Does the truth matter? Well, that’s a matter of “opinion” in the Evan Rachel Wood case

 

This Memorial Day weekend finds  truth-seekers reloaded with fresh ammunition in the battle against the forces  of falsehood and fabrication: a California court ordered Evan Rachel Wood to give up custody of her child to former partner Jamie Bell, which I'm sure comes as a "shock" to people who during all this time have "understood" Wood to be the long-suffering victim of the bogeyman Marilyn Manson. Something is not quite right here, but then again people who have an interest in this case have known that for some time now.

I wondered why Wood and Bell had broken up so soon after their son was born, so I did some investigating. I found this 2014 story in Jezebel:

According to a source, Evan Rachel Wood and Jamie Bell split because Wood prioritized motherhood over her relationship. In a seemingly contradictory detail, Wood also reportedly thought Bell wasn't "edgy" enough.

The couple welcomed a son last July, and he became the focus, the source adds. "Evan loves being a mom. After her son was born, he has been her No. 1 priority. The marriage always came in second. They have different goals for the future and want to pursue them separately."

As for Wood's romantic future, the source adds: "Evan is very edgy and adventurous and wants to find a partner that she can share that with."

Well, first off, it seems that Wood was just using Bell to have a child and then discarded him as no longer needed. The article is in the "Dirt Bag" section of the website, and the writer, Lindy West, provides a few hints about who she thinks the "dirt bag" is here, as if it isn't obvious.

But the other part of this is very interesting because it doesn't have to do just with Bell, but Manson as well.  The “straight” definition of “edgy” or "on edge" is being “nervous” or “uptight.” But in a “not normal”—i.e. “adventurous”—individual, it means someone who “breaks social conventions,” has “controversial attitudes,” and is “unafraid to challenge societal norms or push boundaries.” 

People would say that Marilyn Manson was this kind of “edgy.” Was that what attracted Wood to Manson, because he was into the “very edgy” like herself? Or did she feel a need to be "different," and Manson showed her a way to "express" this, and she decided this was for her at the time?

While we can surmise that Wood was not serious about having a long-term relationship with Bell (note that like Amber Heard she has “bisexual” predilections), it is still a fair question to ask what exactly did she consider “very edgy” then—since what she says now can only be taken as self-serving and not the truth. What is quite certain is that Wood realized she had no credibility about being a MeToo "victim" if it was known she was into "very edgy" things back then. Thus she had to change the narrative and claimed she was forced  to do "edgy" things against her will.

This is a good starting point to examine the credibility of Wood’s accusations against Manson, particularly since in that article her alleged issues with Manson are not mentioned at all as if that was all over long ago, and she is portrayed as entirely at ease with a lifestyle outside the "normal." 

She may claim now she was “groomed” by Manson, but she was an adult when she met him, and she wasn’t a “naïve child.” If she had an “adventurous” nature, it wouldn't be surprising that she would think that the “scene” Manson was involved in was “cool.” And exactly what kind of “adventures” did Wood have in mind that Bell was not prepared to share with her?

Of course Wood denies all now, but why should we believe her any more than Amber Heard? The facts rather strongly suggests that she is being disingenuous and opportunistic at the very least—and more likely someone dealing with “remorse” about her previous life choices, and with the help of her former partner Illma Gore, chose to blame men for it. 

Who was the most convenient target? Why not Manson, whose artistic “tastes” and public persona were already bizarre enough to most people who were even aware of it? Nor would it be too difficult to find women involved in Manson’s projects to make check marks on a list. But just because something is “weird” doesn’t make it a “crime” or even "abuse."

Although a California judge used the state’s anti-SLAPP law to protect Wood and her co-conspirators from answering for perpetuating a hoax against Manson, there have been too many other defeats for Wood that continue to sink her credibility. The latest is Bell’s custody case against Wood that has just ended with a California court ordering Wood to hand over principle custody to him. In court documents that were not sealed, we see why this occurred. Wood, by moving from California to Tennessee, deliberately attempted to subvert the custody agreement and prevented Bell from seeing his son:

 

Bell discovered that the FBI letter Wood was using to “protect” their child was fake:

 

Wood was evading summons to appear in court to explain herself:

 

Even when Wood agreed to mediation, she and her representatives continued to block any resolution:

 

Bell provided testimony concerning how Wood was inflicting psychological abuse on their son:

 

Another effort at mediation was a failure due to Wood’s intransigence:

 

This was apparently too much even for a California court that would normally rule in a mother’s favor at every turn. Wood was clearly not acting in good faith, and now was apparently seen as “unfit” to continue having principle custody of the child because of her increasingly bizarre and unstable behavior. Of course Wood would need to “spin” the story to conceal the truth, and through some sublet media outlet called The Blast we we told “Evan Rachel Wood Gives Up Custody Of Son After Alleged Marilyn Manson Threats.”

This was immediately responded to by both Manson, who insisted he neither has had any contact with Wood in nearly a decade, nor has threatened her son. Bell also asserted in a statement that Manson had nothing to do with the custody decision, and that the decision to relieve Wood of custody of their son was due solely to evidence of her unfitness as a parent. Regardless of what side people are on, for a California court to remove a child from a mother's custody has to raise all kinds of red flags about what is really wrong with Wood.

Evidence of Wood's psychological defects should finally convince those on the “fence” or have no opinion that at the very least Wood's case against Manson is shaky at best, and dependent upon whether you can suspend your belief enough to accept the word of someone whose story has slowly crumbled in the face of reverses such as one case (by Manson’s former personal assistant) being dismissed for lack of evidence, and an former accuser (Ashley Smithline) signing a sworn statement that she was pressured to make false claims by Wood and Gore. These along with former partners who claimed that they resisted pressure from Wood supporters to make false claims, and one who “arose from the dead” to contradict claims made about her by Wood and her co-conspirators, could only lead to questions of what the real truth is.

Of course the "truth" for some people is often based on their opinions or choosing to deny what the evidence (or lack thereof) tell them. On one reddit discussion page we find the usual failure to inform oneself of the facts:

Attacks on the father:

 

Revelations of personal politics and bias:

Was this meant to be "sarcastic":

As noted before, Wood didn't seem "scared" of Manson back in 2014; Wood's relationship with Bell was clearly from the start all about her own selfishness, and now claiming Manson is responsible for the loss of custody is just another way to "remind" people what this was all "really" about.  Of course not everyone wants to understand just how disturbingly odd Wood's claims are, and just run with it without looking where it leads:

Some people admit that they didn't read the court documents before making an ill-informed statement of "fact":

A few people wondered what the hell is going on with these people:

 

 

Someone even had the audacity to suggest that Wood was lying about Manson:

 

And then there are the wingnuts who think a violent response is the appropriate answer:

 Of course I added my two-bit to the discussion:

The facts are clear enough in the Manson case: you have a disturbed woman who “suddenly” discovered these “revelations” that her “very edgy” behavior had become something of an embarrassment for her. Everyone has these  “revelations” where they remember some embarrassing thing they did from the distant past that brings a brief pang about wishing not having done “that.” 

Usually these feelings are temporary because you can’t do anything about it; it's over, you hope nobody else remembers it. Wood apparently had many of these “embarrassing” moments that she wishes people wouldn’t remember or know about, and the MeToo movement provided her with a way to "explain" herself by blaming someone else.

Of course for some people the truth isn’t really the point—it is the “feeling” one has when they are looking for scapegoats to explain their own “issues.” We see people with their own "issues" vicariously “connecting” with a celebrity who gives them a sense of "power" and "credibility." Unfortunately for these people in the cases of Wood and Heard, they picked the wrong horses. The truth doesn't matter; the more the evidence piles up that makes their supporters look foolish, the need to become even more foolish.

"Culture wars" are just foolish children at play, tolerated for now by the corporatocracy that really runs this country

 

On the surface, it appears that this country is locked in a battle between opposing “cultures,” involving “traditional” mores against those who demand the right to do as they please, and between those who believe the past is past against those who believe the past is present. Florida has become the principle battleground between these forces, although it is strictly an unfair fight with a governor with fascist-leanings backed by an equally fascist-minded legislative super-majorities.

But in general this country’s ethical and moral compass has certainly strayed far afield since Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Perhaps people don’t really notice themselves that much because life just goes on day to day without any real change; when politicians just bark at each other, it doesn’t matters all that much. But it is not true that one party can’t cause great damage if it gets carried away; we see the potential for that with a looming debt default that Republicans always happily pass “clean” debt ceiling bills when a Republican is in the White House, but then decide they want a “dirty” one when a Democrat is in office for purely partisan reasons. Fanatics on the extreme right even seem to take a delight in seeing the country to collapse in on itself.

The far-right extremists promise a “new world order”;  Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk gave us a “taste” of that yesterday announcing a “new direction” and “status quo-busting” future for America—DeSantis’ embarrassing and glitch-filled audio-only twitter presidential campaign announcement. It was an inauspicious opening for a campaign that outside the far-right Fox News bubble—which at best reaches 3 million viewers, a relative drop in the bucket as a whole. Outside some media exposure (mostly negative), DeSantis is a relative unknown, and frankly he looks like the political gangster he is.

I have problems with “woke” culture too, but DeSantis goes way beyond that, not merely expressing an opinion, but passing laws that literally make it a crime to express any opinion that he doesn’t like or makes him feel “uncomfortable.” DeSantis is a xenophobe and a racist, and so he passes laws wherever it is possible have his critics “muzzled”—such as in schools and on the streets: he hasn’t quite figured out how he can legally silence free press criticism against himself, but he’ll keep trying. DeSantis is notoriously “media shy,” and he only appears on Fox News for a reason.

It has been noted that DeSantis is so full of himself that he has made little effort at coalition-building outside of Florida, and both Democrats and many Republicans found much to amuse themselves with the disastrous opening of his presidential campaign. No doubt those on the far-right fringe may see him as more “electable” at the moment than Trump, but we remember how fast Howard Dean flamed out. If people think Trump has dangerously destructive impulses, wait until they hear what DeSantis has to say outside his Florida and Fox News bubble. 

People may have to learn the Barry Goldwater lesson once more: after the original favorite, Nelson Rockefeller, saw his poll numbers plummet, by June 1964 polling showed a dead heat between Goldwater, Nixon, Lodge and Scranton at 20 percent each. But far-right voters (who called themselves the “mainstream” of the party) mostly abandoned the others to back Goldwater and his “culture war” beliefs, and merely using “traditional” conservative tropes to mask an ideology of what one critic called “plutocratic profiteering” and “fascist-style thought control nationalism.”

The result was that even in a country divided by the civil rights struggle, Goldwater was seen as too “extreme” in his culture war views, and only the 1936 election rivaled the 1964 election as the worst defeat by a Republican nominee in a presidential election. I suspect that if DeSantis were to be nominated, he could do one of either two things: lose so badly that Trumpism/fascism is killed-off completely—or lose the popular vote by a wide margin but win narrowly by the electoral vote—and send this country down the path of becoming at least “culturally” a fascist state.

Yet the truth of the matter is that Republicans don’t so much as “govern” the country, but impose their own sordid, narrow-minded cultural and nationalistic views on the majority of the country. Beneath the surface of the rhetoric, we in fact live in a—how about this word—“corporatocracy.” It’s an actual “thing,” even if it isn’t in Microsoft Word’s spelling dictionary. It refers to “a society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations.” This includes the judicial system as well, and we can certainly see Clarence Thomas as an example of this; Thomas still claims he doesn’t think he has to report what is probably in the millions of dollars in gratuities he has received from his corporate “best friend” for voting the “right way.”

In a corporatocracy, no major policy decision is made without the approval of Wall Street; an example of this was the Affordable Care Act, which corporate America eventually relented to as long as they benefitted from it and didn’t need to worry about a “public option” as a competitor. Of course it was different during the Great Depression because FDR had super-majorities in Congress to work with and a Supreme Court that eventually included eight of his personal selection. But with “divided” government, corporations pretty much pick and choose their spots, and “ideology” is just what a politician says that is different from what another person says; in some people who are bought and paid for by corporations like Kirsten Sinema, we see that “ideology” and “principles” really doesn’t have anything to do with decision-making.

Some people think that if voters don’t come to their senses soon, fascism will be in this country’s future. Can one imagine the chaos and civil unrest that could ensue if someone like DeSantis is elected president and he tries to impose by authoritarian dictates the same personal “cultural” beliefs he has inflicted on Florida to the rest of the country—especially with a Supreme Court filled with right-wing culture war ideologues?

But this has nothing to do with corporate America, and before DeSantis picked a fight with Disney, his laws did not affect its own “rights.” Perhaps DeSantis (being Italian-American) looks to Mussolini for guidance; Mussolini referred to his version of fascism as “corporatism,” which in theory means that different elements of society form their own “unions” and they band together to work out their differences to agree to a common policy. This certainly sounds “practical” in theory, and unlike democratic government even those on the margins have their two-bit thrown in. 

But in “practice,” as we saw in Nazi Germany, not everyone’s voice in this kind of "system" was tolerated or heard, and in Florida, “dissent” in any governmental department is punished, and all must fall in line with DeSantis’ “vision” no matter how extreme it is.  

Meanwhile those on the outside looking in are being treated to a carnival freak show from Republicans in Congress and in states like Tennessee, as I discussed the other day. Remember January 6? What did you hear from the corporate community about that? Nothing. It was just a mob action that proved their “point” about “the people” being inherently unfit to govern themselves. 

As for their elected officials, you can throw out decorum and civility from any Republican committee hearing, especially one run by Jim Jordan. He doesn’t care if the claims he is making have no basis in fact or reality, or that his “witnesses” are bought and paid for by far-right activists, or are themselves far-right conspiracy mongerers—or in the case of “witnesses” of wrong-doing by Joe or Hunter Biden, they  have mysteriously “disappeared” or never existed in the first place. Jordan’s committee hearings generally degenerate into chaotic pie-fights in which he is only interested in insuring he gets the last pie in.

The corporatocracy is also apparently blasé about Trump, his legal issues or  his fan base. Despite his record of bizarre behavior, clearly false statements, deliberate efforts to turn people against each other and in turn destroying the country from within while alienating our friends abroad, it's tolerated as long as it doesn’t affect “business.” Trump can do and say anything he wishes just as long as he doesn’t do anything that is “bad” for business.  

What politicians do, crazy or not, is surface detail; it doesn’t actually have anything to do with how the country “runs” beneath the surface. If there is a “deep state” in this country, it is one in which politicians are bought and paid for by corporate America. To reach that end, you have to have an electorate that votes on its present whims, not looking to the future. 

You have the hardcore on the left and right, but in the “middle” there are voters who simply vote on “gut feeling.” They probably know more than most that their votes won’t change their day-to-day lives so long as one party doesn’t do something so stupid that actually does impact their lives in a negative way—like allowing the country to default on its debts, which the extremist on the far-right seem determined to do at the moment. And that is certainly not what corporate America wants to see happen; it would be surprising if behind the scenes they are not making their views on the matter known to the parties involved.

And so while DeSantis seems to be “winning” on his “culture war” agenda in Florida, it is another matter altogether when he takes on a corporate giant like Disney, which has announced it is pulling a project that would have brought 2,000 new jobs to the state. Disney has been struggling financially, but its parks and recreation business is still strong. 

But what is important—and that DeSantis doesn’t understand—is that what is bad for Disney is bad for Florida. While Disney isn’t leaving Florida anytime soon, what’s bad for its “business” is bad for the Florida economy, which makes DeSantis’ “culture war” antics revealing for its blindness to the “big picture.”

You have Florida Republican politicians saying, well, my family canceled Disney+ or we aren’t going to Disneyland anymore over the “culture war” issues, but if enough people think like that, who ultimately is going to be hurt by attacks on the company? How about the state where Disney has the largest footprint on its economy? It is people who ultimately lose when “culture warriors” win—both in their free speech rights, and their jobs either with Disney or businesses who rely on it along the peripheries.

Tennessee definitely not the state I used to "know," but should have

 

Last I week I included on a post about the xenophobia and paranoia behind anti-Hispanic immigration mania an image of Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and her “list” of what immigrants from south of the border will "contribute" to the country. I don’t give a damn if there are some people who gaslight society over what happened in the past, but the past is present and it isn’t about them anymore. People like Blackburn and Laura Ingraham are today the Julius Streichers of yesteryear, but this time it isn't Jews who are their targets in a public forum seemingly without fear of being contradicted…

 

…they are demonizing and dehumanizing here today Hispanics, which is something the media doesn't have the time to examine. It does of course have time to examine "structural racism" against blacks in regard to medical care in a current series by the Associated Press, but all those tiny coffins I saw being flown to Mexico when I worked at the airport did not contain black infants (or white infants, for that matter). 

Blackburn has been a racist since at least her “birther” days, and this isn’t anything new. What is “new” is that people who once thought of the state of Tennessee as a more “moderate” southern state definitely need to be disabused of that view. Jonathan Tobin of the far-right Jewish News Syndicate opined in Newsweek (it’s apparently trying to attract more “business” this way) that the black state legislatures who were expelled for protesting too much about the now ruby-red state’s Republicans refusal to act in the aftermath of the Nashville mass shooting were guilty of “anti-democratic hypocrisy.”

Really? Only six of the 33 state senators are Democrats, and three-quarters of the state House is Republican. We can surmise the “interest” in “democracy” that Republicans have after their redistricting plan  carved-up Nashville from a reliable Democratic seat in the House of Representatives into parts of three reliable Republican seats, so that only one majority Democratic district remains  in the delegation, the Ninth which includes Memphis. That sounds real “pro-democracy,” doesn’t it? How about this as “pro-democracy,” from a local Nashville television station as reported by The New Republic, which by the way is an “old school” conservative publication:

An investigation conducted before last week’s drama from Nashville-based NewsChannel5 revealed how Tennessee Republicans have introduced legislation with no notice to the public, denied roll call votes on bills, and killed bills on the basis that their side apparently sounded louder in voice votes.“You have committee chairs single-handedly deciding whether bills live or die. Is that democracy?” NewsChannel 5’s Phill Williams asked Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who responded by insisting that there’s no problem.

Yet a problem there is. On the college student ID bill, pushed by the now-expelled Representative Jones, Republican Elections and Campaign Finance Subcommittee chair Tim Rudd gavelled the vote as a “No” before the voice vote was even finished. Such brazenness certainly cuts against the already condescending charges made by some Republicans last week that members like Jones and Pearson were complainers and not legislation pursuers.  NewsChannel5 gave Rudd the opportunity to explain why he killed the bill before even hearing the vote. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rudd said twice, with not an ounce of shame of what was clearly seen on camera.

Another bill, advanced by local students, that would’ve directed high schools to guide students on how they could register to vote, was denied a roll call vote by Republican Local Government chair John Crawford on the basis that the committee had already voted on an amendment to the bill. House rules explicitly state that “a roll call vote shall be taken at the request of the sponsor of the bill or resolution under consideration.” On the voice vote, it sounded to many in the room like the “Aye’s” had won. Crawford, however, deemed that the “No’s had it.”

 “Democracy is dead here in Tennessee as it stands right now,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Vincent Dixie, who sponsored the bill. Tori Venable, from the libertarian group Americans for Prosperity, told NewsChannel5 how, with the House voice votes, a vote having “sounded one way, [can go] another way,” all by the unchecked discretion of the Republican majority.

Sure sounds like “democracy” is dead in Tennessee to me. Of course if you swing far-right like family members (I use that term with some irony) who live there, “democracy” is only supposed to work for “us,” not for “them.” Politico points out that

Tennessee represents the grim culmination of the forces corroding state politics: the nationalization of elections and governance, the tribalism between the two parties, the collapse of local media and internet-accelerated siloing of news and the incentive structure wrought by extreme gerrymandering. Also, if we’re being honest, the transition from pragmatists anchored in their communities to partisans more fixated on what’s said online than at their local Rotary Club.

Now, I occasionally can be seen walking about Seattle with a backpack which I purchased online with a small “birthday” discount from the gift and collectable section of the store of the university I am an alumnus of. The backpack has the school logo, seen here at Pier 66:

 

Not that it means that much; I suspect that most people here don't see the state as anything more than a country music Hicksville. Not that I knew much more about it myself, spending my time in the bubble atmosphere of college life. I took summer semester courses that allowed me to graduate a year earlier than the people I started out with, which meant that I didn’t take the summers off to get to know the “culture” better.   

To be honest, going to that school didn’t seem to impress anyone on my job searches out here, maybe because they didn’t think I would “fit in” with this “culture”—either that or people had a hard time believing that someone who looked like me could have a college degree at all.  Maybe—probably—it was the latter.

Still, I like to wear the backpack as a kind of –in-your-face thing: yeah, Maybe I’m not from around here,  but not from where you think, or you people are bigger hypocrites than the people from the place I came from, or simply I’m not like you and can you guess what I think about you ignorant assumptions. 

That’s how I feel about these superstars-in-their-own-minds around here  whose  degrees only got them data entry or phone answering jobs. I actually think about things; these other people mark their ballots next to correct ovals so they don’t have to bother with what is happening in this world themselves. But on the other hand, it is fair to say that the right-wingers here are just fakers and wannabes; I’ve seen the “real deal” close up.

The problem is that the states of Washington and Tennessee probably had a lot in common back in the day, but have gone in two completely opposite directions, so it isn’t fair to assert that I would feel any better being there than here. If there were people would elect a neo-Nazi like Blackburn to the U.S. Senate, then count me out of there.

Now you may wonder how someone like me wound up spending  any time in a state like that to begin with, although the real mystery is how I managed to make it to college at all, since my life—at least until the time I enlisted in the Army—was destined to nowhere. It was a complicated story which I won’t get into here, although I will say that it left me which a blasé attitude about familial connections, or personal connections at all—none more important than the fact that in their eyes I am a radical socialist who created his own problems, and in my eyes they are simply in denial and out of touch with reality.

I was born in Cleveland, grew-up in Wisconsin before enlisting—more out of “force,” but I didn’t resist; any place had to be better than where I was at. I suppose that the military was looked upon as a kind of “reform school” for me, although the fact was that I never drank, never did drugs, and never hanged out with "bad" people; when I heard Johnny Depp describe his life as a child, I could "relate" to that, except in some ways it was worse.  My half-siblings who were clearly less "ethnic" than I was got all the perks and privileges, and I had to do the "dirty work." They got allowances, but I dare not ask for a quarter. On the rare occasion my mother was in the mood to treat me with a little kindness, it evaporated the moment I asked for something, because I was taking "advantage" of her. Fear made me do things on the “sly,” and my mother never could come to grips with why I was they way I was. 

But in the Army, we were all one big “happy” family, regardless of background or social status, at least on the enlisted side. It was a job, most of time monotonous, sometimes not so, and you learned how to keep things neat and tidy, and you did what you were told to do. In return, you got your “three hots and a cot” with a little pocket change thrown in.

I was always a book reader, and I had a lot of books that were not taken away from me as "punishment" or feelings of malice when I was in the service; I liked movies, and when the Laserdisc format came out, I thought it was “cool” enough to start building my own movie collection. But there had to be something more to life, and as they say the best place to be in the Army is between the place you are leaving and the place you are going. 

One day a new platoon leader arrived, a second lieutenant fresh out of ROTC. I was a sergeant by then and I had all this “book learning” but not that piece of parchment to prove it like this novice did. So I decided that I was going to go to college and get that piece of parchment, like Jack Thompson’s electrician in the Australian film Petersen; those other “educated” snobs weren’t “better” than he was, and he was going to prove it (or at least fake it as long as he could).

The question was where. My parents had by then moved out of Wisconsin after Caterpillar laid-off a bunch of people, and Dad found a new job near Knoxville, so I could get into the university there as an “in-state” student. I was also fortunate that the school liked to show its “appreciation” for one’s “service” to the country; I asked for an application while I was stationed in Augsburg, a Bavarian city which liked to brag about its Roman “heritage” with this statue of Augustus:

 

Although my academic “credentials” were not exactly stellar, I was surprised by how quickly I received a letter of acceptance. By the time I showed up “home” to a place I knew nothing about except that people talked “different,” I was completely over my previous fear. I think that my parents didn’t know what to make of this person who now did as he pleased and who wasn’t on his way to jail or an early grave after all. I recall showing Dad my first college report card; I couldn’t tell if his look of “disappointment” was because I didn’t get straight-As—or because I actually passed all my classes (one “A,” two “B+s” and a “C+”).

As noted I was in a kind of bubble world in school; I didn’t get a “sense” of what the “culture” or politics was, save for that white female student who befuddled people by saying out loud in class that just because she wouldn’t date a black man didn’t mean she was “racist”; nobody could figure out what was being discussed that motivated her to blurt that out. 

I also remember a Japanese-American student making a racially-insensitive observation that didn’t sit well even with the white students; after all, that was their prerogative. While I notice that the University of Washington is pretty much taken over by Asian students, both legal residents and foreign nationals, no southern university like UTK would ever allow that to happen at their school. 

Just in case someone gets the wrong "idea" about me, before I started working for the campus paper I submitted a letter to the editor condemning what I regarded as an antisemitic op-ed written by another student; when it was published, all the "j"s were in lower case, making me look like an idiot. I confronted the "managing editor" who admitted that he was in a "rush" typing it in and expected the copy editor to "fix" his mistakes; he allowed the printing of a follow-up letter to make sure people knew who was at fault. Why didn't the copy editor correct this obvious mistake? But then again, the paper allowed to pass an editorial cartoon by a student depicting an Israeli soldier mass shooting the members of the Nativity Scene.

Besides, Knoxville is not really a “college town,” and Knox County voted for Trump both times. Although I never got the impression I didn’t “belong”—after all, there was room especially made for “nontraditional” student like me—I tended to get the idea that I was a bit of “curiosity” to people, but at least I wasn’t made to feel like a criminal which is the impression I get from many people here.

But that doesn’t mean I never encountered people who had an “opinion” about me that wasn’t favorable.  I worked for a semester as a “paid” reporter for the campus newspaper, and another semester as an unpaid op-ed writer, with vaguely disturbing left-wing leanings. I knew this because one day I wandered into the editing room and observed that someone had disfigured my photo in a caricature of Satan. I remember being on a bus and some old guy was reading one of my commentaries; you could almost literally see the steam coming out of his ears.

There were also the odd incidents of people making inferences as to my “ethnicity”—someone once yelled out to me “Go back to Iran,” another guy wanted to know if anyone spoke “Spanish” to tell me to hurry up with the copy machine, and when I wrote about how when I was walking down the side of a road without a sidewalk that morning and a white woman deliberately tried to clip me with her car (she was close enough to mangle the umbrella I was carrying) someone thought that was “funny.” Still, I did manage to get out of there alright with a degree in Communications, and there were a few people I still have fond memories of. From there it was on` to the “left coast.”

I’ve never been to Tennessee since, but my former care-givers still live there. For a few years I exchanged letters with Dad, and it was always the same: he tried to convince me why the stuff he was seeing on Fox News was the truth, and I responded by telling him why what he was being fed was bullshit—over and over again for years. You can see what I mean here:

https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2021/03/its-no-good-trying-to-talk-sense-to-fox.html

and here

https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/search?q=fox+news+addict 

It got to the point where I knew what was going to be in the next letter, so when one arrived I set it aside until I had nothing else to do but read and answer it. When I told him that was the reason I had delayed writing him for a couple months, he quit writing, which was just as well. That was end of any communications I have had with “family.”

My folks came from “butternut” western Pennsylvania, although even in “blue” states, all “rural” counties vote Republican. I don’t think they were any more prejudiced than the people generally of that “culture,” but I think it informed their “parenting” of me (Dad wasn’t my natural father, and I was a constant source of obviously misplaced “disappointment” for my mother, who once told me that she wished she “never let you be born”).

To be perfectly honest, they were a natural fit in their new surroundings in Tennessee, and represent the “typical” political and social culture in control there, which I want nothing to do with and despise. Of course they assume I am just naturally “angry” about life, as if that “explains” anything. I am angry about a lot of things, but not about "life."