I will get back to you next week. Not going to be online much over the weekend and I want to read and respond thoughtfully.
The immediate thing that came to mind was that you are perceived as being anti-immigration (I know you’ve said you’re not, but I imagine some in Lewiston view you as that way?). Someone could easily take issue with an (again, perceived) anti-Muslim, anti-Somali, anti-whatever guy using a Lakota guy’s words to back up his own political beliefs.
I’m not saying you’re a racist or hate Muslims or anything like that. I’m just imagining the average person and how they may interpret things. It’s something to consider.
I think he was fairly convinced that all European political ideology, not just socialism, was harmful and antithetical to his own worldview. You say socialists come for lands, laws, culture and children. Well, Means started that speech by saying his lands were becoming a sacrifice area, which you noted, but it wasn’t socialists who were coming for those lands. It wasn’t socialists who removed the Lakota’s ability to govern themselves as they always had done, which caused the very conditions that made Democratic policy appealing. It wasn’t socialists who did not allow Native Americans to have the same freedom of religion that the country was founded on until 1978. (To put that into perspective, Star Wars came out in 1977.)
Yes, Means critiqued socialism, just as you are. But it’s not like he thought the other side was a whole lot better. He specifically mentioned Japanese capitalists in the same speech.
I didn’t find this offensive at all. I can’t speak for other Natives. I can’t speak for white people who may get offended on my behalf. I do think it is important to note that Means critiqued all of European thought, but hopefully if anyone actually bothers to read the speech, they’ll note that themselves.
@jshaving I didn’t think you’d find it offensive, but I was still curious and I’m glad I asked. I’ll once again proudly don my Tatanka outfit to celebrate the possibility that I could be far, far more Native American than Elizabeth Warren, on account of that 1/64th blob on my sister’s DNA chart located somewhere in Appalachia. I figure it’s either native or hillbilly, and I’m fine with either.
I actually posted this a while ago on small group composed of several other essayists who all write about the political situation in Maine, so your efforts to spare white women from being offended have failed. As you pointed out, white people were indeed offended, which was part of what I was hoping to achieve so I could ask them to explain why. I was accused of colonizing history by, I kid you not, a white British immigrant to Maine.
I’m an old-school liberal who was educated before microaggressions took off. I was encouraged to read and write about different people’s ideas no matter what place, people or time the ideas came from, find common ground and criticize the parts you don’t agree with. Back then this was called going to school, now it’s called a whole series of bad things.
I’m sure you get all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings when woke white people in Maine begin their political speeches with Wabanaki land acknowledgements. I still haven’t heard of any of these liberal elites giving their second, third or fourth homes in Maine back to any Wabanaki, but I’m sure they will get around to it when the revolution gets further along. It’s like magic words to these people or even prayer, as if it establishes some moral purism.
Stupid white people crap is what it is, and it has been successfully transmitted to some of our new arrivals. I’m confident they’ll come around eventually.
There’s a reason I only partially agreed with Means, especially considering how much I love the written word, but I think it is worthwhile to point out that he discerned the same threat I do from Socialist saviors. Capitalism certainly has its flaws too, as does the written word, but I view both as more neutral forces that can be co-opted for good or wicked purposes. The market just is, whether we want it to be or not. Socialism is inherently destructive, and that’s the distinction I see that’s relevant today.
This actually goes back to my original take on this essay years ago when you shared it, which was that Means never really explains what his alternative to those systems were. If it’s Lakota ways or social destruction, we’re doomed to destruction unless you relocate east and begin teaching us how to construct a proper Lakota society in Maine, where Buckcherry is still a very popular band and we use 3/4 ton pickup trucks to drive around the block, often quite drunk.
Our groups’ essays (that was a very short one) won’t ever go viral or anything, but there are a lot of important eyes on the site. Some of the themes we are writing about are getting picked up on by some of the more click-bait headline grabbing social media. I’ve been harping on about Democratic Socialist ideology in the Maine Democratic party for well over a year now. Other people are picking up on how I distinguish good Maine policy from bad, and why. They are adopting some of the vocabulary I’ve used and sharing some of our stuff, which we all do for free.
We typically get anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand eyes on each post, and some of the most influential Maine politicians read us, as well some prominent locals. So do the remaining local newspaper reporters, who can’t write like we do and still keep their jobs. Our audience is basically anyone with an appetite for long-form political essays where the authors are all willing to talk in the comments, quite similar to t-nation in many ways.
We’re just a small element of the political thought ecosystem, but we’re the only independent people consistently putting out long form essays in Maine that I know of.
The other essayists in Maine are inherently partisan and all receive funding, and our major media reject our op-eds to instead post terrible writing that is in alignment with the prevailing ideology. Given the small size of Maine, I’m happy with our level of influence and the dialogs we are facilitating.
The project I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks is a demonstration of how to be a liberal Democrat who rejects Democratic Socialism. A big part of how I’m attempting to achieve that is through challenging the prevailing thought in Maine in a somewhat provocative way, using as clear of terms as I can muster, while refusing to employ any of the rhetoric I see or hear in Maine from any politician or media outlet.
This dares people to read between the lines like you correctly assumed white people would. Let me assure you, they did. I was swiftly accused of colonizing your history. This woman who believes she’s doing you a big favor by shouting me down actually DM’d me and now we’re friends, both in shared understanding of how Maine Democrats are subverting our government.
Since taking my t-nation training to Maine, I’ve had a number of politicians reach out to me. That’s not what I’m after per-se, but it does feel good when a city councilor is not satisfied with the three hour conversation we had over the weekend, and wants more.
I’m still in broad agreement with Means on the general notion that European thought needs to go, but let’s keep Newton’s ideas around and some of the other guys who can help us all out. Let’s keep Means around too, and all the rest of America.
This is America in 2025 and we’re all a part of it now, and all the old European ways of thinking have evolved to be American now. Even Socialism, which Americans have turned into a total jumbled mess called Democratic Socialism. I’d go even further and say that world history is everyone’s history, and we all get to read it and decide for ourselves what lessons to learn from it.
My only enemy in Maine is Democratic Socialism. We’re becoming perceived as less racist by the day, especially as the craziness escalates. Just yesterday an unidentified reddit group posted an open letter apologizing for calling some very, very nice people white supremacists, plastering their names and businesses on a whitesupremacistsofmaine website they created.
The bastards even put my writing on their site and attributed it to someone else, choosing a particularly odd piece of writing for it that I sent as an open letter to my representatives asking them to please stop calling Mainers fascists and Nazis.
The woman they attributed it to literally just opened up a daycare for special needs kids in town, staffed with some Somalian team members, caring for children of all backgrounds. The whole story is definitely some white people shit, EXTREMELY EUROPEAN, and too long to cover here.
Thanks for taking the time to read it over and offer your feedback.
Forget wokey for any meaningful subject. You have got to try Grok 3. There’s a deepsearch function that is free for 10 searches a day (I think). It’s unbelievable. There’s also a think function that I haven’t tried, but apparently it solves some sophisticated stuff if you know how to manipulate it.
I am fully loaded with Musk kool aid.
Seriously, robot education is right around the corner.
I don’t think Russel Means would approve of Grok 3 at all.
At some point I’ll try AI in a deliberate fashion, but not for any writing about politics in Maine. That needs to be human thought right now if I am to serve a purpose unfulfilled by other writers or activists.
I also look forward to being a resistance leader in the coming wars against the machine overlords,in addition to surviving the Butlerian Jihad that’s sure to follow.
Lol. I was referring to your use of wokey for Ukraine giving up nukes in return for whatever it was the US promised.
I plan to do that myself later when I have more time.
We’re in my workout log at the moment, lately repurposed for discussing a Russel Means speech from 1980 and not the uninspiring home kettlebell workouts I typically do nowadays.
Since this is in theory a workout log, and I’m trying to catch up with some folks from the old days who I’ve not really kept up with, may I ask what you are doing these days training wise? I saw in some other threads you mentioned fooling with kettlebells, and I recall you’d also been doing a fair bit of grappling or martial arts stuff. What’s the rough blend these days?
Hey thanks for popping in @activitiesguy. I need to do the same and poke around to see who’s still up to what, training-wise. My keystrokes have found a new interest to document lately, but I’m glad so many people are still kicking around after so many years.
I’m training in the old folks home most of the time nowadays, with kettlebells being the main deal. I acquired a complete set of doubles from 8lbs to 70lbs, which gives me a lot of grab-and go options. I also have a basic powerlifting setup in the basement now, although I don’t move the barbell as often as I should.
Power-walking the dog is more my speed nowadays. I haven’t trained grappling in quite a few years, aside from occasional open mats. The home mats are no more, my coach moved out-of-town, and his coach’s school moved even farther away.
I more or less got the basic competence I wanted out of the activity, and the local place that is accessible to me is more or less an amateur MMA factory that’s decent enough, but not of the same caliber as my old coach. I know how to grapple well enough to grapple if I need to, and if I have to grapple against a highly-skilled grappler or a striking assassin then it may just be my day to die. No situations have arisen that required this skill since I stopped picking up shifts at the bar before the pandemic hit.
Becoming a local rabble-rousing essayist might change that, but hasn’t yet. It has been interesting to say the least. Just this week one of the few remaining local newspaper reporters private messaged me to heap some unexpected praise on my project. Nothing I do is likely to “go viral” due to low attention spans, but I have some rather notable readers in the increasingly bizarre Maine political scene, some of whom are hate readers. If I have to sum the whole thing up, I am basically writing from the perspective of a 1990’s social democrat who was frozen in ice, then thawed out in 2025. Lewiston’s narrator for the last 30 years or so is a big fan who has to be a secret fan due to his employment situation.
Back to training, a typical day is 20 minutes with kettlebells and maybe some rogue bike sprints if I need to empty the gas tank. Nothing is structured, more like crossfit lite kind of variation, but always involving some kind of squat, some kind of hip hinge, some kind of press and some kind of pull.
Thanks again for popping in, it was nice to hear from you. I’ll swing by soon to speed read through the last few years. The task gets more daunting the longer you stay away from a long-term log!