Tom Cotton Quotes

You would needle and whine until finally we gave in. Your father and I would try to get you to come to the community hall and look at the quilts and pet the angora rabbits, but you wanted to eat chili corndogs and cotton candy and then get on one of those god-awful rides that had been put together by three heroin addicts with a sprocket wrench, the rides that made you feel like your head was going to be flung off your neck by centrifugal force.

Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of light would pour the church, all at once, and immediately it would be discovered that everything in the bible and reason went the other way.

Is it strange, then, that some tears fall on the pages of his Bible, as he lays it on the cotton-bale, and, with patient finger, threading his slow way from word to word, traces out its promises? Having learned late in life, Tom was but a slow reader, and passed on laboriously from verse to verse. Fortunate for him was it that the book he was intent on was one which slow reading cannot injure,--nay, one whose words, like ingots of gold, seem often to need to be weighed separately, that the mind may take in their priceless value.

You tell Cecil I’m about as radical as Cotton Tom Heflin.

What are you doing?” he asks. “What everyone does in these situations—I’m turning inanimate objects into friends. Tom Hanks had Wilson, and I have Gary.” I hold up the blue nitrile glove I craftily stuffed with cotton balls. With a Sharpie, I drew Gary a face. Lucas smiles for a fraction of a second before turning and shaking his head. “We saw that,” Gary and I say.

Never did I learn to think in terms of The Niggers. When I grew up, and I did grow up with black people, they were Calpurnia, Zeebo the garbage collector, Tom the yard man, and whatever else their names were. There were hundreds of Negroes surrounding me, they were the hands in the fields, who chopped the cotton, who worked the roads, who sawed the lumber to make our houses. They were poor, they were diseased and dirty, some were lazy and shiftless but never in my life was I given the idea that I should despise one, should fear one, should be discourteous to one, or think that I could mistreat one and get away with it.They as a people did not enter my world, nor did I enter theirs: when I went hunting I did not trespass on a Negro's land, not because it was a Negro's, but because I was not supposed to trespass on anybody's land. I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody, not just Negroes. I was given to understand that the reverse was to be despised. That is the way I was raised, by a black woman and a white man.

It was clear, though, that no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party. Throughout the 18 months of our work, certain Republican House members and senators who knew better elected to play to that audience anyway. Senator Tom Cotton, for example, went on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show at one point and disparaged the hearings as a partisan exercise—and therefore inconsistent with “Anglo-American jurisprudence.

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins’ mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study—where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that’s what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name.

America’s recent decline isn’t an accident. It’s decline by design. For more than a century, liberal Democrats have plotted to sabotage American power. These Democrats believe a strong and confident America brings war, arrogance, and oppression—not safety, freedom, and prosperity. They want America to pull in its horns and apologize for its sins. I don’t assert these liberals are necessarily un-American or hate our country—though plenty are and do—but they genuinely believe American power is dangerous for both America and the world.

The sugar planter counted on an average of ten to fifteen years’ work from a slave before he was driven to death, to be replaced by another fresh off the boat. Along with malnutrition, bugs and diseases could also eventually do in someone working up to eighteen hours a day. The brutality of the American Cotton Kingdom a century later could not compare to that of Saint-Domingue in the 1700s. There would be no shortage of cruel overseers in the United States, but North American slavery was not based on a business model of systematically working slaves to death in order to replace them with newly bought captives. The French sugar plantations were a charnel house.

Bad cotton country meant good moonshining country.

Spot by Maisie Aletha Smikle Spot looks Dalmatian And might even be a Martian He likes to cuddle And play in a puddle Spot is polka dot Cotton white and velvet black Astute smooth and immaculate Better than a box of chocolate He cushions all Before a fall And stands tall To catch a ball At the cat Spot barks When he goes for walks Sniff sniff he detects a rat He must get that His nose to the ground Tail wagging like a hound His ears propped And huge eyes popped From the leash Spot dashed In a twinkling flash Like Tom and Jerry Spot leapt in a hurry He dug deep in the sand Till he could stand Sniff sniff the rat is gone And Spot is worn and all forlorn Spot needs a bone And not sand stone So back Spot went away from the pebbles To catch some floating bubbles Spot ate his bone And sat on a stone Gazing at the distant sun in the horizon He mused for treats he could have a dozen

Tom’s European wealth was in house gadgets, a car and in speaking English. Grandfather’s wealth was Ganda. His biggest wealth was his children and their education. Of course, he had land and land and land: you would have had to cycle for days to see it all. Not to mention livestock – cows, goats, sheep and Zungu poultry – then coffee, cotton and matooke shambas. But there was no glamour in that kind of wealth.

war

Exactly when they pass from the bleak to the fecund isn’t clear. The B road narrows and some oak branches drape the road for a stretch, darkening the interior of the cab. The route then dips, veers west. A turn, a steep ascent later and the outlook changes. Even Gracey is distracted by the carousel of shadow and sunlight upon a wilder earth and upon the windscreen. Not so flat here either. Hills ruffle the skyline and contour the land with smooth undulations. Patches of trees extend into actual woods that you can’t see the far side of from the nearest edge. A buzzard hovers. Then another. Wood pigeons flap for cover beneath them. Tonal shifts emerge. Varieties of cereal crops occult the liverish earth, combed by giants. Odd hay meadows are pebble-dashed with pastel. Hedgerows thicken to spike outwards and suggest internal hoppings and buzzings of minute life. Ancient trees instil repose, austere sentinels drowsing in the corner of fields. Below their muscular branches mooch caramel cows patched with chocolate. Above the vista, the dusty sheets of ashen cloud break apart into cumulus, plump like white cotton. The distinction between back there and here startles Tom. As it did when he came here for the viewings

In popular memory, the enslavement of people of African descent is often depicted as an unfortunate yet unavoidable occurrence in the otherwise glorious history of the American republic. ... Tom Cotton called slavery 'the necessary evil upon which the union was built.' ... [This rhetoric beguiles the fact that] the system of racialized slavery that is now seared into the American public consciousness took centuries to metastasize and mature.

Now, whenever she smelled the gums, the balsams, and the special aromatics that arrived with merchants from afar, her head reeled with images of temples, shrines, palaces, fortresses, mysterious walls, tapestries, paintings, jewels, liquors, icons, drugs, dyes, meats, sweets, sweetmeats, silks, bolts and bolts of cotton cloth, ores, shiny metals, foodstuffs, spices, musical instruments, ivory daggers and ivory dolls, masks, bells, carvings, statues (ten times as tall as she!), lumber, leopards on leashes, peacocks, monkeys, white elephants with tattooed ears, horses, camels, princes, maharajah, conquerors, travelers (Turks with threatening mustaches and Greeks with skin as pale as the stranger who had befriended her at the funeral grounds), singers, fakirs, magicians, acrobats, prophets, scholars, monks, madmen, sages, saints, mystics, dreamers, prostitutes, dancers, fanatics, avatars, poets, thieves, warriors, snake charmers, pageants, parades, rituals, executions, weddings, seductions, concerts, new religions, strange philosophies, fevers, diseases, splendors and magnificences and things too fearsome to be recounted, all writhing, cascading, jumbling, mixing, splashing, and spinning; vast, complex, inexhaustible, forever.

The scene which met my eyes was at once compelling and repelling. The original sweatshop has been preserved for posterity at Levy Pants. If only the Smithsonian Institution, that grab bag of our nation’s refuse, could somehow vacuum-seal the Levy Pants factory and transport it to the capital of the United States of America, each worker frozen in an attitude of labor, the visitors to that questionable museum would defecate into their garish tourist outfits. It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. (Were they in the picking stage of their evolution, they would at least be in the healthful outdoors singing and eating watermelons [as they are, I believe, supposed to do when in groups alfresco].) My intense and deeply felt convictions concerning social injustice were aroused. My valve threw in a hearty response.

In history textbooks and in popular memory, the enslavement of people of African descent is often depicted as an unfortunate yet unavoidable occurrence in the otherwise glorious history of the American republic. Echoing this common sentiment, Republican senator Tom Cotton called slavery "the necessary evil upon which the union was built" in his objection to adding The 1619 Project to school curriculums. The United States was indeed built on chattel slavery, which deemed people of African descent inferior to white people and defined Black people as commodities to be bought, sold, insured, and willed. That was certainly evil. It was not, however, "necessary" or inevitable. The system of racialized slavery that is now seared into the American public consciousness took centuries to metastasize and mature.

Watson knew that the lien system merely provided the shackles of the farmer’s economic slavery. It was only the machinery of exploitation. How was it that cotton had fallen from a dollar a pound at the close of the War to an average of twenty cents in the ‘seventies, nine cents in the ‘eighties, and seven cents in the ‘nineties—a level below the cost of production—and had stayed there?

Ankled, banjaxed, bladdered bleezin’ Why? Do I really need a reason? I’m cabbaged clobbered, Chevy Chased But not a broken vein upon my face Despite being thoroughly Dot Cottoned Sobriety almost forgotten I’m etched – egregiously and completely That creme de menthe went down so sweetly So now, I’m fleemered and I’m flecked So many snifters have been necked That guttered, sweaty, ganted, howling I’m wearing shirts made out of towelling Inebriated, kaed up, jaxied I’ve been ill in every single taxi In every city kiboshed, kaned Bernhard Langered, legless, debrained Dhuisg, it is in Gaelic, mottled (I must recycle all my bottles) I’m Newcastled, out of my tree There’s really not much wrong with me On the skite, overly refreshed I swear I’d still pass my driving “tesht” For drink improves pronounciation Adds sparkle to enunciation Predicting earthquakes, kissing pavements Quite quoited, rubbered, I’ve made arrangements To remain forever snobbled Sleeping on tarmac or on cobbles Thora Hirded, trousered, trashed I’ve spent great lakes of liquid cash Unca’ fou, marocced, it’s easy Discombobulated, queasy My wobbly boots are on, I’m wellied But only very slightly smelly Xenophoned, Yorkshired as a skunk Zombied But not even slightly drunk.

No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin. As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.

It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. (Were they in the picking stage of their evolution, they would at least be in the healthful outdoors singing and eating watermelons [as they are, I believe, supposed to do when in groups alfresco].) My intense and deeply felt convictions concerning social injustice were aroused. My valve threw in a hearty response. (In connection with the watermelons, I must say, lest some professional civil rights organization be offended, that I have never been an observer of American folk customs. I may be wrong. I would imagine that today people grasp for the cotton with one hand while the other hand presses a transistor radio to the sides of their heads so that it can spew bulletins about used cars and Sofstyle Hair Relaxer and Royal Crown Hair Dressing and Gallo wine about their eardrums, a filtered menthol cigarette dangling from their lips and threatening to set the entire cotton field ablaze. Although residing along the Mississippi River [This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a

field beyond field beyond field of well-kept cotton, each tuft white as a senator’s eyebrow.