SPOILER ALERT!!!

For the record... I have NOT READ any of the posts from yesterday yet! So if there is something in this post that is redundant or has already been discussed, TOUGH.

We spent damn near $400 in a bar that had every interior wall space available glorifying a late 1980s visit of KNOWN TERRORISTS to Scranton, PA.

I worked for almost five years with a kid (last name Willoughby) whose primary pastime was doing the pow-wow circuit. That's not a joke, he'd go from reservation to reservation as a part of a drum/dance team for his tribe. Won a bunch of awards. Probably has that infamous poster tattooed on his back now.

I know/am friends with/work with three guys, one named Lee, one named Nathan, one named James, all of them named after prominent Confederate Generals. When asked they will admit to it proudly.

We all were once residents in a state that has the battle standard of the Confederacy as a part of its state flag, STILL.

Now, everything I just mentioned can be seen as the same type of indictment that has stirred the pot so forcefully. As mentioned numerous times, my great great grandfather's name is on the Wisconsin memorial at Vicksburg. My friendly meathead Confederate-named coworkers occasionally talk Confederate smack when they forget who's sitting at the breakroom table with them... And I usually give them enough rope to ensure when they fall, the neck won't break so they get to Danny Deever for three minutes before the twitching stops.

I personally, despite my Irish heritage, cannot condone the terror campaign of the IRA in any of its manifestations. There is no justification of what the British did during the centuries of occupation of Ireland, but terror is terror and is unacceptable.

But Willoughby was a different story.

For good or for bad, and despite the many, many atrocities committed against the American Indian population, they have something no other minority in the United States has... Legal entitlement. African Americans do not have a legal right to the "40 acres and a mule." Disenfranchised Spanish/Mexican Americans, robbed of their legal land grants in a post Mexican/American War or Texan Independence, have no legal recourse nor were given any. But I know many, many people of American Indian descent benefiting from the treaty structures of today.

So when someone plasters a poster concerning Homeland Security, I have to scratch my head. In today's world, the American Indian not only gets to drink, drive and vote... They get the benefits of dual citizenship within their tribal nation AND our country. So how freaking tough is that?

My personal opinion? They want Homeland Security? Fine. Then they become NATIONS, independent nations, stand alone political entities. They LOSE citizenship within the United States. They're responsible for their own affairs, and their own security. Of course, it's my opinion... No one listens to me anyway.

Do I agree with the poster? No. Do they have the right to print/sell it? Of course. Do I feel it's an indictment of everyone not American Indian? No... I feel it is the same kind of misguided individual expression as the Confederate Flag or the Malcolm X or Che or CCCP t-shirts. I get pissed when I see them but more for the morons wearing them. (Well... Che pisses me off on principle, so that's overtime pissed)

Now that being said...

Was the curator of that museum a COMPLETE MORON? Absolutely. Was Ryan justified in his actions with said curator? Completely. Just because someone has the right to wear a swastika, or a rising sun bandanna, or anything with the CCCP on it doesn't mean he/she needs to be parading around in it at the D-Day Museum on June 6. You want to proclaim Indian Homeland Security? Do it from the Crazy Horse Monument, or a warring tribal reservation. Not from some pacifist desert tribe that died out centuries before Columbus was born. Not out of any type of context.

I hope, with all sincerity, that we get posted updates on the campaign against said museum. I would be very very interested in knowing how that turns out.