Posted by
Sam Heath on Friday, June 01, 2007 5:58:11 PM
No, I don’t mean politicians except as a metaphor since they come readily to mind. But not many people have had the experience of slaughtering hogs, and fewer yet doing so with a 600 pound hog in a wilderness environment without utilities like electricity or running water. Grandad having killed the pig, we hung it by a single-tree from a large pine on the mining claim. Boiling water in a 55 gallon drum over a wood fire, the hog had to be lowered one half at time for scalding before being able to scrap the hair off the hide. I will spare readers the other gross difficulties encountered when having to deal with butchering such a large hog under primitive circumstances.
This boyhood story came to mind while considering how difficult it is going to be to change the direction our leadership is taking America. The difficulties of butchering a 600 pound hog under primitive conditions such as those on the mining claim were enormous, but they were overcome by hard work and ingenuity, something Americans of my generation were used to. But no less effort will be required to change the direction America is being taken by corrupt politicians and their corporate masters. The problem is there are too few Americans who ever had to slaughter a huge hog and butcher it in a wilderness setting. And I doubt many of the talking heads and empty suits on TV are qualified by experience to know what is required.
For example, while surfing the news last night I caught a segment of Hannity and Colmes and paused because they were discussing Fred Thompson. It was when Colmes asked a Republican strategist if she considered Thompson “the big white hope?” I was startled! He really said that! Certainly FOX news accommodates the in your face liberal Jewish (which he flaunts or I wouldn’t mention it) Colmes as their poster boy for “fair and balanced.” But this struck me as so blatantly racist I could scarcely believe my ears! It wasn’t the low class vulgarity of Imus, the snake oil of Sharpton and Jackson, it was typical of the far left that would demonize anyone not agreeing with their agenda ever as much as Bush accuses anyone disagreeing with his wars and immigration agenda of not being patriots.
A slip of the tongue by Colmes? Not likely; that would have been “the great white hope,” something having long ago found itself into the American vocabulary from the 1910 contest between Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, and Jim Jeffries, “the great White Hope of the Western World.” So what did Colmes really mean? Just what he said in such a racist and derogatory phrase; the big white hope. But then, no one expects those like Colmes to treat Fred Thompson or any other conservative Caucasians kindly.
While pleasant, even idyllic at times, life was not easy here on the mining claim in the Kern River Valley back in the 40s. As a boy I lived for the fishing and hunting before the lake went in and things began to become “civilized,” but living without electricity or indoor plumbing, having only a wood cook stove and fireplace for cooking and heating, a hand-dug well for water made life very hard in many ways. But there is no experience that can equal such living to give you a sense of the real priorities in life; that teaches the meaning of what real work just to survive consists of.
There is no doubt in my mind America still has many Americans willing to do the work Caesar Bush claims we won’t do as justification for his pushing the invasion and colonization of America from Mexico for the sake of slave labor. But then those like Bush and Colmes never had to deal with the kind of hard work those like me grew up doing. If they had, perhaps they wouldn’t be so anxious to sell out and betray America. I do wonder, though, if it ever crossed the mind of Colmes to refer to Bush as “the big white hope.” Perhaps he was suggesting Fred Thompson should campaign under that banner.