Daily Bread fresh baked every day: Topics to share and discuss

[bigbill]

Since I've been asked by corporate to expound upon my Power of Story, I've added this quote to my introduction.

“CHAPTER VI
Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability

LET no one be surprised if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.”
― Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince

It aligns with the person you've become being a sum of your journey.

[Too Tall]

Interesting quote big man. Who among us does not enjoy a good bask in the glory of the master???? Love it. Learning from others is a patient sport, keeping the ego and eagerness in check is a bear. Seriously.

I'm half way thru Bridge of Spies: https://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Spies-.../dp/B003F3PKW2 I'm affirmed and horrified that the brilliant folks we and the Russians employ to gather intelligence, during the Cold War, were as inept and fickle as we suspected.

Intelligence ain't all it's cracked up to be yahwithmeonthat?

[bigbill]

Having spent a part of my life doing NSA stuff, most of intelligence gathering is really dull monotonous work. Looking at raw news stories, comparing accounts, seeing who denies or confirms, etc to assemble an record of events. Then that record is compared to a timeline and compared to communications and coded messages. Not really James Bond stuff. What was shocking to me was how much damage spies within our own government agency could cause when recruited by the KGB. Each of them should have been put to death.

I'd get periodic polygraphs, usually not exceeding 6 months, to maintain my clearance. Questions weren't about any of my work practices, they focused on debt, fidelity, sometimes sexual orientation (have to consider the times), anything that could be used to blackmail you or make you see funds to pay off debts. I also had to allow periodic checks on my credit. I knew several people who had their clearances removed because of cheating on their spouse, running up debt, and frequenting gay establishments. This was during DADT when people had to keep their orientation to themselves. Hiding that and the threat of exposure and the effect on their career was seen as a red flag. The CO on my last sub actually, in a quiet way, encouraged folks to come out just so there wouldn't be anything "in the closet". Nothing to hide, nothing to be blackmailed for.

[bigbill]

The latest paper I submitted concerned History versus Historiography. There are some differing definition of Historiography but the one I go with is: the study of written history. It's interesting that with all the resources and data we now have how much the expectations have changed with regards to history. In the past, historians or story tellers have related events by adding exaggerating or adding fictional details to keep the listener or reader interested. There really wasn't system to check the accuracy of what was said or written. Today with advent of the internet, email, text messages, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, there is a electronic record reaching back into the 80's. Before that, we had tapes and even those can be pretty damning (Watergate, LBJ, Reagan). Now we have expectations of the actual facts with no flourish but even that is skewed by sound bites or taking comments out of context. We've changed but we've remained the same.

[Too Tall]

The latest paper I submitted concerned History versus Historiography. There are some differing definition of Historiography but the one I go with is: the study of written history. It's interesting that with all the resources and data we now have how much the expectations have changed with regards to history. In the past, historians or story tellers have related events by adding exaggerating or adding fictional details to keep the listener or reader interested. There really wasn't system to check the accuracy of what was said or written. Today with advent of the internet, email, text messages, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, there is a electronic record reaching back into the 80's. Before that, we had tapes and even those can be pretty damning (Watergate, LBJ, Reagan). Now we have expectations of the actual facts with no flourish but even that is skewed by sound bites or taking comments out of context. We've changed but we've remained the same.

That would be a good primer for anyone truly interested in how and why words matter. Speaking of which: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...15f_story.html

The above, seems like a basic filler piece of journalism. However, there is much more to this.

Stop, listen and enjoy the nuances of words when wielded by writers who influence yourself and others. There are writers and speakers who are transformational. (duh). My point is that if you have interest in XYZ topics/events etc. etc. you owe it to yourself to consume as many sources as possible and use the ones, in particular, who are able to create salient points that LINE UP THE FRICKIN facts such that it represents that actual truth.

Opinion pieces, well...that's another story ;)

[bigbill]

That would be a good primer for anyone truly interested in how and why words matter. Speaking of which: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...15f_story.html

The above, seems like a basic filler piece of journalism. However, there is much more to this.

Stop, listen and enjoy the nuances of words when wielded by writers who influence yourself and others. There are writers and speakers who are transformational. (duh). My point is that if you have interest in XYZ topics/events etc. etc. you owe it to yourself to consume as many sources as possible and use the ones, in particular, who are able to create salient points that LINE UP THE FRICKIN facts such that it represents that actual truth.

Opinion pieces, well...that's another story ;)

Folks that use opinion pieces to support opinion pieces are just lazy. For history, we have to preserve all the data whether it's pleasant or not. We have to study slavery, Nazi Germany, Empire building, racism, Civil War from both sides, and other topics that some people want to erase from history. We do ice breakers at the beginning of meetings. A few months ago I did an "on this date in history" where I said that on this date in 1914 that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. I got blank stares. History isn't given the importance that it should. We shift towards more technical education focusing on science and math but we ignore history at our peril. The good engineers and scientist know the power of narrative, the explanation along the way that better explains an outcome or project. Without the study of history, we risk the loss of the narrative skillset.

[bigbill]

I'm in the second 12 week period of my MA program. I'm doing my reading for pre-Columbian to Colonial America, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, by Alan Taylor. I will freely admit that studying history has made me a better leader and engineer because it makes me think things out more thoroughly. Just taking things at face value means that you've accepted someone else's conclusion. I do LEAN events all the time for my job, the type I despise is benchmarking, where you copy what another factory is doing. All you get from that type of learning is the guarantee that your facility will always be a year behind the others. What has to be captured is the thoughts, methods, and history that led that facility to implement their "good idea". Just copying a good practice is a poor practice.

[Too Tall]

I'm in the second 12 week period of my MA program. I'm doing my reading for pre-Columbian to Colonial America, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, by Alan Taylor. I will freely admit that studying history has made me a better leader and engineer because it makes me think things out more thoroughly. Just taking things at face value means that you've accepted someone else's conclusion. I do LEAN events all the time for my job, the type I despise is benchmarking, where you copy what another factory is doing. All you get from that type of learning is the guarantee that your facility will always be a year behind the others. What has to be captured is the thoughts, methods, and history that led that facility to implement their "good idea". Just copying a good practice is a poor practice.

Just copying a good practice is a poor practice. << That should be a Tee Shirt.

Sometimes I just want to relax and not read too hard. When this fluff piece popped up I had to take a calm breath to read and reaffirm what I already know...there is not bad bacon >> The Best Method for Making Bacon | Kitchn

[DJB]

I'm in the second 12 week period of my MA program. I'm doing my reading for pre-Columbian to Colonial America, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, by Alan Taylor. I will freely admit that studying history has made me a better leader and engineer because it makes me think things out more thoroughly. Just taking things at face value means that you've accepted someone else's conclusion.

Hi Bill- I'm sure there is more than enough reading in your life but if you find interest in the early colonial era, this book "Masters of Empire" really turned my thinking of who had the power for the first 200 years of Europeans in North America on it's head. I really like your comment about benchmarking to other's practices.

DJ

[bigbill]

This was a good thing once; I'll try to breathe some life into it. My topic isn't OT, it is very much contemporary, but it is history. Current discussions of systemic racism and the presence of icons glorifying white supremacy require a deeper discussion than just "it's wrong" and "remove them". Of course, systemic racism is wrong, and Confederate monuments on public grounds need to be removed or presented in context as a history lesson. I wrote my American History MA capstone on this very topic. What started as a capstone turned into a thesis. Here is the condensed version.

Confederate monuments were placed to support a lie. That lie is the Lost Cause myth, the defeated South's rewrite of history in their favor. The South started a war over slavery that destroyed their economy, killed over six hundred thousand people on both sides, and forever changed Southern culture. The leaders in the South had to change the narrative from "we lost a war fought for slavery," to "we fought for state's rights." The Lost Cause myth started before the Civil War ended with an article by Edward A. Pollard of the Richmond Examiner titled "The Lost Cause: The Standard Southern History of the War of the Confederates," in 1867. Pollard described a South that never existed, but Southerners eager to recover readily accepted this narrative. The South won the race to tell the history of the Civil War, a classic case of "the first liar wins." The Southern Historical Papers published the first volume rationalizing the war by quoting Jefferson, " that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was the foundation of the "state's rights" argument.

Jubal Early was the public affairs officer of the Lost Cause. He controlled the message by reviewing and editing narratives submitted by Southern leaders to ensure a consistent message. Raising the Southern Holy Trinity of Lee, Jackson, and Davis to that of a religion, the South was presented with symbols on which to cling. First, there was the false narrative, and because Jubal Early published first, any follow-on accounts from the North first had to repudiate the lies before the truth could be told. Lee was a stoic figure, but a mediocre general who lost too many troops in battle due to poor tactics. Lee's actions were changed to that of a heroic figure fighting against overwhelming odds and a ruthless enemy. Lee was the first icon, but not until after his death in 1870. The truth about Lee, he was opposed to monuments and felt that the nation needed to heal its wounds, not be reminded of them with stone statues.

I'll stop there, for now, I don't want to post some unwieldy narrative, but I'll continue the conversation later today.

[Too Tall]

Strong work Big Man. Keep going. I'm reading every word.

[bigbill]

We see the Lost Cause in headlines. The protest (by white supremacists) and counter protests in Charlottesville, the church shooting in Charleston, all relate back to the Lost Cause. What some view as heritage, others use as rallying points for white supremacy. This is from The League of the South, "Our culture is being sacked by an unholy crusade of leftist agitators and foreign religions and our very physical survival depends on us organizing and effectively defending ourselves from this enemy who seeks to eliminate us from the planet earth.” If you're ever in need of a face palm, check out their website.

Picture yourself walking into a centuries-old church in Italy. There's a good chance if you're visiting a church that you know the basic story of Christianity. Knowing that, you see statues and other icons that help tell and reinforce the story. In the US with its more recent religious history as compared to Europe, saw a large expansion of Christianity via tent revivals in the 19th century. Here's the small leap, the Lost Cause was created using bits of history arranged in a way to support the South. Myths aren't necessarily lies, but they're created to support a message using real events. The erection of Confederate monuments, especially those honoring Lee, Davis, and Jackson, were the icons of the Lost Cause religion, physical objects to support the story. Confederate heroes appear in marble, cast bronze or zinc, and even stained glass windows in churches.

As mentioned before, Lee was a reluctant hero. When asked to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield in 1869 to determine where monuments should be placed, he declined with the statement, "I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered." Lee would have never approved of his monument in Richmond.

Edward Bonekemper III was a revisionist historian who countered the Lost Cause myth, breaking it down to seven tenets. ; (1) slavery, a dying but benevolent practice, did not merit war, (2) secession occurred over state's rights, not slavery, (3) the Confederacy valiantly fought a war they could not win, (4) the battlefield mastery of Robert E. Lee, (5) the actions of Longstreet are why Lee lost at Gettysburg, (6) Ulysses S. Grant was a butcher who won with superior numbers, and (7) the Union won by waging 'total war.' In his book, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South fought the Civil War and why the North won, (Washington: Regnery History, 2015), he prosecutes each tenet to disprove the myth. Bonekemper was an attorney and it showed.

Well into the 20th century, Lost Cause proponents continued to push the myth. The history books I used through high school in Texas were based on the Lost Cause.

More to follow..

[bigbill]

Grant wrote his memoirs after his terms as President. His writings tell a different story, one based on his detailed memorandums and orders from the war. If nothing else, Grant was precise in his writings, but it didn't matter, the first liar (Jubal Early) had already won. Grant described Southern society as “mired in backwardness and deeply tainted by slavery." Because Grant was the President during Reconstruction, the hatred of him by the South exponentially increased. At the same time Grant's reputation was being destroyed, Lee's was uplifted, even though he was largely responsible for the South's defeat. Lee's reputation was built upon legend, not actions. Grant was noble in his assessment of the South's attack on his character, “While I would do nothing to revive unhappy memories in the South, I do not like to see our soldiers apologize for the war.”

There was no peace treaty after Lee's surrender because the Confederacy was not recognized as a foreign nation. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery but did nothing for racism and allowed continued slavery for criminals. If you were an African-American who appeared to be unemployed, you were a criminal to be arrested and put back into slavery. Under the guise of Black Codes, laws were written to ensure a steady supply of ex-slaves. Black Codes were not legal, but African-Americans were not yet citizens and had no recourse.

Terms: Among my good friends are several former and active duty African-American Naval Officers. I took their advice to heart and only used the term "African-American" in my essay unless the terms Black or Negro appeared in a quote. In the modern (last 20 years) sources I used, Black and African-American both appear, often in the same paragraph. I chose the term that most accurately described the men and women emancipated after the Civil War. In my sources, one of the most valuable data bases was the Journal of Negro History, which is mostly archived at the University of Chicago. The NAACP archives were excellent as well. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have an extensive archive, but I just couldn't bring myself to join to get access although I do qualify. The United Daughters of the Confederacy had a good archive, but events in Richmond caused some damage and access is limited.

[bigbill]

Confederate Monuments.
Fear of losing Southern identity in North-South reconciliation weighed heavily on Southern leaders. This fear led to the portrayal "of the Crusading Christian Confederates" symbolized by Lee, Davis, and Jackson. The North was viewed as corrupt and had used the tactics of burning and butchery to win the war. The Confederate military was viewed as virtuous and treated as an arm of the Christian church, the Lost Cause religion. Charged with being the "Arks of Southern history," the women of the South were entrusted with preserving the Lost Cause myth. Forming what eventually became the United Daughters of the Confederacy, these groups took the lead on the funding and building of Confederate monuments all over the South. There were two main types of Confederate monuments. The first type were meant to speak for the people such as those in cemeteries and on battlefields. The second type were erected to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth and were typically seen on public land, especially courthouse grounds.

For the purposes of the essay, I narrowed the scope to East Texas to explore the events and monuments. I used the NAACP lynching archives to find places and dates in Texas. Just to clarify, lynching is the act, not necessarily the method. While many African-Americans were hanged or shot, the most horrific examples were the lynching by burning. Men were tied to posts, chained to old farm implements, or thrown into a bonfire. In cases where the person was accused of rape, the accused would be castrated or in many cases had all his sexual organs cut off, usually by members of the supposed victim's family. In an ironic twist, the mutilated men would typically bleed to death before being burned at the stake. Lynching was a spectacle meant to intimidate African-Americans and in the case of the 1893 and 1920 lynchings in Paris, TX, draw tens of thousands of spectators.

The lynching research was emotionally draining, I'd usually go for a walk after a few hours of study. Such horrible images.

[bigbill]

Reconstruction.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments granted citizenship and should have guaranteed voting rights to African-Americans. The loosely written 15th allowed states to restrict rights to vote. The pivotal event was the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. The election was deadlocked for several months, but a deal was struck with Southern lawmakers that Hayes would "favor local self-government and home rule in the South," and that "withdrawal of troops was simply in the nature of a belief that such would be the result of the policy which we believed the President would adopt." The withdrawal of troops from the former Confederacy meant that African-Americans lost the protection of their civil rights, allowing the introduction of Jim Crow laws meant to disenfranchise African-Americans. Separate but equal became the catchphrase after 1881 when the first Jim Crow law was passed in Tennesee for separate railcars. Jim Crow was upheld in the Supreme Court, primarily because the laws affected intrastate travel and were not subject to national law. Plessy v Ferguson was a landmark case that was decided by the popular opinion that supported separate but equal.

[bigbill]

Back to monuments.
Most folks think of statuary when they consider Confederate monuments, but they're all around us. Military bases such as Fort Hood and streets in Southern cities (the Mother Emanual Church in Charleston is on Calhoun Street). The Navy is no better, in 1959 the Navy started the construction of the "41 for Freedom," ICBM carrying submarines that served throughout the Cold War. The fourth submarine was the USS Robert E. Lee, which was built after George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Theodore Roosevelt. The Abraham Lincoln commissioned a year after the Lee. The Ulysses S. Grant was commissioned four years later immediately followed by the Stonewall Jackson. This was all during The Civil Rights Movement. The navy has submarine tenders which are ships that support submarines with repair shops and can also load ICBMs on the missile subs. We had them on both coasts plus Italy, Spain, Guam, and Scotland. The USS Hunley was named for the Confederate submarine and the USS Dixon was named for the captain of the Hunley. The cruiser Chancellorsville is named after Lee's greatest victory in the Civil War. The US commissioned the carrier USS John C. Stennis in 1995. Stennis was a senator from Mississippi who was a supporter of racial segregation and had signed the Southern Manifesto which was meant to resist the Brown v Board of Education decision. He also voted against the Civil Rights and Voting Acts. We named a national security asset after a self-professed racist.