"How's that, boss?"
* * * * * * * * * *
This is the question more of us should have been asking over the last twenty years to every seemingly coded phrase spoken by a conservative. Get them to state their position as plainly as possible. No more fucking dog whistles, guys. If you're proud of your beliefs and ideas then you should have no qualms stating them plainly!
"Well, not that he wouldn't be doing us a favor."
* * * * * * * * * *
I think I've covered this elsewhere but for those who may have missed my responses to nearly everything Nate Privett has said: Nate Privett is a complete and utter dickhead.
We know Nate sees his clients at White City Investigations as the rich and powerful and the jobs he does for them mostly oppressing union behavior. He's a union buster so, of course, he sees the murder of exploited laborers, mostly immigrants, as a tool to help his bottom line. He could probably even make double the money letting Ferdinand hunt Chicago's immigrant population: once from Ferdinand himself and once from the industrialists and capitalists who would see it as union busting at its most extreme and, possibly, most effective. Who's going to risk showing up at a picket line when roving bands of rich gun-wielding Austrians are roaming the streets looking for a little immigrant blood?
"Like there ain't enough Hungarians back home to keep him busy?" Lew was wondering.
* * * * * * * * * *
Come on, Lew! Even you know that's not realistic! If Archduke Ferdinand began hunting Hungarians back home in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it might cause him to be assassinated by Hungarian malcontents. But if he comes to America to hunt them, nobody is going to bat an eye because if there's one thing America has never actually given a shit about, it's immigrants! Even the Statue of Liberty had nothing to do with immigrants when it was gifted to America but about abolishing slavery. It was only later after it became associated with Emma Lazarus's poem, and because it was pretty much the first thing European immigrants saw upon arriving by ship to the United States, that it was thought of as a symbol for America's willingness to accept foreigners.
Imagine that! People hated immigrants but they hated the abolition of slavery even more so they'd rather think of the Statue of Liberty as a symbol welcoming immigrants rather than a symbol of the freedom of Black Americans.
"Gonna be Emperor one of these days, can you beat that!"
* * * * * * * * * *
Oh, okay. That's the part Nate found knew-slappingly funny. That the soon-to-be Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor was a homicidal madman with ethnic cleansing tendencies. Now that I get the joke, it is kind of funny!
Nate Privett thought this was just a knee-slapper.
* * * * * * * * * *
Okay, I was wrong. Lew did tell somebody; he told Nate. But Nate found it just as ridiculous as Lew did. Maybe not "just as ridiculous" in that Lew found the idea insane and Nate found the idea hilarious. So both found it ridiculous but in different ways. One was horrified at the thought of treating other people like game animals and the other thought, "That's a great joke! Ha ha! Hungarians as hunted swine! I've got to remember that one for the boys down at the bar!"
"Your Royal Highness, I'll sure ask about that, and somebody'll get back to you."
* * * * * * * * * *
Lew is not asking anybody and nobody will be getting back to Ferdinand.
In other words, "That's a crazy request but you're too insane to dismiss it outright so I'm just going to let you think the process is in limbo for the moment. At the very least, it will become somebody else's problem."
"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence," Francis Ferdinand declared—"the wild swine by comparison exhibits refinement and nobility—do you think the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out to me and my friends, for a weekend's amusement? We would of course compensate the owners for any loss of revenue."
* * * * * * * * * *
I know this isn't a historical novel (sorry, "an historical novel," for all you "an before every single H word no matter how dumb it sounds" freaks) but until somebody proves to me that this isn't an actual quote by Archduke Ferdinand, it's canon, at least in my mind. People in fandoms usually refer to that kind of canon as "head canon," meaning "it's only canon to me, really." But isn't that what all history is? It's all head canon. That's what I'm learning from reading Mason & Dixon which, also, isn't history. But it has a lot to say about history and how we remember things. And now I'm going to remember that Archduke Ferdinand thinks swine are more noble and intelligent than Hungarian immigrants. I mean, it's just a fact! Not that swine are smarter than Hungarians! The fact is the Archduke thinks that! I'm not the racist here! Probably!
"We would of course compensate the owners for any loss of revenue"
Capitalism! Where the industrialists and railroad tycoons own their employees, and where rich people and royalty see those employees as objects to be bought, sold, or destroyed at their whim.
