Tag Archives: Civil War

Andersonville

dictionary with letter A

Andersonville: (n) a village in southwestern Georgia that was the site of a large and infamous Confederate prison camp during the Civil War.

The Civil War was our holocaust.

Actually, little will be achieved in this country until we universally accept this statement as true.

The Civil War is when we took a race of people, segregated them, mistreated them and then ended up fighting a war which included in its pursuits the decision to continue that same practice indiscriminately.

We murdered, created new weapons to increase the casualties and took brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers and placed them at odds with each other, continually making a “Sophie’s Choice” within the boundaries of households.

  • It was horrific.
  • It was unnecessary.
  • It was short-sighted.

And when you add in the treatment given to fellow-Americans as prisoners of war–on both sides–you have almost an identical parallel to many of the atrocities that were perpetuated in Nazi Germany.

It is our humiliation.

It is a war we should study because we need to make sure that in our present dealings, that none of the ignorance that brought about the massacre and slaughter can be welcomed again.

We need to put away all the trumpets, banners and paraphernalia from that conflict into a trunk and bury it in the ground with a ceremony of repentance.

There is nothing from that period of time that is worthy of our praise, let alone our consideration.

I admire the German people because they look on the horror of their own recent history and refuse to repeat it–by making sure the only reference to it is an apology.

To live in a country that still refers to “Yankees and “Rebs,” “North and South,” “Union and Confederate” with a sense of regional pride is an abomination to our belief in all men being created equal.

The Andersonville prison was a location where the anger, frustration and evil that had been perpetuated for three centuries was brought to bear and turned into a living hell.

But the Civil War was not noble.

It was not good.

It was not brave.

It is our holocaust–and because it is, we should reverence those who suffered and pledge to never repeat such foolish iniquity again.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Almost

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Almost: (adv.) not quite or very nearly: e.g. he almost knocked Georgina over

I don’t want to be cynical but I must point out that we have become the Almost States of America.

“Almost” is our new favorite word. It used to be a compound word — “fries-with-that.” But now, we have embraced the message of emotional anemia, spiritual weakness, mental denseness and physical laziness.

May I give my definition of “almost?”

  • It is the universal certificate given for trying.
  • It is the party thrown for a victory that never arrived.
  • It is the hug provided for losers.
  • It is the hand grenade that never exploded.
  • It is the swimming pool without water.
  • It is the kiss on the cheek.
  • It is the “let’s be friends” in the vernacular.
  • It is the pat on the back instead of the vigorous thump.
  • It is the reassurance we give one another, that most of the time it is the lot of human beings to see the finish line and pull over well short, for a McDouble.

I am guilty of failing, but I have forbidden my addicted, crack-whore soul from going down the path to the pusher of inadequacy and getting my fix of blandness.

Yes, I am prepared to fail without being told that I tried.

I want to look at the pile of stink I’ve left behind in my endeavors without insisting that it’ll be good fertilizer for the future.

I want to admit that my “almost” was not only not good enough, but should be forgotten as quickly as possible, in a flurry of sweat-drenched training.

  • We almost have a President.
  • We almost have a Congress.
  • We almost have progress.
  • We almost have racial equality.
  • We almost have an educational system.
  • We almost have a solution for poverty.
  • We almost have drug addiction on the run.
  • We almost have figured out gun control.
  • We almost have a church.
  • We almost have entertainment.
  • We almost have excellence.
  • We almost have almost of what we need, without having almost of what it will take to do almost everything.

Don’t tell me I tried. Don’t tell me I almost got it. Let me fail. Let me suffer.

Let me rise from my ashes  … and do better.

The Almost States of America could never have won the Civil War. We could never have defeated Hitler. And we certainly would never have landed a man on the moon.

If we’re not careful, hundreds and hundreds of years from now we will be remembered like ancient Athens–a society that tried democracy … and almost pulled it off.

 

Alienate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alienate:(v) cause someone to feel isolated or estranged: e.g. an urban environment that would alienate its inhabitants

Some words are symbiotic twins. (Are the words “symbiotic” and “twins” redundant? I’ll have to look that up.) Anyway, they work together to create a good or to create the potential for evil.

You will never need to alienate another human being as long as you’re willing to confront the mediocre in your life.

For instance, if you run across people who are better than you at some task, rather than trying to attack their acumen, you evolve and learn from them. If you accept the mediocre in your life, it becomes necessary to foster a disgruntled attitude and discover something unseemly about your competition.

All prejudice is grounded in a sense of mediocrity. I will tell you, if the white people in the South prior to the Civil War had raised offspring who could work the fields, toiling with the same diligence as the Africans, they wouldn’t have felt the need to alienate the hostages as inferior, but instead, would have joined them, shoulder to shoulder, pursuing their cotton-picking minds.

I know when I start becoming critical of others, it is a warning sign that I’ve accepted mediocre behavior, and because some strangers have dared to be superior to me, I begin to find fault and separate them from my field of play and stable of friends.

We do it in politics. We certainly do it in religion. We do it in corporations, by trying to spread rumors about another company’s hiring practices instead of allowing for the product itself to find place in the market.

Mediocre and alienate are twins.

If you are alienating somebody from your life right now, it’s because you’ve accepted some sort of mediocre attitude as normal. And if you’re mediocre, you will eventually need to alienate people who dare to excel.

It’s why in the United States it is more popular to talk about our uniqueness than it is to review our plans and critique our progress. When the stats and facts about our world placement in education, health care and even personal relationships is measured against other countries, we are not always found at the top. So this demands that we alienate. Some of our favorite terms:

  • third world
  • backward
  • non-Democratic
  • and ignorant

Great people don’t have to criticize anyone. They just evolve towards the new understanding instead of staying entrenched in tradition.

When you get rid of mediocre, you no longer feel the need to alienate other people. When you’re alienating people, it’s always a sign of some mediocre part of you trying to justify … blah.

 

Abscise

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abscise: v. to cut off or away.

The problem with cutting is that it’s always done too quickly, with an impetuous disregard. We are so determined to divide some piece of a whole into parts that we snip away with careless abandon, leaving a jagged edge.

Oh, yes–I encounter the frayed ends every single day of my life. People are finding themselves divided by careless leaders and causes, determined to create animosity instead of finding a way to generate a sense of union.

It’s all over our country.

The Mason Dixon line is not a smooth pathway that differentiates between “Northern and Southern thinking,” but rather, a deep-rooted tear in the fabric of our nation, continuing a verbal Civil War–between those who feel progressive and those loyal to a former time.

Even in the medical field of surgery, cutting is a last resort. It is what the doctor chooses to do when the combination of medications and the human immune system fail to unite to dispel the infection.

Is it possible for us to join forces to vomit the evil from our thoughts as a nation instead of continuing to cut our flesh like some frustrated teenage girl, aggravated by her neurotic insecurity? I don’t know.

But what I have decided is to never be part of the abscising of the “Body Americana” merely to demonstrate my power and prowess. I am not better without you. I am not self-sufficient. I cannot be ripped from the lineage of my fellow-citizens and expect to maintain the integrity of my birthright and freedom.

I cannot decry you of your rights and sleep at night, content in my own. I cannot make fun of you because you fail to recognize my obvious superiority and still keep my intelligence intact.

There are people who are proud of the fact that they stand up for their cause by tearing apart everything around them. Historically, they have been called ignorant, traitors, fools and backward thinking. They will be again.

I offer no malice to them whatsoever. But I also refuse to join their mob.

I plan on doing no abscising.  I am walking around my country with a needle and thread, looking for ways to repair the breach.

Abolish

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abolish:   v. to formally put an end to a system, practice or institution

That’s a strong word. Matter of fact, as I sat down and thought about it, the only “abolish” I ever heard of was slavery.

  • I personally would like to abolish fat grams.
  • I would like to abolish calories.
  • I would like to abolish ignorance that tries to pass itself off as comedy.
  • I would like to abolish about seventy-eight pounds off my body.
  • I would like to abolish some of the decisions made by my children in the name of free choice.
  • I would like to abolish some of the choices made by me when I was childish, in the pursuit of some hippie philosophy.
  • I would like to abolish the parliamentary procedure which seeps into our grown-up world and makes us feel like we’re really adult but ends up just halting progress.
  • I would like to abolish political parties so that individual candidates could run, and since we didn’t already know the talking points, we would have to listen to what they had to say.

But none of those are as strong as abolishing slavery was.

How about this one?

I would like to abolish all the foolhardy people who are talking about legalizing mind-altering drugs simply based on economic convenience, with no aforethought about what might cause some young person to become involved with these deadly chemicals, lending themselves to other even more deadly chemicals.

I guess there are a lot of things I’d like to abolish. But the problem with “abolish” is that you find out that merely stating your case is not enough, and as in the American Civil War, you end up squaring off and fighting to the death over the issue.

I’m not sure what I’m willing to die for. Certainly not abolishing fat grams (although the little boogers probably have a plan for MY demise).

Abolish is a strong word. I guess instead of abolish, I would just like to hear some intelligent dialogue on many of the issues of our day instead of hearing pundits portray their platform as they pontificate their principle.

Yes, I would like to hear an intelligent conversation about abortion, capital punishment, civil rights, global warming and nuclear proliferation, without being handed a pamphlet listing the ten reasons why the other side is anti-American.

It was a good thing to abolish slavery.

Who knows? Maybe it would be a good thing to abolish calories. But if you stand up to abolish something, you’d better be ready to fight.

That’s scary crap.