Mr. Bankston

My sophomore year in High School I had a teacher I liked a lot, named Mr. Bankston.
Mr. Bankston was a history teacher. He taught the subject, which had always bored me to tears, in a way that at least made me think how it connected to the way I was living.
He was from Texas, and he was a bit of a character. Trying to impact our personal lives, he'd frequently get off on tangents about how to drive safely, how to act in such a way as to avoid trouble, and how to FIGHT if trouble was unavoidable.

I can remember one thing about his advice on fighting to this day...
"If you get into a streetfight and you're losing, you'll end up fighting dirty.
Why not start out that way? At best it will shorten the fight. At worst, at least you'll get your licks in early."
Agree or disagree?
I think our nation today would be better off taking Mr. B's advice.

I'm now watching the last of my recordings of Ken Burn's "The Civil War", which includes General Sherman's infamous "March to the sea".
William Tecumseh Sherman had the attitude that if you wanted to shorten the war, you needed to make war as unbearable as possible. That meant denying the enemy the civilian support they needed to continue prosecuting the conflict. There are still those who will argue Sherman's actions were inhumane.
I'm sure Mr. Bankston would disagree.

We are now engaged in a war against Muslims.
Our enemy feels no shame in lining up 200 Syrian children and machine-gunning them.
They feel no compunction against taking 35 Christians to the banks of the Mediterranean and beheading them.
They're using Sherman's tactics.

At some point we'll realize we're in a streetfight.
We're now losing that fight.


"War is all Hell" said William Tecumseh Sherman.
I'd argue it's not yet ENOUGH Hell for Isis.

We need adult leadership.
And we need an electorate that isn't a bunch of pussies.