Tag: History

Looking for a Few Good (old flabby) Men

Somewhere around the time our civilization crawled out of the Dark Ages, it was decided that the world should be run by Old Flabby Men.  This was a major step up from Vicious Barbarian Bastards who had been the norm since the fall of the Roman Empire, 500 years before.  The chief advantage of Old Flabby Men (OFMs) was they realized the world had a future, so it wasn’t a good idea to go around wrecking things all the time.  They’d been around long enough to understand that, with a little thought and planning, the world could become a better place.  This cut down on the rape and pillage by about half and confined wholesale slaughter to times of war.  It wasn’t an ideal system, but it stopped gangs of marauding men from stealing everybody’s  turnips every Tuesday, and ordinary people had a chance to do a few things other than starve to death.  Roads and schools were built, people bought homes and raised children (who actually survived infancy) and civilization advanced.

So, for the last 1,000 years, OFMs have made the rules, and, in general everybody else has done as they were told.  For example, when OFMs decided Canada needed a railroad, people got busy, imported boatloads of labour from Ireland and China, and built one.  Things like the mountains, the rivers, and the Precambrian Shield didn’t really hold us up for too long because everybody agreed that a railroad was a good thing.  Actually, it was quite an accomplishment.  We still call it The Canadian Dream.  To their credit, OFMs have done a number of these sorts of things around the world over the centuries — to everybody’s benefit. 

The problem with OFMs, however, is they form an exclusive club.  It’s very hard to get in, and most people aren’t allowed.  In order to join, you have to show up early (when you’re still lean and mean) and you have to toil away for years and years at an idiot job until you, too, become old and flabby.   At this point, if you’re lucky, you get to call the shots.  If not – oh, well!  Of course, any club has the disagreeable habit of forgetting why they’re there in the first place.  They start to worry too much about maintaining their membership and don’t remember their overall purpose.  The OFM club is no exception.  Every so often, they need to reinvent themselves.  Again, this isn’t an ideal system, but it works.  Just as an aside, in the 21st century women have joined the ranks of OFMs, but they can’t be called either old or flabby because that’s not very nice.

Anyway, over the centuries, the exclusive nature of the OFM club has always set a few people’s teeth on edge.  They tend to talk a lot of bull about social injustice, or redistributing wealth, or human rights.  They give off the quaint idea that we don’t really need OFMs and offer any number of alternatives.  This all sounds good, but, in reality, they’re offering unworkable solutions to a non-problem, and they just want to have a crack at making the rules themselves.   Essentially they want to join the club – usually as president.  Every once in a while, this brave talk boils over, the unruly mob gets involved and somebody has a revolution.  The OFMs are dragged from their offices, palaces or counting houses and given the chop.  What follows is a brief return to Vicious Barbarian Bastards.  Ordinary people are, once again, at the mercy of any number of armed thugs, legal or otherwise, who metaphorically start stealing everybody’s turnips.  Civilization falls into disrepair; this is inevitable.  For example, the French Revolution had its Reign of Terror, the Chinese Revolution, its Hundred Flowers Movement; and nobody knows how many people Stalin killed in just one of his many Five Year Plans.  Eventually, saner heads prevail, and the revolutionaries start looking like Old Flabby Men.  They move into the offices, palaces and counting houses recently vacated by the last bunch, and things gradually get back to normal.  This scenario was illustrated by George Orwell, in a cool book called Animal Farm.  And we are about to see it ourselves — up close and personal — in places like Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli.  With any luck at all, the new crop of OFMs will keep a few more of their promises than the last crowd did.  They will recognize that it’s a whole lot better for all of us if they regenerate themselves through the ballot box, not the bayonet.  This saves civilization from stumbling through nasty periods of Vicious Barbarian Bastards — where nothing gets done and we’re all in danger of getting dragged down into anarchy and chaos.

As we journey further and further away from our barbaric past, it becomes increasing apparent that OFMs give us the stability we need to advance our civilization beyond thumping each other on the head at any provocation.  They offer us a grander vision, something beyond the day after tomorrow.  They also take care of the little crap like street lights so we can get on with art and science and medicine.  But mostly, they provide us with the rule of law — so we don’t have to spend our days guarding our turnips against every marauder who wants to take them away from us.  This is extremely important because it gives us the time and leisure to engage in reasonable discussions about the role of Old Flabby Men in our society.

Seeing is Believing

Sometime in the late 1970s, a clandestine team of top scientists developed a super-secret formula.  This formula was so secret and so dangerous that each of the scientists who worked on the project was immediately killed in what looked like a series of unrelated freak accidents.  This formula was then introduced to a small segment of the population.  It was a formula for invisibility.

This isn’t just another idiot conspiracy theory like Roswell, Area 51 or Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone.  This is backed up by hard evidence.  So before you pooh-pooh it and lump it in with the Illuminati and WMDs in Iraq, let’s look at the facts.

In 1970, Toni Cade Bambara wrote in The Black Woman, “…a man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too.”  This was the birth of Politically Correct, an ethos of inclusion that was welcomed by a society too long dominated by old, bald, Euro-American men.  For a few years, people followed its tenets with some very good results — firemen became firefighters, mailmen became letter carriers, and so on.  This worked out quite well for a while: unfortunately, like all movements embraced by the middle class, Politically Correct went nuts.  Eager to prove their sensitivity and superiority the Middle class jumped on the PC bandwagon like it was heading to Oprah Winfrey’s house.  They decided that our entire society should be regulated by their vision of politically correct, and, as per usual, would not take no for an answer.  Soon PC thugs were roaming cocktail parties, being indignant and shouting at people.  They crashed political gatherings to be offended and call people names.  Ordinary folks — who had never been racists, sexists, bigots or anything else — were intimidated in the face of this naked aggression and usually just shut up and went home.  All during the 70s, the population cowered in fear as Yves St Laurent jackboots prowled the pavement, kicking people into line.  It wasn’t until the Culture Wars of the 1980s that a brave resistance fought back and proved — beyond any doubt — that Politically Correct was totally stupid and anybody who expounded its virtues was an idiot.  Yet the movement didn’t die.  Why?

Around the same time, it suddenly became trendy for fashionable people to drink incredibly overpriced bottled water.  They sucked away on this stuff like starving piglets at every inappropriate opportunity and generally left a mess wherever they went.  It was everywhere, from the gymnasium to the boardroom.  Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.  The water is still being sold, and the empty plastic bottles are still choking the life out of our landfills, but you never see anybody drinking the stuff anymore.  Why?

There is only one conclusion.  The Politically Correct have become invisible.  It sounds far-fetched, but when you stop and think about it, it makes perfect sense.  Just ask yourself a few simple questions.  Who drank that overpriced bottled water?  Those pain-in-the ass, holier-than-thou middle class muffins.  Do rednecks ever drink Perrier or Pellegrino?  No, they’ve never even heard of them.  How come people still lower their voices and glance around whenever they talk about “inappropriate” things – even in their own homes?  And how come we have to go through the same old “Happy Holidays”/“Merry Christmas” crap every year?  You’re starting to come around, aren’t you?  Now here’s the kicker, and this really puts the croutons in the Caesar salad, believe me.  Do you actually know anybody who admits they’re Politically Correct?  You probably don’t.  In fact, most people go out of their way to declare that they’re Politically Incorrect.  So where did they go?  Think about it.

Here’s what happened.  The Politically Correct knew they were fighting a losing battle, but rather than surrender, they just took a page out of their Nazi forefathers’ playbook and went into hiding.  With all the money they collected from civil rights lawsuits, they bought and perverted modern science to give them an opportunity to stay close and lie in wait.  This is why we’re all still scared stupid about which term to use when and about who we may be offending.  They’re still among us — listening.  So the next time you feel that tingle on the back of your neck, or a cool breeze on your ankles be afraid – be very afraid, because they’re still out there – watching — waiting for their opportunity.

Jack the Ripper (III)

From Hell:

Why we remember Jack the Ripper

The streets are cold in London in October, and the nights are long and empty.  In November the rains come, with a chilly wind off the Thames River.  Only the poor are out and about, searching for the few pennies they need to buy shelter and food.  The people of Whitechapel held their breath and waited for the terror that walked among them.  They didn’t wait long.

On November 9th, at about 11:45 pm, Mary Jane Kelly was very drunk and singing “Only a Violet I Plucked from my Mother’s Grave.”  She was with a man, walking back to her room at #13 Miller’s Court.  A witness described him as stout and shabbily dressed.  At 1:00 am, Mary Jane was still singing but soon stopped.  At approximately 2:30 am Kelly was seen on the street with another man (or the same one) going back to her room at #13.  The witness, George Hutchison, claimed he had briefly talked to Kelly a couple of minutes earlier.  At 3:00 am, Mary Ann Cox, a neighbour at #5, returned home and later testified there was no sound or light coming from Mary Kelly’s room.  At approximately 10:45 the next morning, John McCarthy, the lodging-house keeper, sent his assistant Thomas Bowyer, to “Go to #13 and try and get some rent.”  Bowyer knocked at the door, and when he didn’t get an answer, went round to the window and put his hand through the broken pane and pushed back the old coat that served as a curtain.  Mary Jane Kelly was dead.  She had literally been chopped to pieces, and according to the autopsy, “the heart was absent.”

 In their briefest form, these are the tales of the five Jack the Ripper murders.  There are hundreds more stories, facts and clues.  There are eyewitness accounts, police records and detailed autopsy reports.  There has been enough information collected over the last century to fuel a whole industry – Ripperology.  There are literally hundreds of theories.  There’s the Masonic Theory – some sort of cover-up by the police members of the Masonic order.  There’s the Jewish Theory – a blood sacrifice from some demented sect.  There’s Leather Apron, a butcher gone mad, and Doctor Ripper, an insane surgeon.  There’s even a theory that there was no Jack the Ripper at all: her name was Jill, and she was a deranged midwife.  Over the years, many prominent Victorians have been accused of being Jack the Ripper.  Those theories have reached even into the royal family and convicted the Duke of Clarence, Queen Victoria’s grandson, second in line to the British throne.  Each of these theories comes complete with a written article or book, claiming to solve the mystery.  Each one carefully documents the evidence; each one builds its case, and each one comes to its own conclusion.  But each one unravels far faster than it was ever put together.  Why?  Too many things don’t fit; too many things are odd.  There are too many coincidences, and too many “facts” are in conflict with what we know to be true.  There are just too many impossibilities.

Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman were both killed and mutilated in less than 30 minutes — in the dark – and Chapman was killed on a busy thoroughfare on a Market Day morning.  Catherine Eddowes was killed and her kidney surgically removed in less than 15 minutes! – once again, in the dark.  One murder under these circumstances is possible; two, maybe.  But three go beyond the realm of belief.  On September 30th, 1888, how did Jack the Ripper commit murder, travel some distance through tangled streets and alleys, commit murder again and escape both times – unseen?  It’s possible, but highly unlikely.  Each killing is possible individually, but taken together – five?  In the open streets of Whitechapel?  That’s pretty far-fetched — especially since, after the first murder of Mary Ann Nichols, the entire community was on alert, watching, including several vigilante groups.

The only murder that has any logical explanation is that of Mary Jane Kelly, who was killed in her room.  But there is evidence that Mary Jane Kelly wasn’t even killed.  Caroline Maxwell, of #14 Dorset, testified that she saw Mary Jane Kelly in front of Miller’s Court at 8:30 that morning and stopped and talked with her.  Maxwell also testified that she saw Kelly again at 9:00 am, outside the Britannia Pub.  Maurice Lewis testified that, at 10:00 am, he went into the Britannia Pub and saw Kelly inside, talking and drinking with some other people.  These two independent testimonies cite the same pub; could two different people be so specific and so wrong?  In another weird twist, Catherine Eddowes identified herself as Mary Jane Kelly when she left Bishopsgate police station.  Why?  Another coincidence?  Perhaps, but how can there be so many?  For example, all of the victims had sort of drifted into Whitechapel at around the same time.  Nichols, Eddoes and Stride had all lived on Flower and Dean Street, within a few doors of each other.  Their lives and habits were centered around Dorset, a short street off Commercial.  They all frequented the Horn of Plenty and the Britannia Pubs and they all worked the streets of the area as prostitutes when they had to.  Yet, there is no evidence that they even knew each other – although that doesn’t seem possible in a crowded, poor community.  And there’s more, much more – including the Goulston Street graffiti and of course the letters.  Each coincidence is possible, but, like the murders themselves, not all of them.  The laws of anti-chance alone forbid it.

 So, even with only our cursory examination we can come to the same conclusion that every Ripper investigator has come to since the murders themselves.  Some hideous evil stalked the streets of Whitechapel, London in the autumn of 1888.  It killed women and then it stopped killing them.  That’s it.  There is nothing else.  The mountain of evidence is so strange and contradictory that we cannot glean anything further from it – except, perhaps, that the murders could not possibly have happened the way they did.  The amount of coincidence, happenstance and odd occurrence strains even the willing suspension of disbelief.  No fiction could have been written so wildly.  And the monster that called himself Jack the Ripper will remain anonymous, forever lurking in the shadows of time and the cold dark soul of our 4 o’clock in the morning.

 This is why we remember Jack the Ripper.  He is the last resident of Evil.  In our calm, clean, well-lighted world, we rehabilitate our criminals and sanitize our villains.  We give them names and parents.  We seek their motivation and try to understand their desperate minds.  We hold them to be one of us, tricked, by the very society that condemns them, into performing hideous acts.  Our world has no room for monsters, or fiends or the tortures of Hell.  But Jack the Ripper defies us all by his very existence.  In 2006, the BBC produced a documentary about Jack the Ripper.  They used modern techniques of forensics, like geo-profiling and computer enhanced facial construction to reassess the 120-year-old crimes.  They found that Jack the Ripper was an ordinary fellow who probably lived on Flower and Dean Street.  He probably worked at a menial job and drank his gin at one of the pubs.  They even produced a face.  But Jack the Ripper will have none of this.  He has no name, no family, no childhood, no face.  No amount of empathy or good intentions can ever wash the blood from his hands.  He alone still lives with the demons – and laughs — the last of his kind.