Free State of Jones

I did not choose this movie.....just asked which movie I could see when I got there. I could have seen a fish cartoon, or this movie. It was rather depressing. As miserable as I have been for the last two days in the panhandle, this movie fricking felt like it was filmed on my property in Santa Rosa County, and all the extras were neighbors......I need to go to the islands where the cool river water snakes between the cool forest and meadows. Where people were not slaves, and where people who settled the area were from New England where the abolishinist movement started.......the most depressing thing is people who are in poverty still look for scapegoats, that the wealthy still exploit, that to keep power among the corrupt it was necessary to restrict the vote, and a standing army drained citizens of their substance.....there are solutions, but sometimes it is just better to get in the car and realize that god sometimes does curse a region, that maybe hurricanes are like sorbet to clear God's palate because he is so disgusted with what he created.......in some of the most beautiful land and beaches in the world.....it is simply a hostile environment for civilization. It is dog eat dog and exploitation and manipulation.......and that is just the weather people trying to describe this hell.......so many good people, such beauty, but overpowered by a hostile evil environment.

I honestly thought that was positive, and thank you Mr. Studer for trying to civilize the barbarians.......If I wanted to get negative, I could have told you about my experience at the Milton MacDonalds yesterday.......but why bother it is just so pervasive and so consistent.....how many rotten apples do you have to eat out of bushel before you realize the bushel is irreparably damaged and that you are only fooling yourself that there can be redemption.

In regard to going home and not coming back.....I am beginning to think I died last year and this is hell......kind of like groundhog day.....over and over again the same old story. I played some poker today, and eight of the ten players were ex military. Had a nice conversation with a pilot who had his act together and is now working at Delta, but some of the younger people were just so painfully tedious......This one young man wanted to impress all the old guys about the best war movies and his declaration that he is a movie expert. An old guy who was a Viet Nam vet and was a pilot with the Navy, quietly asked this kid if he had ever seen the Guns of Navarone.....he said...whats that......the old guy says......have you seen the godfather movies......he answers......no.....nothing good came before 1980, this Australian immediately speaks up.....you are an idiot.......kind of summarized three or four folks who blabbed away....probably the most tedious afternoon of poker.....but I am dead.....and this is hell.

I couldn't agree w/ you more Oatie. It's the most ignorant and backwoods place besides Alabama that I've ever lived in and that's where you're from so you should feel right at home. God,guns the military and all kinds of racists.

2seaoat wrote:I honestly thought that was positive

Are you KIDDING us???  I'd hate to see what negative would look like coming out of your mouth, Sea.

As for the very unpleasant heat and humidity, you came to the Florida Panhandle in July, what did you expect?  It's not hell; it's just the Deep South that you apparently love only when conditions are exactly to your liking. And did you forget about climate change?  Guess what?  It's making things hotter.  So again I ask: what did you expect?

I know you're not feeling well or strong and that this heat has to be particularly enervating for you, but that's not a great excuse to wax all nasty and negative about our home area.  Please.  

I find myself wondering tonight:  why don't you just sell your real estate holdings here and be done with it?  Seriously.

Yes, by all means go on back to your beloved islands -- but I'm guessing you don't spend much time out there when the snow and ice and frozen knife-edged winds of winter arrive.  That must be when hell freezes over.

Oh -- but I thought I was being positive.   Ha.

2seaoat wrote:.....but I am dead.....and this is hell.

Sounds like a quote from Stephen King's The Stand.

It's the most ignorant and backwoods place besides Alabama


It just keeps getting worse, then I wake up thinking yesterday was a fluke, and my worst thoughts are confirmed over and over again. I mean the whole Orwellian doublethink which is displayed here at times.....horrible Algae on the most beautiful beach is called June Grass which is algae not grass, where on the Washington Pacific coast sea grass is real salt water grass which helps coastal erosion,yet tourists are led to believe that the waters are not fouled but grass.

I mean I try to watch scores on local sports, and baseball at the major league level is simply not covered. I saw a couple scores the other day, and some discussion of the Cub's shortstop, and then all I heard at the poker table was talk about the college world series and some small school called coastal something, and everybody talked about how they have not followed the Atlanta Braves since the late 1990s......I mean it is like a Stephen King horror flick as the culture is bizarre. Then like a fool I am not more selective and go see a movie which has historical context about the hateful culture. It is overwhelming......but I wish it was just about my health and lack of strength......sometimes you have to quit fooling yourself. Sometimes you have to be truthful and realize that politicians who fight to be the most conservative are not crazies, but actually are indicative of the culture.

I asked my wife, how can an area which has so much military which has people across the nation coming here with diversity, different educational experiences, and ethnicity produce such mind numbing consistent politics. It is funny how Linda hit on the rest of our conversation.....sell everything and just withdraw from the culture shock........it is still on the table. Armpit seems harsh when there as so many good people, but the historical context, the harsh environment, and the mind numbing idiocy have us discussing the very thing you pointed out.

Sell out, pack it up, and leave. You only came here to make money off the beach, got eat up with taxes and a hurricane, and now you continue to try to make money off the folks you loathe.

Go home.

I am not nor ever been a carpetbagger, or made money in Florida. I simply came to the place my family had been coming to from Birmingham since the 1930s, and did some building which is what I do. I chose to live here because it reminded me of my youth where people were like my childhood, but the reality is that the panhandle has become a very harsh environment, where the bay is full of mercury, the waters fouled where people try to call algae grass, and do not want to describe the nutrients which feed those nutrients. Where the once beautiful white beaches have this brown coarse sand being pumped to cover the beaches to protect huge condo projects which now fill the beach with people who want to exclude the public. Where this nation as a whole is dragged down to fascism where the historical racism has an entire region believing our nation begins and ends with the second amendment because the government is going to attack citizens, or protect the rights of citizens and actually mandate laws to insure the same. Where Matthew 6 correctly identifies those who stand and pray the loudest while doing horrible things. Where militarization is a jobs bill and almost everybody has some connection to the military......what happen to 90 percent of this great nation at the time of our revolution living simple agrarian lives not on the government teat. Where America was filled with an open door welcoming the people of the world to live in freedom and opportunity. Not a closed society so xenophobic that they approve of identity cards, restrictions on voter access, gerrymander a democracy like they created apprentice programs after slavery which bypassed the law and required the military reconstruction.

No of course you would render my repulsion of this evil culture as an invasion of a Yankee, or worse a money grubber. Where is the American culture? At least the comfort level in this hell is accurate and can be measured. If only you could put a gage on the hate, fear, and lack of education which has this beautiful natural area fouled as people take pride in gas guzzling pick up trucks, and want to make America strong again, and think global climate change is a democrat thing.........up is down......in is out.....and then I wake up Friday morning and start to do it over again......Groundhog day in hell, with little hope that the culture can change, that the environment will be protected, and justice and equality will grace this nation.....and now we face a fascist as president, like a tropical storm passing over the SEC states and growing into a cat 5 hurricane, the pain and suffering continues and like the child who simply says to the king........but you are naked and are not wearing clothes, folks were aghast at the child, rather than admitting the truth.....the King stood before the world bare butt naked.

Black people being shot like dogs and a nation which want more security, more military to invade and kill innocents across the middle east as the results are hundreds of thousands of innocents bombed by the military which is not defending America but providing welfare and a job program for an entire region which through these foul politics has military base after military base choking the American economy. I have played poker all over America and there are about 1% of Americans who are veterans or active military, but I sat at a poker table where it was 80%.....from high school to the military and then back again.......no concept of what this military has done to civilians......only concerned to dedicate I 65 to the "war on terrorism", and Donald Trump has a minister introducing him in Pensacola.......where he blew away conservative republican opponents. I guess I have reached the point that nobody gives a chit about good vs evil, or just simple aspirations of treating others as you would want to be treated.......to sit back and pretend is cowardly, and getting unanimous disdain from participants on a forum......because the truth is spoken.......oh well.....I will not be here that much longer anyway. Just utter disgust is an understatement......machine guns and killing unarmed black men where folks want to keep blaming the victims......hell could never be this bad.

When you played poker with the Military guys, why did you not rant on them how big a piece of shit they were for being part of the destruction of America?  Or may Oats really doesn’t have to balls to tell a vet or active Military that to their face?

more military to invade and kill innocents across the middle east as the results are hundreds of thousands of innocents bombed by the military which is not defending America but providing welfare and a job program for an entire region which through these foul politics has military base after military base choking the American economy

Actually, I did silence the table. They were talking about how awful government is and the TSA. How they actually remove agricultural items and had the audacity to take some seeds from his suitcase, where he did not declare the agricultural product. I simply said after ten minutes of listening to this whine about government where 80% were teat suckers that I always keep my seeds with my heroin and the government has never found the seeds. The table got absolutely silent as every person there understood I had just told them to go f' themselves and their f'ing governmental rants, and then the dealer just burst out laughing and could not stop laughing for a minute, because she is forced to listen to this dribble day in and day out. The table remained pretty silent after my comment, and I was surprised the message took.......and Hallmark.....like I care about who respects a coward who says nice things to people, and does not speak the truth. My wife said it best.......who would respect anybody who does not defend their home and would attack you for your criticism. I respect you for defending this mess, you are a good man and at least have the integrity to take me on, but I am done with diplomacy, I am done with finding the politics of the panhandle as edible, and most of all I am done with the systematic hate which has allowed a fascist to become a presidential candidate because old people want to go back to an imaginary time where Mayberry actually was a good place rather than the horrible reality of de jure hate. I will be leaving soon enough.

I was a child and loved those who systematically took rights away from other people. I just wish I went and saw the damn fish movie Dora.....because this damn movie seems like it was filmed in the Panhandle and not 1863 Mississippi......I get Hollywood, puffing and selling tickets, but biggest terrorist in our history wore white robes and killed black folks, yet today we see black folks getting murdered, and we simply turn the page......and ignore the hate and systemic attacks on America with this fascism.....no to defend fascism has no honor and to be shunned like when I was a child and my brother and I continued to swim in a public pool in North Birmingham......I get the routine.....been there done that.....I will make no more excuses, I will try to be civil, but I am in hell and have died, and I see no end to this nightmare which is engulfing America. We need people of good moral character to say enough, and work to make this country fair economically and allow every citizen the rights envisioned by our founding fathers......go see the fricking movie and then tell me about hate and what I have experienced and observed in my life.....Lucifer please turn up the heat.....I heard toasted Seaoats are tasty.

Hate is for young men...  I am a old man.....  Everyday I am reminded how short and fragile life is.  If I thought for a millisecond i could change things, I would.  Fact is I cant.   I can only lead my example, however poor that might be. I am slowly  watching something as dear to me as life its self being taken away from me.  The world that I was born into has been fucked up as long as I have been alive.  I choose not to see the evil and hate that seems to consume some people.  I guess it is very selfish for me to do so.  But any other way would drive me back to insanity.  I can only try to focus on the beauty and small things that make my life worth while.

No pity or sad.....I personally have never been happier, but I am angry that time is being wasted by slight of hand as we continue to be given excuses why we cannot change politics for the better. Never has a culture had so much and been so unhappy and destructive to our environment or to people around the world and here.....I have been house bound today because it is an oven in this hell hole. I have two rental home air conditioners which have failed as one just froze up trying to keep up, yet we have people denying that this planet is warming up and we should mine more coal, drill more off shore, get more guns, and then to see a fricking movie because I needed to get out of the heat....please do not see this movie.....it is depressing that this country has reverted back to our worse fears. I will immediately find my rosebud under a maple tree next to the river in a few days, but that would be heaven, and I am still pretty sure I am dead and in Hell.