Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3

September 2, email to Marisa Treviño, Hispanic Link News Service

“Coloreds and Crackers as Cannon Fodder”

Please forgive the crass headline, but I'm a member of all minority categories, a white ex-Army captain with a black wife whose last (non-writing) gig was a stint teaching lit and history in a Hispanic charter school (porque yo puedo hablar con mis amigos, estudiantes y padres. Yo creo que los norteamericanos neccesitan estudiar las lenguas de otros pueblos – verdad?).

Like you, I publish op-eds for the Houston Chronicle from time to time.

I thought your essay "There is a medical problem with being blind to race" was nicely rendered and on target. I will pass it on to Caesar de Paz, a young man with whom I taught high school who is now one of my martial arts students (tae kwon do/hapkido/weapons). He is in medical school in Galveston and may be a fine contact for you. He is brave as a lion, but impaired by a hip injury he suffered in a dumb-ass kid prank of jumping from his roof when he was ten years old – exactly the kind of dumb-ass thing that this white kid was doing at about the same point in life. Only Caesar didn’t have my luck: He shattered bones, and the US public health care system said “take an aspirin.” He limps to this day, a Lord Byron. I used to pity him, but now I admire him, because his goal in life is to become a general practitioner for those who, like him, have need but not means.

By the way, I offer you an informal alliance (don’t worry, I don’t write for money, just fun) on the basis of the following prediction (based on my three decades of military service): The situation in Iraq is melting down, and it will be the colored folks and the crackers who will do the bleeding. History has shown that Middle Class America prefers that less empowered citizens (and immigrants) do the dying. Should our (fatuously) ambitious world-taming continue, DA’s will begin to accept plea bargains in which folks in the grip of the courts start shipping out for foreign wars rather than domestic prisons. Interested in talking it over? [telephone number omitted by Editor]

I’ve attached my last two Chronicle Outlook pieces (April 3 and July 8). They may not be your regular reading, but hey, I’m not usually into domestic issues nowadays – but I liked your stuff. The April piece is simply a sound prediction of where the war was going, brilliant only because everyone else was broken in by Cowboy Bush. I called everything right but the chemicals – which doesn’t count because I was lied to by my own side. The second piece calls Bush a liar, and it serves him right.

I hope you enjoy. I hope you will get in touch and (most of all) I hope you will continue to give voice to those who would otherwise lack it. I salute you and your cause.

Captain Eric May (attachments)

Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3