The Viceroy is a guest columnist who enjoys studying history, old school video games, and underwater basketweaving.
A Storyville Whore I live the college lifestyle. Bud, Booze, Gaming, Sleeping, Fucking. And then there's midterms. It's midterm season- I've got crazy classes; we’re talking human sexuality, marketing, advertising, and a class (I shit you not) on Log Cabin building. I also assist people in writing papers for cash on the side. This will be the culling of all the vainglorious shitsplatters of intellect that I have gathered over the last two weeks. So without further ado, fucking and bombing.
Fucking
The population of New York in the early 1800s was about 60,000. The crazy influx of immigrants in the early stages of the 19th century brought about a huge increase in population size. The ten largest cities in America at the turn of the 19th century combined had less than 200,000 people in them. The entire nation in 1801 had only 5,000,000 people with less than 10% living in cities. By 1901 there were 77,000,000 people with 60% living in cities. Keep in mind this is the Victorian Era of America. Sex is something that is only to be done in the home with the wife in missionary position strictly for procreation- a load of fun. So check this, between 5 and 10% of all young women in cities were involved in prostitution. Weird time. In the supposedly most morally rigid time period of American history (the ideas associated with Puritanism are misnomered. These moral ideals are more appropriately called Victorian. Queen Victoria was a frigid cunt and reigned for 60 years) over half of working age men had engaged with sex with a prostitute. Not only was America becoming sexually “corrupt” it was being more and more devious. Ever need affirmation that the French are a bunch of cocksuckers? In 19th century America getting a blow job from a prostitute was as simple as finding a “French massage”.
Shit, it just gets worse (or better depending on your stance.) In the beginning of 1933 only 10% of the requests of whores were for sex acts other than intercourse. By the 1960s, 90% were requests for head or sex +dome. Fucking gnarly huh? Check out this gravestone from a 19th century whore in Colorado:
Here Lies Charlotte
She was a harlot
For 15 years she preserved here virginity
A damn good record for this vicinity.
During this time period, New Orleans was overrun by Storyville, basically the French Quarter on steroids, crack, and a mean case of gonorrhea (the STI of choice back then). One book describes New Orleans in 1890 as a “massive, municipal gumbo of sexual excess”. Not much has changed, eh?
As we approach the beginning of the 20th century this motherfucker Comstock comes along. He’s got this big moral agenda going on and bans the sale or distribution of contraceptives in the United States- furthermore he is asserting that masturbation drives men crazy and that sex is an obscene thing. Anyway, the point is these laws didn’t get repealed until the 1970s!
Bombing
So now lets talk Cold War. This shit starts because the Russians are thinking that the Americans and British are trying to make them bear the brunt of the Nazi war machine. By the end of WWII the Americans have cracked the Russian cipher and are beginning to discover leaks within the government and spies operating within the US border. The Venona Transcripts. Meanwhile, the soldiers are coming back from the war and everybody is fucking like crazy.
Fat Man and Little Boy. The two nukes we dumped on Japan. These are atomic bombs. In 1947 our scientists (Openheimer, Einstein and the like) predict that Russia will achieve nuclear status in 5 years. Truman, the president at the time, doesn’t think they will ever achieve nuclear status. Meanwhile, you’ve got this rogue scientist, Teller, saying that he has a theory for creating a bomb that uses Fusion instead of Fission- which in theory would create exponentially larger explosions. Well, then 1949 rolls around and BOOM, an American recon plane detects the fallout of a nuclear testing in Russia.
Truman shits himself then establishes the Truman Doctrine saying that the US will support any nation that is threatened by communism. Truman also approves funding for Teller’s fusion bomb. Think hydrogen bomb, thermonuclear device. The US tests a thermonuke in 1950 on the Bikini atoll. Motherfucker kills all the inhabitants of an island presumed outside its blast range and kills all the inhabitants of a even more remote island in less than 10 yrs from radiation poisoning. Nuclear fallout floats over the continent. The government tells us no one has been or will be exposed to a harmful amount of radiation. Blatant lies.
Anyway… Eisenhower gets elected in 1952 in a landslide. Basically he was running on the same core message as McCain- a strong military leader- but he (Eisenhower) was a confident and persuasive orator, raping the political battlefield as opposed to McCain who is being raped worse than Indiana Jones. McCarthyism is getting really revved up around now.. . and remember we still can’t sell or advertise for condoms and sexual abstinence is the social more. What is more communist than discouraging people from having sex, especially in a time of nationwide panic?
Anywho, the Russians launch Sputnik and fuck our shit up, then we realize that our Propeller planes arent going to stand a chance against the Russian jet MiGs. Fuck. Increase defense budget again. It is in this period that we see the first billion dollar defense budget. We get jet engines. Eisenhower gets elected again. Then… fuck. South Korea gets invaded by North Korea communist aggressors, the USSR is eating up eastern bloc countries establishing puppet regimes, the Communist party in China kicks all the nationalists into Taiwan. And Eisenhower is sitting on his thumbs staring at the Truman doctrine and his Thermonuclear launch codes.
Essentially our plan at this point is akin to that of when kids put a hand over their face and cross their arms through it to fight. We sit at home and hide behind our H-bombs and throw money, guns, and troops at the terrorists… ahem… communists.
Blah blah blah… 1960. Stalin is dead and the new Russian president, Khrushchev, demands the US’s head… but is optimistic about peace. JFK enters office just in time to deal with the crisis in Cuba. Blah blah blah Vietnam.
I conclude with this: In the 1940s-1960s we were fighting two wars. One against an aggressive political party (the Stalin/Lenin communists) engaging in espionage and nuclear research. The second was for an obscure ideal- that every nation deserves freedom (which basically boils down to just interventionism due to paranoia) and that communism isn't free! This stance got us backed into a true military war that we could not win (Vietnam) because we had stretched our forces and funding thin on battling the ideals in Korea, China, Eastern Europe and Africa. A military and economic strategy that has been employed during the last 8 years and which John McCain will continue. In this writer’s opinion, we cannot financially afford the social initiatives that Obama is supporting, however, we cannot socially afford the military initiatives that McCain is supporting.
Tl;Dr- The populace is more interested in stacking paper and bumping uglies than fighitng wars for American Idealism. Besides most of us are so disenfranchised at this point (1965 and 2008) that we could give less than a fuck if Kyrgzkitstan has a puppet democracy.