-
Mark McNease On Topic: Cowgirls and Alpha Gomers
Enjoy my weekly Substack, Mark McNease On Topic. Subscribe HERE.
Slavery as a career path
Among the most appalling things I’ve heard in 65 years was the recent “curriculum” in Florida that requires history teachers include in their discussions of slavery that some slaves learned useful skills (like how to cut themselves down from a tree?). When I was in the 6th grade, attending a private school, we had to read books every summer. One of them was called ‘To Be a Slave,’ consisting entirely of the lives of slaves described by the slaves themselves. This book would surely be banned today in many states. Slavery was ugly, brutal, vicious, murderous, and demonic (defended with biblical scripture, as we can expect). The images included in the book were searing: men and women with deep scars on their backs from being whipped. Perhaps it taught them the skill of endurance? Embroidery? Surely they learned something they could parlay into a small business after emancipation.
-
This Week’s Mark McNease On Topic (Substack)
Click to subscribe to Mark McNease On Topic, a Substack original arriving every Monday
Well, it finally happened. Donald Trump was indicted, and not the kind of ‘nothing’s going to come of this’ indictment many of us thought was handed down in New York. This is some Espionage Act, serious prison time stuff, and it has left me … ambivalent.
As much as I loathe Trump (almost as much as I loathe DeSantis, and that’s more loathing than I can fit into a thousand Substacks), the idea of a former American president sitting in a prison cell still manages to shock my sensibilities. I felt no sense of joy, no thrill of revenge, when it happened. I felt like we were finally coming to the end of a grotesque tragedy America wrote, produced, and starred in for its own entertainment. American exceptionalism is all the rage, and what could be more exceptional than a trial-by-jury of the most catastrophic head of state we have ever had?
The only enjoyment I’m getting from this is knowing how absolutely out of their minds it’s making the right-wing nut-o-sphere. Their cries of weaponized justice and the criminalization of political opponents rings more than hollow, coming from people who chanted “lock her up” at Trump rallies, and who are currently passing vicious, cruel, draconian laws in Republican-run states in a brutal but doomed attempt to eradicate trans and queer people.
-
Mark on Topic: Subscriber Tree House – ‘Joyful Warriors’ and Cheerful Terrorists
The following is from my Wednesday ‘Subscriber Tree House’ edition of Mark on Topic (Substack). Subscribe here!
Happy Wednesday, Tree House friends! A couple things to relate today from the tin-cans-and-a-string news outlet.
One, I may take a short sabbatical from fiction writing. As much as I love making up worlds and the people who inhabit them, it’s also frequently frustrating. I sometimes suffer from a form of creative constipation, and that’s where I find myself this morning. But it does not mean I’ll be this way tomorrow. It’s likely that I’m just feeling over-extended, and one of those burners has to be put on low.
The subtitle today, ‘Joyful Warriors,’ comes from the name of an upcoming convention in Philadelphia being hosted by the Moms for Liberty kitchen-table terrorists with their massive dark money backing. You know Besty DeVoss is lurking in there somewhere, salivating at all the public education dollars she’ll be able to funnel into her Good Christian friends’ pockets as our educational system is destroyed. Knowledge and freedom are the wood, Moms for Liberty are the termites.
-
Now on Substack: Mark McNease On Topic
It’s a blog! It’s a newsletter! It’s a new adventure in writing!
Having just discovered Substack and all the great writers, journalists, thinkers and contemplatives offering up their intellectual property, I decided to jump right in. Mark McNease On Topic is the result. I’ll be examining something at least twice a week (gun rights, self-creation, the dangers of the unwoke, politics, culture). And on Fridays I’ll put out my Weekly Readlines news roundup.
While a lot of the writers on Substack are journalists or quasi-journalists offering paid subscriptions roughly the monthly cost of a cappuccino, mine will be free until further notice or until I have a much bigger subscription base. So why not sign up now and take this journey of discovery, recovery and misdirection with me!
Here’s my first official post from this morning (New World Disorder). Like a good blob of dough on a floured baking board, I expect to knead this out week by week until it’s something everyone in their wrong mind will want to get in their inbox. Yours, Mark.