Anyone who has followed my blog off an on for a couple years knows how I operate. I explain what I see and experience.
My readers also know what motivates me. First and foremost its the Red Plan and uncovering its mysteries, and recovering from it. I’m not shy about complaining when obstacles are thrown in my path to prevent me from achieving this goal. Removing Art Johnston who shares my goals is such an obstacle.
Neither have I been shy in my blog or in a few letters to School Board members about warning them that I would start doing to them what they have done to Art Johnston. My warnings have been taken as a threat while their actions are not to be taken as such. Well, if my warnings are “threats” they are also as American as apple pie. The coiled rattlesnake on the Revolutionary Gadsden Flag is perhaps the best example of this. It is an image closely associated with today’s libertarian movement or so Wikipedia informs me.
One of the books I’d like to read this summer is the latest and the first scholarly treatment of the 369th Infantry Unit that fought in World War I. That’s the all black unit recruited in Harlem that my Grandfather was sent to as an officer when the Army removed all the black officers their not being deemed sufficiently up to the task of leading their fellow African-Americans. (Same argument that was used to deny black athletes coaching positions in professional athletics)
The book is Harlem’s Rattlers. I’ve been asked to dig out some background on my Grandfather Robb to give to one of the authors for a presentation next fall about my white Kansas Grandfather’s unlikely association with the unit which earned him a Congressional medal. (This is another personal project I’d much rather write about than our dysfunctional school board)
Apparently the Harlem warriors preferred the rattlers as their nom de guerre over the one bestowed upon them by the Germans “Hellfighters.”
In choosing “Rattlers” they stood in a long line of folks honoring the American viper famed for its rattling tail. Well, my blog is my rattling tail. Step on me and I strike. What my fellow board members and others take as a threat is my way of giving out a warning before someone steps on me or on Art Johnston. At least that’s how I look at, or possibly rationalize, my “warnings.”
There is a funny scientific post script to this anecdote. In much the same way as ocean game fish are evolving into smaller fish because the great fleets are pulling out all the big tuna, American Rattlesnakes are evolving much smaller rattles. It seems that Westerners have been plugging rattlers for generations when they hear them so that the rattlers magnificent warning systems are shrinking for survival’s sake. Killing all the noisy rattlers is leading to stealthy quieter snakes and more deadly snakes.
I suppose, like some of my former and current school board colleagues, I could pen poisoned comments for others to disseminate in order to hide their authorship but that’s not my style. I prefer a noisy rattle to warn of my imminent strike – in order to make it unnecessary. Is that a warning or a threat? I can’t decide which it is but I won’t apologize for it.
