sprawling, concrete city that ends up flooding every time you get three inches of rain; well\u2026 Please don\u2019t<\/strong> haul out poor heroic Cletus and his flatboat and expect me to buy your shtick. Clete has had his head turned around so far (from listening to talk radio all day long), he\u2019ll likely go back home and vote in people who will continue to create the conditions for more flooding, more pollution, more industrial explosions. And he\u2019ll be convinced that he\u2019s protecting his freedoms by voting that way.<\/p>\n

I saw a quote yesterday that went something like \u201cAmericans are great in a crisis, but bad on the long haul.\u201d Avoiding more situations like Flint\u2019s water, or Norfolk, Virginia\u2019s sinking waterfront, or Houston\u2019s sprawl takes planning, regulations, awareness, spending, and long-term determination. It takes a concerted effort to fight political corruption and make sure that we know what\u2019s going on, and why<\/em> the regulations are important.<\/p>\n

Private industry isn\u2019t going to do that. They\u2019ve proven that plenty of times over the last 200 years.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I know the old chestnut: \u201cthe scariest phrase in the world is \u2019I\u2019m from the government and I\u2019m here to help.\u2019\u201d Funny joke. You know what? At its best, the government is us<\/em>. It\u2019s made up of citizens who want to fix things so they\u2019re still working a century from now.<\/p>\n

If we work really hard, find ways to mitigate the pollution, reduce greenhouse gases, stop the destruction of the oceans and the rain forests, then perhaps Clete\u2019s great-grandkids will have clean lake water to fish in from their<\/em> flatboat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been seeing posts on Facebook and Twitter this weekend saying things like \u201clook at these heroic redneck guys who are rescuing people! But next week, media will be back to calling them Nazis and KKK.\u201d Tell you what: if anyone in \u201cthe media\u201d is randomly accusing guys with pickup trucks of being Klan members … Continue reading “Camouflage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","category-social-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-gJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1151","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":0},"title":"Gated communities of the mind","author":"Jorah","date":"July 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Many years ago, I was walking through New London, Conn. late on a summer day and spotted a dog trotting along the sidewalk, obviously on some doggish errand, and paying no attention to anyone around. I remember him turning a corner very decisively & vanishing from sight. The scene struck\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophizing"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=35","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":1},"title":"Bible Argument Spurs Boiling-Oil Charge","author":"Jorah","date":"May 20, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Posted on Thu, May. 20, 2004 Associated Press EUGENE, Ore. - A woman is accused of pouring boiling oil on her boyfriend's face in an argument over a Bible verse. Angela S. Morris, 19, was charged with domestic violence assault and jailed on $250,000 bail. Her 31-year-old boyfriend, whose name\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":599,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=599","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":2},"title":"CQ, CQ, CQ This is KK4LZQ calling","author":"Jorah","date":"October 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"CQ, CQ, CQ calling CQ 2 meters. This is KK4LZQ calling. Kilo Kilo Four Lima Zulu Quebec, KK4LZQ in Indian Land calling. ...or words to that effect. I haven't done it yet, but the first time I call CQ I'll probably say something like that. I just got my amateur\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ham radio"","block_context":{"text":"Ham radio","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=35"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":178,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=178","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":3},"title":"Missed My Calling in Life","author":"Jorah","date":"August 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"My wife is a medical transcriptionist. Every day, she types reports about colonoscopies. She could easily have said the lines that Arlo says in this strip.","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":67,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=67","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":4},"title":"Need to vent? Really want to yell at SOMEone, ANYone?","author":"Jorah","date":"July 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.jumbojoke.com\/For all of you who occasionally have a really bad day, and you justneed to take it out on someone, don't take it out on someone you know,take it out on someone you don't know. I was sitting at my desk when Iremembered a phone call I had forgotten to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Post"","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":861,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=861","url_meta":{"origin":1037,"position":5},"title":"“I don\u2019t need to march for any rights,” she said.","author":"Jorah","date":"January 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I spotted this post on Facebook today written by a Trump supporter in response to the women\u2019s march, a woman with an Hispanic-sounding last name. ========================================================= I am not a victim. I don\u2019t need to march for any rights. I have the same rights as anyone else. I\u2019m not raising\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Social commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Social commentary","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=46"},"img":{"alt_text":"Marcher in New York City on Jan. 21, 2017. 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