August 02, 2020
Sunday PM

While Jerry Cegelske has proudly, even adamantly, self-asserted his status as a student of history, it should be emphasized that as such a student he has yet to get out of diapers or to get the binkie out of his mouth. He claims to have read hundreds of books about history, but his spew suggests to me that he is reading the “All About” books I read as a kid, or at best something out of a Time-Life series. He gushes nonsense. More pertinently, he is not even capable of getting his facts straight; simple, basic facts.

For example, Old Abe really could not free all of those slaves of the Indians in the southeastern portion of the United States because, wait for it, between 1861 and 1865 the southeastern portion of the nation, including in particular Florida, was a part of the Confederate States of America. The Emancipation Proclamation, of course, freed any slaves extant in such territory the instant Union forces got there. Oh, and wait for it again, with the exception of the Seminoles there were not even any Indians in Florida at that time.

There was this little thing in Andy Jackson’s time called “the Trail of Tears.” You might have heard of it, but then again maybe not. That was when the five civilized tribes were deported to Oklahoma, losing something like a third of their number along the way. Once they got to Oklahoma they did in fact get into slavery with the Cherokees holding as many as 4000 black slaves. They also had real problems; proximity to Mexican territory meant that escaped slaves ran south and west, not north; and slaves were much more aware that freedom was an actual option. So by February 1863 most of these slaves had been freed. The rest were freed between 1865 and 1866. During the Civil War the five civilized tribes split their allegiance with some fighting for the south, some for the north. The rights of these freedmen are still a matter of periodic court disputes to this very day.

So you got every bit of that wrong.

You claim you got your information off the internet, to which one must respond what nut job internet sites are you searching? While it is not where I got the information originally, virtually all of this information is available at Wikipedia and other sources.

Sid Hartley’s presentation is not without its flaws starting with its over-the-top emotionalism. A little less drama and more analysis, please. I assume this is at issue here currently because of the murder of George Floyd, which, if so, is obviously quite an indirect effect. Racism does exist in Ketchikan, always has, and dealing with its present manifestations is not unreasonable, albeit for so many locally it is imperceptible.

Sid Hartley exclusively deals with racism; there is no discussion about slavery, the word is not used once. Jerry Cegelske discusses nothing but slavery, pretending somehow that he is addressing the issue at hand. He is not; his comments are not really even relevant. Somehow he wants his audience to conflate the slavery by capture of various Indian cultures with the industrial-strength slavery of millions of blacks, and apparently thereby we are supposed to understand that the Native Americans were really bad, too, so we don’t need to have any conversation about racism in the community now, love God, kiss Jesus, and we are done.

What Jerry does not understand at all; what Sid does not begin to understand exactly is that racism is in fact the predominant story of Ketchikan throughout its history to the point today where it is literally subliminal in both consequence and effect.

Sid is correct that much of this is systemic, but does not begin to clearly understand how those systemics work. I am not sure that Jerry is a hopeless case, but day-to-day human life involves bickering, belching, and toilet paper. In between a lot of bitching. More to the point people seek advantage over others, and over other groups. So ash-can your “my god-ism” stuff. That just puts you in the same category with Florida Congressman Yoho-Ho-Ho-Ho who we all know actually called her a “clucking fitch;” then using your “my god-ism” to justify bad conduct, bad behavior, bad thought, and your own stupid, poorly researched opinions.

So first for each of you a reading list. For Jerry:

The Impending Crisis: America before the Civil War 1848-1861 by Professor David M. Potter (edited & finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher after Professor Potter’s death), 1970. A Pulitzer Prize winner and the most erudite presentation of this period in our history that exists. A top-five read for all Americans, one of the most important books written by an American author.

The History of the Art of War in the Western World by Professor Archer Jones, 1987. The single most important volume on the art of war that has ever been written. Known to most as the ‘Jones’ of Hattaway & Jones with many significant scholarly works on the Civil War to their credit, in his magnum opus Professor Jones has surpassed and left in the dust Sun-Tzu (most likely an amalgam, and not a real historical character), Baron de Jomini, and Von Clausewitz.

Blood, Tears, and Folly by Len Deighton, 1993. He did not just write great novels. This is one of those books that teaches you thought you knew something about a subject, but in fact don’t know squat.

The American Civil War is a study of logistics, communications, and psychology. To start, the autobiographies of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Grant is by far the most articulate, but Sherman is the most important; he teaches logistics from which perspective is derived most clearly an understanding of the problem known as communications. In combination with the map series on the Civil War, a series of map books not yet complete for every battle and campaign of the war in 15-minute slices. Which leaves psychology, most readily discerned indirectly via Professor Archer Jones, ibid.

For Sid the list is topical:

You want to understand contemporary systemics, you start with the names ‘Banfield and Wilson.’ There might be a handful of folks in this town who have heard of them, true enough countrywide, but these two have more to do with societal systemic function and dysfunction in this society than anyone else. They did not even design the systems; they designed the systemic justifications for the systems.

You want to argue systemics, you had best understand what the hell you are talking about, and to you right now it is obviously basically just a word.

In refutation to ‘Banfield and Wilson’ is Chomsky, a name that pisses off every redneck out there. Why? Because he thinks. He is a bona fide intellectual, not something rednecks can be, for as the old saying goes, “Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.” (George Will by the way is a conservative and an intellectual, but he is no one’s redneck.)

Then study everything from the founding in 1893 of the National Municipal League and its monstrous abortion called the “Council-Manager” form of government, and the so-called “ethnic ethos” it was designed to displace and destroy to be replaced by the so-called “business” or “middle-class” ethos of white bread only.

At which point you should begin to understand something of the nature of the systemics you deign to modify or destroy and replace yourself.

Why, for example, have local governments always been run by elected white officials? There are Native and part-Native folks elected to the Borough and the City Council on many occasions to be sure, but have they ever come close to being a majority? No.

This, of course, is normal. Jerry Cegelske would have us love God, love thy neighbor, and go home; leave everything as it is.

Why then do we have KIC? In part to be sure because the local Natives did not think they were getting a fair shake from the white part of the community. Gee whiz. That really is hard to figure. The very clique-ish nature of this town stems from its foundation as an incredibly racist community.

Racism, by the way, Jerry, is not always associated with slavery. Indeed in fact rarely is that the case. White America, all immigrants or descendants thereof themselves, were racist toward Blacks and Orientals and Native Americans. Nativism is the term for intolerance of ethnic (as opposed to racist) groups which started with American whites against Irish, then Italian Catholics, and now, more conveniently perhaps, against brown, Hispanic Catholics. It’s always Catholics, whatever the color or ethnicity. Jews, Germans, and Scandinavian Protestant groups got their own dishes of nastiness, but they also tended to maintain themselves as more successful financial and segregated groups, thus a lot of modern conservatism stems from their intolerance inbred over half-a-dozen generations or so.

There is a lot of this in Ketchikan. Over time the mere fact of limited mating options has moderated this somewhat as the generations have passed; lots of mixed marriages. Yet it remains the case that many of these old stalwarts, many Scandinavians among them, have never had much affiliation or association with Black people or Hispanic people because there are not that many of them on this rock. And a lot of them still don’t like Native Americans. Then there are the Native Americans who have a rage on toward whites. All of you come from a position of inexperience.

Ketchikan has its problems. We should be grateful they are not worse than they are. But to ignore the reality of their existence is naïve.

David G Hanger
Ketchikan, Alaska

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Editor's Note:

The text of this letter was NOT edited by the SitNews Editor.

Received July 31, 2020 - Published July 25, 2020

Related Viewpoint:

Selective History By Jerry Cegelske

Acknowledging the existence of racism in our community both past and present By Sid Hartley

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