IDGRA*IDGRA- an acronym standing for "I don't Give a Rats' Ass"

[Annie]

http://www.sgtstryker.com/weblog/archives/004552.php#004552

To: The Usual International Suspects
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: Why We No Longer Give a Rat’s Ass What You Think of Us

1. This months’ edition of Texas Monthly was in my mailbox this weekend; this regular appearance is a mystery, to the best of my knowledge I have not renewed the initial one-year subscription for several years, yet suddenly it began reappearing in my mail; perhaps in the bowels of the magazine subscription industry this is some sort of cosmic payback for the failure of Brill’s Content when they still owed me a number of issues. The cover story features the banner headline “Texas VS The World” and in smaller letters “Yes, they Hate Us. Should We Care?” The article inside, by Mimi Schwartz is the long answer; the short one is the cover paragraph, with Kinky Friedman, resplendent in hairy-chested décolletage in a lace gown, sash with decorations, elaborate tiara and jewelry, lipstick AND a cigar, giving the white-gloved finger. The offending finger is tastefully covered with a “censored” sticker, but the intended answer to the rhetorical question is clearly not just no, but hell, no.

2. The stereotypical image of the Texan has been around for a good few decades, and available for denigration for longer than just the recent presidency, as the drawling illiterate hick from the sticks, or a fat, racist bumpkin with more vulgar money than education. And the resident Texan great and the good have built elaborate houses and public buildings, imported pianos and opera companies, established schools and universities, and exported writers, musicians, intellectuals and artists, medical and military talent, trying to ameliorate it, but without much luck. The cultural cringe--- that feeling of inferiority, which led to either excessive apologies, or the exaggerated brag for having come from such a benighted place--- was the expected default reaction, especially in the face of those representatives of the larger cultural world, whose good opinion was desperately craved. The referenced cover photo might be seen as a harbinger of a change: no more cringe, anyway.

3. I have now lived in Texas for ten years, it’s a big place--- which everyone freely admits--- but the differences between Texas, and the other places in the heartland were I have lived are actually fairly minor. If anything, Texas is rather more a boiled down concentration of the rest of America, very like it, but just a little more so; a demi glace , as it were. If it powers up the average euro-sophisticate feelings of superiority to think of Texans and Americans as clueless bumpkins--- well, sweetie, everyone needs a hobby. Whatever floats your freakin’ boat. Enough people have come here--- and continue to come--- from Africa, the Caribbean, the Near and Far East, wanting a chunk of the pie and maybe, just maybe, a better life for themselves and their families than they could have had in whatever quaint hellhole they came from--- or whatever banlieu or sink estate with generous running welfare stipends they could have had elsewhere. Their children and grandchildren have been and continue to be elected to office, invent the next big thing, write the literary sensation, make the next scientific breakthrough, command an army. That flaccid pink thing those descendents of political and economic migrants are handing to you? That would be your ass, and no need to thank us, the pleasure was all ours.

4. This reminds us again of where we came from, as Americans, and why we--- or our ancestors left. They were economic migrants, losers in political bun fights, religious non-conformists, convicts, criminals, cranks, deadbeats and weirdoes, fleeing from the law, from conformity, the stake and the lash, from poverty, land clearances, pogroms, men with guns, the dead hand of nobility of both the ready made and inherited kinds, and the intellectual set that whores for established authority. Against all confident expectation, we throve and prospered, prospered to an incredible degree, all these outcasts and ner’do-wells, and losers. This must just gall the hell out of all those people in the places we left, and perhaps accounts for the incredible venom displayed in some quarters. We have the nerve, the absolute nerve to prosper, against all their expectations.

5. 9/11 shook loose a certain insularity, a tendency by Americans to undervalue ourselves; as Tom Wolfe once observed, the cry of the American artist and intellectual was “They do everything better in Europe!” The true path to enlightenment was to mimic our bettors and import the toys and maybe then we would merit enlightened approval. The outright glee in some quarters, and the barely-veiled schadenfreude from others in the wake of 9/11 was a dash of ice-water in the face. Americans looked at recent and not-so recent events and institutions, and began wondering if we really, really wanted the approval, after all. The UN? A matchless combination of corruption and incompetence, singularly unable to prevent a massacre in so-called safe zones in Bosnia and it’s own employees in Rwanda. The European intellectual set? Considering that they’ve been on their knees for the last 80 years, performing intellectual fellatio on Uncle Joe Stalin and his heirs and ilk, their approval of our works and ways was never a likely thing; nor do they relish the reminder of the human costs of Marxism’s various brave new worlds—especially since so many of the fortunate survivors of the various national experiments finished up here. And the manner by which millions of Europeans-- Jew, Romany, gays, retarded, religious and political dissidents--- were loaded into the gas chambers by their peers and neighbors is a living memory to many Americans; the survivors of that adventure in totalitarianism must relish the pious lectures on toleration and racism received from the same direction as their initial persecution. We have also noted the tendency of certain nations, or political sub-sets of same, to swoon into the arms of a political dictator, or at the very least, sell him nuclear reactors. And now, another collection of rigid religiously-orthodox fascists with imperial ambitions has decided that we--- all of us who do not wish to submit--- are suitable candidates for mass murder by any means available, while the usual suspects rejoice and cheer them on.

6. So as the political and intellectual whores unlimber their kneepads, and get ready to service the next conqueror, and cheer on those who would be our murderers, and demand that we acquiesce to decisions made by those who we can clearly see are not in our best interests, and in fact, have been historically suspect--- well, they are fortunate, in only getting shown the finger.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

 

[UsaPride]

The outright glee in some quarters, and the barely-veiled schadenfreude from others in the wake of 9/11 was a dash of ice-water in the face. Americans looked at recent and not-so recent events and institutions, and began wondering if we really, really wanted the approval, after all.

This is how I've been feeling!

My mom would say "I don't give a rat's ass", unless she was really pissed she would say "I don't give a rat's fat ass", LOL!!