Andy Stumpf, whose Cleared Hot podcast I listen to regularly, has a new podcast called Change Agents. Here’s the caper:
In each episode, Andy Stumpf — a former Navy SEAL and host of the Cleared Hot podcast — takes an unfiltered look at one of the world’s most pressing issues – from sex trafficking and modern-day slave labor to large-scale big game poaching rings and political persecution in North Korea. He then sits down with a real-life agent of change who is risking it all to help those in need.
I found this one particularly interesting. Matthew Ilseman reviewed Nores’ Hidden Wars: How Special Op Game Wardens are Reclaiming American’s Wildlands from the Drug Cartels back in February.
Cartel marijuana grows in the Angeles National Forest were just beginning to become a serious problem when I left Southern California in 1993. My friends and I regularly did 20-milers in very rugged backcountry terrain — and that was starting to get a little sketchy as growing operations started popping up — booby trapped and using really nasty chemicals. We never ran across a grow or ran into armed men, but they were out there… As Outside Magazine would report a few years later, the Angeles National Forest became “Forest Prime Evil.”
Legalization has not eliminated the problem, because there’s still a black market and California has, predictably, perversely incentivized cartel activity by removing felony penalties for illegal growing. As Nores points out, Cali could have done it smarter and better, but… well, it’s Cali.
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Speaking of podcasts, I finally have a couple of blocks of writing/recording time to get the Emiliano Zapata episode of The Mexican Game of Thrones series finished. I hope to have it up by the end of next weekend…
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And speaking of games of thrones… I’ve been musing on the the final scene of Season 3 of Black Sails. The writers of my beloved pirate show had a sophisticated — and cynical — understanding of how politics works, and the critical nature of narrative creation in advancing a cause or agenda. This final scene depicts the deliberate creation of Long John Sliver as a figure around which resistance to the reassertion of British authority in Nassau can coalesce.
“Do we care that it isn’t remotely true?”
“It doesn’t matter what’s true. Not now, anyway. We’re creating the appearance of a man out of nothing — the appearance of a man that the resistance to the English feels compelled to rally around.”
I have witnessed in my newspaper job over the past couple of weeks — not by any means for the first time — the manner in which preferred narrative trumps fact or truth. Unfortunately, that is the case for many in my own trade. This is, of course, not a revelation to me, nor is it anything new. Sometimes, though, the understanding that truth matters not at all to a very large portion of the people one encounters on the daily is disconcerting and discouraging. Especially when you take seriously your profession’s duty to seek truth.
I fell into a brief funk over it last week, but clawed my way out of it by administering tincture of gunpowder-and-kettlebell, and a dose of music. And the perhaps perverse comfort of realizing that ’twas ever thus…
Matthew says
I hate to bring this up, but the L comes before the S in my name. I know it’s a weird name. I may be the only “Matthew Ilseman” on earth, actually, it is so rare name.
About seeking the truth, I think courage is more important than intelligence in finding it. We quite often tend to prefer simplistic narratives. Our brains are to some degree designed that way. It takes courage to accept the truth.
For years, George Washington (for example) was held as without sin. Now, some people think of him as only a slave owner. The reality is that he was a complex man with both good and bad qualities.
JimC says
Dammit. Fixed.
JimC says
Part of the funk was watching a friend throw his critical faculties out the window for the sake of cheap political theater.
Matthew says
That can be disheartening.
It’s amazing how cheap political theater is effective to some people. And both parties use it. Highly intelligence people can be superficial. Charisma can convince people of things that aren’t true. I’ve known people with great social skills who turned out to be both morally contemptible and just plain incompetent. You did not realize those things the first time you met her. I am actually talking about a family member here. She fooled everyone in the family myself included.
To figure the truth about something you have to go deeper. That’s tricky and it requires a certain amount of courage.
Ugly Hombre says
George freed his slaves in his will iirc. Wonder if the below did?
https://www.theroot.com/did-black-people-own-slaves-1790895436
“Some free black people in this country bought and sold other black people, and did so at least since 1654, continuing to do so right through the Civil War. For me, the really fascinating questions about black slave-owning are how many black “masters” were involved,”
The complete essay from “Roots” is quite interesting and tells the facts brave of them I hope it does not get spiked.
“It would be a mistake to think that large black slaveholders were only men. In 1830, in Louisiana, the aforementioned Madame Antoine Dublucet owned 44 slaves, and Madame Ciprien Ricard owned 35 slaves, Louise Divivier owned 17 slaves, Genevieve Rigobert owned 16 slaves and Rose Lanoix and Caroline Miller both owned 13 slaves, while over in Georgia, Betsey Perry owned 25 slaves. According to Johnson and Roark, the wealthiest black person in Charleston, S.C., in 1860 was Maria Weston, who owned 14 slaves and property valued at more than $40,000, at a time when the average white man earned about $100 a year. (The city’s largest black slaveholders, though, were Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, both of whom owned 84 slaves.) ”
Wonder if the descendants of black slave owners will get reparations?
Wonder if jive @$$ Angela Davis will pay up?? lol
“Free black people could even “own” the services of white indentured servants in Virginia as well. Free blacks owned slaves in Boston by 1724 and in Connecticut by 1783; by 1790, 48 black people in Maryland owned 143 slaves. One particularly notorious black Maryland farmer named Nat Butler “regularly purchased and sold Negroes for the Southern trade,”
Sad to say slaves young and old- are being imported and used in the U.S. right now by the Cartels who have been given a blank check and free range by the open border policy of Biden and company.
Damn hard times for our country.
Jean Nave says
Truth is a very big word and so much of human truth is based upon perception. We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear.
A a professional speaker I would often be speechless when someone would come up to me and tell me what I told them. Very often I thought that they must have been listening to someone else.
There is no simple answer to it, but if we work to be at least thoughtful of other’s ideas, it’s a place to begin. I’m not condoning deliberate perversion of obvious reality, but we do a lot of things out of fear or selfishness that lacks a good perspective.
JimC says
Very true.
lane batot says
Yeah, this is something I’m rather particular about. It’s like so many people don’t really care about the TRUTH, they just want THEIR SIDE to WIN, no matter the consequences(and yes, there are always consequences, eventually!), as if various debates and controversies were about their favorite SPORTS team! It’s just about WINNING! How you play the game doesn’t count for shit with such folks. I DESPISE anyone, no matter what side, that thinks that way. The truth can hurt, and can be disillusioning, but in the end, it is ALWAYS for the best. Besides, as Shakespeare himself well knew, in the end, it WILL ALWAYS “out”!
Kobus van Coppenhagen says
Sometimes a journalist’s imagination becomes the source of his facts (I read this somewhere). In any case the word originated with travellers who kept journals, in which they were the central figures (which I alluded to on a previous occasion). A reporter does not place himself in the middle of every story, but editors are prone to stoking the fire of dishonesty by encouraging them to dig deeper into ‘events/stories’ in order to increase circulation. …..