Victory isn’t some sinister end game; it’s the only positive way to end a war. Look at it this way: at one time you either won the war, or you damn well lost it. While ceasefires have long existed, modern culture seems to have sanctified their status. Millions seem to now view them as the bellum cessavit et pacis est, or the end of war and not just its pause. So, if you want to dispense with the victory-versus-defeat binary (and who wouldn’t, what with all binary things being so uncool) you may want to opt for the expedient of a ceasefire.

Despite the West’s touching belief in them, ceasefires aren’t peace treaties. Lately, they exist to avoid the losing party’s capitulation. To the woke-encumbered West, the term “unconditional surrender” seems so, well, mean. Ceasefires exist as a work-around; think of them as the military version of kicking the can down the road. Once overseen by United Nations troops brought in from their door-to-door selling of United Nations Troops Cookies™, the Gaza ceasefire will now rely upon Ugandan soldiers to disarm Hamas’ yellow-eyed guerillas. Good luck with that, Natukunda; for as sure as past is prologue, Hamas’ agreement to hand over their weapons means that this is exactly what they won’t be doing. This is just one aspect of the disconnect between the West’s Judeo-Christian worldview and that practiced by Islamist war machinery.

When it comes to ceasefires, the Western view is sadly obdurate. Imbued with a starry-eyed insistence that all people strive to behave with a compassionate and morally governed self-interest, it seeks to uphold the common good. This impulse is so akin to the pursuit of happiness that you might think of it as Jeffersonian. Jefferson himself doubtlessly did so right up until the time the Barbary pirates went about prefiguring Hezbollah for him. In the modern era, the West continues to treat ceasefires as yoga retreats in which contending forces gather at a sacred fire circle, pass around the talking stick, and wonder just what all the fuss was about. By contrast, as practiced by the Spread-by-the-Sword Religion’s forces, ceasefires not only save their military bacon (not that they have any bacon), but also pocket the West’s customary rewarding of aggression.

It’s also important to note that Islamic ceasefires are marked by a general absence of cease firing.

So, while one side is all kumbaya and breathing into its collective heart chakras; the other is restocking rockets, rebuilding tunnels, rounding up human shields, and printing new martyrdom posters. The asymmetry would be funny if it weren’t so tragic — or predictable.

After its October 7^th invasion of Israel and the Israeli response, Hamas was on the ropes. Bruised, battered, and encircled by the IDF, they were one advance away from becoming a cautionary tale. But as we’re talking about Israel here, we can assume that the ordinary rules don’t apply. Israel, as told by the world, can have a war. Moreover, it’s welcome to lose that war. The one thing that the Jewish state must never be allowed to do is to win at war. In fact, the world only really, really, really hates war when Israel is about to win one.* Thus, just at the moment the IDF was closing in on Hamas, the international cries for CEASEFIRE loudly erupted. Corrupt NGOs, aggressively-non-philo-Semitic Euros, terrorist-adjacent university students, unkempt boomers in colorful folk sweaters, affluent white liberal and/or lesbian women (AWFLs), Subaru-Americans from the country’s upper corners, the now openly fascistic Democrat Party, and celebrities whose cheap morality is an apparition that stalks the night on television talk shows — all suddenly lifted their voices into a chorus of ceasefire demands. When the U.S. joined in, the IDF had no choice but to withdraw. Afterward, all these parties (except Israel, of course) could congratulate themselves on having birthed a toxic reality from a narcissistic virtue by granting Hamas the time to start preparing for another 10/7.

Nothing if not quick to get the message, Hamas has quietly returned to recruitment, repression, rearmament, reorganization, and -- barring any successful interference by Ugandans -- setting up for the next grisly, genocidal round.

Soon, Hamas and the IDF will be at it again as nothing fundamental has changed. The only way to break the cycle is for Israel to ignore the global peanut gallery long enough to finish the job. Victory first, peace second, with justice and prosperity following in that order. Israel has always understood this and did so again right up until the world insisted it couldn’t.

Iran, of course, is the varsity version of this problem. It has turned negotiation into performance art. Watch closely as they promise compliance with one hand while pulling 60% enriched uranium out of a silk turban with the other. The Islamic Republic has never honored a major agreement in good faith, but the West keeps lining up for the next round of diplomatic speed‑dating, hoping that this time the mullahs will invite them up for coffee. It’s touching, in a tragicomic sort of way.

This is where Trump’s instinct for dealmaking, normally an asset, has become a liability. The president -- under pressure from factions within his own party as well as by Gulf States with no tolerance for Iran’s incoming Shahab-3 rockets, climbed aboard the ceasefire bandwagon. He must’ve been encouraged in this by his view of deal-making as the dominant part of his knowhow and identity, as well as the talent he used to end several prior wars. For its part, Iran doesn’t respect deals; it respects force. If Trump becomes enamored with the idea of a grand bargain with Iran, he risks repeating the same mistake every administration has made since 1979. In the president’s case, this comes from the belief that a revolutionary theocracy, in pursuit of chaos and the subsequent coming of the Twelfth Imam, is really just a difficult business partner awaiting the right offer. It isn’t. It’s a regime that sees every ceasefire as a useful pause on the road to world dominance.

Victory, not negotiation, is what ends conflicts. Ceasefires prolong war and cost lives. Only decisive outcomes foster lasting peace. The West may resist this truth, but the Middle East keeps teaching it — loudly, repeatedly, and with live ammunition.

*Otherwise, war can carry on as it’s presently been doing with the killing of scores of thousands of Kurds by Turkey and of Christian innocents in Nigeria, Somalia and the Sudan and elsewhere. For a compleat picture, read Victor Davis Hanson’s “Hating Israel Fatigue.”

I think if we’re going to be honest here, we’ve got to admit that the chant to “Free Free Palestine” sounds a bit clunky, even for an urban-guerilla street mantra. I hate to say it, but its two-fer repetition of the word “free” comes off as a bit lame — even as it echoes in dissonant patterns off concrete-canyon walls. Free Free Palestine. I mean, can’t we come up with anything better? Why in the name of Yasir Arafat’s chaste widow should we have to stop at two crummy frees? Hell, even Jaguar has better marketing.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m trying to cast any aspersion on anyone or anything like that. Dar al-Salam forfend. After all, the yearning of a people to breathe the air of their own country — even while breathing the air of their own country — shall not be abridged.

No wonder we’ve got to at least double-dutch it on the “frees.”

Besides, the zios keep telling us about Jordan right there over the Palestine — or whatever it’s called — River. Anyway, they’re saying that the place across the river is the real Palestine. Just ask Mrs. Arafat. So then, maybe “Free Free Palestine” really means “Free (the already freed) Palestine, which would make a lot more sense. Here’s another thought: Perhaps we’re ordering up another “Palestine” for every “free” used. Is that it? Then, all the more reason to go full-tilt-boogie. After all, the Califate needs all the international land mass it can grab.

I don’t know. Like I said, it’s all confusing and I’m just asking questions. I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes. So, if by “Palestine” you mean Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and the Zionist entity known as Israel, that’s a helluva lot of territory to claim for a country that never existed in the first place.

Talk about pulling another terrorist squat out of the Levantine hat!

Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way that came out. My point is that if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. If all this is such a big deal, why in the al-alam are we calling it quits just after a cockamamie pair of “frees”? Sure, Ya-Ya Sinwar never felt the need to add another “Ya” to his name, but is limiting ourselves to two “frees” really all that cool? It’s so — I dunno — binary. After all, it’s not like there’s just two sexes or anything. And you don’t hear our brothers and sisters among the progressive chest feeders referring to some lame “LG” crusade. It’s either LGBTTTQQIAA+ or it’s nothing.

Get real.

Look at it this way: If we’re bound to go from some river all the way over to some sea (I’m not sure of its name either, but I think we drove the Jews into it once, but they parted it and never got wet), is just a lousy pairing of the word “free” quite enough to do the trick? I’m pretty sure that two frees weren’t enough for Mao on his Long March, or for Uncle Ho along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or for the sublime Mrs. Arafat in her progress toward a Paris apartment with its high ceilings, elegant moldings and appealing mix of modern and historical elements, or Che -- who I don’t remember giving away any T-shirts

It almost seems as if something -- or someone –is behind this failure to add least one other “free” to our plaintive cry. It could be the “suits” -- those white male guardians of the patriarchy who are putting the kibosh on “free” expression, if you take my meaning. Then again, the entire thing could be due to the increasingly corporate nature of social media. That, or an evil assemblage of AI robots. They all might be acting as if the ideology of liberation were an algorithmically-driven dead end despite the techno-sphere’s alliance with a nubile body of Tic-Toc adherents. Probably not, though. Probably it’s just either Jewish Space Lasers or whatever cultural poison Elon has been mixing up in his Texas apartment. Surely, he heads that flying-monkey troop of cis-billionaires that either owns -- or is owned by -- Trump.

Who then owns – or is owned by -- Netanyahu.

I’m also pretty sure the unblemished Mrs. Arafat (Suha, btw) figures into this. But only in a good way.

To be fair (my intent, as mentioned), I admit that one or another of our admin-building-occupying edge-Jacobins occasionally tries to bring another “free” into the “Free Free” mix. Sadly, their efforts have never ignited much in the way of a prairie fire. I can’t say why. It’s not like they risk being a Gay person caught flouncing around in Ramallah or anything. Perhaps these free-free-free backers were shouted down by ranks of homeless and others who — like the rest of us — have no knowledge of Middle East history but, at a minimum, get paid enough for a Lunch Supreme at Phebe’s Whamburger plus a bus ticket home. Failing these, it could be that our ranks have just fallen victim to the trolling of agent-provocateurs from Prager U. (these lurk everywhere — even Mrs. Arafat isn’t safe). Last, there’s those students who among us who larp as Hamas-adjacent irregulars. Fresh from their climate-change clashes with the authorities and Soros-supplied with a bounty of nicely-quilted new flags and keffiyehs, these baizuos have joined with Boomer ladies in colorful Ecuadorian folk sweaters to fill our ranks. All are idiots, so the simple palilalia evident in “Free Free Palestine” likely works well for them.

In the end, it looks like I’m a victim of my own political genius. No one need drop me off a rooftop to make that any clearer. Still, you don’t have to be Anonymous in a pussy-hat to know which way the wind blows. A full quartet of “frees’ should be the absolute -- and I mean absolute – minimum for any self-respecting aux armes favoring Hamas.

At least until they’re done executing civilians.

I think if we’re going to be honest here, we’ve got to admit that the chant to “Free Free Palestine” sounds a bit clunky, even for an urban-guerilla street mantra. I hate to say it, but its two-fer repetition of the word “free” comes off as a bit lame — even as it echoes in dissonant patterns off concrete-canyon walls. Free Free Palestine. I mean, can’t we come up with anything better? Why in the name of Yasir Arafat’s stainless widow should we have to stop at two crummy frees? Hell, even Cracker Barrel has better marketing.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m trying to cast any aspersion on anyone or anything like that. Dar al-Salam forfend. After all, the yearning of Gazans to breathe the air of their own country — even while breathing the air of their own country — shall not be abridged.

No wonder we’ve got to at least double-dutch it on the “frees.”

Besides, the zios keep telling us about Trans-Jordan right there over the Palestine — or whatever it’s called — River. Anyway, they’re saying that, Jordan, the place across the river is the real Palestine. Just ask Mrs. Arafat. So then, maybe “Free Free Palestine” really means “Free (the already freed) Palestine, which would make a lot more sense. Here’s another thought: Perhaps we’re ordering up another “Palestine” for every “free” used. Is that it? All the more reason to go full-tilt-boogie. After all, the Califate needs all the international land mass it can grab.

I don’t know. Like I said, it’s a confusing situation and I’m just asking questions. I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes. So, if by “Palestine” you mean Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and the Zionist entity known as Israel, that makes a helluva lot of territory for a country that never existed in the first place.

Talk about pulling another terrorist squat out of the Levantine hat!

Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out. My point is that if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. If all this is such a big deal, why in the al-alam are we calling it quits just after a cockamamie pair of “frees”? Keeping in mind that even Ya-Ya Sinwar never felt the need to add another “Ya” to his name, it’s hard to know the right course of action. Still, it’s not like there’s just two sexes or anything. You don’t hear our brothers and sisters among the chest feeders referring to some lame “LG” crusade. It’s either LGBTTTQQIAA+ or it’s nothing.

Get real.

Look at it this way: If we’re bound to go from some river all the way over to some sea (I’m not sure of its name either, but I think we drove the Jews into it once, but they parted it and never got wet), is just a lousy pairing of the word “free” quite enough to do the trick? I’m pretty sure that two frees weren’t enough for Mao on his Long March, or for Uncle Ho along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or for the sublime Mrs. Arafat in her progress toward a Paris apartment with its high ceilings, elegant moldings and appealing mix of modern and historical elements, or Che -- who I don’t recall giving away any T-shirts

It almost seems as if something -- or someone –is behind this failure to add least one more “free” to our plaintive cry. It could be the “suits” -- those white male guardians of the patriarchy who are putting the kibosh on “free” expression, if you take my meaning. Then again, the entire thing could be due to the increasingly corporate nature of social media. That, or an evil assemblage of AI robots. They all might be acting as if the ideology of liberation were algorithmically cancelled by the techno-sphere’s confederation with a nubile body of Tic-Toc adherents. Probably not, though. Probably it’s just either Jewish Space Lasers or whatever cultural poison Elon has been mixing up in his Texas apartment. Surely, he heads that flying-monkey troop of cis-billionaires that either owns -- or is owned -- by Trump.

Who then owns – or is owned by -- Netanyahu.

I’m also pretty sure the unblemished Mrs. Arafat (Suha, btw) figures into this. But only in a good way.

To be fair (my intent, as mentioned), I admit that one or another of our admin-building-occupying edge-Jacobins occasionally tries to bring another “free” into the “Free Free” mix. Sadly, their efforts have never lit a prairie fire. I can’t say why. It’s not like they risk being a Gay person caught flouncing around Ramallah or anything. Perhaps these free-free-free backers were shouted down by ranks of homeless and others who — like the rest of us — have no knowledge of Middle Eastern history but, at a minimum, get paid enough for the Lunch Supreme at Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers. Failing these, it could be that our numbers have just fallen victim to the trolling of agent-provocateurs from Prager U. (these lurk everywhere — even Mrs. Arafat isn’t safe). Last, there’s those students who larp as Hamas-adjacent irregulars. Newly fevered after their climate change uprisings and Soros-supplied with a bounty of nicely quilted flags and keffiyehs, these baizuos combine with Boomer women in their Ecuadorean folk sweaters to populate our protests. Many are Ivy-league dumb, so the simple palilalia evident in “Free Free Palestine” likely works well for them.

In the end, it looks like I’m a victim of my own political genius. No one need drop me off a rooftop to make that any clearer. Still, you don’t have to be Anonymous in a pussy-hat to know which way the wind blows. A full quartet of “frees’ should be the absolute -- and I mean absolute – minimum for any self-respecting aux armes favoring Hamas.

At least until they’re done executing civilians.

The data on a Facebook page I published sometime back (that had nothing to do with pirates) revealed it to have been seen by 549 people over the first week, including 160 who speak “English (US),” another 160 who speak “English (UK)” and 20 who speak “English (PIRATE).”

This here’s for them Piratephones:

“Pirates!” I exclaims, "and ones who claim to speak English (PIRATE) into the bargain! Just where might these faceless-Facebook pirate-speakers be holdin’ up?" "The Tortugas, I’d imagine," sez ye, "drinking rum, roasting boar and comparing Butterick great-coat patterns." "Could be, could be," I mutters while giving me beard a stroke. “But I’m layin’ odds they’re as phony as a Disneyland doubloon. Why – they’re no more’n a bunch o’ barnacle-blistered scalawags play-actin’ at speaking English (PIRATE). Fact is, ye can tell ‘em facebookers that ye’re the Nabob of Nubia an’ they’ll run t’ publish ‘er!

Me anger rightly sated, I turns to me bucko Jim wi’ me sails trimmed: “It’s these pirates’ Letters of Marque of I’d see, Jim lad. I’ll warrant they’ll have elegant curlicues scrawled onto some foolscap all tea-stained ‘n’ burned around the edges to give ‘em the style o’ antiquity.” “Captain, if you’ll look,” sez Jim while directin’ me eye with a ringed finger, “the Tortugas are viewable right here on this map.” “Why, if they ain’t stowin’ away in the Caribe’s orlop of an archie-pelago jes’ like a heap o’ sea-dogs” sneers I in contempt. “Even now I kin hear their land-lubber chorales of ‘avasts,’ ‘n’ ‘arrrghs’ bein’ sung as they hop aroun’ some facsimile of a foc’sc’le, having drawn a ration of stuffed parrot ‘n’ a plastic peg-leg each. Why – it’s enough to make Robert Louis Stevenson rick-o-shay puke like shot aroun’ a gun deck."

This here rant o’ mine were a pitiless one, I’ll confess. An’ recitin’ it wore me down hard as a stuck capstan. I’m studyin’ on the weevils in me ship’s biscuit when I looks t’ where Jim’s all downcast, his eyes hangin’ the jib. “Now, now, Jim lad,” sez I, “I’m mighty sorrowful fer not thanking ye fer all yer work markin’ out ‘em chicken-hearted marooners on the map ‘n’ all. Sink me if’n I don’t knows right where to send me black spot, thanks t’ ye." "Not atoll," replies the lad. "Ah, but Jim," I cautions, "don't be so modest-like. I'm obliged to ye for throwing in with me and this lopsided crew of bilge-rats on the Ill Wind. Why, I'll be keelhauled if’n it don't bring a tear to me one good eye." "Not at all," replies me bucko, addin’, "but what I mean is that they -- the English-(PIRATE)-conversant buccaneers -- aren't on an atoll. They're on some desert island somewhere." "Aye, Jim, aye," sez I, "but -- desert isle and atoll -- don't they drop anchor as the same thing?" "Not at all," sez he. "You're either on an atoll or not on one at all. Are all the Tortugas an atoll? Not at all. Well --not all." "Aye Jim," I concedes warily, "so ye’re sayin’ it's on some not-atoll desert isle where these English-(PIRATE)-pratin’ picaroons piss their scuttle butts and shite their poop decks dead slick – an’ hang the man who sez differen’!"

Aye – but somethin’s wrong somewheres. “S’blood,” thinks I while suspicionin’ there’s a falsehood floppin' on the boards like a caught mackerel. So, hand on me cutlass, I regards Jim with me milk eye, for -- blind though it be -- it can spot a lie loomin’ afore me like a grapple-hooked merchantman. But, alas, not when it comes to young Jim. For whether it be with me milk eye or no -- I find the lad harder to read’n a whale's lavender tripes. So, I gives way and comes about agin’ the sternpost to peer at the horizon with a sorrow hangin’ over me like the Jolly Roger lyin’ slack on the mizzen above. ‘Tis daybreak, an’ the sun’s arisin’ behind Calico Jack strung up in the harbor. I don’t know if it’s the tide goin’ out or Jack’s havin’ danced the hemp jig in a gibbet – but I suddenly feels a strangeness risin’ in me gizzards like a whale outer Davy Jones: "Honest, Jim lad," sez I while makin’ out I’m not tearin’ up but merely givin’ the wind a sniff, "we'd best hoist anchor fer the Tortugas. Why, I’ve been thinkin’ that mebbe them English-(PIRATE)-talkin’ fellas ain’t so bad after all. Come to remember – I heerd they’re more fun than a cabin-boy caught in a rain barrel.” With that, I takes another look at me bucko, his face now all a-twist on account of my notions comin’ about so lubberly. “Awww, hell’s bells, Jim lad,” sez I, “‘tain’t no use me lyin’ to ye. The truth is I’d sooner walk the plank as scoff fer fishes than t’die afore learnin’ what it’s like t’ talk like a proper pirate.”

Copyright 2025 by Alan Wellikoff

Written in memory of his cousin Ed Kritzler, author of the best-selling “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean.” Pirate scholar, fearless New World adventurer, and boon companion.

Social media fatigue is such that no story, however world-shattering, hits the news with anything beyond the lifespan of a good sneeze. I can remember when the sinking of the Andrea Doria caused a stir that rattled the world for years before Johanssen beat Patterson for the championship and gave people something else to talk about. But then, those were simpler times.

Look — up in the sky – there’s a battle being waged between Mecha-Godzilla and a mammoth Jeffrey Epstein. They fight for control of everything but Greenland, which Islam claims anyway. Even if one of the angels from the Ark of the Covenant refereed this match within a proscenium of artfully arranged cloudbanks, you’d still have to throw in Prince Harry chest-feeding and braiding his wife’s hair during Transgender Story Time for news of it to go viral. Back in 1958, all the chrome on a high-end Buick wasn’t enough to reflect the curious cultural events that were to come. Today, we’re assaulted by too many crazy stories to care about any of them. As we drive our imports down treeless miracle miles, we experience an emptiness from which even the most lurid and historic news won’t distract us. Motoring through farmland owned by the Chinese, we seek out the burger that hasn’t yet succumbed to shrinkflation, anxiously look for the next charging station, and drive on.

Meanwhile, more crazy shit happens.

For one thing -- something called something else but is really the stuff of ground-up bug carcasses can be found in your neighborhood grocer’s food pantry, although this isn’t necessarily a problem for the Hollywood Swells who eat free-range children. Were all that not enough, A.I. robots have begun to converse in an indecipherable beep-boop language of their own making. Are they chatting about ball scores or laying the groundwork for mankind’s demise?

It’s all beep-boop to me.

If there were only some turban-rocking time lord -- some exquisitely multicultural sage -- who’d explain it all. Kamala Harris might’ve had a clue. We have no one to blame but ourselves for failing to heed her words when she spoke of the significance of the passage of time. "The significance of the passage of time," she intoned an effort to become president, "the significance of the passage of time." It sounded as if something profound was about to follow, but, sadly, nothing did. She did repeat the phrase -- so there's that. Still, I think the lady may have been onto something.

Tell me that you don’t sense some invisible hand wiggling the joystick that oversees our affairs. Recently, who'd have guessed a swarm UFOs would suddenly fill the skies over New Jersey only to just as suddenly disappear like — well — things that visit New Jersey. They and their quirky orb friends also hit the Southern Hemisphere as millions of its inhabitants were heading north to help upend two continents with bone-through-the-nose norms that include murder and rape (President Trump, aware of the significance of the passage of Central American terror gangs, has ended this phenomenon). If that weren’t enough, something dart-shaped and the length of Manhattan is voyaging through the solar system while emitting its own light. As the thing heads past Mars, an oddly bemused Harvard astronomer observes as how it’s likely of non-human origin, his mysterious smile a visible contrast to the strange nervousness Obama evinced while admitting that space aliens are real. Then, going forward-yet-backward in time, a Dallas lab just used mammoth DNA to create wooly mice (is that good?) with the real, elephantine creatures said to be not far off. And not last by a longshot, we’ve discovered that the great pyramids are little more than bits of crown molding for subterranean columns that seemingly run to the depths of time and space.

Now, those are all world-changing stories. Time is so knotted up by them the significance of its passage is harder to find than a sock lost to the world beyond your dryer. Years ago, you might’ve read these stories off supermarket tabloids in the checkout line; now that they’re real, they’ve fallen between the cracks on cable.

A hearty handshake awaits anyone who guesses what’s next. Will it be Space escalators? A pole reversal? Apex biologicals on the march? Smilodon cubs at the kiddie zoo? Particle accelerators fashioned from old shopping malls? Mobile loudspeakers issuing public commands in beep-boop?

Maybe we should just “look up” as Luke 21:28 advises.

Anyway, winner to be announced on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

It was written by Julia Ward Howe in November, 1861. She got $4.00 for it — a sum then good for four shots of Kentucky bourbon.* It was made famous when President Lincoln, after hearing it sung for the first time, stood up, asked to hear it again, and remained standing. From there, its impact grew until it became the unofficial anthem of the Union itself. Even so, today it’s mostly used as a song for high school chorales to perform before their assembled parents. As a standard part of the American catalog, it can be found up there with “John Brown’s Body” (the melody from which it loosely borrows), “Shenandoah” and “Simple Gifts.”

But it’s something more than these are.

As anyone who’s seen “Casablanca” well knows, “La Marseillaise” makes for a better call to arms. While the French national anthem rings out for citizen soldiers to arise and “formez vos bataillons,” our fight-song is busily making wine. Not that it’s all like that, for right after the grapes of wrath are pressed and the Lord’s “terrible swift sword” is loosed, its fateful lightning is presumably there to strike secessionists in dreadful retribution. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Johnny Reb when that happens. So, while it isn’t fashionably French, may be weighed down by its 19th-century lyrics and would be less likely to silence a bunch of Wehrmacht officers in a North African café -- it still knows how to fight. Besides, as anyone who’s seen “Gettysburg,” or better yet — “Red Dawn” — is aware, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is our call to arms.

It’s right there in the name.

As a strongly Victorian work the Battle Hymn is replete with references to God. As such, it’s easy to consider it sacred. However, the song’s job is primarily to act as a nobly warring and nationalistic opus. Lit by a gentle watchfire, it evokes more of the Samuri warrior’s quiescent spirit than the embattled farmer’s rage. Perhaps this is the reason why, despite its calling upon “the hero born of woman (to) crush the serpent with his heel” (Secesh again), it’s still seen by most of us as just a baronial-sounding bit of patriotic fluff.

Despite its glorious description of an unmatched history of valor in the face of overwhelming odds, a lot of Americans view “The Star-Spangled Banner” with disdain. That’s because, well, America. For these folks, it’s “America the Beautiful” that should’ve been played every night as the TV signed off. But I call BS. Sure, “America” (its other name) deserves praise for its rare invocation of the American landscape; and while it’s admittedly more “singable,” it isn’t our national anthem any more than “Lift Every Voice” is.

Beginning when the National Football League announced that it would be played at the opening of all games during the 2020 season, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was foisted on us as the Black National Anthem with all the subtlety of a North Korean military parade. While it’s indeed a beautiful -- and even inspirational – work that extends back to 1900, you hear Lift Every Voice less now as athletes no longer Bend Every Knee in pre-game displays of shame for the “dark past” to which the song refers. Ironically, these shows of virtue would also take place during what inference compels us to regard as the White National Anthem.

Way to unify, future bug-eaters.

Ironically too, it’s the Lift Every Voice crowd that may have put kibosh on “America.” Once the unofficial White Liberal National Anthem, “America’s” lyrics famously end up crowning the country’s “good” with “brotherhood” -- thereby coronating the latter as the supreme American value. Never mind that the Battle Hymn of the Republic calls on us to sacrifice our very lives in the war to abolish slavery, it’s “America’s” reference to brotherhood that’s earned it politically appropriate hosannas to arise from those in Malibu, on Martha’s Vineyard and in other kombucha-quaffing quarters with frontage on a shining sea. However, this reference has lately become problematic. In certain places, its elevation of brotherhood has made “America” a patriarchal Horst Wessel among Wokeism’s dying breed. Sung in violation of Code Pink’s redline, it’s become as toxic as masculinity itself for those who once would’ve knelt on Maya-Angelou-facing prayer rugs just to venerate it.

Despite also his wiping sweat from his brow with a scarf and tossing it into his Vegas crowd, Elvis nonetheless sang the Battle Hymn with a reverence that’s righteous in its reverberation. A musical phrasing of “Dixie” appears at the song’s bridge, possibly to both echo Presley’s Mississippi origins and as the Civil War Centennial’s nod to national unity (Dixie’s diasporic lyrics hadn’t yet set Leftist hair afire). Also, while giving the Battle Hymn the honor it deserves in varying degrees, other artists covering it range from Mark Twain (whose re-worded version wasn’t published until 1958 — the same year that Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” hit number 46 on the dance charts) to the Chad Mitchell Trio and Leonard Cohen. Winston Churchill was a great admirer who directed that it be played at his funeral, and Ronald Reagan was reduced to tears as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sung it during his inauguration. Sung by the U.S. Army Band, it also marked the emotional high point of President Trump’s second inaugural.

The Battle Hymn sounded again during one of the Trump inaugural balls as the new chief, his wife Melania, and their entire family seemed made to dance to it as if it were “Begin the Beguine.” While some might rightly view its use in that context a mishandling of its solemnity, this was a joyous occasion for the president, who could be forgiven for leaning out from his wife’s embrace to exaggeratingly mouth the “Glory, Glory” lyrics on their second go-round. That’s a far cry from Reagan’s reaction, but it seemed less intended to ridicule the song than exult in The Raised Collar One’s’ funereal version of it.

Besides, that’s Trump. Jacksonian from the jump.

Now the Battle Hymn stands second only to the National Anthem in the reverence it commands. It’s not perfect, and whether or not Christ was born with any lilies nearby, it continues to stir the hearts of Americans while reminding them of their nation’s — and particularly their warfighters’ — spirit, faith, sacrifice and strength.

Besides, it’s what you carry into battle.

It says so right in the name.

*As one who can remember buying beer for 15 cents a pour in DC’s GW Inn just over a century later, I’m guessing that in 1861, dollar-per-shot whisky was a mining-camp price.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, brazen practitioner of wrongthink, flew an American flag. Worse, it wasn’t just any American flag but the Appeal-to-Heaven (or Pine Tree) flag that dates to the Revolutionary War. As you may remember from school, that was a conflict in which American slaveholders put down their bullwhips long enough to battle 18th-century Britons who fought in long rows. At the time, the Americans couldn’t foresee how their red-coated foe would help with PBS funding by providing the network with colorful English content. Still, this is a case in which a U.S. Supreme Court Justice has the temerity to fly a banner that figured in the country’s founding (silly us, we took murder, child rape and making the “white supremacist” three-ring sign to be the worst crimes anyone could commit). The question is, what should happen now to the racist, transphobic, zio-occupied, cis-male justice? A clue may be found in Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s words when, in March of 2020, he mounted the Supreme Court’s steps to grandly announce that conservative justices Brett Kavanagh and Neil Gorsuch will “pay a price” for having “released the whirlwind.”

That dreaded torrent may have now come for Sam Alito. If so, look for him as he flies helplessly aloft, caught in a vortex of airborne cows and farmhouses while headed for that Oz from which few return.

Like Justice Alito, the New England colonists, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the city of San Francisco and General George Washington all had the moral laxity to fly the Pine Tree flag. Among these, Washington was naturally prominent. Designed to represent “the strength and resilience of the New England colonies” (the pine tree was then a familiar symbol of New England), in 1775 the banner adopted by the country’s founding father rippled at the sterns of schooners in pursuit of English vessels at sea.

More than just a navy jack, the Appeal-to-Heaven flag was itself appealing: Emblazoned with a green conifer that stood against a white field, its motto asked God to take a hand “in delivering us from tyranny.”

While there’s surely hope contained in the Pine Tree flag’s motto, some desperation lurks there as well. With his summer-time soldiers, Washington was taking on the greatest fighting force the world had known; and although the army that would defeat Napoleon at Waterloo would first present its sword to him at Yorktown, in 1775 Washington could reasonably expect his rebellion to not only end in his defeat — but in penury, imprisonment and death upon English gallows.

Just as an apparent assassin stalked Justice Kavanagh, Sam Alito might also anticipate a bad end from his future decisions. Among these are those relating to President Trump’s appeals against bogus guilty verdicts, another sham Democrat election victory, the invasion of the country by millions of illegals, the mounting evidence of President Biden’s treachery and God knows what else. The verdict on any of these might lead us into civil war pitting heavily armed, tattooed and ten-galloned men driving pimped-out Jeep Wranglers against a force of vegans of indeterminant sex using converted rubberized garbage cans as tanks.

On the other hand, if you don’t think that Joe Biden would use the Army to retain his hold on power, you haven’t been paying attention. He’s already floated the idea of applying F-15s to that very purpose. But would the Pentagon leadership go along with a war against American citizens? Some of it doubtlessly would, although the DEI military under Biden has been so incompetent it couldn’t win a war against bonobos in golf carts.

While we hope that no such unhappy events come about, it’s now Alito’s turn to ride the tumbrel that woke-ism affords the pale, male, and ready for the rail. Never mind the Pine Tree flag’s role in mankind’s liberation; rely upon those keffiyeh-flouting Jacobites who’ve added to Biden’s years of misery to tell you what to think. For them, Alito’s Pine Tree banner has invoked the latest gris-gris in the art of political voodoo: Christian Nationalism. The phrase is a compound of two neutral religious and historical terms lately re-fashioned by the left into the very watchwords of fascist oppression.

So, fellow binaries and those insisting on being addressed by freaky pronouns, it’s down with the Pine Tree flag and up with the “Palestinian” rag instead. Hoist it high while chanting Alito, Alito, you can’t stay incognito. Last, unleash hordes of Hamas-hugging mutants to drive the judge – and those still here reading this -- from the river to the sea.

It’s either that or resurrect the Pine Tree flag and its epic cri d’coeur. We could use another deliverance from tyranny.

Oh, never mind that her paltry body of published works was stitched-together from the words of real researchers and writers. Forget too that she was unable to sit before a congressional committee without a smirk adding to the general unpleasantness of her features. She also was unable to say that at Harvard — the ultra-prestigious university into the presidency of which she had been thrust like a DEI-fueled Queen of Hearts -- the advocacy of genocide against Jews is not something worthy of outright condemnation. It was in this congressional setting that the term “context” granted Claudine Gay and her sister university presidents a day-long Get-Out-of-Jail card. That’s not to say that the trio didn’t come prepared with some lawyer-supplied claptrap about their aversion to prejudice, it’s boilerplate regarding anti-Semitism also citing Islamophobia to nicely round things out. Hearing this, I wish someone on the committee had the wit to ask the Harvard prez if she considered campus advocacy for the wholesale murder of black people, or of women, or of gays, or Muslims or some curious intersection of these — as something that might also skirt her condemnation.

Subject, of course, to “context.”

The obvious question to ask is just what did Gay and the other university bobbleheads mean by their repeated citing of “context.” The Cambridge supremo replied sotto voce, claiming the context was conditioned on whether or not the genocidal threat was “targeted as an individual.” I think she meant “at an individual,” but I’m not sure. She was likely, deservedly, nervous. Even so, I suspect that Gay has again been guilty of cribbing copy from the wrong source. Genocide refers to the murder of a mass of people based in their common nationality or ethnicity. The murder of an individual is known as homicide -- although the prevailing culture may soon supplant this with “gynecide” as a matter of compelled speech. As genocide cannot be attributable to the death of an individual (something that even the president of a nail technology institute is surely aware), Gay’s “context” doesn’t enter the picture. So, while it could well be that Harvard’s former president is so stupid as to think that an individual could be genocided, I am offering her an out — although like her, it isn’t a pretty one: By her use of the term “context,” I infer her to mean that the genocide of Jews can be advocated at Harvard if those doing so claim to feel sufficiently oppressed by Jews to justify it.

That’s the context. The pro-Hamas demonstrators at Harvard represent a protected class whose demand for the total elimination of Israel “from the river to the sea” must not be maligned. As the demand for Israel’s watery end derives directly from the Arabs’ 1948 battle cry to “drive the Jews into the sea,” its association with a call for a second Holocaust is clear.

That whole “we mean Zionists and not Jews” thing is so over.

The recent president of Harvard is a black woman – something that puts her well up on the beanpole of today’s ethno-politics. Additionally, she’s not only an immigrant (albeit, we assume, a legal one), but is rumored a lesbian into the mix. And if all that weren’t enough to secure her woke status -- her surname is "Gay.”

This means that she’s got privilege aplenty. Thus, Harvard didn’t fire Madame Gay, but, after a period of dithering, allowed her to resign as president while remaining on the faculty. For her part, instead of expressing any remorse for the anti-Semitic nature of her congressional testimony, Gay later expressed “regret” for it. This calls for another lesson in the use of the English language. Rather than being remorseful — or sorry for her actions — Gay’s “regret” implies she’s sorry for the actions others have made in response to them.

Then again — maybe she got the meanings inverted.

That would hardly be surprising as Plagiarist Gay’s letter of resignation is an inversion of truth — something that has long characterized the left. In it, she proclaims herself to have the very virtues the absence of which required her to write the letter in the first place. Gay styles herself as a victim, thereby entering the highest caste western society affords its racial elites. The poor woman is oppressed, and although she can find comfort in the unconditional support she enjoys among students, feminists, black activists, academics, affluent white female liberals/lesbians (or “Awfls”), the seven figures she’s being offered for her “story” and her $900,000 Harvard salary — like Alice, this Queen of Spades has fallen. Sure, she’s spun giddily around and around into a deliriously upside-down Woke Wonderland filled with miracle-working “contexts” — but in the end, it’s off with her head at Harvard!

Once the "Great Camp" of Buffalo's Gilded Age industrialists, the privately-owned Verplanck Club* carries on as the Adirondack retreat of their descendants. The club was built late in the 19th-century to encircle Lake Verplanck, a body of water that the Great Glacier shaped as a hand diffidently pointing to what would, after the unfolding of eons, become Quebec. It lies within the Adirondack Preserve, one of the great experiments in nineteenth-century wilderness conservation which, when viewed on a map, resembles nothing so much as a Connecticut-size tick glacially crawling its way northeastward. Although only a speck when compared with the preserve in size, the lake’s pointing finger directs the tick toward the map’s upper right — as if urging it to make Quebec before another Ice Age kicks in.

Nestled in a mountaintop basin of maple, hemlock and pine, the Verplanck Club is carried along on the tick’s right adanal plate.

Around the club’s lake, rough-hewn dwellings that scale up from modest cabins to twiggy mansions are now inhabited by its inheritors -- a cheery lot more likely to go in for social work than the manufacture of locomotive transfer cranes. As the latest of these build their own camps, the newer structures’ Cal-Neva aspect imparts a Rat-Pack atmosphere far from anything that William West Durant – the celebrated turn-of-the-century Great-Camp architect — ever had in mind.

Central to the club is its clubhouse, where meals were once taken communally. Step inside its sprawling porch and you’ll see — in addition to more than a century’s photos of clubmen posing with caught trout and deliriously happy dogs — where Teddy Roosevelt and his chauffeur each signed the guest book in an elegantly cursive script. There’s also a twiggy dining room and upstairs bedrooms, in one of which I once awaited the arrival of a female club member while feeling like one of the retrievers on the walls below but coming off instead as one of the trout. The kitchen is a place that’ll send anyone who remembers old country hotel cookeries into a rapture of lost familiarity.

But rustic interiors, while important, don’t provide Verplanck with its most inspiring settings. At night, you walk out under the Big Dipper that beams with a singular brilliance that seems to send a wordless message of assurance — or alarm — earthward. Even so, the Dipper is soon obscured by the boathouse roof, but with your canoe loosed from its mooring, you can then set out onto the woodland lake where the Milky Way will greet you, its majestic vault through the heavens above mirrored in the waters below. In the embrace of starlight both real and reflected, your aluminum-hulled Old Town suddenly becomes a starship that glides, silently, through the enveloping firmament. In this fantastic setting, the sky -- as a sky -- is lost; but you are not. Instead, you've never had a keener sense of your exact coordinates in a Galaxy that spills and sparkles around you.

In the wee hours, I’ve navigated these heavens in search of other interplanetary vessels, the scene being ripe for the appearance of a UFO along the lines of that blue bastard from “This Island, Earth.” That it never appeared is just as well, as all here is wondrous stillness — except for the dipping of the paddle, the “plunk” of trout and tree frog, and the maniac call of the loons.

A trek north of Verplanck brings the hiker to Animosh (Algonquin for “dog”) Rock, the main feature of which rises along an eponymous lake. Bears are visitors here, and the wise camper loads his canned goods into a canoe before climbing into his sleeping bag to quake all night at the racket mysteriously coming from the lake. If he’s like me, the camper will peek out from time to time to exchange worried glances with his doggie companion; and, when the dewy morn rolls around, strike out to investigate what was making all the noise the previous night. Thus, the camper and his animosh might discover that a muddy slide was involved; and after concluding a colony of beavers used it for a bit of late-night carousing, might further have to consider how to retrieve his canned goods, which, far from meddlesome bears, had floated out mid-lake.

Above Animosh Rock lies The Forest Beyond – a seemingly trackless expanse here capitalized into a promising place name. Beginning in a muddy meadow surrounded by long-dead drowned trees, this runs to the mountains to impart a feeling to the wet camper and his freshly retrieved canned goods of being poised on a wilderness vast as the one that scared Puritans into thinking that “heere-be-demons” in the bosky wood.

Nearby, the sun-lit boulder that gives the great rock its name beckoned as a place upon which to contemplate our fern-draped entry to The Forest Beyond’s verdant precincts – one through which Benedict Arnold and his Continentals might have followed Verplanck’s pointing finger right into Quebec City. Atop the rock, I divested myself of wet clothes and, stripped down to my sappy regard for all things wild and historic, contemplated the fact that here I was -- a kid from teeming Keskeskeck -- overlooking a territory that might run to the Canadian line without harboring another human soul. This called for a bit of writing, so seeking wisdom on the matter, I turned to Saki, the sweet bitch at my side, only to find her raised into a crouch with ears back, hackles up, and mouth contorted into an uncharacteristic growl. It was only then that a heretofore soundless (to me, anyway) pair of Air Force A-10 Warthogs blasted over our naked forms at near tree-top level.  Maybe these jet-propelled enemies of solitude and soulful doggo repose were providing air support for Arnold and his boys. Either that, or they were executing a bombing run on the demons that Puritans would’ve sworn were up that way.

Tarnesda, a cabin on Verplanck Lake that once served as the club’s post office, later became a twigged-out camp meticulously done up in compliance with W. W. Durant’s Adirondack style. It is here where — indebted to the generosity of my late friend and its former caretaker, I first came to compose this book. My idea for the work was for it to be a modern Walden as written from the unlikely perspective of a kid from the Bronx. But rather than go all the way back to nature, I thought I’d just go back aways in history – even though those are overlapping ambitions.

What follows then, is a series of personal tales that begin and end in KesKesKeck, and into which specters from American history occasionally wander – only as companions in misadventure more than anything instructive.

Next — if anyone’s interested: “Spectacular 10”

* Certain place names have been changed in the interest of preserving the Verplanck Club’s privacy.

USSS (United States Star/Space Ship) Acquire. The Acquire Class of combat vessels include:

The USSS Asimov

The USSS Buck Rogers

The USSS Bug-Greeter

The USSS Dog Star

The USSS Earth

The USSS Dominus

The USSS Greenbank

The USSS Frank Drake

The USSS Gustav Holst

The USSS Oumuamua

The USSS Radiant

The USSS Red Planet

The USSS Sebastian von Hoerner

The USSS Valiant Thor

The USSS Immanuel Velikovsky

The USSS Wow Signal

The USSS George Adamski. The Adamski Class of supply ships include:

The USSS Alice Kramden

The USSS Benjamin Banneker

The USSS Ray Bradbury

The USSS Celestial Ranger

The USSS Centaurus

The USSS Charles Messier

The USSS Claire de Lune

The USSS Close Encounter

The USSS Debussy

The USSS Eudoxus

The USSS Event Horizon

The USSS George Airy

The USSS Glenn Curtiss

The USSS Humble

The USSS Hyperion

The USSS Icarus

The USSS Interplanetary

The USSS Irreversible

The USSS Jar Jar

The USSS MST 3000

The USSS Jovian: The Jovian Class of research and auxiliary vessels include:

The USSS Extra Terrestrial

The USSS Katherine Johnson

The USSS Kinetic

The USSS Klaatu Barada

The USSS Magellanic

The USSS Man in the Moon

The USSS Morning Star

The USSS Nordic

The USSS Orion

The USSS Perihelion

The USSS Planets

The USSS Pleiades

The USSS Proxima Centauri

The USSS Roswell

The USSS Seti

The USSS Seven Sisters

The USSS Sol

The USSS Beagle

The USSS Spectra

The USSS Zarkov

Copyright 2023 Alan Wellikoff. All rights reserved.

Under the trade name “Illustrated Brands" my now departed friend Alan Rose and I came out with a product line that went nowhere. Well, almost. Among them were Dr. Kevorkian’s Hot Sauce, Next to the Last Supper Bubble Gum (“King of the Chews”), Death to All Monsters Refrigerator Magnets, Heroes of the Torah dinnerware and others. However, the most popular of all — if I can venture to use the term “popular” in this context — was General Tso’s Coffee. What follows is the invented, one might say chickenshit, history of the coffee imprinted on each can.

A HISTORY OF GENERAL TSO’S COFFEE

Tso Kuo-fan, the "Chicken-Mad Commander of the Anti-Foreign Campaign," rose to prominence during the First Opium War when his obsession with the foraging and field-preparation of chicken allowed for a decisive British victory. This resulted in the Treaty of Nanjing, a document mysteriously lumbered with Ch'ing Dynasty recipes for both chicken and guinea fowl. A side letter that Tso presented to the treaty's conference demanded of the victorious Britons that they export Welsh bantams, Sussex cockerels and other barnyard fowl to China in numbers so great that conferees on both sides were dumbstruck - remaining, according to one contemporary account, "seated in mute bewilderment until long after Tso strutted from the hall, clucking in furious agitation."

Theories as to why the Chinese general took up the unusual practice of coffee drinking vary. Some say it was just to forget this entire episode, while others claim the general became an embarrassing dipso during the Second Opium War and used coffee to sober up in the manner of American General Ulysses S. Grant. Sadly, neither is true. General Tso was entirely indifferent to coffee, and when not arising late in the day to sample one of his cook's attempts at a stimulating chicken brew, always took tea.

Be that as it may, we think that General Tso would've thought of this coffee as a pretty-good beverage - for coffee - if he'd had some.

It’s hard to be unaware that many on the left are given to styling President Trump as a “fascist”– something they conflate with his being a nationalist.  This status shares an open border with his being a full-on Nazi. To see what the Left would make of such nationalists as Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln, is to make them engage in more name-calling.

Besides, if Trump were a fascist, those who daily called him one would’ve disappeared before another day passed in which they could do so.

Actually, the term "fascist" derives from the Roman image of the "fasces," a bundle of sticks (a faggot in English) which Mussolini used as the emblem for his Partito Nazionale Fascista. The fasces, which dates to a time before the Roman republic, symbolized the authority of a magistrate. However, Mussolini’s fasces was different: Representing the strength of the collective over the individual, the emblem -- along with Il Duce himself – was admired by Lenin. Nor was FDR exempt from Mussolini’s appeal as (while doubtlessly aware of the fasces that flank the U.S. House of Representatives’ podium to signify, in bundled-stick terms, the e pluribus unum ethic),1 FDR once sent a delegation to Rome to study the Italian leader’s method of governance.

Not to be outdone, Adolph Hitler also admired Mussolini – but their brand of socialism was a variation on the old collectivist theme.

Here’s how that worked:

Traditional socialism, as expressed in the writings of Marx, endorsed a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” As such, it was class-based and foresaw a triumph of the workers following a period of class conflict. According to Dinesh D’Souza, Mussolini observed during World War I that working-class British, Americans, French and Italians were really fighting for their countries against the Germans; while the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Turks were doing the same for theirs. He therefore inferred that workers’ loyalties lay not with their class identities but with their national ones. This led the Italian dictator to create a brand of socialism he called "National Socialism" -- a system that was, by definition, more nationalistic that its predecessor. As such, it would emphasize its host country’s myths, folklore and military conquests in order to foster a belief in an epic past.

In the 1930s, Hitler would follow Mussolini's lead with his own National Socialist Workers’ Party. Known as the Nazis, this drew upon the emerging theories of biological hierarchism and the bacillus of Jew-hatred. At first, the Nazis united Germany, helping it to regain national pride with a new, magnetic, Fuhrer. Hitler’s economic reforms, bracing militarized nationalism, Wagnerian use of symbols and ascription of blame for Germany’s humiliating defeat in WW I, helped blind many to his ruthlessly brutal methods — methods that led to the industrial-scale murder of millions of innocent civilians.

Despite this history, the idea that fascism and socialism occupy opposite, rather than neighboring, parts of the political spectrum, is widely embraced. This derives from the rabid warfare that took place between Germany and the Soviet Union during WW II. While this conflict was vicious, battles between groups whose ideologies are difficult for outsiders to distinguish are often among the hardest fought. History is rife with them: the decades-long clash between Irish Protestants and Catholics being one prominent example; and the ongoing wars resulting in the deaths of countless Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, another.

Posing as a reaction to – while acting as a fomenter of -- such ethnic squabbles, a new form of socialism is emerging throughout the West. This party is no longer based on class nor nationality, but on ethnic, religious, racial and sexual identities, the last — by some magic — being fluid in nature. In this, the socialists recall the Nazis’ racialist policies -- only with blacks, browns, women, and those within the ever-expanding LGBTQIA+ community granted a kind of legal, cultural (if not also biological) superiority; while at the same time, white, heterosexual, “cis-gendered” men and Christians join with Jews among those reliably blamed for having pitilessly brought forth all the world’s woes and none of its blessings.

According to my analysis, and following the lead previously set by Mussolini, a good name for this brand of socialism would be Identity Socialism — and the party by which it operates, the Idzi Party.

In a way reminiscent of other socialists -- the Idzis concentrate power in the hands of an upper-income elite unattached much beyond yard work to those they pretend to champion. Additionally, they malign some groups in the name of benefitting others; believe in the inherent biological superiority of some people over others and take outrageously illegal measures to eliminate dissent. They fix elections, weaponize government institutions and use black-shirted thugs to stage blazing riots.

Moreover, instead of history being reworked to emphasize a countries’ past glories, the Idzis emphasize its past failings. Too, monotheistic religions are replaced by pagan cults and esoteric practices while young minds are subjected to brainwashing so extreme it would make a KGB functionary puke. Finally, in a manner akin to the totalitarian practice of “disappearing” their enemies, the Idzis “cancel” those whom, whether by some deliberate or inadvertent act, are found to be out of synch with the New Order. These are condemned as either racists, fascists, or just mentally unstable assholes who must lose their jobs and — despite their abject apologizing — disappear.

See: North Korea.

Presently, the “Squad,” a quartet of women Democrats, some of whom were elected to congress from President Obama’s Muslim-fortified districts, have joined with allies who’ve since emerged to constitute the Idzi’s political shock troop. Of these, and likely more as a function of her looks than knowledge or intellect, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has risen to prominence as the Idzi Party’s apparent standard bearer.  

Thus, just as one crescent moon succeeds another, AOC succeeds Barack Obama as Identity Socialism’s charismatic leader.  Still, it’s Obama, who with chin raised high over Marthas Vineyard’s greening plain, reigns as its Grand Vizier. Thus, his name takes its place alongside those of Karl Marx and Benito Mussolini in the socialist pantheon.

All of which brings us back to Mussolini and his fasces. Should National Socialism – and its attendant charismatic leader -- have arisen in 1920s England rather than Italy, its bundle-of-sticks emblem would necessarily represent that of a National Faggot Party. Were that the case, today’s Leftists would find themselves railing against faggots rather than fascists.

Although none would ever think to call Donald Trump one.

Fanny Farmer’s Candies

Dear Yelp,

It was coming up on Christmas, and a trip occasioned my getting a day off from school. It wasn’t going to be the kind of day I’d be losing stickball; nor would it be a rainy one watching Shenanigans on TV with best friend Billy. Fashioning a cowboy town out of shoe boxes would surely be out; as was pretending the Electrolux was a Mars-based troop-carrier coursing its way over an alien, yet nicely carpeted, landscape.

No -- it would be a day of climbing into a yellow school-bus and going off somewhere with classmates.

The destination was a promising one – the Fanny Farmer’s candy factory. Two things about this trip are immediately notable: First there was the yellow school bus. Its very presence bore the appeal of The Magic Bus Golden Book that – even half-way through grade school – had an iron grip on my soul. The charm it imparted was a rhapsodic one that could transform mere thought into fragrant memory. Truth to tell, I could recall other things in the same way. Places, colors, certain aromas -- and they didn’t have to use the word “magic” with reference to themselves either. So, as I boarded the bus I was thinking, what the hell’s wrong with me? Here we all were clambering onto a school bus, but I alone was doing so in a state of near rapture.

I know that sounds pretty fruity – enough for me to quickly add the next thing about this trip: my love for classmate Judy Rothbutt (name only slightly changed to protect the innocent). Sure, I’d been struck by Cupid’s arrow before – Patricia Magee in kindergarten comes to mind – but here was a desire that could gather my thoughts, ego and general awareness and burn them in the pit of my soul until nothing but an ashen being in a Cub Scout cap remained. Judy’s dark-eyed beauty cast me into a ring of fire well before Johnny Cash ever sat for a mug shot. Of course, Miss R was unaware of my feelings. After all, how could she be when my sole attempt at seduction was to repeatedly walk past her desk with my eyebrows scrunched together like James Dean.

Obviously, I’d be aware of our relative seating positions on the bus. I wasn’t allowed to get up and walk about, so another slo-mo saunter past Judy in a labored imitation of Dean was out of the question. Perhaps because of this, I don’t remember the trip over other than for the bus’s pulling into Fanny Farmer’s itself. Considering its industrial role, the place was pretty. Was I still in the Bronx, or had we passed into a park-like nether-region, a candy land in which Judy and I would unite in whatever would pass for an understanding back at P.S. 94?

Added to this was the fact that while I knew we’d arrived at a factory, I was also keenly aware it was a candy factory. I found the whole concept disturbingly incongruent. Candy, as it turned out, wasn’t made by friendly elves in groves of oak, but by careworn ladies in little white caps. Confounding my bewilderment was an inability to figure out why the teachers had brought us here in the first place. After all, candy was a commodity they tended to look down upon. Worse, these were people who’d tried sanitizing our recent trick-or-treating into a kind of anti-McCarthyite fund-raising ritual for liberal causes. One beneficiary was to be a UN organization that – for all we knew – held candy in even lower regard than the teachers did. I’m pretty sure Judy R wouldn’t have fallen for this commie trick. Hardly anyone did. All others deserved to get whacked with the heavily chalked boards we Norwood boys traditionally broke out for Halloween.

But getting back to Fanny Farmer’s. While it’s clear that every factory had a certain educational value, perhaps by taking us to a candy plant, the teachers were making a gentle attempt to introduce us to the idea that candy -- which we took to be a gift from the Gods -- was as mundane an item as any worn turnbuckle. I don’t know. I suppose there’s a very prosaic explanation for all of it. Typically, I’m working the issue way too hard. In any event, all the teachers (and – for all I know – Judy Rothbutt) are dead by now, so I guess we’ll never know if the school trip was any more profitable than my James Dean gambit.

In the end, I confess it’s all become pretty hazy. However, there was something at Fanny Farmer’s you’d never find in any turnbuckle plant. This took the form of an assembly line on which the stuff of candy canes – brilliantly white under its entwining crimson stripe -- appeared as an endlessly moving and jiggling log. There’s no other way to put it. This thing must’ve been a good 18 inches in diameter, greater in circumference than a mature maple back wherever it was we’d come from. What’s more, it moved hypnotically, like some gelatinous Christmas miracle. Then, by means of entering a dark tunnel, this massive girth of sugar was transformed into a mess of little candies. That changed me. I saw the whole thing as sexual – although doubtlessly in some poorly understood way. I do know this much: I’d never look at the pretty girls at their school desks in the same way again.

Anyhow – some Fanny Farmer employees gave us little bags of treats on the way out. They were OK. Three stars.

Henry's Auto Repair

Dear Yelp,

There was this auto repair shop I visited with my father as a teenage kid. It was either named for its owner or for something (or someone) else -- but was known by its owner’s name, nevertheless. And while I forget the name, I feel compelled to say it was Henry. Henry was tall, lean, not unkind, but tough as a Cat’s Paw heel. He was further distinguished by a strawberry birthmark that almost fully divided his face longitudinally. At first, this harlequin effect had me feeling sorry for him; but I have to say that as he seemed to be OK with it, I was eventually cheered by the sight of it and allowed myself think of it as the mark of a man who labored at the height of autodom’s two-tone era.

Anyway -- down on Webster, and hard by the Argo Buick dealership, my father and I would appear at Henry’s with our successive Pontiac and Oldsmobile cars – having, in the hierarchy of such things, always fallen short of actual Buick ownership. My dad, a nearly-no-nonsense businessman would treat Henry courteously, but curtly; while I, conscious of my status as one who still stood in anticipation of manhood’s many trials, pretty much remained silent. This was done with reticence, as we all knew Vietnam to be coming with its bid on my presence, and we all – that is, father, perhaps Henry, and I – wondered if I would heed its call. “Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed, and hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day," I would say to myself, quoting King Hal before Agincourt. This helped immensely. My dad would show no anger, but this was not the case with Henry, whom I can remember standing under a lift, his face now fully red, and thinking himself accursed by a Chevrolet’s broken control-arm. “Another shit Chevy,” he muttered, damning the car more succinctly than would any Shakespearean king. But did he not know of the Chevrolet marque’s august history? Didn’t he understand that Louis Chevrolet was an early race car driver? I don’t know.

He fixed cars pretty good though. Four Stars.

I read recently of Mark Twain saying of those he called “moral statisticians” (i.e. health scolds) that they “are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to their theory, they ought to have died young.” This had me reflect on a vice I’d reluctantly given up on based on a doctor's warning: Pipe smoking.

Lists of quotes like the one from which I got Twain’s remark are full of men, famous and otherwise, who extol the pleasures of puffing away at a good briar. These gents will use terms like “supernal,” “sublime” and “transporting” to convey what it’s like to smoke a pipe. While all these descriptors are apt, I’ll just say that if you ever smelled the aroma given off by a pipe as it’s being smoked, it’s like that — only not so much.

Despite the enjoyment it had provided, I greatly limited my pipe smoking. This meant never smoking one in public as doing so will have you looking like a pretentious prig. You might not be a pretentious prig. You might be the farthest thing from one — but smoke your pipe in public and ruffians in Mohawks will tie your homeless-chic pirate boots together and throw them over telephone wires from whence they can never be retrieved. Alternatively, you can wear your pipe as a statement, its bowl faced out from a tattered tweed jacket’s breast pocket. However, this is only advisable for inheritors of English country estates having pastoral views distantly dotted with roes and harts. Others had best stay away.

Nevertheless, and because things always go to the other, there does seem to be a narrow subset of hipster urban males carrying pipes. They’re dark, brooding, favor black leather and tend to look like Anonymous without the mask. Of course, I’m well past that kind of thing. If I ever wanted to take a pipe out along the strand, I’d likely do so as an irrascable old eccentric. Come to think of it, this may already be achievable.

But back to the no-public-pipe-smoking rule that left me restricted to lighting up indoors like a kindly old dad on a 1947 Christmas calendar. In the idealized version of this scene, a fire would be ablaze behind its hearth, and a retriever asleep beside my chair. Nearby, a blue package of Granger’s Rough Cut could be seen opened and plundered. This image was fine with me, especially when you consider a briar is all about home and hearth anyway.

In this earlier incarnation as a pipe smoker, the briars were always the straight-forward apple and billiard types -- curvy sherlocks and meershams elaborately carved into the heads of Newfoundland fisherfolk being too absurd even for indoor use. Similarly, my choice of tobaccos was limited to utility-grade varieties — the Cherry Blend (you never forget your first), Bond Street, Mixture 79, Amphora, Half & Half, Sail and Carter Hall brands once openly displayed at drug store counters. Every now and then I’d abandon these for an upmarket purchase of Rattray's Red Rapparee or Balkan Sobranie. But that was mostly for the way the cans looked.

I’ve got to admit it’s been the siren call of these fancifully named and designed tobacco cans that’s loosened the bonds keeping me from my briars these many years. Among tobacco brands, you can have your way with Three Nuns or Ten Russians depending on your inclinations, or rest up with a bowl of Hearth & Home Fusilier’s Ration after engaging the Turks at Gallipoli. Fumes from Edward G. Robinson’s “Pipe Blend,” while pretty good stuff, have the added benefit of prompting you to ask where’s your Moses now. After any of the above, a few pinches of Dunhill’s Nightcap will supposedly grant a soporific affect, but avoid getting one of their cans emblazoned with the warning that “Smoking Kills” along with the admonition to “Quit Now.” In addition, there’s McClelland Club’s Celebrated Sovereign, a blend that manages to be both quaintly Victorian and painfully Elizabethan; and a poetic reference to the 1828 novel, “The Fair Maid of Perth,” borne by the name of Rattray’s Hal o' the Wynd. This stands in contrast with Gawith & Hoggarth's Best Brown, the label of which somehow evokes the whole Harry Potter thing.

The apparent Anglophilia in most of these labels can be tempered by adding a bit of George Washington Cut Plug to their mixtures; and for those who find the names all too devoid of disturbing sexual innuendo, there’s always a bowlful Daughters & Ryan Cockstrong to be had.

Sometime before I quit, a Maryland tobacconist (really a cop moonlighting as one) set me up with his personal mixture, a blend he’d named for himself. Whatever Jim’s Mixture lacked in nomenclature was more than made up for in flavor. Woodsy, aromatic and gently rounded with threads of sweetness playing throughout, this was the pipe tobacco blended to raft you heavenward in a paroxysm of pleasure. First hit and I was hooked. It was the best tobacco I ever smoked. On one visit — made after Officer Jim and I had become chummy — I feigned idle curiosity to ask what shags made up his eponymous blend. “Oh, it’s just some vanilla mixed with a ready rub,” Jim allowed while affecting a breeziness to mirror my own.

Damn.

That was the way things stood until the day I arrived at the shop to find it had succumbed to the same market forces that's driven cigarette smokers to puff away in sodden alleys. I sniffed the air to see if some remnant of the store's aroma lingered, gave silent thanks to Officer Jim and went home to eventually see if I could re-create his blend from the recipe he’d passed along. Needless to say, this didn’t work. On reflection, I thought “Tire Fire” a pretty good name for the result.

Ah, but all that's shove behind me now and what with there being so many new pipe tabacs, and what with cancer finally having been cured once and for all (it has by now, surely), and with no less a personage than Sam Clemens in my corner, I'm taking up my long-stemmed billiard again. The question that remains is what tobacco to put in it. While I should be basing what I'm to smoke on its pleasing character, I’m too much of a tart for the tins to go about this rationally. This puts Ashton's serene Winding Road into contention — along with the far darker Cult Blood Red Moon. Foremost, however, is McClelland’s Scottish Woods. That’s because a brother from the pipe-smoking-idiots' page over on Reddit said it might taste like Jim's Mixture.

But I seriously doubt it.

One thing missing from most analyses of the left is the inflation that comes with moral superiority. Once someone who is juiced with this feeling discovers that others also pretend to her level of empathy and tolerance (along with, ironically, a hefty dose of intolerance for those in opposition), her jones for more and better moral-sup kicks in. This need for higher ground is unremitting, and requires new groups for our virtue-signaling junkie to champion. In effect, she must find a way to be morally superior to those who see themselves as unsurpassingly so.

(OK. I’ll lay off the feminine pronoun; but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like the rest of what I have to say.)

I’m not claiming that all these people are insincere, most aren’t, and I won’t mention Lenin’s take on the utility of “idiots”; but indifferent to the suffering she pretends to deplore, and caring only about the personal virtue she proclaims, our Potemkin revolutionary is engaging in the familiar act of being holier-than-thou. Think of a sexually-fluid Cotton Mather dressed up in a pussy hat and Palestinian scarf. She started life out (and remains) a biological male, has adopted the African-sounding name of Abeke-Zuriah Tubbs, and just happens to live in an all-white neighborhood. As she shouts and agitates her hand-lettered sign, the raw-material of parties worthy of its protected status are fed into LBGTQ+’s hungry maw. The only trouble is that, unlike sexual differentiation, the law of supply-and-demand is immutable. As such, the oppressed nature of each new group tends to be less valuable even as it becomes more risible.1 Thus, sillier causes and more obscure cliques join the ranks as INCELS, beagles (actually, I’m all for anything that can be done to improve their lot), the hopelessly uni-browed and those who were bullied for being too tall in high school join some of the most privileged people to come along since creation, and conga with the LGBTQ+ elite.

Meanwhile, Wokesters are on the alert. They discover new causes for their revulsion as the patriarchal subjugation of each freshman group is proclaimed and the first letter of its brand added to LGBTQ+’s alphabet. As this goes on, the search for others among these downtrodden assumes a level of difficulty comparable to a successful ascent on the face of Annapurna (pardon me for reveling in the sexist tone of that one); and it will not end until the last troupe to come along -- namely those who proclaim their sexual attraction to children -- get their own stripe on the rainbow flag.

Signaling that the end of civilization is near — so is this group. A sign of its approach is Allyn Walker, who, as a professor at Johns Hopkins, requires pedophiles to be called “minor-attracted persons.” Look for him at next year’s “Summer of Pride” (it used to be “Pride Month” but everything since Biden seems to incorporate its own inflation). But whether they sport a more acceptable name or not, one imagines that the pedophiles’ elevation into LGBTQ+ ranks would result in a volta face of revulsion. You’d think that the whole multi-lettered edifice would then tremble and sway before the world’s scorn. You’d think so — but watch what you say.

I could say that those who drive gas-powered cars will one day be called before a Tribunal for the Enforcement of Approved Ideologies, but then, I’m speculating. There’s no telling how things will go. For all we know, AI could be running the show by the forthcoming Pride summers, and we’ll have to live by what it thinks. Still, affected moral superiority — like stuff in general — tends to flow in a sinus curve. So, while I, your devoted Substack blogger, am more knave than Nostradamus, we all may be forgiven the hope that better times will soon appear.

A re-broadcast of Ken Burns’ series “Country Music” brought back memories of a time when — secreted under the covers in my parents’ New York City apartment late at night — I escaped ordinary life with the help of disc jockey and country music singer, Lee Moore. Moore, the “coffee-drinking nighthawk” of Wheeling, West Virginia’s far-ranging WWVA, took me to a place I’d thought lost to time — one in which an ancient America still lingered amid mountains and hollers. What follows is edited down from my car blog Hoovering the Horizon (www.HoovertheHorizon.blogspot.com); and consists of a brief account of the escape made after throwing off the bedcovers one night.

Abraham Lincoln said that “the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” Of course, that's only until it stops coming at all. Then -- if you’re anything like Lincoln the Emancipator -- you belong to the ages.

Back when I was an automotive journalist, I had a Lincoln to review. It was a Lincoln Navigator – Ford Motor Company’s Columbiad of an SUV. The Navigator was beginning to have trouble drawing buyers away from the more recently updated Cadillac Escalades and Land Rover Sports that were its competitors. Left to wallow in the back channels of its uncool truckdom, the Kentucky-built Navigator had to chart a new course if it was to sailor on.

While Lincoln the Emancipator famously dreamed of his demise, Lincoln the Navigator didn't seem to have a clue. With its direct-injected, 3.5-liter V6 ticking down the BTUs, the SUV stood tall in the drive, its angular look redolent of a time when vinyl roofs enclosed opera windows and rear decks could serve as helipads. At its bow, the truck's split-wing grille stood out as a new signature feature, while aft, its taillights extended across the power liftgate's full width. Other than that, much of 2007 remained in the 2015 Lincoln's lines -- lines that reflected elements of Ford styling that went back to the post-war years.

I was in a position to know, for while my friend's fathers were driving their Mercury Montereys and Pontiac Bonnevilles under Sputnik-swept skies, my dad was still negotiating cloverleaves in his ‘51 Ford Custom Fordor. A midnight-blue sedan powered by a flathead-eight producing 100 horsepower, the Ford seated six and featured power-equipped nothing. With its dual-bullet grille separated from winged chromium taillights by a 114-inch wheelbase, its styling followed that of its much-heralded 1949 predecessor -- a car thought to have foretold an era of Populuxe modernity.

By the early Sixties, with Populuxe modernity in full flower, father had sufficiently fallen under its sway to add an Arctic-White over Apache-Red Ford Custom 300 to the family lineup — its three-digit suffix lending mute testimony to our arrival into polite society. In response to this glittering purchase, I began regarding the old Ford with a sense of ownership -- and it would be weeks later when I, a high-school Civil War fanatic armed with a learner's permit and a desire to see something of the Lincoln War firsthand, stole the keys to the old Custom and set out from the Bronx to the Battle of Antietam. 

I can't say what I was thinking. I'd already been picked up once for car theft (the police were in a taxicab — it’s a long story). Now, while my parents thought me asleep in a back bedroom, I was tearing down the New Jersey Turnpike in the old sedan -- its humped profile back-lit by Rahway's cracking tower inferno.

There’s something about the nighttime Jersey turnpike that leads you to believe that the world will always present itself as a cross between noir adventure and a bunker-oil-specked road to perdition. However, even the most hellish highway will in time lead to a country byway and, for me, a night where the Fordor's instruments would glow amber as the risen moon, while its radio made whistling and crashing sounds in concert with some far-off storm.

Of course, to a kid with a learner’s permit, country roads can be said to present their own dangers. Driving the same car in which Mitchum outran the law in "Thunder Road," I was beginning to feel less like a duck-tailed outlaw than a seriously spooked kid. With my hands tight on the wheel, I was stiff with the thought that any one of these curves might launch the car down a mountain like a Marmon in an old gangster film. With the fear upon me, and I sought what comfort I could from whatever noises came out of the speaker that didn't sound like banshee howls. It was then that something of a miracle happened: "This is Lee Moore, your coffee-drinking nighthawk, coming to you from WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia," declared the suddenly becalmed Philco. It was an announcement I'd heard countless times before while secreted under blankets back in the Bronx. Now, at last, I was in the magically remote realm from which Moore and his Midnight Jamboree originated. With my coffee-drinking nighthawk providing comfort from the dash, I drove along to the music of such Jamboree regulars as Flatt and Scruggs, Hylo Brown and Hardrock Gunter. Amid the ads for prayer shawls, miracle waters, tent revivals and the honkey-tonks where bands like Power in the Blood would be playing come Saturday -- these artists would play their bluegrass, mountain and rockabilly standards.

I picked up speed, seeing all as guideposts on the road to Harpers Ferry, in which John Brown tried to foment a slave revolt in 1859, and, three years on, A.P. Hill and his men rode at full gallop to save Lee's bacon at Antietam Creek. Nearly a century to the month from this second event, I was at full gallop too, running the length of smokey hollers and moonlit hamlets, all darkened save for the juke joints still open on outskirts of towns. Drawn in by the strings of colored lights on one of these, I pulled up to it. 

The building opened into a room that was bare other than for pool table and a juke box playing “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” Gene Pitney's gunslinger lyrics couldn't help but add a note of drama to my silhouette's arrival in the doorway; and regardless of whether I looked like trouble or the tenderfoot I was to them -- the trio at the bar looked to me like veterans of Chickamauga.

The old-timers regarded me suspiciously, but it wasn't long before hard stares gave way to toothless smiles. Although a rank outsider, I was soon accepted as an admirably crazy kid by this small gathering of locals. Hollis, or Clem or Ephraim wanted to buy me a beer, but the others objected -- so I eagerly accepted their offer of a coke and ham sandwich. As I ate, we talked: cars, the Civil War, George Wallace, school. One fellow had met Eleanor Roosevelt, while another obligingly emptied the remaining slosh from his gas-can to the Custom's tank. When it came time to go, I was reluctant, but the place was closing anyway, and so with a wave to my grizzled friends and saviors, I fired up the Fordor's eight-banger and headed out for another league of cold foreboding and night. 

The ensuing route wound its way through woodland hollers studded with sleeping cabins, clapboard houses and shuttered filling stations -- the last’s darkened Esso and Kendall signs prompting me to sweat having enough gas with which to greet the dawn. In the dead of night, I'd deliberately cast myself into this alien world; but with its galleon moon adrift among the cottonwoods, dead-of-night West Virginia was a place with the mountain wildness, raw character and sense of antiquity to which I'd long been drawn. In an odd way, I was coming home -- wild as John Brown and fueled by a wish to see something of the Civil War's ghosts firsthand. 

I arrived in Harpers Ferry well before sunrise and parked the Ford on a patch of ground that the dawn revealed to be the front yard of a stone ruin. The songbirds were in full chorus, and somewhere nearby, a freight train noisily barreled through a mountain cut.

These were in the days before the park service had gotten ahold of the town, which in the early hours of a September morn in 1962, simply presented as a fog-bound, empty and antique little West Virginia hamlet.

At some point as the morning wore on, I stood on the rock where Jefferson was said to have stood, and, like him, peered down at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. John Brown and Bobby Lee were running through my thoughts — with some musical accompaniment doubtlessly provided by Bill Monroe.

Any readers who’ve gone so far as to delve into the “About” section of Arrant Bushwa might recall a boast about being able to spot the sails of cultural phenomena “just as they begin to flutter on the horizon.” I tried to curb the big-headed tone of this claim with something about how it only obtains when held up against the pig-headedness of some editors. However, as evidence of the stand-alone nature of my brag, I offer “Goofy-American History,” a piece written in the last century’s quaint era of political correctness when boys and girls were unapologetically aware of their sex and Disney’s rodentine woke-ism hadn’t yet gnawed its way out of the woodwork:

Today we came under attack by the combined forces of the Imperial (crackle, crackle, OOOOWEEEEOOOO, crackle)
- President Franklin Roosevelt's radio announcement of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Epcot Center's "American Adventure."

You can’t turn back the clock, but you can wind it up again - Smokey, from “Cars 3”

Walt Disney believed history was best taught as entertainment, which is pretty much why Pocahontas enjoys more fame than the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Act. Of course, Mr. Disney advanced this theory back in the ‘50s, just as the country itself was beginning to take on the look of a fun park, with its wild frontier carved into Mickey Mouse suburbs and burger-themed miracle miles. However, as it's been years since the Disney Corporation proposed to build an "American Historyland” not far from the Battle of Bull Run, it might do well to consider just how that bit of history – and others like it -- fare at the company's existing wonder worlds. One place to go is Disney's Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.

At Epcot, Disney's "American Adventure" stands in the gargantuan colonial splendor of a mid-century insurance company headquarters amid nearly a dozen other pavilions. In its lobby, crowds of tourists ignore revolutionary-era artifacts until permitted to enter a theater that’s a patriotic iteration of a Loew's movie palace where a "magical mix of motion pictures and Audio-Animatronics imagineering" will soon unfold.

Signaling the start of the American Adventure, house lights dim and music swells as -- trembling on their lifts -- robots rise. These aren't sinister cyborgs, but effigies of Mark Twain and Ben Franklin that -- appropriate to the mixture of past and still further past they represent -- are our cohosts for the performance. Although artificial as a couple of strawberry Yoo-Hoos, the clockwork Franklin and Twain are astonishingly lifelike and perform their tasks with no less skill that might be found in a junior-high production of “Our Town.”

After introductions, Franklin and Twain yield to a succession of replicants from beneath the stage as a US history unfolds: Jefferson banters amicably as he prepares a draft of the Declaration, and silhouetted atop his horse Nelson, Washington contemplates nation-building at Valley Forge. Then, and in a gesture reminiscent of Jiminy Cricket snuffing out a candle in Pinocchio, George Washington Carver douses a lantern on a Mississippi river raft. What’s this? G.W. Carver floating down the Big Muddy on a raft? Well, it could’ve happened – but, in iconographic terms, Carver coursing the Mississip’ on a raft is much like Huck Finn developing a peanut-based machine lubricant in a Tuskegee research lab.  Sure, Carver's a genuine historic figure, but the river-rafting franchise belongs to two of the greatest characters in literature: Huck and his runaway slave companion, Nigger Jim, whose name would not be mentioned.

All the while, the animatronic Twain abides in the American Adventure’s wings.

You'd think he might lift a servomotor in defense of his characters.

I've got a Franklin that says the old man himself would have done as much.  

This episode was a harbinger of the historical schizophrenia that informs the American Adventure. While partly reinforcing the postwar ideal of technological progress for which the first Disneyland stands as a real-world-after-all monument, it's also a variation on Disney's customary telling of history that's like Cubby and Annette being replaced in the Mousekateer lineup by Charles and Mary Beard.

For instance, although he's cordial toward fellow android Twain, Franklin's favorite author appears to be John Steinbeck, to whom he refers twice. Was this the Wonderful World of Historical Revisionism with Disney returning Franklin to us as a Pinkerton-fighting Wobbly in a bearskin hat? Is a coy parallel being drawn between the embattled farmers who first fired the shot heard 'round the world and the migrant farm workers of Steinbeck's “In Dubious Battle”? Maybe so, but the American Adventure cannot be dismissed as simply an endorsement of Depression-era polemics -- for Disney doesn't just leave the stage to reconstituted colonial grape-boycotters like Franklin.

As part of history that pays tribute to those political movements that have come into vogue since before you, I and Fess Parker were kids -- and as a likely sop to Epcot's many German and Japanese visitors -- the American Adventure covers both World Wars without any mention of just whom it was we fought.  Then, in a Magical Kingdom take on the revisionism for which American history texts have become notorious, such denizens of historical diversity as Chief Joseph, Susan B. Anthony, and even John Muir get full robot-and-set status, while Honest Abe enjoys no more screen time than Say-Hey Willie. Why? Maybe it's because Lincoln's one dead white male whose animatron is doing nicely over at Disneyland, or -- as JFK also get surprisingly short shrift in this program -- perhaps it's because the American Adventure considers martyrdom a subject more in the province of the Moroccan pavilion just down the street at Epcot.

In all, these weird couplings, PC additions and omissions attain a greater strangeness when limned in the cartoon style of early Disney histo-dramas. A clockwork Sally Ride flying the Discovery space shuttle through the heavens like Herbie the Lovebug wouldn't be out of place here. Nor would a funicular Mike Fink polling down the Missouri along with Emiliano Zapata, Haym Salomon, Rosa Parks and Squanto. Their finale might proclaim the Disney dictum that any portrayal of history must not only entertain but do so while keeping kiddies rapt consumers of the worst kind of political correctness. It’s a lamentably predictable matter and a sad example of Anything-Can-Happen Day having taken a bad turn.

Demon Kaze (Demon Wind): A Perilous Porn Noir

. . . and a Novel in Progress. Copyright 2025 by Alan Wellikoff

THE CONVERTIBLE'S FUEL GAUGE flirted with empty when a motor-court pierced the darkness. Its sign flickered above the coast road, promising – then withholding the promise of -- “Rooms.”

He knew all about phony promises, but detective Mac Comtois figured he’d buy whatever the sign was selling anyway. Besides, such offers came few and far between this far north of Frisco. He made a hard left and pulled onto the court's drive as quietly as its gravel bed would allow. Some guys had it good. They got to kick the gong around. But it was the need for caution -- eternal caution -- that was riding Comtois' back. Vigilance was especially needed in places like this -- places where the view was enough to let your guard down.

She’d fallen asleep after he raised the top with the chill that crept in outside San Jose. Now, hearing her softly moan as she curled up in the amber light of the dash, he wondered what she was dreaming about. Pursuit by evil clowns in a Marmon? Maybe. That one always gave him the willies. Except his pursuers always turned out to be a grinning bunch of Japs. Been that way ever since the war. The gumshoe allowed himself a bitter smile. Best not to think about that now. Better just to wake her. Light from the convertible’s headlamps played over the Pacific as it rolled onto the shoreline. You could do a lot worse than awaken to that.

“We’re here kiddo,” he said, nudging her gently.

The detective half expected to find the night manager having nodded off over a newspaper. He’d grab a room-key off a peg and slide a buck or two into the guy’s pocket. But the old gent was wide awake behind pince-nez glasses, so he had to gab awhile about that A-bomb test the navy was conducting somewhere out in the Pacific. Everyone was talking about how badly it affected the weather.

Especially there on the coast.

“Yessir. Put business right off too” declared the clerk, his rheumy eyes lit with indignation. He then made a seaward jab with his briar. “Room number 20, feller. Facing the water.”

Number 20 turned out to be less of a room than an adobe cottage. Comtois looked it over while she dolled up in the bath. The place was a dive, a fleabag still reeling from the Depression. The smell of tobacco, seawater and old timber lingered like a trinity of ghosts. A dresser, a pair of night tables and a double bed accounted for all the furniture, while a mirror and a framed picture too dark to make out hung on the walls. Light from a dime-store lamp showed a calendar advertising the local Kendall station, its gas jockey in a state of happy salutation. Outside, whitecaps rolled in from the sea. The detective wondered if their glow had anything to do with the A-bomb. Whatever its appeal or lack of it, having a moon-lit sea right out the window kept the place from resembling an L.A. flophouse.

He figured he didn’t care if she didn’t.

She slid into the room like a tiger into an orphanage. Under a string of expensive pearls and a threadbare towel, her body seemed the same as in the old days – lithe, silken, -- and best of all -- game. “We had something like this back in Rangoon,” she said, her eyes scanning the room.

Comtois grunted distractedly. He leaned back in a creaky chair he’d commandeered and watched the shadow play that the lamp cast on the walls. He prided himself on always being one step ahead. Always just out of reach. But tonight, the game was different — the stakes higher, more dangerous.

“Sorry for the way it happened, Mei,” he said in a rough whisper. “There just wasn’t any time for chit-chat.” His eyes slowly traced the curve of her neck down to where the towel clung to her hip. Their past was a haze of sex, smoke, and red whisky. Only a few bright moments of terror and triumph stood out. Right now, the smart money was on terror.

She walked over to the window, the click of her heels softly echoing in the cabin. "I really didn’t put up much of a fight, did I,” she asked in her Chinese-accented Bacall. “I knew it was either that or face the music back in Tokyo." She lit a cigarette and locked her eyes onto his. “And you know how I feel about music."

The detective smiled, his mind spinning with thought. He looked away until his glance landed on the framed picture. He could make it out now. It was a print. A wolf peered down on a snowbound home. He repeated her words to himself while instinctively feeling for his shoulder holster. "Yeah, I remember that night,” he said, still staring at the wolf. “But you’ve got to know that what we’re in isn’t just any song and dance. The feds are already setting off A-bombs, so the Japs have got to be tracking us with blood in their eye.” He turned to look at her. “They mean business, Mei. They want us dead and won’t stop until they get what they’re after."

She settled into the chair opposite him, “What’s the plan, Mac,” she asked. “Sure, this place is a picture postcard, but it’s a cinch we can’t hide here forever. Sooner or later, they’ll find us.”

He ran a hand through his hair, the weight of the situation pressing down on him. “I’ve got a contact. A guy who owes me a favor — a big one. We’ll get new identities and blow this place. But we need to stay put for now. Keep our heads down. That jake with you, kid?”

Mei delicately flicked the ash from her cigarette into a nearby ashtray. “And what of the past,” she asked in a way that was more challenge than question. “What about everything that happened?”

“The past is just that — the past. What matters now is getting out of this in one piece. Whatever we had back in Asia, forget it. Right now, this is all that’s left.”

A silence enveloped them, broken only by the crash of waves. The cabin, a sanctuary amid all the chaos, suddenly felt as much a prison as it did a haven.

Mei-Ling rose. She appeared not to notice that her towel had slipped enough to reveal more than the swell of her breast. It was the kind of thing that used to bring any conversation they were having to an abrupt end. “Well, if we’re stuck here,” she said ‘“we might as well make the best of it.” She stared at the ocean. “You ever think about what it would have been like if things were different,” she asked. “If we hadn’t gotten mixed up in all this?’”

He joined her at the window where the smell of brine called to them from distant harbors. “Every damn day,” he said after beat. “But there’s no use dwelling on it now. We’ve got to keep moving, one step at a time.” She drew closer, her eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Let’s make a promise, Mac. No matter what happens, no matter where we end up, we’ll never forget this moment — this place.”

He nodded, her lightly accented words still charming him even as their gravity sunk in. “Deal. But now, let’s get some rest. Tomorrow’s a new day, and we’ve got a lot of figuring to do.”

They settled into the quiet of the cottage while the outside world faded away. For an instant, they were just two souls clinging to each other in a storm of uncertainty. In that fragile peace, they found a sliver of hope. It was enough to keep the darkness at bay, if only for a while.

TOKYO 1936

Tokyo was another place they’d not forget. Dirty, primitive, and smelling like shrimp husks in an alley can, the town nonetheless charmed the gumshoe, even when sober. He sat in his room at the top of a walkup near the Nippori station and looked down on a narrow street filled with signs and banners, each covered with chicken-scratch letters he just partly made sense of. It was the dawn of another day into which he’d hardly slept. Comtois took up his usual post at his window while smoking an Old Gold, a cigarette he found to pair nicely with shots of a Japanese rotgut named Queen George. “Queen George and the Old Gold,” he mused while holding his glass up to admire its contents, “sounds like the bones of an interesting tale.” He downed the whisky as fog pooled in the street below.

Back then, Comtois wasn’t a detective. Rather, he was a stringer for the Los Angeles Times named N. Kenneth Winston. He didn’t like his job any more than his name, which he thought too grand for work or anything else he could think of. He published under the handle of an old friend named Mac Comtois. Comtois was dead, but the reporter hoped that by using his name he could somehow keep him alive and nearby. The byline worked so well that most people referred to him by it, which suited him just fine.

The morning ritual was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Call for you, Mac-san,” chirped the downstairs neighbor, Mr. Nakashima. Mac got his share of calls, and Nakashima never tired of running up the stairs to announce their arrival in a musical pidgin. He swore to himself that he’d send a couple bottles of Queen George Nakashima’s way.

The phone hung on the wall near the front door. Nakashima, who had charged down the stairs ahead of the reporter, bowed slightly as he handed over the receiver. Mac acknowledged the courtesy with a wink and click of his tongue, then he took the phone and turned toward the wall for a bit of privacy.

Something told him he’d need it.

“Mac – can you come into the office by half-past seven?” the caller asked hurriedly. Editor O’Rourke’s query lacked his usual bark. It could’ve been the ungodly hour he was calling that softened his tone. But why even make the call now? Something was up – and it wasn’t Mac’s lateness in filing that cockamamie eel-farm story either. O’Rourke seemed uncharacteristically rattled. Mac paused to listen while the editor would worked the top of his Zippo lighter a few times. “Yeah Jake, I’ll be there,” he finally said, “But what’s up? Something big?” Perhaps becalmed by the action of the Zippo, O’Rourke reverted to his regular guilefulness. “Y’know, Mac, I really couldn’t say,” he said. And hung up.

Daylight glistened on rooftiles as Mac settled into a rickshaw and told the runner where he wanted to go. A sinewy silhouette in the morning sun, the fellow trotted along briskly, pulling the reporter through a series of winding alleyways in a mosaic of darkness and light. What could be so urgent that O’Rourke would bring him down to the office at this hour? This never happened before — particularly as the editor was generally too hung over from bad whiskey and worse cigars to be conscious before noon. Mac listened to the clatter of the rickshaw’s wheels as Tokyo stirred, its wooden shops slamming open while temple bells gently chimed in the distance. In the first hour or so after dawn, the aroma of fresh fish, smoky woodfires and steamed rice carried through the air. It combined with that ethereal Asiatic scent that made Mac think of mythic forests. “Christ,” he muttered to himself. “What kind of tough bastard dreams of little fairylands at a time like this?” Yet, for the moment, Mac was adrift in the Asia’s perfumed ether. It was the lure of the Orient and its yellow women that brought him east in the first place. Lately however, a grimmer note intruded — a metallic one. Japan, already in China, was arming further; and soldiers — sometimes truckloads of them —were more evident in the streets. Being lost in romantic thoughts about the East could be dangerous, while, as Mac would learn, being lost in its women could be fatal.

The rickshaw’s journey smoothed as its wheels hit the Ginza. The city was coming alive with automobile traffic and the occasional rumble of streetcars. Comtois straightened his one tie as he stood before the Chuo building that housed the Times’s Tokyo bureau. Although new, the structure looked weary, as if burdened by the world's secrets and schemes.

Suite 402 was a cluttered hive that Mac knew as well as his room back in the Arakawa district. Behind its frosted glass, the day usually started with O’Rourke’s hollering at a copy boy or cursing the hell out of some unwelcome telex. This morning was different — and marked by an unusual hush.

Editor Patrick “Jake” O’Rourke’s door was ajar. Mac knocked once, then a second time before pushing it open. Inside, O’Rourke sat behind his desk. He was a slender man for all his vices and commanded a chair that creaked in agreement with his rants. The editor’s tie hung loose, and his shirt bore the evidence of an early morning scotch. Adding to all this, the room reeked of tobacco, although O’Rourke’s cigar lay unlit in an ashtray.

“Close the door, Mac,” O’Rourke said without looking up. His voice was low — almost mournful. Comtois was well aware of the heart of gold that O’Rourke did his best to hide, but for a crazy moment he thought he was going to get canned.

He stepped inside, his eyes scanning the room. Across from O’Rourke stood two men, each as out of place as a turd in a soup tureen. One was wiry, with slicked-back hair and an expression that said he didn’t smile often—or mean it when he did. The other was big, broad-shouldered and silent, his eyes dark and calculating, as if he was the bodyguard to the guy who owned the mayor. Both were Orientals — Chinese maybe.

Then there was a third figure — one who stung slightly as she caught Mac’s eye. Seated on the worn leather couch was a woman—a knockout, the kind that made men momentarily forget how to breathe. She was definitely Chinese, with almond eyes that weren’t so sharp that he couldn’t imagine them melting into softness. Her dress, a deep green cheongsam, clung to her like it was afraid to let go. She stared at Mac critically — and he wasn’t sure if he’d passed the test.

“Mac Comtois,” O’Rourke offered while gesturing vaguely, “meet our guests.” He didn’t bother with their names, and none of the strangers offered one.

“What’s this about, Jake?” Mac asked, keeping his tone casual, though the back of his neck prickled. The early hour, the secrecy, and the characters in the room—it was enough to curl teeth.

“You’re here because you’ve been asking for a big assignment,” O’Rourke told Mac — who hadn’t been. “And we’ve got a hell of a one. But what you don’t have is background. Sit down, Mac.”

Mac didn’t sit. Instead, he leaned against a filing cabinet and fished an Old Gold from his pocket. He looked around as he lit up, wondering if he could beat the sumo guy to the door should circumstances warrant.

“So, what is it?” Mac asked while squinting through the smoke curling past his eyes. But he didn’t wait for an answer. “The Japs are gearing up for something new, aren’t they? Some new action. Half the town’s talking about it.” The flame from the match Mac was holding reached his hand, and he winced as he tossed it aside. “Look,” he said, pausing only to nurse his fingers, “I keep hearing murmurs of some big move. Tojo wants an empire, right? And he’s looking past Manchuria.”

The wiry man smiled the kind of smile that would freeze a lesser man’s heart while his jumbo companion bristled slightly as if trying to wear in a tight-fitting suit. Not to be left out of all the kabuki, the woman re-crossed her legs under a slitted skirt, her dark eyes never leaving Mac’s.

Mac exhaled a stream of smoke. “So, let me guess, Jake,” he said. “These fine folks haven’t wandered in to ask where they might find a good chop suey joint, have they?” At this, the wiry Chinaman’s smile faded into a thin, unnerving line while his mountainous friend gave a master class in menace management. Unperturbed, Mac looked at their female companion. All she needs now is a snow leopard on a leash, he figured. The woman looked back as if sizing him up for some battle, but while Mac had no taste for battles, he supposed he didn’t altogether hate the attention he was getting from her. In the room, a tense quiet served as the backdrop for all this strangeness — one that O’Rourke broke with a couple of clicks from his Zippo. “No Mac,” he finally said, leaning back in his chair, “this isn’t about chop-suey. It’s about something else. Something even riskier. And these ‘fine folks’ as you call them? Popeye, Wimpy and Olive Oyl over there? They’re from an outfit,” here he paused to consult a piece of paper he was holding, “they’re from an outfit called the Northeastern Counter-Japanese United Army.” He looked back up, “Don’t ask me,” he said, tossing the paper onto his desk, “I didn’t name it. But they’ve come because for some reason I can’t figure — they want you to throw in with them. You’re all going to fight against some crazy Nip wind or something”

“Throw in with them?” Mac asked. “I don’t care if they did name their scout troop with a decoder ring from a box of Wheaties, I don’t ‘throw in’ with strangers, especially when they look like they just missed catching their circus train. Hell, Jake, I don’t even associate all that much with people I do know. You know that. What’s more, I’ve rough idea of what their game is, and I don’t want any part of it. I mean, I’m out here working the eel-farm beat. All I need is a beat-up fedora to look like an ink-stained wretch who’s past it despite vigorously maintaining his Brylcreem regimen. Oh — and by the way Mr. Editor — I should be filing that fish story just as soon as I get the fuck outta here.”

“Before you go,” said Popeye, speaking for the first time. “You should know that we know all about the Winstons. Winston — that is your real surname, am I not correct?” Popeye’s oily delivery was a match for his looks, but his message was enough to keep the reporter from leaving. So, after tamping out his cigarette in the manner of one who’d decided to stay put, he regarded the Chinaman deadpan.

“We know that — while you have forsaken them — you come from a family that is the retainer of considerable wealth,” the man continued, “‘rich as Croesus’, isn’t that how you put it? Forgive me if I mispronounce the phrase.” Mac didn’t care about this mysterious figure’s pronunciation nearly as much as his he did his general affect. The guy was a viper — and one bearing the kind of knowledge Mac was sure would ruin whatever Eden he hoped to pinch together. “We are aware that your cousin M. Byron Winston is involved in the creation of an American government spy organization called the Office of Strategic Services. We know further that your relation is one of its founders. Last, we believe this ‘O.S.S.’ to be potentially hostile to Nippon, as America is almost certain to take exception to its designs on the Pacific. With this the case, we want you to contact your cousin Winston and begin acting as a liaison between his organization and our unworthy one, named as it is for a decoder ring.

“By a decoder ring” said Comtois, feeling a bit gut punched. “But since you seem to know so much about me and my family,” he went on, “perhaps you’ll clue me in on your name” “My name is unimportant,” came the reply. “However, you will learn of it in the due course. For the present you may call me Huishou. It’s as close as I can come to saying ‘Popeye’ in Chinese.”

“OK Here’s-how, But I still don’t see how this is ever gonna work.”

Huishou lowered his head and for a moment Mac thought he might actually go into a bow. Instead, he just smiled his rendition of a smile. “I must tell you that it will work, Mr. Winston. It will work because you have no choice. There’s a war now on and, like it or not, you are a soldier in it — you and Miss Mei-Ling, whom you will find to be an excellent comrade.”

Mei-Ling looked at Mac with a gaze that was still level and penetrating. For his part, Mac still couldn’t figure whether she was measuring him for a trench coat or a coffin. “You must forgive our friend Huishou,” she said. “He talks of me as if I singlehandedly shot down nine of the ten suns.” Her voice was husky — all smoke over honey. “I see that your name is Mac now,” she said flatly “Mac Comtois. Yet Huishou Xiānshēng calls you by your former surname, Winston. For my part, I will not do so, even though Winston — Ken Winston — is how I remember you.”

At this O’Rourke erupted, clearing his throat a bit more loudly than intended. “Look,” he said, “it seems were not about to play Mah Jong here. Mac, I can tell you that your new friend Popeye’s people have names, dates, ship manifests — the whole megillah. Apparently, the Japs are about to move something through Shanghai, and from what I can gather, it ain’t chopsticks. They say that your cousin’s OSS wants a look. It seems that you’re the look.”

The next puff on his Old Gold sat in Mac’s lungs until it bit. Now, instead of O’Rourke’s chair, it was the floorboards’ turn to creak as the sumo guy shifted his weight. “O.K. Let’s see,” Mac announced to the room through an exhale. You want me to call Cousin Byron. You then want me to tell him to put down everything and come play patty cake with a bunch of Chinese bandits just because you think there’s some stinking wind or other blowing from Japan?”

“Not bandits,” Huishou corrected. “United Army. But you are correct about one thing: Your ‘stinking wind’ is what the Japanese call the ‘akuma kaze,’ or demon wind. You will understand soon.”

The room quieted as Mei-Ling rose. “For your last story you photographed an eel farm,” she told Mac. “You photographed the crates the tide brought in with your Speed Graphic camera. These included the crates that didn’t hold eels.” Her last three words were perfectly sculpted. You could stand them in front of an art museum.

Mac kept his face still — a skill he’d learned in wartime Spain. “I saw a lot of things in ’32,” he said. “I drowned most of them in booze.”

“No more drowning.” Huishou pronounced. “Not now.” He nodded to his sumo confederate. The big man reached inside his coat, prompting O’Rourke to start for the .38 Special he kept in his rolltop. However, all the sumo produced was a photograph. Smiling wryly in spite of himself, he placed it on O’Rourke’s desk.

The picture was one of Mac. He was maybe ten years younger and leaning against a car in front of Rangoon’s Strand Hotel. Alongside him was Mei-Ling, just out of girlhood. She was laughing in a high-necked dress. To her right was Mac’s cousin Byron Winston, wearing his inevitable blue blazer. He was partly cast in shadow, but you could still make out his Yale tie.

Mac’s mouth went dry. He felt quite sober, his earlier whiskies now just a fond memory. “How in Sam Hill did you get this?”

“We do not steal,” Huishou answered. “As I said earlier, we are not bandits. However, we do remember. Miss Mei-Ling remembers you very well, Mr. Winston. Do you not remember her?”

Mei-Ling stepped around the desk, her heels noiseless on the rug. She stopped a couple of feet from Mac, close enough that he could detect the smell of perfume cut with gun oil. “You called me ‘kiddo’ once,” she said. “In Rangoon. After the roof fell in. You pulled me out and called me ‘kiddo’ like I was your sister.”

“I remember,” Mac replied, remembering.

“Good,” she said. “I am not who I was then.”

“As if I needed another reason to be glad I got you from under that roof.”

O’Rourke pushed back from his chair, which now creaked for attention. “Look, Mac. I don’t like this shit any more than you do. But I got a telex at four this morning that said if I didn’t have you here by 8:30, people I know might start disappearing. It so happens I like my people where I can yell at them.”

Mac stamped out his cigarette. Now two lay broken in the ashtray. “O.K. I get it,” he said while regarding the crumpled pair. Then, looking up: “So, Mr. Here’s-how, what’s the job?”

“You go back to your room in Arakawa,” Huishou instructed. While this wasn’t exactly a command, it was becoming apparent to Mac that it might as well have been. “There, you develop the roll of film you have showing the crates.”

“I turned in all my film,” Mac said. This was a lie. It hung in the air like something foul cut by the sumo guy.

“No,” said Mei-Ling. “You kept one roll. Maybe for insurance, we don’t know. Maybe for the day when eel farm becomes something else.”

Mac looked her. “Even if that were true, lady — or should I say kiddo — there’s no way you could know it.”

“You have a tell, Mac. You tap your side pocket whenever lying. I remember this. You did so in Rangoon when you said you hadn’t taken pictures of the general.”

He hated that she was right; that she remembered. He hated that his hand had moved over to his pocket a moment before without him telling it to. “And if I don’t have it?”

“Then we will find it,” Huishou interjected. “We are very good at finding things. Ask your editor about his gold pocket watch. Ask him if he’s found it since it went missing last night at the Imperial Hotel barroom.

O’Rourke reddened under his stubble. He looked at his desk, then at the ashtray. He knew the watch was gone.

Mr. Sumo opened his hand. The watch sat seemingly miniaturized in his palm. It was engraved with the 1st Marine Division. “You were not as alone as you thought, Mr. O’Rourke,” Huishou said. “No one is.”

At this, the room regained its disquieting stillness. Outside, a streetcar rattled past, making the office windows shiver in their frames. Somewhere, a temple bell counted out the hour. It was 8 A.M.

Mac pushed off the filing cabinet. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s say I have the film roll. Say I develop it. Then what? We gonna print the pictures in the Times? ‘Local Boy Makes Good, Exposes Imperial Plot, World Saved’? That it?”

“Then you meet us,” Huishou said. “Tonight. At the Mandarin’s house.”

Mac frowned. “At whose house?”

“The former German ambassador’s home,” Mei-Ling said. “He was called ‘Mandarin’ for his regal manner.”

“The house is in the Karuizawa” she continued. “It was once quite grand. Now you could say it’s been taken by the wind.”

“The kaze,” Mac said before he could stop himself.

“The kaze,” Huishou repeated. He said it with a liquid slowness, like a like a key turning a lock. “Come at midnight. Come alone. Bring negatives.”

“And if I don’t?”

The sumo finally spoke. His voice was like grinding gears. “Then the music starts, Mr. Winston. “And it won’t be a tune you’ll like.”

Mei-Ling looked at Mac with eyes that had seen Rangoon fall and Tokyo gear up for a fight. “Don’t be late,” she said. “I hate waiting. Not even for men who pull me from rubble.”

O’Rourke found his voice. It was smaller than usual. “Mac, for Christ’s sake. Just do it. Whatever it is. Just do it and get these people out of my office.”

Mac picked the photo up off the desk. “I’ll be there,” he told the visitors.

At this, Huishou bowed, if only for an inch.

They left as they’d entered, without pleasantries. The sumo guy opened the door and held it for the other two to pass. As she left, Mei-Ling brushed Mac’s hand with her own. It seemed intentional.

It had to be.

O’Rourke exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since they came out with balloon tires. “Jesus, Mac. What the hell did you step in back there?”

Mac looked at the photograph again. His younger self was grinning, dumb and arrogant. Mei-Ling’s hand was on his arm. Cousin Byron was absorbed in something out of frame.

“I’m not sure” Mac said. He put the photo in his pocket. “You got a car I can borrow, Jake? I don’t feel like taking a rickshaw.”

“You don’t like to drive.”

“I don’t like doing a lot of things I’m about to do.”

O’Rourke opened a drawer and slid a set of keys across the desk. “My 120. It’s in the alley. Don’t get blood on the seats.”

“No promises” Mac said at the door. He paused there with his hand on the knob and looked while his editor reached for the bottle he kept in his bottom drawer. The watch sat on the desk, right where the world’s most imposing Chinaman had left it.

“Hey Jake,” Mac said. “You ever hear of that place in Karuizawa?

O’Rourke stopped with his hand on the whiskey. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “They were right about it having belonged to the German ambassador — a guy named Voretsky or something. Whatever his name, he left — or got recalled — right after Hitler got appointed Chancellor. The place has been vacant ever since. People are said to be afraid of it.

“Very reassuring. So glad I’ll be going at midnight.”

Comtois closed the door behind him and took the stairs down two at a time. The Chūō Building’s lobby was a churn of newspapermen and secretaries and boys with telexes. Nobody looked at him. He pushed through the doors onto the Ginza where the morning hit him like a wet rag, its air threaded with that metallic note he’d been trying not to smell.

The Packard was right where O’Rourke said it would be. It was black and stubby with sunlight glinting off its compound curves. Mac slid into the driver’s seat and remained there for a minute gripping the wheel to keep his hands steady, he then turned the key until the car’s engine caught and purred reassuringly. He checked the mirror. There was no sumo, no Mei-Ling, no Here’s-how. There was just Tokyo. Mac watched it awhile, seeing only his thoughts.

Then he headed out. He didn’t go to Arakawa. Not yet anyway. He had a stop to make. If he was going to Karuizawa at midnight he needed to know something about what he was walking into.

And there was only one man in this city who could tell him the truth of the Mandarin’s house.

But that man had been dead a year, easy.

Mac smiled humorlessly and pointed the Packard north.

Dead men told tales all the time in Tokyo. You just had to know where to dig.

To be continued

Copyright 2024 by Alan Wellikoff. All rights reserved.

I've been reading this edition of "King Arthur and his Knights" and doth marvel at the English therein. By my head, such is the ancient language pervading the book's adventures that I am astonied that this was considered childrens’ literature back in 1955. Here below are some of the terms I've weened, their meanings presented as nothing more than that which I've inferred from context. Thus, venture with me to yesteryear — in a manner of speaking:

Astonied: To be stunned. As stoned and astonished have be said to have similar meanings, I wit that it's been astonied from whence they've come.

Wit: To inform, be informed or understand. "Had you wit me of the perilousness of that castle, neither would have I ventured forth."

Hart: A deer, but not necessarily a female deer. You knew this.

Dole: Sorrow, anguish -- just as you'd infer. Knights see their horses slain with horrific regularity while on adventures. Alas, they make not great dole over the loss. However, Sir Launcelot du Lake did feel sorry for a falcon caught in a tree that he happened upon. I think he delivered the falcon.

Damsels: Whether in distress or not, nothing is too good for these people! As I cannot imagine any maiden termed a damsel as being anything other than pretty, I wonder what the ugly young women of these times were called. Unfair? Fair-challenged? Golemic? Perhaps all young women were damsels in Arthurian England. Readers' suggestions as to the name for ugly medieval English maidens are invited. Winner to be announced on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Passing: Means "very" as used, and not just getting by, as you or I might think. "Yonder damsel is passing fair. "

Adventure: Not quite what we mean by the term. knights seem to do nothing but go on these, which involves their "venturing" forth, encountering another colorfully named knight, making ready, and smiting one another with great force while both sustaining and inflicting terrible wounds. If, after hours of such battle, a knight is not cloven through his helm right down to his shoulders, he forswears undying fealty to the other knight while his opponent, in turn, proclaims they will be fellows together. Each then forswears never to fail in this union for as long as they live. It's rather nice, really.

Smite: This doesn't mean to kill, as I've always unreflectingly thought. To kill, of course, is to "slay." However, if you've ever been smitten in love, it can be a lot like a barbed lance through the breastplate.

Buffet: Also indicating to hit, only with some other shade of meaning. "Hey -- let's buffet the buffet now that they've got a chocolate fountain."

Gramercy: “Thanks.” This was a time when England included some of France.

Giants: In those days, Giants roamed the realm. Attended by dwarfs. How much of this is real history? Merlin would know, but by page 224 he seems to have disappeared somewhere. That Merlin.

Liever: Rather. "I'd liever put my spear in rest before we hurtle together as fast as our horses can run."

Hounds also have a funny name -- "brachits" or similar.

Homoerotic knight names: La Cote Mail Taile, Sir Sagramore le Desirous, Sir Dodinas le Sauvage.

Names betraying some undisguised quality: Dolorous Tower, Perilous Castle, King Anguish. This last sounds as much like a character from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood as any of ancient Ireland.

Gramercy, friends and subscribers alike.

Once a charmingly rustic byway in the time of Obama, Florida’s State Road 200 now rises out of Ocala, its six lanes spanning a pitiless prospect of big-box stores, car washes and fast-food outlets. Remorselessly, the miracle mile’s roadside competes for your attention -- its architecture and signage undeniable in their zeal for appeal. Zagby’s, Bojangles, Walmart, Steak ‘n’ Shake and the others are not little boxes, but big ones, although the ticky-tacky’s pretty much the same as ever -- and both they and their surrounding billboards won’t let you by without making a stab at your notice. See the faux-colonial balustrades tempt you with their plasticized charm. Marvel at the lurid depictions of chicken wings so browned and boneless as to make your mouth water. Towering signs that advance like army ants are accompanied by legions of brilliantly smiling lawyers, their billboards promising millions to past and future victims of fender-benders.

Every now and then, a copse of trees can be spotted. But, alas, another kind of billboard, one that proclaims the property it stands upon as “Available,” spells doom for it as the Sunshine State’s Walden.

However, once you leave SR 200, the change is immediate. Green fields in which horses and black angus graze stretch for miles; each bordered by forests in which the live oak, cloaked in Spanish moss, form their hoary rooms and corridors. The sky and these fields are so saturated in their blues and greens as to seem other-worldly, while the ecclesiastical air of the oak woods leads into piney ones, this horsey part of Florida being more like southern Georgia. Moss-laden oak still gather amid the softwoods, as do the sawtooth palmettos that spice the forest with a subtropical air. They provide the delicately needled boughs of the long-leaf pine with a rough and exotic companionship.

My companion Miss Woo and I hiked here, down to a surprisingly fog-bound lake named the Rock Island.

Except for a guy who’d clearly raised his hoodie so we couldn’t see his face (other than for a pallid, stubbily chin) before slinking closely past us in the woods, we hadn’t yet seen another soul all Saturday.

Was this spectral figure a "Florida Man," we asked, while unconsciously picking up our pace. Got to wonder whom it was he just buried.

In case you aren’t already versed in the Florida Man meme (and, as I’ve been given to understand, most everyone has), he’s a creature that emerged from the swamp of contemporary culture to inhabit a place that ranges from the merely deviant to the frightfully deadly – and all of it, perversely, Floridian. The rise of Florida Man has been the stuff of worldwide headlines, as he appears in them with a consistency that no Alabama Man, Oregon Man nor any other state-linked Grendel can hope to match:

There’s Florida Man the idiot:

Jan. 1, 2015: “Florida man trapped in unlocked closet for two days”

Florida Man the horndog who’s also an idiot:

June 8, 2017: “Florida man desperate for ride to Hooters calls 911”

Another who is as surprised as you are:

Jan. 8, 2019: “Florida man insists syringes pulled from rectum aren’t his”

Like ours, a swamp-dwelling Florida Man:

July 5th, 2020: “Florida man flees into swamp after police chase gets stuck and licked by police dog”

The Florida Man who’s bound to end up in a penal colony:

Aug. 21, 2019: “Florida man arrested after botched at-home castration”

And, like the above Florida man – there’s Florida Man the disfiguring maniac:

June 27, 2012: “Florida man chews off another man’s face”

Not that I was all that worried about our passing Florida Man. After all, was I so very different? I may not have remained trapped by an unlocked closet for days on end, but — along with the help of another New York man — I did break down a restaurant men’s room door from the inside only because I’d pushed on it and hadn’t bothered to pull. Still, back in Florida, I didn’t get rattled until Woo and I returned to our car and saw that the hooded Florida Man and a confederate had set up a rough campsite no more than 20 yards from where we parked. The camp had been there awhile, and yet it was so nearby that it seemed impossible that we had missed it.

To make matters worse, the rusticating Floridians were eating something boney. We’d interrupted this meal, so their greeting – if it could be called that – was similarly cur-like, consisting of hunched, hostile glances. It seemed sure that we weren’t about to be offered any leg of park ranger or whatever it was they were wolfing down (possibly amid soft grunts), but that’s for the best.

I can’t find it in a search engine, but I remember that somewhere in the pages of “Life on the Mississippi,” Mark Twain meets up with a man -- doubtlessly a Missouri man -- who insists he’s the devil’s own brother and that the author acknowledge this as fact. Twain replied that as he never met the man’s family, he was in no position to offer an opinion. After that, he thought it best to beat it, which he promptly did.

We considered the Bard of Hannibal to have provided us with an excellent course of action.