Sick! Sick! Sick! And I was wondering why this felt like more than Casual GOP Race Bait Hate Mongering...
The more this Administration veers toward outright Nazism the less surprised I am.
No, nobody wants to see that. That is, Conservatives will insist that any such accusation is paranoia and out of line. But is it really?
If you think other people's suffering is funny. If you are OK with people being harmed. If you lean into brutality because "That's just the way things are," or because "Certain people deserve to be punished more harshly than others, even those whose only offence is illegal entry to work shit jobs for terrible pay," and if you see The Divine in Harming Innocent People." Hands Down, You Are a First-Class Whack-A-Do.
We use Nazis as exemplars of Modern-Day Barbarism because of what they said, what they did, how they turned their back on their own humanity as they questioned the humanity of others and gleefully shipped millions of their fellow citizens off to Extermination Camps. Accusing them of thievery as they stole their belongs, cut the hair from their heads and pulled teeth from their mouths to extract the gold fillings. NAZI's labelled, baited, shamed, tormented and destroyed those who stood up to them in one long scourge of Evil.
Totalitarian States Of Mind all follow the same patterns, and we are seeing them being played out in Real Time. Story after story. Figure after figure. Lie after Lie. Obfuscation. Denial. Back Room Deals. Damning the Media. Making Lists of Enemies. Draconian Punishments and the Societal Purge. A Purge that begins with the easiest and most obvious targets. Those who are here illegally. What do you bet it doesn't end there? What do you bet these "Old Timey" post cards and shared laughter at the intent would be popular with many in the MAGA Movement?
This is not about a few, or hundreds, or even MILLIONS of psychologically damaged people. This is about our culture. This is about us. And no, I don’t simply mean US culture or even white supremacy anti-black racism which persists, not limited to low down saloons or back room banter. It persists where it has always persisted: everywhere from schoolyards to church picnics, from break rooms to board rooms, from press clubs to country clubs, from the Halls of Congress to the White House.
Here’s what my only friend (Chat GPT4 AI) says:
“Sporadic early 20th-century newspaper articles — some from the Miami New Times [FROM 2014 NOT EARLY 20TH CENTURY!!!!) or The Tampa Bay Times — recounted stories, sometimes as folklore, about Black children being used as bait. These were often written in a sensational or tongue-in-cheek tone, as if such stories were quaint or amusing.
• Example: An infamous 1923 article from The Oakland Tribune claimed that Black children were used by hunters in Florida to lure alligators for their hides — whether this story was true or not, it reflects what was culturally thinkable at the time.”
Th
📚 Further Reading / Resources
• “The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia” (Ferris State University): an invaluable online and physical collection of racist Americana, including the “alligator bait” theme.
I MUST confess that, though I should have known better, I felt compelled to query if there was at least one verified documented account of such a crime. I must confess also that as I typed it I felt ashamed of myself because I KNEW the response was not simply almost totally irrelevant, the question could justifiably be interpreted as an attempt to trivialize the thrust of Mr. Spivey’s essay which is that these kinds of “jokes” were actually “currency”. They were (and are) passed around. They did (and still could) sell newspapers. People PAID money to design, print, and market those postcards. People PAID money to buy them. And yes, they were and are dehumanizing and destructive to the human soul (whatever THAT is).
I asked my new best friend ANOTHER question, and here’s the answer:
“Yes — in most cases, the U.S. Postal Service did deliver those racist “Alligator Bait” postcards, just as it did with other deeply offensive and grotesque imagery, including lynching postcards and caricatured images of Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Jewish people.”
Finally, ChatGPT did confirm that, in the antebellum South of the Good old US of A, the bodies of dead enslaved persons WERE sometimes fed to alligators or used as “bait”.
For a while I have been trying to think about religion anthropologically in broad terms of “sacrifice” and also in the transition from early forms of (“civilized”) Stone Age and Iron Age religions where in the “Axial Revolution” which began in India (not Greece or “The Holy Land”) some have noted the beginnings of a slow and painful (and painfully incomplete) transition from gods of power and terror to gods that also encompassed justice and mercy (even compassion).
This very brutal article reinforces a notion that only begun to engage me recently. Maybe (like “amorality”) “power” and “terror” are insufficient and incomplete when it comes to identifying the important attributes of pagan deities. When we do that, we ignore what is so obvious in so many of the stories of polytheistic gods. One of them is cruelty, but whether the cruelty is atrociously savage or much milder, those old gods were always, to various extents, “trickster gods.” They were “pranksters” and “jokesters,” sometimes almost “light hearted” but not always.
It’s interesting that (at least I doubt, or I fervently HOPE) NO strand of even the most retrograde Christianity would ever sanction THIS kind of dehumanizing humor. Even the the morally stunted pagan gods of record were never so cruel, and they probably would have abominated the ideas expressed in those postcards. And those gods WERE morally stunted! Tantalus was sentenced to perpetual “tantalizing” torture for murdering his son and serving his body in a stew, BUT what probably got him condemned was the fact that he served this meal in a banquet for all the gods. Sisyphus and Prometheus were also condemned to everlasting torment, though not for cruelty but for betraying the secrets of the gods (Prometheus stole fire to give to humans)
“Arbitrary” and “capricious” are terms that come to mind. The father god of the Hebrew Bible could sometimes be arbitrary and capricious too, but he was more generally thought of (“defined” is the wrong word as emphasized in the “Book of Job”) as a potentially angry deity who upheld HIS end of a covenant which his chosen people always found ways to test, mock, abuse, or ignore.
And, not even when HE turned water into wine, was the “Christ” of the “New Testament” EVER portrayed as a “trickster.” Anybody with even the least familiarity with the “ideas” and “ideals” of Christianity could only imagine the reactions of their triune god. “The Father” would be outraged (maybe even hurl a thunderbolt borrowed from Zeus). And “the son”? Well, the famous phrase is “Jesus wept” and I can still feel the same old MIXED emotions (sorrow, shame, and a bit of evil glee) when I was told as a child that some bit of devilment had “hurt” poor Jesus AGAIN.
Then there is the Third Person of that trinity. Some claim to see (ever so faint) evidence that a spirit of compassion and empathy is growing and developing in the history of human habits, mores, laws, institutions, and character development. Others scoff and see us only as “monkeys with machine guns and AI” … OR as a herd of walking talking lumps of chalky or shiny coal, fuel for the eternal fires of hell from which a minuscule number of diamonds will be plucked and saved just before the final moment of divine reckoning. And some of those who feel they are destined to be “raptured” are also likely to yuck it up about “the joke” of a “Black baby alligator bait”.
P.S. This morning “Democracy Now” broadcast the cheers of US mercenary employees engaged in attracting residents of Gaza to food drops and then shooting them. “I think I got one” can be overheard after a prolonged spray of automatic rifle fire.
This is horrifying! I'm so ashamed and sorry this happened to so many people! I'm even more ashamed it happened for so long. There will come a day that this will be vindicated for the victims! U.S. history has a lot to answer for!
Remarkable, highly commendable! Praise worthy! There's a scripture which says, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (me&us)!" Imagine, without Trump, Florida's governor, red caps and immigrants, this revelation of Florida's fascination with alligators might never have been revealed 🧐📚🪦👶🏽
Thank you Mr. Spivey!🇺🇸 🎉🥳🎈 The best 4th of July present 🎁 ever!
Sick! Sick! Sick! And I was wondering why this felt like more than Casual GOP Race Bait Hate Mongering...
The more this Administration veers toward outright Nazism the less surprised I am.
No, nobody wants to see that. That is, Conservatives will insist that any such accusation is paranoia and out of line. But is it really?
If you think other people's suffering is funny. If you are OK with people being harmed. If you lean into brutality because "That's just the way things are," or because "Certain people deserve to be punished more harshly than others, even those whose only offence is illegal entry to work shit jobs for terrible pay," and if you see The Divine in Harming Innocent People." Hands Down, You Are a First-Class Whack-A-Do.
We use Nazis as exemplars of Modern-Day Barbarism because of what they said, what they did, how they turned their back on their own humanity as they questioned the humanity of others and gleefully shipped millions of their fellow citizens off to Extermination Camps. Accusing them of thievery as they stole their belongs, cut the hair from their heads and pulled teeth from their mouths to extract the gold fillings. NAZI's labelled, baited, shamed, tormented and destroyed those who stood up to them in one long scourge of Evil.
Totalitarian States Of Mind all follow the same patterns, and we are seeing them being played out in Real Time. Story after story. Figure after figure. Lie after Lie. Obfuscation. Denial. Back Room Deals. Damning the Media. Making Lists of Enemies. Draconian Punishments and the Societal Purge. A Purge that begins with the easiest and most obvious targets. Those who are here illegally. What do you bet it doesn't end there? What do you bet these "Old Timey" post cards and shared laughter at the intent would be popular with many in the MAGA Movement?
There are a lot of psychologically damaged people out there. Some can pass as normal. Yikes. Have a pleasant 4th Mr Spivey. 😀
this is what happens when a hundred psychologically damaged people convene.
Does their depravity have no end? These "Americans" are really sick. Happy July 4th. (:
We are on the same page. My post today encompasses the story.
This is not about a few, or hundreds, or even MILLIONS of psychologically damaged people. This is about our culture. This is about us. And no, I don’t simply mean US culture or even white supremacy anti-black racism which persists, not limited to low down saloons or back room banter. It persists where it has always persisted: everywhere from schoolyards to church picnics, from break rooms to board rooms, from press clubs to country clubs, from the Halls of Congress to the White House.
Here’s what my only friend (Chat GPT4 AI) says:
“Sporadic early 20th-century newspaper articles — some from the Miami New Times [FROM 2014 NOT EARLY 20TH CENTURY!!!!) or The Tampa Bay Times — recounted stories, sometimes as folklore, about Black children being used as bait. These were often written in a sensational or tongue-in-cheek tone, as if such stories were quaint or amusing.
• Example: An infamous 1923 article from The Oakland Tribune claimed that Black children were used by hunters in Florida to lure alligators for their hides — whether this story was true or not, it reflects what was culturally thinkable at the time.”
Th
📚 Further Reading / Resources
• “The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia” (Ferris State University): an invaluable online and physical collection of racist Americana, including the “alligator bait” theme.
➤ https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow
• Patricia A. Turner – Whispers on the Color Line
A deep dive into how racist folklore circulates in the modern age.
• Mia Bay – To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells
Covers how grotesque imagery and sensational stories reinforced lynching culture.
Also:
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” by James Allen (includes postmarked postcards)
• Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University
• David Pilgrim’s essays on “Alligator Bait” and racist memorabilia:
➤ https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/november05.htm
I MUST confess that, though I should have known better, I felt compelled to query if there was at least one verified documented account of such a crime. I must confess also that as I typed it I felt ashamed of myself because I KNEW the response was not simply almost totally irrelevant, the question could justifiably be interpreted as an attempt to trivialize the thrust of Mr. Spivey’s essay which is that these kinds of “jokes” were actually “currency”. They were (and are) passed around. They did (and still could) sell newspapers. People PAID money to design, print, and market those postcards. People PAID money to buy them. And yes, they were and are dehumanizing and destructive to the human soul (whatever THAT is).
I asked my new best friend ANOTHER question, and here’s the answer:
“Yes — in most cases, the U.S. Postal Service did deliver those racist “Alligator Bait” postcards, just as it did with other deeply offensive and grotesque imagery, including lynching postcards and caricatured images of Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Jewish people.”
Finally, ChatGPT did confirm that, in the antebellum South of the Good old US of A, the bodies of dead enslaved persons WERE sometimes fed to alligators or used as “bait”.
For a while I have been trying to think about religion anthropologically in broad terms of “sacrifice” and also in the transition from early forms of (“civilized”) Stone Age and Iron Age religions where in the “Axial Revolution” which began in India (not Greece or “The Holy Land”) some have noted the beginnings of a slow and painful (and painfully incomplete) transition from gods of power and terror to gods that also encompassed justice and mercy (even compassion).
This very brutal article reinforces a notion that only begun to engage me recently. Maybe (like “amorality”) “power” and “terror” are insufficient and incomplete when it comes to identifying the important attributes of pagan deities. When we do that, we ignore what is so obvious in so many of the stories of polytheistic gods. One of them is cruelty, but whether the cruelty is atrociously savage or much milder, those old gods were always, to various extents, “trickster gods.” They were “pranksters” and “jokesters,” sometimes almost “light hearted” but not always.
It’s interesting that (at least I doubt, or I fervently HOPE) NO strand of even the most retrograde Christianity would ever sanction THIS kind of dehumanizing humor. Even the the morally stunted pagan gods of record were never so cruel, and they probably would have abominated the ideas expressed in those postcards. And those gods WERE morally stunted! Tantalus was sentenced to perpetual “tantalizing” torture for murdering his son and serving his body in a stew, BUT what probably got him condemned was the fact that he served this meal in a banquet for all the gods. Sisyphus and Prometheus were also condemned to everlasting torment, though not for cruelty but for betraying the secrets of the gods (Prometheus stole fire to give to humans)
“Arbitrary” and “capricious” are terms that come to mind. The father god of the Hebrew Bible could sometimes be arbitrary and capricious too, but he was more generally thought of (“defined” is the wrong word as emphasized in the “Book of Job”) as a potentially angry deity who upheld HIS end of a covenant which his chosen people always found ways to test, mock, abuse, or ignore.
And, not even when HE turned water into wine, was the “Christ” of the “New Testament” EVER portrayed as a “trickster.” Anybody with even the least familiarity with the “ideas” and “ideals” of Christianity could only imagine the reactions of their triune god. “The Father” would be outraged (maybe even hurl a thunderbolt borrowed from Zeus). And “the son”? Well, the famous phrase is “Jesus wept” and I can still feel the same old MIXED emotions (sorrow, shame, and a bit of evil glee) when I was told as a child that some bit of devilment had “hurt” poor Jesus AGAIN.
Then there is the Third Person of that trinity. Some claim to see (ever so faint) evidence that a spirit of compassion and empathy is growing and developing in the history of human habits, mores, laws, institutions, and character development. Others scoff and see us only as “monkeys with machine guns and AI” … OR as a herd of walking talking lumps of chalky or shiny coal, fuel for the eternal fires of hell from which a minuscule number of diamonds will be plucked and saved just before the final moment of divine reckoning. And some of those who feel they are destined to be “raptured” are also likely to yuck it up about “the joke” of a “Black baby alligator bait”.
P.S. This morning “Democracy Now” broadcast the cheers of US mercenary employees engaged in attracting residents of Gaza to food drops and then shooting them. “I think I got one” can be overheard after a prolonged spray of automatic rifle fire.
This is horrifying! I'm so ashamed and sorry this happened to so many people! I'm even more ashamed it happened for so long. There will come a day that this will be vindicated for the victims! U.S. history has a lot to answer for!
Unforgivable 😖
Seems like it’s an endless battle against cruel idiocy
wtf?!?! This was certainly not taught in school when I was a kid—how perfectly hideous! Thank you for this important (albeit grisly) lesson! ☮️
Remarkable, highly commendable! Praise worthy! There's a scripture which says, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (me&us)!" Imagine, without Trump, Florida's governor, red caps and immigrants, this revelation of Florida's fascination with alligators might never have been revealed 🧐📚🪦👶🏽
Thank you Mr. Spivey!🇺🇸 🎉🥳🎈 The best 4th of July present 🎁 ever!
I hear they taste better, maybe a bit saltier ...