The Power of Babble Too: My Ante Is A Hero ...

Hello Folks,

I finally made it to the old mission after making a discovery and then to confirm something I saw at the mission I went to the former presidio in town ... let me retrace my steps ...

I have noticed lately and I am sure you have too, that I am moving quite freely about town with no interference ... I had assumed that my additional stealth was cloaking me from the 'watcher' .... not true ... it's tequila ... I have come to the conclusion that 2 or 3 margaritas a day provides enough cloaking power that I can move about the town at will ... but as usual there is a direct correlation between mobility, the number of margaritas and cloaking power ... I am still trying to titrate that ...

So after 2 margaritas for breakfast, I took the trolley to the old mission ... an imposing facade and next to a lovely park where artists were rendering what they were seeing in water colors ... 'en plein aire'.

Now this mission and the others between LA and SF were there for two purposes ... to provide a stop along the way for the missionaries and their brethern as they moved up and down the coast ... but their main purpose was in the conversion of the Indians from their natural, holistic way of living to more mercantile, screw your brother, white, old testament style 'eye for an eye' ...in other words they were bringing Christianity to them ....

The conversion process was not a gentle one ... it involved physical abuse ... and a number of the Spanish citizens, local Mexicans and the Indians themselves were offended and frightened by what was taking place ...

In parallel to this, the Spanish temporal authorities were not much better; ruling with an iron fist and a clear objective .... to use the local Indians and Mexicans to achieve their political and material objectives ... again using physical abuse and god and man's law ...distorted to achieve these objectives ... just hold those thoughts ...

As I walked through the mission ... I had a sense of deja vu ... yes ... all over again ... I had never been there before but I had seen something like it ... and then it dawned on me ... when people are oppressed they will naturally look for and find a hero .... one that through small acts of anarchy and social disobedience, 'speak for the people' ... everything I saw in the old mission reminded me of Don Diego .... yes .... Zorro. WTF Zorro has to do with me and the 'watcher' I have no idea ... maybe this was just me ...

The only way to confirm this was go to the presidio in town and see if I saw and felt the same way ... but ... I needed more cloaking so I repaired to La Playa Azul Cafe ... just across the street from the presidio ... how convenient ... soon I was ready ... and through the presidio I went ... yes, the same feeling .. but even more persistent.

There was a special exhibit within the presidio on the local Japanese population in Santa Barbara and how they were unceremoniously and forcefully moved from their homes in 1942 ... because of the paranoia in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor ... moved eventually to Manzanar ... in other words repeating the treatment visited upon the Indians by the missionaries and the Spanish governors ... 175 years later .... the Japanese had no hero ... they accepted their fate with an equanimity that none of us understood then ... or now ....

This shameful practice was carried out in Canada as well ... recently both governments have apologized ... but it's happening again today ... it's happening with the US attitudes to Muslims in the wake of 9/11 ... and we are very small steps away from a McCarthy style 'muslim hunter' ... and this has started with people questioning Obama's birth certificate and his African roots ... unless this is pushed back vigorously, it will gain traction .... and a sad part of history will once again repeat itself.

We need a hero ... just like the natives and the Japanese ... that hero is out there ... and it is each and every one of us ... we owe it to ourselves to be well read and informed and to be ready to act at the ballot box to ensure we get the law makers we deserve ... only in this way will prevent right wing fundamentalist nonsense, claiming to be informed by the bible, from ruling the day ....

I left the presidio feeling a need to do something .... I got my Kindle reader .... downloaded Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and started to read ...