A Chicken Is Not Pillage

Communism Built Our Icons!

So, I finally got to visit Mount Rushmore.  I've kind of avoided it in the past because I thought it was only the place where fat midwestern family types took their MickeyD's swilling fat kids to instill patriotism and an understanding of the Pledge of Alligience.  Okay, so it is kinda that.  It's also really cool.  It is one helluva sculpture.  From the turnout about a half a mile away from the parking area, it looks small.  From the viewing areas, it really isn't.   In real life, one can see the veins of granite which run through the sculpture and give it an animation I can't adequately describe.  This effort is impressive, to say the least.  And it was built by the father of modern communism.

There it is.  A bust of the Mount Rushmore builder.    That's Vladimir Lenin.   Look at it.  Don't believe me? 

 

 

 

How 'bout this?     That's obviously Vladimir Lenin, the father of modern communism.  There are two busts celebrating his will to engage the effort of the people in a strife to create the worker's story.  Rushmore was built with the people's money in celebration of the people's nation.  Of course that's Lenin.

 

Okay, maybe not.  But let's get real here.  Monuments like Mount Rushmore were built as a communal celebration of our national will, with national money and immigrant labor.  It is truly an icon of our will to be socialist when it fills us with pride to be so.  It's beautiful, and that I would never deny.  It did fill me with patriotic spirit.  It is a testament, a monument, to what people can achieve when they work together to build something grand.

 I fear that we've lost our way, on that score.

Quick Hits From The Trip To NN11

1)  Any rightwing idiot who wishes to promote the failed meme that Democratic/liberal women are inferior to Republicant woman because they aren't as attractive has obviously never attended Netroots Nation.

2)  Your tax dollars are paying for South Dakota to post federal Interstate signs promoting the home and birthplace of Republicant Senator John  Thune.  Don't believe me?  Drive through South Dakota.

3)  It may have only been the profusion of water, but anyone who still wishes to convince me that driving across North Dakota is a misery has never driven across South Dakota, and certainly never traveled between Gillette and Sheridan, WY.

$)  The breakout panel on messaging told me that no one actually reads beyond the 3rd bullet point.  Does it help if the 4th is a sign of money?

5)  Colorado drivers are m0re annoying than Billings drivers, and that's saying something.

6)  Marcy Wheeler is one helluva writer, but not much of a public speaker.  No insult intended.

7)  It's farther from Bozeman to the Montana eastern border than it is across North or South Dakota.  Few people from the East seem capable of grasping that idea of space.

8)  Howard Dean is dynamic.  He's also a lot shorter than I thought he would be.  His brother Joe is totally kick-ass.

9)  Darcy Burner rocks my world.

10)  I now truly believe that the western part of any Western state is the 'pretty part'.  And Rapid City, SoDak, is such a sweet little town.

11)  The Black Hills are not hills.  They are actually mountains, and good god how I was thankful for that after being in the flatlands.

More to come, I'm certain, as this all sinks in.