That is, I’m trying to remember what happened at the Alamo. Which was not a hot topic in any of the history courses I took during my education. That’s because I went to school in New York and, if I recall correctly, the Alamo was a fort somewhere in Texas. New York school courses tended to focus somewhat on New York history.<\/p>\n
Despite the official Alamo website<\/a> (“The Mission, The Battle, The Legend”), I believe nothing particularly good happened to the Texans fighting to hold onto the land they grabbed from Mexico.<\/a> Dying in an ugly war and then being elevated to legendary status doesn’t seem like a good outcome to me, especially when you realize that Kim Kardashian and her whole mishpocha have been officially designated as Legends.<\/p>\n So why does Texas worship this imperialist disaster? In my view, it’s become a sort of\u00a0 Texas Masada,<\/a> and you do not want to ask my opinion of Masada. Or why, for many years, a Greenwich Village florist’s shop was named Masada. Would you want to buy your wedding posies from a place named after a mass religious fundamentalist suicide? I mean…<\/p>\n Another mystery: according to Wikipedia, the Alamo was a battle in the “Texian” war against Mexico. “Texian”? Okay, enough of my ramblings. Let’s go on.<\/p>\n All of this because I just noticed a quote within a New York Times article about the, uh, “Mission, Battle and Legend” of the National Guard troops:<\/a> ‘A white National Guard commander called the standoff in Lafayette Square \u201cthe Alamo,\u201d implying that the White House was under siege.’<\/p>\n I’d say that guy — is he a Texian? — is being way over-dramatic, as well as inaccurate in a cluster of areas. But on the other hand, calling the White House “The Alamo” is sort of suggestive in a promising kind of way. It’s certainly a break from other historical references to bunkers under siege.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That is, I’m trying to remember what happened at the Alamo. Which was not a hot topic in any of the history courses I took during my education. That’s because I went to school in New York and, if I … Continue reading