OLD WORDS FIND NEW MEANING

Old words and images find new meaning in our quick paced modern world, but a naked kid stomping the head of his vanquished foe Goliath always carries the same message:

Go, David, Go.

He’s the unlikely underdog facing insurmountable odds and coming through. (You can do it.)

Did young Dave need to kick the ball afterwards? Nooooo, but those were different times.

So, let’s talk about different times? Here’s a different time:

From Google AI:

Thousands of Scottish soldiers captured at the Battle of Dunbar (1650) were imprisoned in Durham Cathedral.

Nearly 1,700 died there due to starvation and lack of sanitation before the survivors were sold into servitude.

While not termed “concentration camps” in the modern sense, Oliver Cromwell utilized mass detention sites during his 1650s Irish campaign to imprison thousands, with Spike Island in Cork Harbour acting as a central holding area for those slated for forced transportation.

These locations held prisoners without adequate food or water before sending them overseas.

 

From Spike Island:

Estimates for the numbers transported vary, with an average of approx 50,000.

‘Prison’ and ‘prisoners’ may not be the ideal term. 

It was more of a ‘depot’ for captured prisoners of war, but also those displaced from their homes and sent overseas for suspected aiding the enemy.

 

From history.com:

Nearly two years after his death, on January 30, 1661 — the 12th anniversary of the execution of Charles I — Cromwell’s body was exhumed by supporters of the monarchy from its resting place at Westminster Abbey and beheaded.

His head was displayed atop a pole outside Westminster Hall for more than 20 years.

 

Detention Depot

While I may quibble with definitions of death camp, human warehouse, and concentration camp, holding large numbers of people together in one location with inadequate support, where people die, is a death camp.

They may not have had the same facilities used in WWII and the industrialized death of the holocaust, but anytime you’re locked down with people dying all around you means you’re in a death camp.

If it’s part of the government like Cromwellian times, it’s a government death camp.

With history as our guide, we’re supposed to believe civilized people allow death camps?

What went wrong?

The main question of history is, “What happened?”

Taking a long view changes the main historical question to, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

Go ahead and change names and meanings but dying in a prison, a camp, a detention center, a depot, makes it, by definition, a death camp location and a death camp experience for all who survive.

Cromwell had his day in one case, hittie had his in the other.

One had his corpse abused by those he abused, the other killed his wife before eating his piece, getting doused with gas, and set on fire as per his instructions to his comrades, and being reduced to a pile of ironic ashes.

 

Holding Area

I moved to Brooklyn in the 70’s, Ave. J on the RR train if my memory serves me.

What I recall from my first few days in the neighborhood, which was a street fronted by huge apartment buildings, was the width of the sidewalks. You could drive a car on them.

Outside my building I saw a lineup of old ladies in lawn chairs on their cement beach.

The first time I walked past I got the stink-eye from them all.

There I was, a young man of tender age, getting the old lady glare.

But why? I asked around. I wanted to know more about my welcoming committee.

It turns out they were holocaust survivors. Once I learned that I noticed the numbers tattooed on their arms.

Their chill became my challenge.

I wanted them to know I was different than the young men they remembered from their earlier lives.

By the time I moved on we were all ‘smile and wave’ friendly.

I like smile and wave friendly. It’s always a good start, but you’ve got to earn it.

Why not take note of historical events before there’s a melon on a pole, or a pile of ashes to sweep up?

Old words like decency, due process, law, and order, still have meaning.

So does smile and wave when you mean it.

 

From USA Today:

 

On March 3, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a hearing on Capitol Hill, accusing DHS of supporting an “incredible empire of for-profit companies that are profiting at rates we’ve never seen.”

“You paid $129.3 million for a facility in my state that was assessed at less than half of that, at $62 million,” Booker said to Noem, who has since been ousted by President Donald Trump. “To work for a president who says he’s a great dealmaker … I can’t believe he thinks that you’re a great dealmaker.”

Meanwhile, in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, DHS paid $87.4 million for a warehouse that sold in 2024 for $57.5 million, public records show.

In February, DHS purchased an empty warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, for $128.5 million. The property’s current value: $29.7 million, according to the Walton County Tax Assessor’s website. And in Oakwood, Georgia, the government paid $68 million for a warehouse and surrounding land that was appraised in 2025 for a combined $7.1 million, according to Hall County records.

The warehouse spending spree is being funded by Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, which set aside $38.3 billion to boost ICE’s detention capacity.

To do this, the agency has begun buying up commercial warehouses that it intends to retrofit into sprawling detention facilities, some of which would hold up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants slated for deportation.

 

PS:

In the ‘modern sense’, intentional cruelty is still cruel.

PSS:

What is the ‘ideal term’ for a building used to imprison people?