In the Crockett Hotel dining room,
a chalk-face man in the medaled uniform
growls at a prayer
at the head of the veteran’s table.
Throughout the map of this saint-hungry city,
hands strain for the touch of shrines,
genuflection before cannon and memorial plaque,
grasping the talisman of Bowie knife replica
at the souvenir shop, visitors
in white biblical quote T-shirts.
The stones in the walls are smaller
than the fists of Texas martyrs;
their cavernous mouths cold drink the canal to mud.
The Daughters of the Republic
print brochures with Mexican demons,
Santa Anna’s leg still hopping
to conjunto accordions.
The lawyers who conquered farmland
by scratching on parchment in an oil lamp haze,
the cotton growers who kept the time
of Mexican peasant lives dangling from their watch chains,
the vigilantes hooded like blind angels
hunting with torches for men the color of night,
gathering at church, the capitol, or the porch
for a century all said this: Alamo.
In 1949, thee boys
in Air Force dress khaki
ignored the whites-only sign
at the diner by the bus station:
A soldier from Baltimore, who heard nigger sung here
more often than his name, but would not glance away;
another blonde and solemn as his Tennessee
of whitewashed spires;
another from distant Puerto Rico, cap tipped at an angle
in a country where brown skin
could be boiled for the leather of a vigilante’s wallet.
The waitress squinted a glare and refused their contamination,
the manager lost his crewcut politeness
and blustered about local customs,
the police, with surrounding faces,
jeered about tacos and senoritas
on the Mexican side of town.
“We’re not leaving,” they said,
and hunched at their stools
till the manager ordered the cook,
sweat-burnished black man, unable to hide his grin,
to slide cheeseburgers on plates
across the counter.
“We’re not hungry,” they said
and left a week’s pay for the cook.
One was my father; his word for fury
is Texas.
This afternoon, the heat clouds the air like bothered gnats.
The lunch counter was wrecked for the dump years ago.
In the newspapers, a report of vandals
scarring the wooden doors
of the Alamo
on the black streaks of fire.
The entire notion of a “3rd World” is a weird political framing of the world by the French. Economist Alfred Sauvy in 1952 spoke of Africa and Asia being like France’s “Third Estate“.
The vast majority of people (over 90%) in pre-Revolution France belonged neither to a clergy (1st) nor nobility (2nd), had less privileges and were unrepresented in government; this imbalance led to their Revolution.
With that in mind, Politico has an article making it clear that rural Americans are tiny in number and spread out, which leads worse healthcare than in the worst in the world.
“We have a residency program at Guyana, on the coast of South America,” Russ said. “These are the types of things that [I see] when I go down and work in Guyana. We see this for the Amerindian population that are coming out of the villages and need a canoe to get, you know, to a hospital. This isn’t the type of thing that we’re used to seeing in the United States.”
Tennessee lost over 1,200 staffed hospital beds between 2010 and 2020 despite a population that grew by over half a million, according to the American Hospital Directory and census data. Mississippi, with the most Covid-19 deaths per capita, lost over 1,100 beds over that decade. Alabama, second only to Mississippi in per-capita deaths from the virus, lost over 800.
Apparently living in rural America with a need for healthcare is like having a canoe without a paddle.
Or, as Dolly Parton famously sang, life on a mountain in Tennessee is hard.
Didja know corn don’t grow at all on Rocky Top?
The dirt’s too rocky by far
And that’s why all the folks on Rocky Top
Get their corn from a jar
Apparently nobody thought to put dirt in a jar and grow fresh corn. Yee haw.
But seriously those lyrics are about the rural community suspicion of federal government (e.g. prohibition and the history of bourbon, which is basically alcohol encoded as corn in a jar).
They come right after lyrics about killing the federal agents who visited.
Once two strangers climbed ol’ Rocky Top
Lookin’ for a moonshine still
Strangers ain’t come down from Rocky Top
Reckon they never will
As much as scarcity of services may seem like news, also I remember experiencing it myself in rural America for decades. A trip to a hospital was considered a minimum 30 minute drive. Even that was to what felt like an outpost where chance of meeting someone with any clue about science was marginal at best.
More recently when I tried to setup a primary care physician — a step required to use health insurance — I was told there was no availability. Doctors would not accept any new patients because healthcare crisis (COVID19) meant they had zero capacity. At one point the American healthcare “system” advised I try to find the rare Muslim woman doctor because they estimated (without explaining why) she would be most likely to have availability and take new patients.
How do you like it as far as you’ve got?
Jefferson D, Jefferson D,
Are you glad you began it, or do you wish you had not?
Jefferson, Jefferson D.
People say, though of course I don’t know that it’s so,
That your spirits are getting decidedly low,
That you’re sick and discouraged and don’t know what,
But say though — do you like it as far as you’ve got.
Ho! Ho! Jefferson D,
Things look rather shaky now
‘Twixt you and me.
You can’t think how sorry I was when I heard,
Jefferson D, Jefferson D,
That your visit to Washington had been deferred,
Jefferson, Jefferson D,
But I hope you will find it convenient to come
When Abe and the rest of the boys are at home
And I trust you won’t mind it, they’re such a lot,
If they ask you how you like it as far as you’ve got.
Ho! Ho! Jefferson D.
Also of note is the following advertisement poking fun at Confederates who both advertised for whereabouts of their escaped slaves, while also tending themselves to run away.
“Two Dollars Reward, Confederate Currency,” for the whereabouts of “Jube, answering to the name of Early,” [i.e., Confederate general Jubal A. Early] and One Cent Reward for General [Thomas L.] Rosser.
But seriously, I’ve just read a very bizarre article by an automotive automation expert (redundant, I know) about Tesla’s “self-driving” software.
This industry luminary (bringing oodles of experience and expertise) starts off with saccharin and effusive framing of a car manufacturer CEO before absolutely TRASHING the cars as garbage that nobody should buy and must be explicitly branded as inferior.
Does it make sense for this automotive expert to promote such an abject failure of leadership in deserving respect before rightfully calling the Tesla CEO’s predominant work an obvious pile of trash?
This is evidence of someone throwing a big juicy bone in order to disorient the obvious mindless attack dogs; much like we see in totalitarian governments where voices of reason have to account for a dictator’s insecurity police before saying anything honest.
I have great respect and admiration for Elon Musk, so sorry to say this but … it’s terrible. I mean really bad. After all those videos I didn’t expect a lot, but I expected more than this. My first drive home after activating it was frightening. […] So I’m giving Tesla FSD an “F” when it comes to self-driving. In fact it clearly shouldn’t have that name, as many have pointed out. It should have a driver-assist name, so I will call it “Street Autopilot”. The problem is I have to give it a “D” as a driver assist product.
Sorry?
He is being too kind. Where does such respect and admiration for fraud come from? I suspect the author is worried about his position in the industry and doesn’t want to ruffle feathers, but at this point he seems to be growing a spine — he no longer can deny water flooding into a purportedly unsinkable Titanic.
That’s why it’s so remarkable to see someone come out waving peace and love flags of apology, while also warning everyone to stay away from Tesla because it’s a total scam.
Really he should have used the warning that Tesla deserves: That T on the car means pile of Trash
If the grouchy Tesla owners insist on “going for a ride” that puts everyone at risk (including them), then should they be cited under existing public safety laws (e.g. littering)?
Proud new Trash owner details it, arguing “I can do whatever I want and avoid accountability because it’s called my Trash can, not a Trash can’t!”
I can’t take any credit for such obviously necessary rebranding as a means of safety awareness campaigns. Tesla rightfully has been called a pile of trash for a very long time by many other owners dealing with the fraud.
Perhaps no better example is a thread from three months ago, when an owner taking delivery of his new “top of the line” model groused how product management was awful and disappointing:
Tesla Model S Plaid build quality is trash
From there you will find comments about an absurdly priced “flagship” such as…
$13,000 car. $130,000 window sticker… same people who are fitting the panels are also fitting the suspension bits and important bolts… an old S’s subframe failed because the design had no margin of safety. It was really poorly designed.
And perhaps straight to the heart of the matter is this comment:
Unfortunately as Sesame Street might say “shit piles” doesn’t start with the letter T.
Will it ever stick or slow down ownership? It has been like going backwards in time and monitoring a fan club for the Titanic, as I’ve been saying here for many years.
My favorite comment from one of these pile of Trash owners is here:
Some manufacturers used to have a problem with so-called ‘Friday cars’. Tesla avoids that by making them all Friday quality.
Ha ha? It is funny except this is safety-related and thus actually criminal-level stuff. Think of all the people around in danger from neglect related to automotive safety quality failures.
It is an intentional race to the absolute bottom of quality and safety if I ever saw one. The CEO is to blame here, right?
Los Angeles County prosecutors have filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla on autopilot who ran a red light, slammed into another car and killed two people in Gardena in 2019. The defendant appears to be the first person to be charged with a felony in the United States for a fatal crash involving a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system. Los Angeles County prosecutors filed the charges in October, but they came to light only last week. […] Criminal charging documents do not mention Autopilot. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sent investigators to the crash, confirmed last week that Autopilot was in use in the Tesla at the time of the crash.
Did you know when you buy a Tesla you may face criminal prosecution for operating false-autopilot exactly how the CEO has repeatedly and personally told you to do so?
In a related case a drunk driver in Norway was pulled by police from his car and he tried to escape blame by arguing Tesla’s CEO had instructed him it was ok to be unconscious at the wheel since he no longer believed he was the driver of the car he was driving.
For what it’s worth as a final thought the CEO, now known for mountains of Trash of his own making, has started a campaign in classic propagandist fashion to fling his mounting failures at his competitors.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Sunday: “[Our competitor’s] software is a pile of trash.” [Full self driving (FSD) software by Tesla] is controversial and critics say the name is deceptive… because it doesn’t make cars fully autonomous.
And thus I offer my dear readers an easy to remember security haiku:
Full is not true full.
Self driving is not true self.
T means pile of Trash.
