Sunset Grill

Aggravating, but the "Re-uniting of the Children with their families" is wrought with ill and horror.

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    Folks, it is not my wish to praise Ceasar but I cannot allow this burial of facts and reason to go on any further.   This is not a defense of Trump, nor Pena Nieto, nor AMLO, nor is it a condemnation of those personalities.   Please believe that I am certain in my knowledge, and that I have had seventy years and a little more of life, much of it involved with Mexico, Mexicans, Americans and Texans of Mexican and Spanish ancestry, along with a considerable bit of Central American understanding, study, and analysis.

     There are those who have accused me of being "hopelessly pro-Mexican", and that is a falsity.  A lesser number has said that I am a real live hater of the Latin sub-race…the response must be, "No, I am not".  The simple fact is that I was born into an environment that included numerous Mexicans from the "old Country" who were involved in the Bracero Programme of the WWII through early 1950s period.  The latter part of that episode were the years of my childhood.   From age 0 through age 10, except for school, Mexicans were a major part of the recipe of life on our farm and citrus care business.

     My studies advanced my understanding of the pre-Colombian times, and the Colonial Epoch, and the Republican Epoch of Mexico.   My eldest brother was a Ph.D. graduate faculty professor of very high regard.  He and I had common brainwaves and communicated on a level similar to twins.  He was an authority on historical linguistics, climate and geomorphology, and matters pertaining to historical and present day cultural geography.

     My wife and I operated an upper-case excursion company that toured all corners of Mexico, and we were in service for well over twenty years in that endeavour.   So please take these following words seriously, as truth that is true.  The clutching of the chest, and pointing to the sky, and howling about the horrors of "separating the children from the mothers and family" is such a shallow, ignorant, at times purposeful theatric sham that it must be contradicted in the strongest terms.

TO WIT:

     The entire event of the flood of Central American "refugees" and/or "migrants" was contrived by the Obama Administration when the State Department was under the command of Hillary Rodham Clinton and later John Kerry.   Your humble servant listens to a lot of overnight radio while he stays down at our home in the interior of Mexico.  AM radio transmissions reached my radios from broadcast positions located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Guatemala (2 different big cities), and San Salvador, El Salvador.   Those AM radio stations would come in and fade out, but there were many nights and early mornings when their signal was excellent and prolonged.   We received Radio Rebelde from the Peoples' Republic of Cuba that unloaded literally tonnes of anti-Gringo and anti-American bilge continuously, with breaks every now and then for long and repetitive replays of Guantanamera.

     During the late night, around 22:00 - 24:00 hours, there would be talk shows wherein the guest, frequently and apparently an American consular official would opine and comment about the best way for people from Central America to access entry into the United States.  After the initial bilge talk about waiting lists, fees for application for an entry visa, the declaration of intention and purpose for visiting or wishing to enter the United States, the need to have a passport from the country of departure along with other life documentum vitae, the conversation would always turn to the inevitable.
     Speaking in conditional tense, it would be pointed out that a person, especially a woman with children, the younger the better, could possibly arrive at the banks of the Rio Bravo / Grande, arrange for passage with an inner-tube driver or similar, and then surrender to the first Border Patrolman encountered, declaring oneself as a "refugiada" (refugee).
     One night the 'locutor' (radio host) asked his guest, "But what if the woman has no children?  How can she leverage acceptance as a truly needy and urgently concerned person."
     The guest responded on that particular night…this time in Guatemala…"Ask around of family, perhaps a niece or nephew, or perhaps a neighbour might be willing to forward a child, especially if there are already relatives in the United States, established."

     As one might imagine, I was aware of this trickle of departures leaving the mess and disorder, especially of Honduras and El Salvador, even as far back as the 1980s.  The Guatemala thing seemed strange to me because it was not such a basket case as the other two.  One reason is because 35% of Guatemala's population is native…still with many who speak little or no Spanish and who seem content with their position and activity.   Honduras and El Salvador were in dire straights in 2004 - 2009 and after that things became even worse.
     Why were things worse?  Simply put, it was because of the growth of the horridly depraved gangs of subhuman murderers, extortionists, rapists, and generally violent individuals.   These gang members knew from their older brothers that causing havoc in the home country was fun, but only in the United States could a MaraSalvatrucha XIII or Callejon 18 really get down and boogie…murder, robbery, torture, drug trafficking, prostitution of children, extortion…almost always of their own "carnales" (same meat and blood).
     Every now and then they would venture out and harrass the Mexicans and the Angloids, but they concentrated on terrorising their own people into submission.   They are found in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and lamentably many smaller cities and towns that have long been famous as citadels of tranquility and blessed boredom.
     Even the Mexican drug cartels had trouble with these types.   One time, a group of MS13 were contracted to guard a group of "migrants" (future illegal aliens) outside of San Fernando, Tamaulipas…this about 10 years ago.   During the detention, inside a barn with no facilities or food or water, the custodians demanded of the "migrants" to volunteer to "mular la mota"…a slang expression meaning "to become marijuana mules for the cartel".

This is not what the bad guys want to run into
in Mexico - A column of the 65th Regiment of
 Infantry on a patrol, search, and engage operation.

     The detainees demanded to be taken to the border according to the agreement that they had made and paid for.   After a 18 hour session of tequila, beer, and weed, the six MS13s slaughtered the entire group of 75.
     Only one person survived.  That individual remembered that there was a Mexican Army facility some miles back to the South, and he made his way there, although he was wounded.
     Some locals gave him a ride to that military facility south of San Fernando, where he made his report and received needed medical attention.  A detail en force departed, and encountered the barn on the ranch as described, with 75 dead "migrants" inside.  Later that day, there was an encounter between a company of Mexican heavy infantry up near Reynosa (McAllen's sister city) and a group of about 25 MS13 types and certain allies…two soldiers were wounded and 9 MS13 were killed, with the rest being wounded and captured.   Those who survived were transported to Mexico City for debriefing, then incarcerated.
     Later it was divulged that over the years most of those individuals had been killed in prison due to their contentiousness and violent disposition.  That has been their record in the prisons of Honduras and El Salvador as well.  Pointless violence, violence, violence.

    Moving right along to processing the illegal alien arrivals, we should point out that many, many children and other minors came in without any adult relative…auntie, sister, grannie, or male equivalent.   In fact, adult males doing much of anything to "help" the invasion of illegal aliens from 2012 through to the present constituted less than 2% of the total tsunami of humanity that came into just Texas alone.
     Recently released data, as of the 10th of July, 2018 shows that a minimum of 20% of the children of 5 years of age or less who were separated from their "mommies" had absolutely no biological relationship to said "mommies".   This fact was developed by DNA analysis.  Another grouping showed the "possibility" of collateral relationship of another 20%.
     The fact is that people who remained back in Honduras and El Salvador were (1) "loaning" their own children, for a price to a woman to use as a ruse, or (2)  having their children ripped away by MS13 operatives kidnapping tots and infants to thrust upon a supposed "mommie", once the "mommie" or her family came up with the price for the child, or (3) older children were being kidnapped and marked…and we are talking about girls aged 8 - 10 years of age…for service into forced prostitution when the time would be "right".  This in fact was and is the actual facts of this "migration".
     On top of that, even the ones who had "legitimate" concerns about health and safety for self and offspring were almost uniformly dull, unappreciative, sullen, and even contemptuous of volunteer gifts of food, money, clothes, or reading material, etc.   This matter of "separating families" is absolutely one of the largest red herrings ever presented to the body politic.  It is a mendacity truly engineered by people who have not the slightest sense of the value of truth in the discourse between citizens.  The leftist opposition to normalcy seems to be willing to leave no stone unturned in order to forward the purpose of nihilism, socialism, and the steady degradation of America as the true beacon of hope, progress, and the opportunity for the fullness of life.

     So many people…Mexicans, and other foreigners…come into this country legally, AT GREAT EXPENSE and TIME and TROUBLE…and leave and return, and leave and return…compliantly, daily, going about their daily business, tourism, shopping, and such legal and pleasant pursuits, and yet we are supposed to give special deference to people who jump the line, pay nothing, and then disappear into the ether of the "population unknown and unseen".  Shame on the "progressives" who delight in the passive enslavement of hundreds upon thousands of people who genuinely should be shouldering efforts to improve the homeland they chose to abandon.

Enough!
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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Four Days of Torment, and finally a bit of success.

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     After four days of fighting the natural forces of computer programming and reconstruction, we have finally found a very circuitous and cumbersome method by which we can post a photo. 

    The scene displayed before the viewer is the lime orchard plantation of the Hacienda de La Vega, situated adjacent and to the west of the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre, the Mexico home of El Gringo Viejo and family.   This particular plantation is among the  very largest of a new variety of lime that is becoming very important to saloons of the highest category in New York City, Paris, Rome, Mexico City, Houston, and similar such places.

     The market has already expanded to general distribution potential for standard domestic marketting, such as for home culinary applications.  This particular lime has really hit a positive nerve in the market.   The trees that are in view are two years old and have been through a test of fire (or ice and snow) so to speak.
    During the past Winter, we went through four episodes of barely freezing weather.   Three of those episodes involved minor bursts of sleet and snow, a couple of times enough to leave a little on the ground.  The Sierra in the background picked up nearly two feet of snow in some places, and further West, there was a traffic tie-up on the main National Central Highway that involved over 100,000 vehicles, literally frozen in time…thirty-six hours…from one of those Winter episodes.

     Many of the recently planted orchards of these "magic" limes were destroyed.   Several around the nearby Victoria, Tamaulipas area did not have any "rebrote" (return to life), representing a loss of many, many millions of pesos to the scores of planters who had just put fortunes into the levelling, planting, purchase of saplings, and other such preparations.
     The orchard in front of the viewer had "burn" on the very tip-top part (about 12 inches) of the young trees, but no real damage beyond that.  Perhaps 13 or 14 trees at the opposite end of the field did die, but the remaining several thousand burst forth in a Spring and early Summer recovery that was truly remarkable.
     It would appear that we shall see a "setting" of flowering trees early next Spring, followed by a first harvest of limes during the late Summer.   Limes can produce in an unpredictable pattern, based on rains and irrigation and other conditions, so it would not be out of consideration to see a late Summer harvest and another around Christmas-time.   We shall see.

     The Hacendo (plantation owner) recently bought a brand new Massey Ferguson medium-heavy duty tractor with several attachments, and the OROG can see the new "beast" mowing the weed-growth produced by about 20 inches of rain during the March - June period of this year.

     Now that I have found a cumbersome route to post a picture or two, perhaps we shall be able to keep one and all a bit more informed.   Thanks for your interest.
El Gringo Viejo

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Concerning Children in Cages…"migrants"…and Immigration as a Human Right

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    So much is written and stated about how the present administration is brutalising "the children" by draconian immigration procedures.   Yea! Even adults are being brutalised by the Border Patrol, ICE, Trump, and the innate racism that defines the controlling classes in the United  States.

    There are several facts that one must have before he/she develops a solid opinion about these matters.  Among them:

(1)   There is no requirement that this Nation or any other be required to accept undocumented or non-Visa bearing arrivals at the frontier.  Nations who might accept such "applicants" do so at their own discretion and jeopardy.

(2)   Mexico began to allow people to come into Mexico without documents if they could demonstrate that they were "in transit" to the United States or Canada, and that there were people, already legally in the United States or Canada, who were waiting for them.  For this, Mexico was rewarded with the residuation of 2,000,000 Central Americans who melted into the major cities of Mexico and essentially disappeared.

    Others who have continued to the North have been subjected to kidnapping by cartel operatives, especially of girls and women, who are shuttled into the most horrid forms of "employment" one can imagine.  An estimated 30% of those illegal aliens who come into the United States are "employed" as cantineras (saloon girls), forced prostitution, free hand-labourers working for farthings, meals, or a corner with a mat in a room shared by 10 or 20 other unfortunates.

     The vast  majority of the "migrants" are not coming for a "better life" as we might think of it.  They are coming because they want to gain free medical, food, and accommodation.   Most are not even concerned about anything that has to do with education, and who see schools essentially as baby-sitting services.

    They are almost all uniformly un-appreciative of private donations of clothes, money, and such, almost never expressing even the slightest courtesy of a "Gracias" or a smile and a nod.

(3)   The Obsolete Press has made much of the separation of children from their "mothers" or "parents".  Once again, as in the Obama Era photos, the pictures of very young children being held in dog-cages were employed to colour American opinion.  That they were Obama Era images was never discussed or revealed by said press.

     The fact is that many…very many…of the "unescorted" children, and the children who had mommies and the very occasional daddy, were actually escorted by someone to the edge of the Rio Grande or the international boundary.   Many of the "mommies" were not lugging their own children, but rather children who were "loaned" by families or cartel operatives to pose as the actual offspring of the "mommies".

    Now, we can suggest that even among the people who manage to continue to the North with some kind of credential and an Immigration Hearing Date (85% never report), the new environment is bleak.  Areas in American cities and towns…in all those areas where there are clusters of established Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, and now to some degree, Nicaraguans…those people do not want to see their "cousins" arriving.

    It always leads to new wave of recruitment and hideous terroristic brutality by such groups as the MaraSalvatrucha XIII.   Their brutality is beyond depravity.  They control large swaths of "The Community"…and therefore America and Texas.  They are a cancer

     The "neighbourhoods" in the central cities and various towns where these clusters have established have long since become the same hell-holes that the Progressives foisted upon America's central cities with the public assistance programmes starting in the 1960s with the "War on Poverty".

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IN THE MATTER OF PERMISSIONS AND CONTROL OF POPULATION MOVEMENT
(by Mexico)

    As many who follow El Gringo Viejo know, he and his boss own a small tract of property in the interior of Mexico.  The process of purchase of the land as a "non-immigrant resident" was daunting.

   Although the extent of the property was just shy of what would calculate to be three acres, the process of transferring title, registering the property, developing the "escrituras"(the writing of the new title and descriptions) by a qualified and reputable Notario Publico, and receiving the letter permissory took considerable time and money.

     It was required to demonstrate an independent income derived by activity other than employment in Mexico.   At that time, (a bit less than 20 years ago) it had to be roughly the equivalent of a minimum of about 700 American dollars per month.

     If married, it was necessary to submit a formal copy of the marriage certificate, approved by the Secretary of State of Texas in our case, being Texans.   It was necessary to obtain an authorisation by the Secretaria de Gobernacion de la Republica Mexicana, specifying that we would not invoke the military forces of the United States of America to defend our title.

     We were also admonished in that same authorisation to refrain from political activity in Mexico at any time, nor could we vote until completing citizenship, authorised by the Honourable Congress of the United Mexican States.   Also, during those days a foreign person had to maintain status as an FM-3 (migratory form three) which essentially was a Mexican passport, and it cost about 110 dollars per year.

   After about four years, however, the Mexican law was changed, allowing foreigners of good character and independent means to be able to own eligible property outright, but not property closer than 50 kilometres from a coastline or 100 kilometres from a terrestrial frontier or boundary.  There are other exclusions, such as military bases, national parks and forests, and certain very indigenous areas, and most of Mexico, D.F.

010203040

2010

• 20.02

     There are approximately 500,000 Americans who live in a semi-permanent or permanent way in Mexico, and who own or lease property.   About half of those rent their accommodations in places such as San Miquel de Allende, Lake Chapala Area, while the other half own their properties and structures.
     The above-posted graph shows Americans who have no good sense, or who are possessing better knowledge and understanding of Mexico than some, and still regard Mexico as a decent destination for fun, games, and the American (and Mexican) way.

We resign for to-day.  To-morrow we shall be in early departure for "extreme Central Texas" to count granddaughters, hobnob with close friends and family and generally try to relax a bit.   More later.
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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Dr. Hayward really is an intellectual: We are stunned that this missive could escape Gulag Cal Berkeley...

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     During these days, the present Bishop of Rome has invited and is receiving a large delegation of Oil and Natural Gas producers for the purpose of refining approaches for the remediation of Global-warming-cooling-climate-change.  Since the Bishop of Rome has proven to be a complete secularist, and liberation theologist practicing progressive, it is well that he should continue in that persona so as not to confuse us, The Unwashed.

    Were your humble servant so disposed, he might remind His Holiness that he would be better served by studying weather and climate history as it pertains to the past 100 years or so.   As we have pointed out on other occasions, my grandmother, Esther Lee Christian and my great grandfather, Peter Bonesteel Christian, lived in a community named Llano de Enmedio, State of Vera Cruz.
     P.B. Christian had bought a 2,100 acre finca in the high hills and mountains of the very tropical Sierra Madre Oriental in the 1880s, and re-established the tropical orchards that had been producing oranges, mangoes, avocados, and various other tropical and neo-tropical bounties.   He was an associate and stockholder in the company Washburn & Christian Mills in Minneapolis when that company was the largest milling operation in the world.  It later reconstituted under the name General Mills which is a well known corporate title to this day.
     For several years P.B. Christian and his daughter operated and enjoyed their little hideaway, and sent tonnes and tonnes of produce down the Pantepec River to connect with other transportation of the harvests, mainly to Mexico City.   Some of the produce was shipped to Galveston and New Orleans as well.
     My grandmother made several trips back to Minneapolis just to visit and keep relations fresh.  She also made social inroads, particularly with one Mexican gentleman from Mexico City who was a buyer of quality tropical fruit for the Mexico City market.   We have indications that the relationship was something formal and serious, but there was a tragic end when it was learned that the boy was murdered by bandits on the road back between Vera Cruz City and Mexico City.  It was apparently quite a to-do in Mexico City because the family was well-known and highly regarded in that theatre.

     The main reason I present any of this material for the OROGs and other readers is to reinforce that we know from whence we speak.  During the progress of the 1890s, there were three different devastating freezes, at least two of which had the visit of abundant snow.   The mighty and prolific orchards of the Christian family were degraded with each onset.  By the third hard freeze, the finca (or hacienda) was reduced to being a place that could only hope to support a couple of crops of corn per year.  Such farming could never justify the effort. 
     So, sadly, they packed their possession they cared to take back to Minneapolis into huge canoes and floated / rowed back down to Tuxpan, where they also had maintained a flat in a fancy district of the downtown, and while there booked passage on a freight and passenger steamer that connected Tuxpan with New Orleans.   This would have had to have been in 1900.
    From there they loaded up their possessions on the City of New Orleans limited express passenger train, and travelled up to Chicago, where they changed to the Burlington line for final arrival in Minneapolis...all done in less than a week.
     Oddly enough, Peter Bonesteel Christian returned to the south, but stopping on the border...and helped establish the cities of Donna and Weslaco, Texas.  He became actively involved in the real estate and farming business, including the venture into Valencia oranges and various types of grapefruit. Later, in the 1913 - 1916 period he managed to convince his son-in-law, Norman Newton, the husband of Esther Lee Christian to come down to the Magic Valley and buy some magnificent orchard and farming land!!  There would be no more farming a thousand acres of wheat and enduring the six-month Winters of Gwinner, North Dakota.  After all, the Magic Rio Grande Valley had a 400 day a year growing season, P.B. Christian would declare, only half in jest.

Not global warming or climate change.   Just a common
everyday, category 5 hurricane with winds of 195 mph
and waves of 40 feet.

     As best we can tell, no one, during those times suggested that there was "climate change" or any other such bilge.  The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was not pronounced to be a harbinger of "global warming", even if something between 7,000 to 12,000 people were killed in the event.  No accurate count could be made due to the lack of a constant census and the presence of so many "world citizens" due to the workers in the docks...Galveston being the number one port for Texas at the time.

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The following is a commentary from a true authority concerning the topic.  The comparisons and analytics are marvelous.

      Climate change is over. No, I’m not saying the climate will not change in the future, or that human influence on the climate is negligible. I mean simply that climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.

     Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. You can date the arc of climate change as a policy priority from 1988, when highly publicized congressional hearings first elevated the issue, to 2018. President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident.

     A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ” Another is Sarah Myhre’s address at the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in which she proclaimed that climate change cannot fully be addressed without also grappling with the misogyny and social injustice that have perpetuated the problem for decades. 

The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out.

     This outcome was predictable. Political scientist Anthony Downs described the downward trajectory of many political movements in an article for the Public Interest, “Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle,’ ” published in 1972, long before the climate-change campaign began. Observing the movements that had arisen to address issues like crime, poverty and even the U.S.-Soviet space race, Mr. Downs discerned a five-stage cycle through which political issues pass regularly.

     The first stage involves groups of experts and activists calling attention to a public problem, which leads quickly to the second stage, wherein the alarmed media and political class discover the issue. The second stage typically includes a large amount of euphoric enthusiasm—you might call it the “dopamine” stage—as activists conceive the issue in terms of global peril and salvation. This tendency explains the fanaticism with which divinity-school dropouts Al Gore and Jerry Brown have warned of climate change. 

     Then comes the third stage: the hinge. As Mr. Downs explains, there soon comes “a gradually spreading realization that the cost of ‘solving’ the problem is very high indeed.” That’s where we’ve been since the United Nations’ traveling climate circus committed itself to the fanatical mission of massive near-term reductions in fossil fuel consumption, codified in unrealistic proposals like the Kyoto Protocol. This third stage, Mr. Downs continues, “becomes almost imperceptibly transformed into the fourth stage: a gradual decline in the intensity of public interest in the problem.”

     While opinion surveys find that roughly half of Americans regard climate change as a problem, the issue has never achieved high salience among the public, despite the drumbeat of alarm from the climate campaign. Americans have consistently ranked climate change the 19th or 20th of 20 leading issues on the annual Pew Research Center poll, while Gallup’s yearly survey of environmental issues typically ranks climate change far behind air and water pollution.

      “In the final stage,” Mr. Downs concludes, “an issue that has been replaced at the center of public concern moves into a prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest.” Mr. Downs predicted correctly that environmental issues would suffer this decline, because solving such issues involves painful trade-offs that committed climate activists would rather not make.

     A case in point is climate campaigners’ push for clean energy, whereas they write off nuclear power because it doesn’t fit their green utopian vision. A new study of climate-related philanthropy by Matthew Nisbet found that of the $556.7 million green-leaning foundations spent from 2011-15, “not a single grant supported work on promoting or reducing the cost of nuclear energy.” The major emphasis of green giving was “devoted to mobilizing public opinion and to opposing the fossil fuel industry.”

     Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.

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Mr. Hayward is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Disparate Points, somehow related one to the others...

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     There are several topics that bounce off of the calcified inner lining of the skull of this Old Gringo.   Somehow, it seems that each is related to the other.   For instance, male irascibility.  Some of the Old Men are high school "students" who have tired of the long life they have had.  They are the ones who are tired of being picked on and disrespected and dismissed as irrelevant personalities.
     Frequently these teenaged grumps have been almost forced to take medicines that treat "Male Derangement Disorder",  frequently beginning in the fourth grade of primary and lasting until the shooting spree at a school or movie theatre near you.    Three or four thousand ancelapathy dihydratezironicide (read directions carefully), tends to dull the brain down, reduce socialisation ability, accentuate a sense of "apartness", making Jack a terribly dull boy.
     By the last years in high school or while at college, Jack tires of the cage into which he has been placed, and seeks revenge by lashing out at those he perceives as people who are having a happy life.   By this point, besides the normal psycho-medical treatment and prescriptions he has used, it is probable that Jack is smoking dope, because as everyone knows, including Billy Jeff Blythe and Barry Soetoro, it cain't do no harm, nohow, anyway.  

     So a white-trash boy, mixed up with the Klan, goes into the premier Negro Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina where the regularly scheduled advanced Bible-study group has gathered to argue, discuss, analyse, and dig into the inspired Word of God.  The boy kills eight of them, as if they were troublesome o'possums, or targets on a barn wall.  They were truly the salt of the earth.

      Another Baptist Church, in Texas just southeast of San Antonio, has a visit from another white boy who decides that since some girl did not return his attentions, it is necessary to slay everyone in the congregation one Sunday.

The University of Texas Tower

      This portion will truly be brief.  All of the "town-hall meetings" and "gun-control laws", and community sensitivity mixed with midnight basketball will not explain, solve, make up for, or prevent events such as the school and church shootings.  El Gringo Viejo, when he was much less "viejo" than now, was on-campus on this day, trying to intercept a fellow named Sontag, who was the son of one of Hollywood's very integral behind-the-cameras cinema and photographics specialists.
  He (the son) and I were both park leaders of nearly adjacent Austin Parks and Recreation Department parks in the near - downtown part of the city.   It was a "prestige" Summer Job for universitarians in those times...$2.92 / hour and the title of PARK DIRECTOR.  
     A particular oddity on that day was that my mother, upon hearing of the shooting going on down on the "40 Acres (local term for the campus of the University of Texas)" was comforted a bit by knowing that all her men were safely away from the scene.  Little did she know that her husband (my father), her second son (my brother Norman), and her last son, your humble servant, were all there under different missions and purpose...well within the reach of the rifles of Charles Whitman.  Each of the three of us contributed to restoring a bit of order to the wounded and the "pinned-down" in the mayhem...even while exposing ourselves to improbable but every possible gunfire. 

     Many of those affected directly...the older children of to-day's schools...are not aware these things actually began "way, way back in the olden days" perhaps fifty years ago.  Very few such incidents occurred before perhaps, but the Charles Whitman event is a good baseline marker.  The Whitman case was especially egregious due to the number of dead and wounded, especially foreigners.

Charles Whitman

     Whitman was a Marine who had been furloughed or placed into a reserve unit because he had some problems with finishing some academic requirements to qualify as an officer in the Marines through advance university studies. He had been deployed for a while at Guantanamo.  There was some thinking within the Corps that he had been tinkering with prescription drugs and, of course, marijuana.    
     He began to have trouble with his studies at the University of Texas...and he consulted a campus psychologist.  Whitman told  that psychologist that he felt like going up to the top of The Tower and shooting people.   Supposedly, such a self-observation should have set off alarm bells at several different levels, but, alas...in this case, not so much.
   

     The psychologist gave him a prescription and told him to come back in a week.   Details are not included in this transmission, but suffice to say that the psychologist's analysis did not cause him any particular alarm.   My father, also a psychologist, thought that the campus psychologist was daft. 
     In fairly short order however (within the lapse of 10 days), Whitman had killed his wife and mother, and then, that same day, proceeded to put into operation what later was found to be a frequently stated project;  going up into the University of Texas Tower and shooting people.    The date?  1 August 1966...mid-day.

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     The next great problem is the dissolution of the family unit.  This might be a sore point in to-day's more "understanding" environment, but the "Progressives" buying votes with AFDC, Section 8 rent subsidy, food stamps, Head Start, Medicaid, and such left the "minority" family in a position that there was no need for a classical job-holder male in the house (apartment).  The new "Alpha Male" is the United States Government.

     Lamentably, the "dependent class" is taking advantage of these  freebies.  Those who avail themselves of the "free money" are almost always doomed to multigenerational, beggar status.  Some, a few, manage to keep the faith and see the light of self sufficiency still

     If one depends on the Central Government for all manner of sustenance and personal "progress", it is fairly certain that a large percentage will become adapted to what they see as a reasonable "displacement" of assigned social and cultural duties.

It is simply natural law.

El Gringo Viejo

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