An Ancient Sea Shaping Alabama Politics, and Josh Reviews Ahsoka (Spoilers!)

Good morning,

I’m back. Sorry for the hiatus. But good news! I brought Josh Baxt back with me. A couple lighter topics for you all today, including a “review” from Josh about Ahsoka, the new Star Wars show. If you haven’t seen it yet, or are in the middle of it like I am, then be warned! Spoilers ahead.

The October 7th Weekly Three:

• I have to include Kevin McCarthy’s ousting as Speaker of the House of Representatives by his own party; a first in our modern history.

• NBA Media Day was this past week, and while this is not earth shattering news, its worth taking a look at Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat’s emo haircut. It’ll be his official headshot for the remainder of the season.

• An evolving situation: Hamas, a militant Palestinian organization operating in Gaza, launched one of the largest surprise attacks of the last few decades against Israel, effectively pouring even more gasoline on the near century long conflict.

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An Ancient Beach Shaping Alabama Politics

Humanity’s entire existence, from our beginnings in the cradle of Africa, to the height of the Roman Empire (which I think about 3 times a week if you were wondering), through the Renaissance, to the present day incarnation of our civilization is but a blip on the radar of our Universe. A tiny, near pointless speck of time on the cosmic scale. I feel we humans often have an overexaggerated sense of control over the present day. And the truth is, much of what we currently grapple with are merely an ongoing series of reactions to the near and ancient past.

Let’s take, for example, modern voting trends in the state of Alabama. Below is a map of how counties swung Republican vs. Democrat in 2018. Keep in mind that blue swathe of counties running through the middle.

Have that in your brain? Good. Now lets go back in time, to the ancient Cretaceous period, a full 85 million years ago.

During this era, an ancient sea once existed in what is now the southern half of Alabama. For quite a long time, this ocean deposited all sorts of sediments onto the seafloor. See that swathe of yellow in the image above? That is what used to be the coastline of this ancient sea. It’s a region of Alabama currently called the “Black Belt”, a name given due to the dark, mineral rich soil found here.

Because of this extravagant, fertile soil, this region of Alabama makes the perfect location for farming and agriculture. Which American colonists took notice of as well back in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Of course, this era and region of US history is also marked by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860, the enslaved population of Alabama grew from less than 40,000 to more than 435,000 slaves, and by 1861, accounted for nearly 45% of the population of the state.

Here’s a map of the population of Black slaves in Alabama at the time. The denser the shading, the higher the population of slaves:

Notice any similarities to the previous maps? Should you overlay all three of these images you will see a fascinating connection.

Because an ancient sea 85 million years ago created incredibly mineral rich soil here, a large of number of farms and plantations were created by colonists hundreds of years ago. Because of the time period these farms were created, vast numbers of Black slaves were brought in to work the farms, whose families stayed in the region and grew over time. And because the Black population in the South today skews Democrat, the counties which make up this “Black Belt” continue to vote Blue in present day elections.

That’s right, we can roughly tie the impact of an 85 million year old sea on modern day voting trends.

The fact of the matter is, humanity has far less control over our individual lives than we would like to think. On some level, all of this stuff we create, destroy, and fight over is simply a series of reactions to the events of the distant past. The symptoms afflicting our modern day society are almost always the ramifications of hundreds, thousands, or (in the case of Alabama voting trends) millions of years of events before we ever even existed.

When you think of our day to day in that context, maybe there is such thing as destiny. And maybe destiny is just random chance, compounded over and over again along the course of millions of years geologic development.

Ten Things I Hate About Ahsoka

By Josh Baxt

My family is done with my rants, so now it’s your turn. Disney recently wrapped up their Star Wars miniseries, Ahsoka, and I have a few things to say. Yes, there are spoilers, though I doubt that matters.

1. You Have to Take the Prerequisites: Star Wars 201A, B and C
   I was chatting with a friend, who likes Ahsoka, about how confusing I found the series. She wasn’t surprised – I had not watched Clone Wars or Rebels. She then spent 20 minutes explaining the backstory. If Star Wars has become a closed society, in which only the geekiest of the geeks even know what’s going on, it’s time to shut the whole thing down.

2. What is a Grand Admiral Thrawn?
   The whole point of the series is to thwart efforts to return Grand Admiral Thrawn from a distant galaxy. I assume he will then reinstall the empire, though it’s never explained how. I can tell Thrawn is a supreme baddie because of the all the faces new Republic Admiral Hera pulls whenever his name is mentioned. Still, I have no idea why everyone is so afraid (See #1). I’m even more confused when we actually meet Admiral Thrawn, who turns out to be a blue-skinned, red-eyed version of Mr. Burns, woodenly rubbing his hands together and saying: “Eggggsellent.”

3. Why Does Everyone in the New Republic Have to Be so Fucking Stupid?
   I have a general rule, if you have to make characters inhumanly stupid to make the story work, you’re doing it wrong. While Admiral Hera is warning of Thrawn’s return, the powers that be decide to completely ignore the threat because…stupid. Perhaps they have other agendas. Perhaps they miss the empire. But we don’t get any of this backstory (See #1), so stupid it is. This was also a big problem in the latter movies. Dumb republic people ignoring obvious threats.

4. Anakin Skywalker Shows Up…Because?

   Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, shows up for a bizarre and mostly useless philosophy fever dream. He is essentially Jedi Stuart Smalley: You’re good enough, you’re smart enough and doggone it, people like you. Recharged with this fortune cookie wisdom, Ahsoka goes on to not save the galaxy (See #9).

5. Sabine Wren is Insufferable

   Sabine Wren is a wild child who used to be Ahsoka’s Jedi apprentice. By the way, the show does explain what went wrong between them – in the last episode. I suppose that was meant to be a reveal. But once again, the plot only moves forward because Sabine is an idiot. At one point, she possesses a magic space ball that shows Thrawn’s location and chooses not to destroy it. She wants to see Jedi buddy Ezra Bridges again, and he’s in the same place as Thrawn. How she knows this is also unclear. Does she love Ezra? Is he like a brother to her? What is their relationship? (See #1)

6. There Are Intergalactic Space Whales
   When your characters are backed into an impossible corner, you must produce a deux ex machina. In this case, the intergalactic space whales Ahsoka and company use to chase the bad guys, who they incompetently let get away in the first place, to the distant galaxy where Thrawn is apparently exiled.

7. We Crossed Intergalactic Space for This?
   Ezra Bridges is an amiable character who hangs out with snail-like humanoids (Ewoks with shells) in the distant galaxy. We don’t know how Ezra or Thrawn or anyone got here. Oh wait, it was the intergalactic space whales. Anyway, we are here for Ezra, and Ezra is meh. Even the reunion with Sabine is strange. It’s like he went on a weekday business trip rather than being exiled to a distant galaxy for an unspecified period of time. We assume years. A decade? Everyone seems so young, it’s hard to grok. Also, Ezra and Thrawn have been co-existing on the same planet but seem to be leaving each other alone. Seems strange.

8. The Best Character Has the Smallest Role

   The only truly interesting character is Lord Baylan Skoll, a former Jedi who is now working for the bad guys. He is calm, reasonable, ruthless and seemingly conflicted. He doesn’t appear to be satisfied with his role and makes several comments to that effect. This is potentially interesting. Will Lord Baylan betray Grand Admiral Thrawn in the end? Will he join forces with the Jedi? What will he do? Nothing. He does nothing. His only purpose is help move the action to the other galaxy. Once that is accomplished, he basically goes away.

9. No One Was Saved
   The last 15 minutes of Ahsoka may be some of the least satisfying in television history. Thrawn escapes back to our original galaxy with a star destroyer and some troopers. Will that be enough to overthrow the new Republic? Beats me, but I suppose. Ezra also escapes and is reunited with Hera, who is happy to see him. Everyone loves Ezra, though nobody tells me why (See #1). Will the new Republic now respond to Thrawn? We don’t know. Ahsoka and Sabine are stranded in the other galaxy, but seem perfectly content. Lord Baylan is also stranded. What does any of this mean? Again, got me.

10. Andor is Several Orders of Magnitude Better
    I had a professor who liked to say the best is the enemy of the good. He was talking about Dr. Strangelove vs. Failsafe, but it kind of applies here. Andor is the class of the Star Wars universe: the writing, the plot, the acting, the settings, the character arcs, the tension, everything. I’m fairly convinced that I wouldn’t dislike Ahsoka nearly as much if I had not seen Andor. If you have not seen Andor, watch it. If you have seen Andor but have not seen Ahsoka, watch Andor again – the rewatch will be far more enjoyable than anything Ahsoka can offer.