It's Time to Go All-Roman

We have reached the point in the country's latest war --the war on everybody who doesn't make a million bucks net per year --where one side or the other has got to give in.  On the right, there is 1% of the population who owns, I dunno, about 22% of everything worth anything in the entire United States, including 90% of the Senate, 99.33% of the House of Representatives, and 5/4ths of the Supreme Court.  Just slightly to the left are the other 9% of the top 10% who own, according to CNN, about 65% of the rest of the country's wealth, including just about all the rest of government, industry, farming, manufacturing --you get the picture.  On the left, we have 90% of Americans (plus all those undocumented workers who work for the top 10% under the table) who own about 23% of America's wealth, including Senators Boxer and Sanders (D-CA and D-VT respectively), US Representative Nikki Tsongas (D-3rd Cong. Dist. MA) and maaaybe one other Congressman from either Ohio or Michigan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her more lucid days, President Obama, but not on his golfing days -or when he's busy making a speech after the latest mass killing -or when Michele, a.k.a. The Flotus, is bugging him about all the fat kids in America -or on days when he's forced to grovel before the Republican Congress to, like, KEEP  THE  UNITED  STATES  OPEN.  Oh yeah, and a Taco Bell in Fresno.  Oh, and a couple of late model Chevys and one Subaru.

To be fair, it looked a whole lot better back when I had a job

I know what you're thinking: if it was a tug-'o-war instead of a class war, the left would totally kick ass.  There is one small problem: this ain't no tug-'o-war.

"Over? Did you say it's over?"

You see, the right has managed to buy the media, government, legal establishment (except for one legal aid clinic in Newark, NJ), the police, the military, the health care industry, all the farms and grazing ranges, all the mines, oil wells, and even most of the other 90%, or at least the 90% who work for the 10% and are regularly cowed into silence by the ever looming threat of unemployment.

To put this in perspective, the unequal distribution of wealth in contemporary American society far surpasses even that of France's Ancien Régime just before Louis XVI literally lost his head during the French Revolution.  So is this our fate?  Must we set up la guillotine in places where Occupy America, um, protesters pitched their quaint camps and go 10% head huntin'?  I think not.  For one thing, Americans don't go in for killing people unless they do it with one or more of their legally owned, Constitutionally protected guns that take clips of 20+ rounds.  For another thing, the downtrodden of today can institute meaningful economic and social change by doing as the Romans did a couple thousand of years ago: leave.

The year was 494 BCE; the place was what was then modern Rome, but is in fact that which we today call ancient Rome (try translating that tortured syntax into Latin!)  The Roman underclass, the so called Plebeians, were sick and tired of getting shafted by the Roman 10%-ers, the so called Patricians.  I mean, they were paid literally in bread and salt, had no legal rights, couldn't even run off and join the army, and had literally had it up to here, when some wily Plebeian had a stroke of genius: let's all just fuck off and leave the stupid Patricians to fend for themselves.  Which they then proceeded to do,  The whole lot of them -men, women, children, old folks, transvestites and a dog named Rex -left Rome and set up camp on the nearby Sacred Mount.  Days, then weeks went by, Patricians in their nearly empty city, all eyes on the Plebeians, who in turn watched the Patricians, who finally freaked-out when somebody started a rumor that the Gauls were on the way to administer a little elective surgery upon the persons of the Patricians.  In short, they caved-in, gave the Plebeians rights, officials called Tribunes and welcomed them back with open arms.

So here's my plan for today: how about the entire 90% of America go on vacation for a whole month, all at the same time!  We could all go to Mexico, unless the undocumented bunch want to go somewhere else like, um, Canada.  We'll all pool our meager resources and rent a nice but not too expensive thousand square miles of Manitoba for the month, eat breakfast at Tim Horton's every day, watch hockey every night, say "eh" a lot, and watch the CBC for reports of how those spoiled rich bitches and bastards are doing back in the States.  I just bet that Paris Hilton will crumple in the first hour, Kanye West might make it a week, and that blow-hardest of the blowhards, Donald Trump, will be Donald-please-oh-please-come-home-you-losers by the end of week two.

So, who's with me?

The Separation of Church and State

Today's post focuses on those times and places in human history when government and religion either got along or didn't, or maybe they didn't even notice each other for a while, or maybe, like, Religion got all weirded-out and did some stuff that got the government all p-o'd and junk, which made Religion behave even weirder until government was all like, "Yeah, no, you can't ever do that again, so we're just gonna kick you and all your followers out."  So Religion was all like, "FINE, what-EVER, just don't go bother us right before you DIE and want to be saved from the ultimate unpleasantness that awaits you on the OTHER SIDE, because we'll probably just ignore you, so HA!"

Not very mature for a venerable institution like Religion, which actually predated government in the chronological order of sociological institutions.  This is because the first of what we might call governments were probably extensions of the family's extended cousin, the clan.  Humans are similar to dogs, cats and naked mole-rats in that they are social animals who like to live together in groups.  There are genetic and psychological reasons I won't go into here that evolutionarily favor species that can live together without killing each other or eating up all the food in sight, so until early humans figured this out and set up actual rules for living together in groups larger than a clan, Religion had the whole place to itself.  This is because humans are the Earth's only animals that practice religious rituals.  Note, for example, the complete lack of synagogues inside a termite mound.

How do we know humans practiced religion?  A combination of two things: they way they treated their dead, and the pictures they drew on rock walls.  As far back as 50,000 years ago, people were burying their friends and families underground, arranging the corpse carefully, and including stuff the dead person owned along with the body.  This implies a belief in some sort of an afterlife, where the deceased person will need his stuff in order to get along.  What would you like to be buried with?  If

Ok, there's Fred, Jacquie, Wanda, Billy, your Mom and some random dude,
but WTF, who is that HUGE guy-thing on the right?!?

you believe the song, Willie the Wimp was buried in his Cadillac Seville.  Now, about those cave-rock wall- rock overhang drawings: they seem to show supernatural beings interacting with primitive people.  Could these be ancient aliens? --or could they be Supreme Beings conjured from the minds of primitive artists?  Also, among the animal paintings at Lascaux cave in France, there is a picture of a fearsome cave lion that had been struck thousands of times.  This implies a ritual --a ritual killing of a powerful predator in this case.


Government and religion ultimately collided in that totally man-made, artificial environment called the city-state.  These places were breaking out all over the Near East (as opposed to the Way-the-f*ck-over-There East) in places like Jericho and Sumeria.  Historians are fairly certain that the earliest governments of these places were priest/kings.  Why?  Because up to that point, only religious leaders could convince that many people to do things they might not ordinarily do, such as dig and maintain irrigation canals, not immediately kill people who offended them in some way, or construct these really weird statues and temples dedicated to gods and goddesses,  In Sumer, the priests even had a corner on the sex-trade market.  The temple of Ishtar was staffed by priestesses who were literally prostitutes.  For a price, men could lie with a priestess who was specially trained in the arts erotica.  Even amateurs got into the act.  If a Sumerian girl wanted a husband and wasn't rich enough or pretty enough to get a lot of suitors, all she had to do was to hang-out at Ishtar's temple and give it away for free --just as long as the guy took her home and raised a family with her.

My victory over these infidel unbelievers is made all the more complete
by using my wind-up horse chariot to smash the city's idols!  Mwa-ha-ha!

Religious leaders had to take a back seat to military leaders once cities started raiding each other for scarce supplies, but religion was still important.  What would make an army fight even better than usual?  Why, a special blessing from a priest!  However, there was trouble on the horizon.  See, whenever a victorious army broke into the walls of an enemy city, the second thing they did was to trash that city's gods by smashing the idols and killing the priests.  The first thing the army did was, of course, wipe their hobnailed boots on the corpses of dead enemies.  Thus began humanity's first religious war, a war that has been raging off-and-on for about four thousand years!

Sometimes, religious leaders and government leaders in the same city got into spats.  These usually worked themselves out with select banishments or a few well-chosen executions.  Sometimes religion won; sometimes government won.  This was the state of things when the Roman Empire was forced to deal with a new religious cult that had started in one of its eastern provinces.

Colosseum cat-food time!

On the whole, Romans thought of themselves as very open-minded when it came to the subject of religion.  There was, in fact, a temple in Rome called the Pantheon that had idols of every god/goddess/religious-type-thing worshipped in every corner of the Empire.  Romans had their own religion, of course, which was bits borrowed from the Etruscans, Greeks, Carthaginians and stuff they had pulled right out of their own toga-covered asses, but they generally left the different peoples within the empire alone when it came to practicing religion, except when that practice included human sacrifice which, strange as it may seen what with their love for gladiatorial contests and public executions, the Romans totally hated.  Because the Celtic Druids were big into the old kill-em-for-piety's sake rituals, the Romans got rid of Druids wherever they found them.  So what were they supposed to do with this weird messianic cult of ex-Jews who reportedly ate flesh, drank blood, and nevertheless professed to love their neighbors?

The first Christians were, of course, Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant rabbi who had his own problem with the Roman state --it crucified Him.  After Saul of Tarsus' conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul, as he was now called, enlarged the Christian communion to include Gentiles, ie., guys who still had their foreskins attached.  Pretty soon, there was even a bunch of these Christians living in Rome itself --they had followed the Apostle Peter there and helped him set up a church.  All went swimmingly until the sect began to grow and flex a little political muscle among the Roman plebeians, the working stiffs of Rome, with whom the new cult was very popular.  Slaves liked it too.  Emperor Nero came up with the idea of blaming the Christians for the great fire during his reign ("Woah, I've seen fire during my reign," he reportedly sang from his own private stage during the worst of the flames), and thus kicked-off a kind of free-for-all on Christians.  Things got so bad that Christians were driven literally underground into these burial vaults called catacombs, where even there they were sometimes ratted-out by a jealous neighbor or a total dipshit.

The Mass is ended.  Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.  And Tiberias? Tell your mom to keep her big, fat mouth shut!

However, Christians hung in there (some at the end of their ropes) and eventually were made the official religion of the Roman Empire.  There was only one small problem: the Roman Empire kind of sucked at this point.  It was invaded by a bunch of Germanic tribes and one Central Asian bunch called the Huns, until nothing was left but the Greek part which historians later called "The Greek Part of the Former Roman Empire," later shortened to "Byzantine," just because.  So now that the Church was still relatively ok and the State was on life-support --at least in the West --the Church busied itself with setting up a hierarchy because it knew that the state would come around sooner or later and have it out with the Church.

Note to self: don't piss-off Henry I-
he's a really mean drunk!

And a mere 604 years later, trouble broke out between Pope Gregory VII and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV over something called investiture.  Basically, this bit of silliness was over the question of who got to hand out Church offices like Bishoprics and Archbishoprics: the Pope or the Emperor?  To be fair, the Church was well-meaning, attempting to curb the practice of Simony, where Church offices were sold to rich people.  When Gregory's reform-minded clergy told the Holy Roman Empire's nobility that Church offices were no longer for sale, the Emperor himself got into the fray, sending off some nasty-grams to the Pope, calling Holy Father, "Hildebrand, not-Pope but false monk," and other such neener-neenerisms that made Pope Greg hopping-mad.  This issue even darkened the relationship between Henry I of England and Pope Paschal II, resulting in Henry's pal, Thomas `a Beckett, getting sliced-up by a quartet of Henry's knights in the basement of Canterbury Cathedral.

It wasn't until 1122 that H.R. Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II settled the whole unpleasantness with the unappetizing-sounding Concordat of Worms.  The meat of the Concordat is something like this:  kings and emperors and, I don't know, Grand High Poo-bahs, have this stuff called secular power, with which they can make Bishops in their territory help equip an army if the place gets invaded.  Popes have this stuff called sacred power, with which they give Bishops the power and authority and the duty to go out there and save some souls for Jesus.  So yeah, after all the pushing, shoving and at least one murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, it all came down to a compromise between Church and State that puts Bishops under both authorities.  Still want to be a Bishop?

Now you would think that with this kind of sensible solution, there would never again be a problem between the Church and State, right?  I sure thought that!  But alas and alack, this was not to be.  See, there was this little dust-up called the Protestant Reformation that brought out some... issues... that had been swept under the ol' altar rug for about 350 years.  In England, a different numbered Henry --number VIII --completely kicked the Catholic Church out of England and set up his very own church just so he could get a divorce.  And that new church, the Anglican Church?  Yeah, the English King was in charge of it.  In Germany, there were a couple of small wars (the Schmalkaldic Wars) that ended with the Peace of Augsburg, which basically gave German princes the right to pick Catholicism or Lutheranism as the official religion of their territory.  Protestantism continued to spread to places like Sweeden and Switzerland and even to the Netherlands, which made some devout Catholic kings totally furious.

Things got positively out of control with religion and the state with the 30 Years War, which lasted, um, 30 years.  It pitted the Protestant nations of Europe against the Catholic nations.  Nobody really won, lots of people got killed, but the French --who entered the war late and on the Protestant side, which is weird because the country was run by a Catholic Archbishop --kind of came out on top by not losing as badly as everyone else did.  They even got to thrash their next door neighbors, those miserable Spanish, in the process.  Hooray for religious wars!

Those are the Spanish on the horses, wisely choosing to not make horse-kebabs on the ends of French pikes.

Church vs. State conflicts became a bit more subtle after the 30 Years War, and it mostly had something to do with how much influence States allowed the Church to have in their countries.  There were countries like Spain and England where a person's religion was basically ordered by the State.  In 1492, Spain kicked all the Moors and Jews out, then created the feared Inquisition to find people who had fake-converted to Catholicism but were still secret Jews or Muslims.  The Catholic Church would hang onto this much influence in Spain until the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the 1970's.  In Elizabeth I's England, she didn't really care of some English people were Catholic, just as long as they showed up once a month to an Anglican service.  Those who followed were less tolerant.  James I kicked the Pilgrim Separatists out, first to Holland, later to Plymouth, Massachusetts.  His son, Charles, got his head cut off because 1. he married a Catholic; 2. he probably was a Catholic; 3. he pissed-off the Puritan Parliament.  Oliver Cromwell then set up a Puritan military state in England and attacked Catholic Ireland because he was that much of a dick.  He even attacked the Protestant Dutch because he may or may not have gotten an STD from an Amsterdam hooker (ok ok, I just totally made that up- but the Anglo-Dutch war really happened).

In America before our revolution, Church and State had a mixed relationship.  New England started out pretty much as a theocracy lead by fiery Puritan Calvinist preachers, which went great until Salem and some other towns were convinced they were besieged by witches and hanged a bunch of mostly harmless old women who had a few too many pet cats.  In Virginia, they allowed so-called "dissenter meetings" such as Presbyterians and Baptists, but they had to pay a tax which was used to support the Anglican clergy in Virginia.  Maryland was basically set up as a place that English Catholics could go and, if they didn't starve or get killed by Indians, live in relative peace and quiet.  However, Maryland was soon overrun by Protestants, and Catholics had to put up with not being able to openly go to Mass without being molested by their neighbors.

I am Thomas Jefferson.  #*$! religion!

Enter Thomas Jefferson.  He was a young man who traveled in Europe, was a good student of Enlightenment authors, and although a nominal Anglican himself, was kind of bugged by Virginia having its own "official" religion.  I guess some of his best friends were Quakers, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Catholics, or Presbyterians.  He drafted Virginia's Religious Toleration Statute, which was basically copied and stuck into the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights which, along with Article IV, made the United States of America the very first country in the entire world that explicitly separated Church from State.

Over the years, lots of Supreme Court cases tested and further refined the "Establishment," "Free-Exercise" and "Religious Test" clauses of the Constitution, which has had the effect of really pissing-off the fundamentalist Christian right-wing wack-o's who basically want to unite Church and State and have THEM in charge of BOTH.  On the other side of the coin, atheists get all bent when they look at the money in their pocket and have to read, "In God We Trust," or send their kids to a school where the Pledge of Allegiance is recited, especially the "One Nation, under God" part.  There's basically just no pleasing some people!

Go in peace, and thank you very much.

There are a lot of religions in the United States today, some familiar, some exotic, some weird, and at least one completely preposterous religion.  I am referring, of course, to the Chapel of the Church of the Divine Elvis Presley, a "religion" that was invented by my friend, Voga Wallace, as a way to get out of paying his city property tax by claiming part of his apartment was a religious shrine devoted to --you guessed it --Elvis.  A small room that was probably supposed to be a pantry was outfitted with four Elvis posters lit by a dangling black light, an old guitar case was set up on a trunk, into which people were encouraged to leave free-will "Love Me Tender" offerings, and the perpetual "Elvis Light," a candle stuck inside an Elvis drinking glass, was always lit --whenever Voga remembered to do it.  And I am completely not making this up when I tell you that the city bought this charade, even listing it as one of the city's "places of worship"  on some grotty official publication.  That, despite the fact that the whole time I hung out with him, there was never one, not one person who visited Voga's stupid shrine!

Lastly, let me just say this: even though our state and religion are separate here in America, that doesn't mean that Americans aren't friendly towards religion in general.  Just look at the parking lots that surround mega-churches on a Sunday morning and you'll see what I mean.  So Iran can just suck it whenever they try to pass us off as the Great Satan or whatever.  I bet you there are more mosques in America than there are in Iran, tons more synagogues and tons-squared more churches to boot.  We just don't think our religious leaders should have a say in fixing potholes in the streets, or whether or not to go to war with some country whose religious leaders call us the Great Satan.  Get it?  So here's to religion and government: may they peacefully coexist as separate institutions because bad things tend to happen whenever they team-up.

Cats! They Walk Among us!

In this, my 41st posting to  the blogosphere, I thought it would be fun to write about cats and how long they have been sponging-off of humans.  I have two spongers now: Mimi and Ebby (short for Ebony).  They are both black American shorthairs, but that's all they have in common.  Mimi is very talkative, can be playful, likes to look at all the birds, squirrels, raccoons, badgers, dogs, elephants and orangutans cavorting around in the back garden; Ebby is invisible.  Most of the time.  And doesn't meow.  And is literally afraid of his own shadow.  Every now and then, especially whenever I am feeding them their expensive cat food --the kind that promotes a healthy feline urinary tract --I find myself complaining to them about the 21 1/2 hours a day they sleep, grouchily saying things like, "And I suppose you'd like it better if we worshipped you two freeloaders as goddesses, just like the Egyptians!" or the equally mean-spirited question, "And just HOW MANY mice did you catch and eat today?"

Truth be told, I suppose I'm a bit envious of my cats.  I'm sure that if I went to, let's say, the Serengeti and tried to move in with a pride of lions, I doubt I'd get fed "human chow" every day and have my hair stroked, or be given bits of leftover bones to play with.  We humans are --with the exception of the sign-language-communicating gorilla named Koko --the only species that keeps pets because we like them.  But was this always the case?  When did humans and cats connect?  And given that there are few "working cats" left in the Western world these days, just why the heck haven't we turned these furry little freeloaders out to fend for themselves?

Not Mimi and Ebby- I have no pictures of them together because
Ebby is too scared to come out from under the bed.  Dipshit!

Domestic cats are descended from the African wildcat, a little guy who lives in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.  In 2004, a neolithic grave was discovered in Crete that contained a human skeleton and a cat skeleton, side-by-side --although I have no doubt that the cat caused the human's death by twining around-and-between the human's legs until he tripped and cracked his skull on a Neolithic rock.  The gravesite was carbon-dated to about 9,500 years old, and it takes a few hundred years at the very least to domesticate an animal species, so cats have been hanging around humans for close to 10,000 years.  That's a lot of cat food cans!  But why in the world would cats choose humans to cozy-up to back in the Neolithic?

No!  I will NEVER be tamed!  I will not be... wait, is that cream?
I like cream.  Hmm... but No! I must not... ooo, is that fish?  Prrr...

It's simple, really.  Cats, both wild and domesticated, are carnivorous, solitary hunters, who nevertheless live social lives, usually with other cats, but who won't turn their noses up at the odd scrap tossed their way.  By the Neolithic period, humans were giving up their nomadic ways in favor of a more or less fixed address, just as long as the fish, fowl, game animals, roots, wild berries, nuts and fruits held out.  A few intrepid bands had supplemented their diets with these weird animals called pigs, cows, chickens and goats that they had managed to domesticate, with the help of Man's Best Friend, the dog.  With all the food hanging around a Neolithic campsite being prepared, grown, caught or eaten, it was just a matter of time before the domestic cat's wild African cousin took notice, and decided to throw her lot in with humans.

"Can I haz a tiny nom of wheeeat?"
"No.  But I can haz juicy mousie, nom nom nom!"

By the time the Neolithic Age had given over to civilizations in the Fertile Crescent, the Nile valley and China's Yellow River Valley, cats were firmly entrenched as human companions, and rightly so, because they had the all important job of helping to guard the grain surplus these civilizations had managed to accumulate, from marauding bands of mice, rats, birds and the like.  This was a totally huge problem, because ancient peoples of the Near East hadn't yet discovered the Midwest Grain Silo, the storage innovation that made it possible for so many Americans today to suffer from wheat gluten allergies.  Given the chance, wheat and grain-eating rodents would reproduce like mad and munch their way through the entire surplus of, say, ancient Jericho without even breaking a sweat.  They were, like, total opportunists.  Luckily, we humans had our own opportunistic animal allies fighting the good fight at our side: felis silvestris catus, a.k.a. the pussycat.  They aren't mentioned in the Sumerian written record, nor do they show up in Mesopotamian clay tablets, but cat skeletons are found at the same level of ancient Sumerian cities, indicating that cats lived and died inside the city walls.  If they lived inside Sumerian households, they probably chased and ate mice and rats that invaded the Sumerian home.  If they didn't it was probably because their services were required at the central granary and Sumerian priests may have had a monopoly on cat ownership.  Which totally makes sense, because across the Sinai desert, the Egyptians had a very close and well documented relationship with cats.

This is a contemporary drawing of the Egyptian goddess, Bast, a.k.a Bastet, shown in her later, anthropomorphic form of a woman with a cat's head.  She carries in her hands a sistrum, a kind of bronze rattle that sounds like a key ring being jangled about, and the ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life.  To her devotees (which I am sure included lots of little old Ancient Egyptian ladies who had a few too many cats at home), she looked after cats (well, duuh!), protected people, and was a source of joy, dance, music and love.  She had an entire temple devoted to her worship, staffed by a bunch of priests who took care of the sacred cats, who were sometimes awarded to lucky supplicants and taken home to protect it from vermin.  This temple was even visited by Herodotus, the dude who actually invented history.  Here's what he had to say about it: 

Save for the entrance, it stands on an island; two separate channels approach it from the Nile, and after coming up to the entry of the temple, they run round it on opposite sides; each of them a hundred feet wide, and overshadowed by trees. The temple is in the midst of the city, the whole circuit of which commands a view down into it; for the city's level has been raised, but that of the temple has been left as it was from the first, so that it can be seen into from without. A stone wall, carven with figures, runs round it; within is a grove of very tall trees growing round a great shrine, wherein is the image of the goddess; the temple is a square, each side measuring a furlong. A road, paved with stone, of about three furlongs' length leads to the entrance, running eastward through the market place, towards the temple of Hermes; this road is about 400 feet wide, and bordered by trees reaching to heaven."

Nice digs for our Egyptian goddess!  I, however, was somewhat surprised that Herodotus neglected to mention anything about the temple litter box, which must have been extraordinary as well.

I told you to get the cat a meatball!  What the Hades
is she going to do with a yarn ball, you twit?

There is no doubt that cats were purring, scampering, chasing balls of yarn and otherwise on the hunt for mice and moles in Ancient Greece.  One of the most important things that a Greek housewife did, especially if she was a noblewoman, was to prepare and weave wool into all kinds of useful things, like clothes, curtains, wall hangings and blankets.  With all of that yarn around to chase, I have no doubt that somewhere, on some lovely Greek island, there was a cat in the middle of it, making a hilarious muddle of things, much to the enjoyment of the lady of the house.  At least one Greek potter put this cute domestic scene on one of his pots.  

If you close your eyes, it's easy to imagine cats all over Ancient Athens: prowling the Acropolis for mice trying to steal the food offerings to Athena, sideling their way through the Agora on watch for any dropped kibbee or discarded fish, sitting on Socrates' lap as he peppered Plato and his other students with his socratic questions.  Now open those eyes, and if you're in Athens, you can see descendants of those Classical Cats ranging all over the city!  I visited Athens in 1981 and was astonished to find myself trailed by no fewer than three cats wherever I went.  They were kind of like my personal feline Greek homies.  I ended up always having a spare bit of kebab on hand as a little treat for them.  Abandoned and scruffy as they were, they always politely waited their turn for their treat, and never bit or scratched me.

The Romans had cats, and so possibly did the Etruscans, the Romans' neighbors to the north, who conquered and ruled the Romans for a while before the Romans got their act together and took over 7/8ths of the Known World.  We know without a doubt that cats were in Ancient Rome around the time of Christ, because an archaeologist recently found cat paw-prints on a section of clay roofing-tile, dated about 2,000 years ago.  I wonder what that tile-maker's cat looked like, and what it was doing strolling across damp roof tile.  Speaking of tile, before Mt. Vesuvius blew its top and turned Pompei into the ancient world's biggest ashtray, there was a place called the House of the Fawn that had some pretty great mosaic artwork.  The most famous piece is Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus, the one where the Great Al totally kicked the ass out of the Persian Empire's army and just about snagged the King of Kings, Darius, off of his retreating chariot.  A lesser known mosaic is this one here, presumably of the family's felis silvestrius catus:

Ego sum: Fera pessima bestia formidetur!

Although the claws are a little fanciful, the mosaic shows a really pretty kitty with orange fur and black tiger stripes.  Unfortunately, every human, dog and cat died when Vesuvius erupted.  But cats were in the empire to stay, and wherever the legions went, cats either followed or were already there once the legion pitched camp.  And when the empire fell apart and was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy courtesy of the Goths, cats stuck around to help chase the mice out of the barns and help themselves to any medieval handouts that came their way.  It was during the middle ages, however, that cats find their way into the written record.  Literally.  During the 14th century, an Italian manuscript called Lettere e commissioni di Levant, Vol. 13, has inky cat paw prints across a couple of pages.  Why the scribal monk who wrote this book didn't fix this feline desecration is because in order to do so, he would have had to trash hundreds of hours of meticulous, hand-written copy.  Better to just beat the cat instead.

There are strange appearances by cats in medieval literature, with people talking to cats and the cats talking back, cats being associated with angels and devils, cats being chased by dogs and cats chasing lions (and catching them, too!)  But there are sweet portrayals of cats as well.  My favorite one is this poem by an Irish scribe/scholar about his pet cat, Pangur Ban:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Watch out, you moussesss!  Pangur Ban is in da houssssse!

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

During the Age of Exploration, cats hooked a ride on many a caravel and pinnace and found themselves in some pretty exotic locations.  Sailors really liked having cats on shipboard because they ate the mice and rats that ate the sailors' food, such that it was.  Once on shore in the South Seas or the Spanish Main, cats found themselves among fauna that had never met them before.  And that fauna, in some instances, suffered for it.  Biologists estimate that domestic cats are responsible for 32 species of New World birds going extinct.  Forever.  But the sailors didn't know what they were doing, and cats were just doing what they had always done, so although regrettable, we can't really blame cats for everything that went down.  And sailors being the superstitious crowd they are, no cat on a ship, no crew. Cats were literally that well respected.

Wherever Europeans set up colonies, cats came along to police the grain supply and to ingratiate themselves with people who owned warm fireplaces.  Although there is no mention of cats at Monticello, Mount Vernon or Paul Revere's house, it's not a huge leap of imagination to picture a grey-and-white tabby sitting on John Hancock's lap in the front parlor of his Boston home, having her ears scratched by the hand that wrote the biggest signature on the Declaration of Independence.  Hey, even this lady had a cat.

He's stuffed.  That's because he wouldn't
sit still for his portrait.

Which brings me to a very dark part of the feline/human relationship: the belief that cats are evil spirit-familiars who carry plague and kill children in their sleep.  While it is true that cats are disease carriers --hey, so are you! --they are certainly NOT carriers of bubonic plague.  They, like humans, were victims of plague, but only if they were bitten by an infected flea.  They were also collateral victims of medieval medical quackery that went something like this: plague was spread by the bad air breathed-out by cats and dogs, so kill all the cats and dogs and your town will be plague-free.  You can see where this is going.  Without cats and dogs around killing the host animals of the Bubonic Plague-infested flea, those fleas will jump onto humans, bite them, kill them, and > poof!< one-third of Europe's population is on their way to meet Jesus or Satan, depending on their level of medieval faith.

As for killing children in their sleep, the theory was that cats would crouch on a child's chest at night and steal their breath, thus killing the hapless child.  The reality of the situation is that cats like a warm place to sleep (who doesn't?), and it just so happens that humans radiate a lot of heat from their heads, which are usually outside of the sheets, blankets, duvets and duvet-covers at night, unless there are monsters under the bed, in which case the child's head is under the covers.  This is why I often wake up in the morning with a cat sleeping peacefully on my head.

Onto the part about cats being the familiar spirits of witches, warlocks, demons and that crowd.  As stated in the fourth paragraph of this article (scroll up- it's next to the picture of the African wildcat), cats are social creatures.  This means that they like to hang-out with people and other cats.  You could say that cats are familiar with people who feed them, clip their claws, play with them and stroke their fur.  When an old, ugly lady who had a couple of cats for mousing-purposes and for companionship was accused of being a witch, one of the exhibits for the prosecution would always include the poor little pudddycats, who would be put to death as well.  Such a raw deal!  Usually these cats were completely screwed if they happened to be black cats, the Devil's favorite color.  The sad part about this is that presently, people will cat-nap and torture black cats around Halloween, or sacrifice them in satanic rituals they make up by pulling some random occult shit right out of their asses.  This is why my two black cats are NOT allowed to trick-or-treat by themselves anymore, even though most of my neighbors are probably not closet satanists.

Actual autographed publicity-shot of Felicitte, the
French astro-cat

Finally, neither NASA, the Russian space program nor the European Space Agency have any current plans to send a cat into space, although dogs, monkeys, rabbits, mice, rats, frogs, frog eggs, fruit flies, a guinea pig (really?  using a guinea pig as a guinea pig? how droll), parasitic wasps, flour beetles, one tortoise, white flies, meal worms, spiders, a couple of fish, nematode worms, a stick insect and I am so totally not making this up, a couple of newts, have made it into space.  Only the French had the sense to send a cat into space.  The date was October 18, 1963; the place was some grotty French launchpad.  On board the Veronique sounding-rocket was Felicitte, a black-and-white stray cat from Paris.  Her flight lasted 15 minutes and she went 97 miles into space!  Her capsule was recovered with the chat blanc et noir safely inside, although the miserable French had stuck electrodes into her brain and recorded her brain activity, which probably went something like this:

"C'est dommage, there are no souris in this place to chase and ironically play with.  Et bien, I will nap for a... mon Dieu, what the hell was THAT noise?!?  I shall float over to the fenêtre for a look.  Ah, la beauté de la Terre is so, how you say, breathtaking this day.  Excuse me, I must see to my toilette."  There is no documentation from France's space program whether of not any litter box was included in the original mission specs, but I doubt one was due to the only 15 minute mission length.

Just because there has only been one cat in space so far, I firmly believe that as people venture off this lovely planet we call home and colonize miserable, airless, rocky, ultra-violet-light-bathed worlds completely hostile to life as we know it, sooner or later, a couple of mice will sneak along with us, making cats a necessary mission specialist for future space travel.  And since it takes a long time to get to the planets that are just in our own solar system, future astronauts would no doubt appreciate the company provided by a good cat.  Sure, something will have to be done about their shedding and feeding them in a weightless environment, but cats are adaptable creatures, so I bet they can hack it.  Besides, cats like cheese, and I hear that the moon is made of cheese... or was it Lunar Regolith?

"Mission Specialist Skeeter here.  I am stepping off the lander platform now.  The surface is loose and granular, perfect for liquid and solid waste disposal.  Will continue E.V.A. for 30 minutes, then return for some lap-time and a few treats."

Colombo, a Ribald Holiday Ballad

Special Columbus Day Edition! --erm, Indigenous Peoples' Day
--umm, the Holiday Formerly known as --you know what, just
F*CK  IT!!!  Nobody gets the day off any more, so who CARES
whatever the f*ck it's called?!?

Today on View from the Podium, a reprint --without permission --of that dirty sea-chaunty Salty Dick's song, Colombo, with two added verses composed by me --also without permission.  Enjoy!

In fourteen-hundred ninety-two a sailor from Eye-tally,
He walked the dirty streets of Spain and he shat in every alley!
At that time reigned a fair, young Queen of Spain named Isabella,
Who cast an amour-ush-is glance at Chris, the smart young fella.
He knew the world was round-oh,
His balls did touch the ground-oh,
That syphilitic, hypo-critic, son-of-a-bitch Colombo.

 
Colombo went to the Queen of Spain and he made a proposition,
But what she wanted most to do was fuck in the prone position!
The Queen of Spain then said to him, she’d give him ships and cargo,
He said “I’ll kiss yer Royal Ass if I don’t bring back Chicago!”
He knew the world was round-oh,
The queenly-cunt he’d pound-oh,
That fornicating, royal-mating, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

Three little ships set out to sea, each one a double-decker,
The Queen she waved the royal flag; Colombo waved his pecker!
Colombo paced upon the deck, he knew it was his duty,
He took his wang into his hand and said, “Ain’t that a beauty!”
He knew the world was round-oh,
That sailors could be browned-oh,
That dirty lecher, asshole-stretcher, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

Colombo had a second-mate who he loved just like a brother,
And every night below the deck they’d bung-hole one another!
The fourteen-year-old cabin boy, that dirty little nipper,
Shoved powdered glass right up his ass and he circumcised the skipper.
He knew the world was round-oh,
His pecker it was ground-oh,
That bleedin’ fucker, weenie-sucker, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

For forty days and forty nights they sailed the broad Atlantic,
Until at last for a piece of ass the whole crew it grew frantic!
A mermaid came a’swimming by –the crew let out a holler,
And when they tossed her overboard she’d made ten thousand dollars.
He knew the world was round-oh,
That tail could be found-oh,
That navigating, masturbating, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

And when the lookout sighted land, the Natives came to meet ‘em,
(The crew was armed up to their teeth in case they tried to eat ‘em!)
Colombo then said to the chief, “Hey, where be all the women?”
He said, “buck-naked by the crick; on Fridays they go swimmin’”
He knew the world was round-oh,
Some native snatch he’d found-oh,
That sailing-master, lucky bastard, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

The Spaniards chose a group of men to find those native bitches,
But all they found was poison oak and soon they had the itches!
Colombo laughed at all of them, sayin’ “Boys, no need to scratch so,
I’ll find that pussy by myself and youse can lick my asshole!”
He knew the world was round-oh,
For pussy he was bound-oh,
That most ironic, high colonic, son-of-a-bitch Colombo. 

An Indian maid appeared on shore, Colombo soon pursued her,
The white of his spunk rolled down her leg –the son-of-a-bitch, he screwed her!
And when he got back home to Spain to tell of his adventures,
Queen Isabella sucked him off –of course, without her dentures.
He knew the world was round-oh,
His dangling dong was crowned-oh,
That syphilitic, hypo-critic, fornicating, royal-mating,
Dirty lecher, asshole-stretcher, bleedin’ fucker, weenie-sucker,
Navigating, masturbating, sailing-master, lucky bastard,
Most ironic, high colonic, son-of-a-bitch Colombo!

The Top Five Most Stupid Battles of All Time

War is hell.  And stupidity.  Just ask any vet sporting one of those futuristic blade-runner legs they're fixing our amputee service-people with from Iraq or Afghanistan and they'll give it to you straight.  Sure, they volunteered, but that doesn't make war such a good idea. And if you want to know just how exactly dumbass war is, it totally flies in the face of evolution, removing the young and strong from the gene pool and leaving the old dip-shit admirals and generals who are too busy writing their memoirs and getting their brass knobs polished to do any actual generaling/admiraling to give the first fuck about the lives they're about to toss into the meat grinder.  As a testament to the idiodacity of war, I present you, in no particular order, with the five most stupid battles ever fought.

1. The Battle of New Orleans - War of 1812.  What should have gone down as the best showing of the new American Repiblic's armed forces under the dynamic leadership of General Andrew Jackson, who had a real goddamn pirate fighting on his side during the course of this humiliating rout of the British Army, instead must necessarily be consigned to the "Whoops, we blew our chunks all over THAT one!" file, because the Battle of New Orleans happened after the fucking war was already over!  If there were NFL referees, the U.S. of A. would be hit with a "personal foul-late hit" penalty for this monumental communications breakdown.  Now granted, it's not like General Jackson could have called up the White House and told them "We march at dawn!" and President Madison would have said, "Umm, don't because we just beat them, ok?"  Still, it's not like guys that died at the battle would have been like, "Ok, guess we'll just go home now and not get killed, so have a nice day!"  So to recap: big win, totally bogus battle.

Um, you guys are late.  Does this battle really count?

2. The Battle of the Crater - U.S. Civil War.  The Confederate Army at Petersburgh was dug-in so superbly that finer trenches would have to wait for WWI to be built.  Robert E. Lee's troops nickname for their famous general was the King of Spades, not because he always seemed to have one up his sleeve during officer's poker-night, but because he properly understood the devastating effect of the rifled musket, the repeating rifle and the canister-shot shell, so he always had his troops well dug-in if time and conditions favored it.  This, of course, peeved Ulysses S. Grant to no end, who wished to march his Army of the Potomac right over Petersburgh on their way to Richmond.

The siege of Petersburgh had settled down to the dreary long-range artillery duel that so much of the Western Front would experience in 1914-1917, punctuated by sorties of brigade-sized units that made absolutely no headway, until one day, an officer from General Burnside's IX corps informed the mutton-chopped general he had an entire company of soldiers from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the heart of coal mining country, who had an ingenious plan: they would tunnel under the Confederate lines. pack the tunnel with gunpowder, blow it up, charge through the gap and be heroes.  Burnside gave the go-ahead, but his superior, General George Meade, basically saw it as a way to keep the men busy during an otherwise boring siege.  An elite corps of black Union troops would lead the assault.  It would be totally kick-ass!

You will note at the center of the map, General, a very large crater.  Try and go around it if you can.

June 30 arrived, the mine was detonated, the Confederate lines were blown up, and then absolutely nothing went right after that.  The black troops were replaced by uninformed white troops whose commander was drunk the day of the battle.  And these troops, instead of intelligently charging around the massive crater in the earth where Confederate defenses used to be, charged straight down into the fucking crater, then got stuck and couldn't get out. The Confederates counterattacked, many of them giving turkey calls because a battle between two armies had just degenerated unto a turkey-shoot.  And so the siege of Petersburgh would go on for another seven months.

3. The Battle of Gettysburg - U.S. Civil War.  Robert E. Lee wasn't immune from making dumb strategic moves --he just made 85% fewer of them.  Case in point was the Battle of Gettysburg.  Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had invaded the North with two goals in mind: to win foreign intervention from Britain and/or France, and to bring about a negotiated settlement to the Civil War.  Although the war had been a nearly even affair up to that point, superior Union industry and numbers of soldiers were beginning to tip the balance.  Lee thought if his army could attack and take Pennsylvania's capital at Harrisburg, there would be a very good chance for an end to the war.

"Men! Up and to your posts!  Remember, you are from Old Virginia!
And you're working for Ted Turner!"

The one thing Lee didn't count on was Pennsylvania's macadam-covered turnpikes.  The Army of Northern Virginia was mostly shoeless, but they didn't really mind because most of the roads  they trod were dirt.  Macadam was a different story.  Think asphalt, but way more sharp and pointy.  His army was basically bleeding-out on the roads, and not a shot had been fired.  Lee's intelligence reported that there were shoes to be had up the road at the small town of Gettysburg, so he sent a detachment of troops to liberate said shoes.  Instead of returning triumphant with Pradas, Kate Spade's, vintage Chuck Taylors and classic Bostonians, Lee's scroungers ran into a detachment of dismounted Union cavalry, who stubbornly stood their ground.  So Lee sent more men in, forcing the Union elements to evacuate the town and take up positions on the best fucking terrain around.

During the night and into the next day, each side continued to pour more and more men into a totally nowheresville Pennsylvania town with absolutely no strategic value or military advantage.  And the shoes?  Someone had fucking lost them by day 1!  There was now nothing to do but fight: up Little Round Top, Culp's Hill, Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, the Wheat Field, the Devil's Den, the Sunken Road, and finally, make George Picket destroy his entire division attacking the union center in the stupidest frontal assault of all time.  To his credit, Lee realized what a total mind-numbingly dip-shit he had been to fight here of all places, claiming the loss was "All [his] fault," but I personally think he should have been busted down to sergeant for such total pig-headed stupidity.  However, he didn't have his "eyes and ears" with him during the battle, as the Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart was absent for most of the fight, so we'll give him a pass on just this one.

3. Dunkirk - World War II.  The German War Machine had patched itself up from it's shabby old condition at the end of World Way I and had proven itself by conquering Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and was just about to conquer France and destroy the British Expeditionary Force which was holed-up in the picturesque seaside town of Dunkirk, when the unthinkable happened.  The armored columns were told to halt and let the National Socialist Luftwaffa destroy the British on the beach.  Nazi General Gerd von Rundstedt was all like, "Umm, hey, we’ve got these Limeys in the bag, so why don’t we just go ahead and finish them?” But Hitler was all like, “Nope, Fat Herman’s gonna do it for you.”

"Quick men, commandeer that rowboat!"

What happened next was that Goering did send in his air force, which at that time consisted in large part of these slow dive-bombers called Stukas, which made a terrifying noise, but were fairly easy for anti-aircraft guns to hit.  While this duck-shoot was going on and the odd bomber was getting through, the British assembled the weirdest looking flotilla of anything that could float --ships, ferry boats, yachts, Huck Finn's raft, garbage scows, three guys in a tub --and sent it over to Dunkirk, where they saved the British Expeditionary Force, a few of their French and Belgium friends, and a dog named Digby, who went on to fight Rommel in North Africa and eventually fuck things up in Operation Market Garden, which is just barely edged-out by this bit of mind-fucking stupidity of the Dark Ages, starring the Saxons (basically half-British Germans) and the Vikings (not the NFL team from Minnesota).

4. The Battle of Maldon - Viking Invasion of England.  There were basically three types of Vikings: Swedes, Norwegians and Danes.  The Swedes were the ones who explored all of Russia's rivers, founded its first cities, traded in timber and amber, and got so stinking rich and famous that the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople kept a bunch of Swedish Viking warriors on retainer as his Varengi Guard.  The Norwegians explored the Orkneys, Shetlands, settled Iceland, Greenland and Vinland (Newfoundland to you and me), spreading their DNA from Oslo to Canada and back.  Then there were the Danes.  These were the "Let's kill everybody who won't make a good slave, rape the rest, steal their stuff, burn everything else, then get drunk and swap stories in Heorot Hall, pass out, and get eaten by the monster, Grendle during the night."  --oh, it was also this lot that attacked England.

"Unleash the ultimate Viking weapon: IKEA!!"

To a Danish Viking, England, Ireland and Scotland must have looked like easy pickings.  The place was chock-full of these places called monasteries, filled with unarmed men, who had lots of gold crosses and other nice stuff, and could be enslaved to do all the busy-work an important Danish Viking just doesn't have time for, because their days were heavily scheduled with berserk-fighting, dashing babies' heads out against stones, and drinking mead.  That is, until they ran into the Anglo-Saxons, those German-blokes who were slowly turning into Englishmen, who knew a thing or two about fighting.  Their king was one Ethelred the Unready, which doesn't have anything at all to do with how well prepared he was, because the Saxon form of his name is "Unroody," which means "unschooled," or "self-taught."  The Saxon force consisted of this citizen-militia called the fyrd, which was about as good as any citizen militia can be expected to be, plus the king's Housecarls and Earls, professional fighting men who could seriously mess you up if you had the poor sense to tangle with them.

The Vikings, for all the terror they caused, were essentially ship-borne raiders, whose main tactics were surprise attack and swift retreat with their jacked-stuff.  But once in a while, Ethelred's Earls and Housecarls caught up with the Vikings, and things would then be fairly evenly matched.  The Battle of Maldon was one of these occasions.  However, because of the inexplicable stupidity of the Head Saxon in Charge... well, just see for yourself.

Contrary to popular opinion, I am ready
...to pay-off the Vikings 

The Vikings had been looting and burning the English coast in Folkstone, Sandwich and Essex, before turning their attention to Maldon.  Landing on an island connected to shore by a land bridge at low tide, the Saxon commander, Ealdorman Brihtnoth, got into a shouting match with the Viking leaders when they demanded plunder and Eldorman told them to suck it.  The Vikings then made an incredibly ballsy request: put off the battle until low tide, so they could all cross and fight a proper battle at full strength.  And wonder of wonders, Ealdorman, whose fyrd and retainers were a smaller force than the Vikings had, actually agreed!

The battle was an especially brutal one, but luckily, Ealdorman was killed.  However, his boys fought so bravely that the Vikings said, "Aw, fuck it!" and limped back to their ships, leaving Maldon intact.  However, King Ethelred was convinced that with dip-shits like Ealdorman running his army, it might just be better to pay the Danes a heap of gold so they would just go the fuck back to Denmark.  Which they did.  Except for the bunch that didn't and settled on the East Coast, where they lived under their own Danish laws and customs.

Because of his incredibly stupid conduct at the Battle of Maldon, two new terms enter the English (or Anglo-Saxon) language: Danegeld, or gold paid to the Danes so they'll stop murdering and raping us, and Danelaw, the place the Danish Vikings settled and eventually became English.

5. The Battle of Los Angeles - World War II.  Folks were jittery in 1942, and quite understandably.  Following an invasion of Martians in Grover's Mill, New Jersey on Halloween in 1938, and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December seventh in 1941, America was all like, "Just don't FUCK  WITH  ME  because if you do, I will SERIOUSLY fuck you up!"  Which partly explains what happened the night of February 24, morning of February 25, 1942.

The night before, a Japanese Submarine's deck gun opened up and pumped 14 shells into the Ellwood Oil Refinery, just north of Santa Barbara.  The next night, before midnight, air raid sirens sounded in Los Angeles.  A total blackout was ordered and air raid wardens were called out to enforce it.  Searchlights swept the sky, looking for all the world like the worst Hollywood movie premiere ever.  Then at about 3:16 a.m., the 37th Coastal Artillery Brigade went off the reservation, blasting away with their .50 caliber machine guns and 12.8 pounder anti-aircraft flak batteries.  Shrapnel rained down on Lala Land as the gunners fought like hell to bring down what was either some kind of  meteorological balloon or a barrage balloon that had slipped its moorings. Or it could have been a flying saucer.  I mean, there's this one pic of something caught in the searchlights that looks kinda E.T.  I'm just sayin'.

Weather balloon my ass.

Total casualties from the Battle of Los Angeles: 5.  Three car wrecks --L.A. drivers can't drive in the rain, fer chrissakes.  How do you expect them to drive during a blackout with shrapnel raining down? --and two heart attacks.  The balloon was never recovered.  Or so they say...

HONORABLE MENTION goes to something the British called "The War of Jenkins' Ear."  There were some good battles and it was by all accounts a decent war, but really?  Jenkins' Ear?  Come on.

5 Ways We Could Have (and probably should have!) lost the Revolutionary War

John Adams once wrote that there were three camps of American opinions about what he called "independency:" one-third who wanted to remain part of the British Empire, one-third who didn't, and one-third who were either too slave, female, illiterate, Indian, insane, or too far away from the colonial centers of population to give a shit about it one way or another.  Of course, John Adams had the luxury of writing this before the war for independence had gotten started, and his polling methods may not have been statistically sound, but he did not write this from prison at the close of an unsuccessful revolution awaiting the hangman, so he and his co-conspirators must have done something right.  Or did they?  What if American independence wasn't won by the Founding Fathers, but lost by an inept British king and his mad-cap, bumbling, 3-stooges-like ministers.  Here are, in no particular order of importance, 5 times we could have lost our revolution.  And the first is:

1. Lexington and Concord- On one very early April morning in 1775, His Majesty's troops stationed in that loutish city of Boston were on a super-secret mission: about 700 redcoats under Lt. Col. Francis Smith were to row across the Charles River, march to Concord (about 25 miles away), destroy arms and ammunition that radical colonial Whig politicians were storing there, and bring back two disreputable characters, John Adams and John Hancock, for questioning.

This wasn't a very tough assignment.  And this army had done the same type of thing before.  When they marched north to Salem, Massachusetts (yes, that Salem!), the town militias  along their way turned out and escorted the British Regulars down the road.  Once they arrived in Salem, they were greeted by Salem selectmen and were told that the army wasn't allowed into town until Salem's militia that did not contain any witches had finished hiding their secret stash of arms and ammunition, even though the British army was very keen on confiscating it all.  So there things stood, quite literally: the Salem militia, town fathers, other town militia units, umm, milling around, and the King's Own Regiment of Foot or some other bunch looking very silly because they weren't allowed to kill anybody.

Oh, please? Can't we kill just one person? Somebody you don't like?

To stop that sort of embarrassing thing from happening this time, strict secrecy was to be observed.  It was so secret that Paul Revere and all his friends and drinking buddies at the Green Dragon, a couple of prostitutes that specialized in British officers, one washerwoman, five apprentices and a guy named Phil were the only ones on the Colonial side to know.

To make a long story short and way more interesting, Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott woke up the captain of the Lexington Militia. as well as everybody else along their route.  The militia did the sensible thing: voted to go home.  Then a bunch of them went to Buckman's Tavern for some 'flip, the colonial equivalent of the mudslide.  Then they got a bit bottle-brave and lined-up on Lexington Green.

And nobody would have sculpted me!

And here is where we could have lost the war before it even started.  The Lexington Minutemen stood their ground in a very manly fashion, while a British officer screamed at them to lay down their arms and disperse.  Nobody moved.  Farmer, husband, teenager, battle-scarred veteran of the French and Indian Wars, all stood facing a detachment of the army that won the 7-Years War, and nobody blinked. Then some idiot's pistol went off and the British column threw a fiery sheet of lead musket balls into the Minutemen, dropping a lot of them in the process.

But what if nobody shot anybody?  The troops would have gone to Concord, the same stand-off would have happened as at Salem, cooler political heads would have prevailed, America would have stayed in the British Empire, and we all would be like Canada today, except maybe not quite as polite.

You see, it was the out-of-control soldiers who fired against their orders that touched-off the swarming militia response that battered the retreating British column until it was rescued by Brig. Gen. Hugh Percy.  Without the battles, the Second Continental Congress would have adjourned after sending a severe message to Parliament to leave our taxpayers the fuck alone, commercial trade with America and India would have paid off Britain's war debt, and British North America would have run from the North Pole down to the Bahamas, but only as far west as the Mississippi because Napoleon probably wouldn't have sold Louisiana to the British in order to raise money to attack them.  Sure, imperial foreign policy might have had us invade Mexico and add all that Southwestern territory, and we might have bought the Louisiana Purchase from France a little later on, or maybe not. However, there would have been no Civil War in 1865, because slavery would have been ended in 1833 when it was ended in the British Empire.  So, tell me again why we fought this stupid war in the first place?  Oh yeah, Taxation without Lap Dancing is Tyranny.  Or Give me Rogain, or give me one of those cool powdered wigs.  Or some shit like that.

And George Washington?  Gentleman planter of Virginia's Tidewater, never to grace the one dollar bill, or quarter, or ever to have a new car sale dedicated to his birthday.

2. Bunker Hill- Just about everybody I talk to except historians, who are really hard to wake-up at faculty mixers, think that we won Bunker Hill.  We did not.  The town of Charlestown had the shit burned out of it by flaming cannon balls fired from British warships, and the earthenware redoubt constructed on Breed's Hill, not Bunker Hill, fell after four determined British charges.  But it WAS a Pyrrhic victory, because we wasted so many British regulars that day, with an especially high proportion of officers killed.  This is the reason that General Gage was so cautious about breaking out of the ring of colonial militia that kept him a prisoner in Boston.  But what if things had gone slightly awry at Bunker Hill?

Tell me again why we're attacking this stupid fort?

The two big heroes on the American side at Bunker Hill were William Prescott and John Stark.  Prescott lead the bunch who fortified the hill in the first place, and Stark played pivotal roles both during the battle and during the retreat.  If Prescott had built the fort on Bunker Hill like he was supposed to, the British in Boston couldn't have shelled it from their warships.  They might not have even attacked it, because it was too far away from Boston to do the colonists any good offensively either.  So no battle.  No battle, no casualties.  No casualties, no cautious British commander, who probably would have blasted out of Boston some other way.

I am John Stark and you must believe me
when I say, "Winter is Coming."

John Stark is the other variable.  His 1st and 3rd New Hampshire Volunteers were among the last to arrive on the scene, having to bully their way through a bunch of guys who had deserted before the fight actually started! so he was able to immediately see that the fort could be easily flanked on either side.  It looked like the British were going to try the side where a rail fence was first, so Stark sent his troops over there to shore up the fence as well as they could with straw and big rocks.  Sure enough, the British came his way first.  Stark had his guys hold their fire until the British had already passed them, making for an even more unpleasant surprise.  After getting sliced to ribbons by the future Granite Staters, the Brits came back and charged again.  Even though they were ready for Stark's men, they still got their asses handed to them and kicked down the hill.

By now, British command took the wise step of going full-frontal on the fort (slaughter continues), so they figured, why not do it again?  As luck would have it, the Americans were out of powder, shot, and witty "yo-Mama" insults to hurl down the hill, so on the fourth charge, everybody broke and ran for it.  John Stark to the rescue!  He held the only piece of land that connected Charlestown Peninsula to the rest of the dry land, and he calmed down the fleeing idiots that came running down the hill, making the American retreat off Breed's Hill much more orderly and profitable for the nascent American Army, for he who turns and runs away, lives to fight another day.

Hanging.  Because the British
don't do pinatas

So, what if Stark hadn't shown up?  What if he never got through that bunch of deserters, or had deserted along with them?  What if he had instead marched his volunteers to the coast to protect Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from an attack from the sea?  New Hampshire had to temporarily relocate its capital during the war for that very reason.  What if Stark had been killed during his service in Rogers' Rangers during the French and Indian War?  The other New Hampshire military light, General Cilley (pronounced "silly."  I swear I am SO not making this shit up!) was more of a politician than a soldier.  It's fairly certain that if he was in command of the 1st and 3rd New Hampshire, they may not have even sought out the most vulnerable point on the battlefield to defend, and in the unlikely event they did, they might not have withstood the first British assault.  And the retreat would have been a mess, so tons more Americans would have died than British.

So instead of no battle, we're faced with a big loss for America, fewer British casualties, an emboldened British commanding general, and one revolution crushed when Gage breaks out of Boston and begins stringing-up rebel officers at Town Neck in Roxbury.

3. New York City- The British had three, count 'em, three chances to obliterate the American Army and end the revolution --four if you count the diplomatic mission the Howe Brothers were charged with, so let's start with that.  The British landings at Staten Island was the largest amphibious landing ever seen until that time, only to be eclipsed by the Crimea, Gallipoli and Normandy D-Day in the future.  New Yorkers who saw this display of imperial might quite wisely ran-up the Union Jack and tried to get their daughters married to a handsome British or German soldier.  Congress and Washington, perversely, prepared for a fight.

Whole books are devoted to Washington's mistakes during the defense of New York.  Suffice it to say that he divided his outnumbered force in the face of overwhelming numerical superiority (a big no-no), and stuck his soldiers into trench works and breastworks of questionable design.  But before all the shooting, the Brothers Howe were entertaining certain gentlemen Congressmen on board Sir Richard Howe's flagship.  The topic of conversation was pardons.  The Howes were authorized to give anybody a royal pardon and once the army outside that was making all the tactical and engineering mistakes had disbanded and people started singing "God Save the King" again instead of "Yankee Doodle."  They would then take all their scary soldiers and go home.  --but leave behind a few JUST IN CASE Indians attacked.  Or the French.  Or Dutch.  Or Chinese.

Nice boat.  But beg your pardon, no pardons needed here, thank you.  Oh yes, I will have another crumpet!

If the Crown was really serious about ending things without bloodshed, they would have sent a few cabinet ministers as well who would have worked out a way to redress American complaints and keep her in the British Empire, not just a pair of military brothers armed with blank pardons.  To get a pardon, you have to admit you've done something wrong, and the Congressional delegation told the Howes that America had done nothing wrong, so no pardons needed, so fuck off and take your hired Kraut mercenaries with you.  Was this a real peace offering, or just a stalling tactic for both sides so they could get ready for the slaughter to come?  There are few hints in the extant letters, but the Congressmen were impressed by the cordiality and sincerity of the Howes, so at least they believed it, but everybody knows how easy soldiers are to fool into doing stuff, so who really knows.  The fact remains that the British had an opportunity to stop the war after only a few battles, make nice with the Americans, and they blew it.  Onto the shootin' war!

The British kicked-ass in Brooklyn, Long Island, Haarlem Heights, White Plains and some death trap named Fort Washington, and were about to finish annihilating the American Army when it got all cold and rainy, so General William Howe called off the attack so that he could take what he believed would be the American surrender in the morning, after everybody had had a good night's sleep.  Dumb move.  Washington's whole entire army slipped out of town like a sleazy salesman slipping out of a motel without paying.  The whole hot mess ended up in New Jersey, where they would go on to cause havoc at Trenton and Princeton, but most importantly, they were all alive and very much in the game.

Yeah, you bitches need me.

Had William Howe pressed his attack that night, the Americans had a huge army in their face and a river at their backs.  They would have all been shot down or surrendered.  The fight for American independence would have either died that night, or would have morphed into a hit-and-run guerrilla war that would have torn the country, its people and the imperial occupiers apart.  America could have become like Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Finally, during one particularly badly fought battle around the Big Apple, the redcoats sounded the fox-hunting call as they chased fleeing Americans through some tall swamp grass.  This pissed-off Washington to no end.  He wheeled his horse around and then rallied anybody around him (about 16 guys who were looking for the ferry to Hoboken) and charged the offending British.  For his trouble, most of the guys died and Washington himself was hit multiple times in the coat, the hat, his saddle and his horse.  BUT  NOT  HIM!  Washington may have had some kind of Matrix-Ninja-ass stuff going for him, because this wasn't the only time he got shot but not anywhere in his body.  Since Generals Stirling and Sullivan were captured during the New York defense, that would leave Congress with Nathaniel Green, "The Fighting Quaker," Horatio "Granny" Gates, and Benedict "You guys wanna trade, 'cause I'm a great traitor" Arnold as possible replacements.  Not quite the Big GW.

4. West Point- Today, it's the home of the U.S. Military Academy, but back in the day, it was the most strategic spot on the whole Hudson River, which is strategic in itself because it is navigable all the way to Albany, deep in the interior of New York.  To get there, you have to sail past West Point, the part of the river that sailing ships of the day had to make a series of tacks, only if the wind is cooperating, which makes them vulnerable from getting blown out of the water by cannons from the West Point fort.  Benedict Arnold was given command of this fort, after he had married the most beautiful Loyalist girl of Philadelphia society, Peggy Shippen.  And after he was pissed-off at the way other generals and Congress treated him, passing him up for promotion again and again, and not giving him the credit he thought was due to him. 

It's not polite to Point.

Strangely enough, Arnold decided to sell the plans of the fort and the fort itself to the British, after doing everything he could do to weaken the fort's defenses.  All was set for him to defect.  Once in British hands, they had a chance to control the Hudson, despite Burgoyne's failed invasion from Canada.  Then two things happened: a robbery and a surprise visit.  The robbery was committed on the person of British Maj. John Andre, spy extraordinaire, and former boyfriend of Peggy Arnold.  The highwaymen who robbed him found West Point plans stuffed in his boots, and turned him over to a local militia unit.  The surprise visit was George Washington and company, come to see the Arnolds socially, and to inspect the fort, militarily.

Needless to say, it all fell through.  Andre was hanged, the Arnolds were shown the door (Peggy was.  Benedict had already defected).  But what if the "keys to the continent" wound up in British hands?  The force from New York City could have secured British access all the way to Albany.  The British then, having enjoyed naval superiority throughout the war, could have stockpiled provisions in Albany, concentrated troops there, and linked up with the garrison in Canada.  This would cut New England off from the rest of America and allow the British to blockade it and then destroy it.  Under this scenario, America would have probably become a place like Ireland or Scotland, occupied and beaten, but still in the British Empire.

5. The French Stay Home- Pretty much every historian says that it was French involvement that tipped the balance scale in favor of the Americans.  Not that there was any real love between the French and the American colonists.  The French were regarded as half-Indian frontier rats who fought dirty and were <gasp!> Catholics.  This was a clear case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  It was the French fleet that chased the British away from the Chesapeake; it was French engineers and artillerymen who designed the siege at Yorktown.  Finally, it was the French who the British tried to surrender to --Rochambeau refused, indicated Washington, who refused, indicated General Lincoln who had just been chased out of Charleston, South Carolina, who finally accepted it.

But what if there were no French?  They were almost broke at the time; the American Revolution put them firmly in the red, causing a fiscal crisis that started their own revolution.  What if Louis XVI's ministers convinced him that America was a lost cause?  After all, the only Frenchman Washington liked was the Marquis de Lafayette, the rest of the French volunteers being stuck on KP or latrine duty.  Let's say that Franklin, Adams and Jay completely botch their diplomatic mission.  Who was left?  Who could replace French power and might?

Now zis is what a real army looks like.  Go and fetch my poodle.

The Dutch sent some money and allowed St. Eustatius in the Caribbean to be used as a smuggling port.  Spain sent food and cloth through their possessions in Florida.  Russia was sympathetic, but it was doubtful the Czar would send any troops.  Prussia was too expensive to hire as mercenaries, as were the other German principalities.  Poland sent a couple of generals, one of whom created the U.S. Cavalry even!  Unfortunately, all this well meaning help would still not have been enough to replace the French if they didn't show.  So merci beaucoup Frenchies!  Without you. we'd be just like Canada, but not the hip, cool, chic French part.

Our revolution was by no means a sure thing,  In fact, it should have failed.  What is surprising is that it did succeed.  And a good thing, too!  Where would this world be without World Wars I and II?  There is no way in hell Germany, a new nation in 1874, would have started anything untoward, certainly not against a humongous British Empire that included all of America.  World War I might have just been the 3rd Balkan War, with minor participation by Russia and Austria, with a peace treaty mediated by France or even Romania.  And without World War I, no World War II.  Hitler would have lived and died in obscurity.

No Civil War, maybe no Vietnam either, but there's a downside too.  We would have been involved in every British colonial fight in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.  And who knows: we, not India, might be the brightest jewel in the crown, and therefore the last one to go, if at all.  I'm sure that Britain would have had the sense to get rid of the endemic corruption American Patriots complained of.  I am also sure that the democratic movements of the 19th and 20th centuries would have been well received in Britain and her North American possessions, and also that Constitutional Law and English Common Law would take deep root in American soil.  And it wouldn't be too bad to be like Canada --hey, they seem to like being in the British Empire, unlike those Israeli kooks who hated the British because they wanted their own little synagogue-sized country, but hey every family has some nuts.