eglamkowski's Journal: Understanding America

You can't really understand America (and Americans) until you understand the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Discuss.

I don't mean merely just the 30 seconds of actual gunfighting itself, but the personalities and their motivations and why and how the gunfight even came to happen in the first place. The actual gunfight itself is very nearly irrelevant actually, except as a reason to understand everything that lead up to it.

History written by the victors

[StalinsNotDead]

And since Wyatt Earp lived until the late 1920s, he had a good hand in crafting the particular myths surrounding the gunfight.

It was essentially a fight between two practically equally corrupt factions fighting over business interests in the town (illicit or otherwise). One party hiding behind the veneer of authority.

It was a small scale Waco without women and children getting killed.

Re:

[eglamkowski]

Like I said, you can't understand america without understanding the O.K. Corral...

There are many levels at which this is true. This is just one of those levels.

Re:

[StalinsNotDead]

Another one. Never trust a Cl*nton.

RE: Trust + Cl*nton in same sentence.

[DaedalusHKX]

Now now, those are two MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE terms. :)

While you're at it, never trust anyone named Lon Horiuchi either.

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[pudge]

It was essentially a fight between two practically equally corrupt factions fighting over business interests in the town (illicit or otherwise). One party hiding behind the veneer of authority.

Oh, nonsense. First, they were not at all equally corrupt. You didn't see Earp and his brothers killing or raping anyone, or doing any serious extortion or the like. They were corrupt by today's standards, to be sure, but not so much by the standards of the time; and by their standards or ours, they were not remotely equally corrupt. And far from a mere veneer of authority, they were the legal authority.

That said, Earp did cross the line, in many ways. He wasn't in a white hat or anything. But he was

Re:

[eglamkowski]

You can tell Wyatt was THE Good Guy because he was the only one to walk away from the gunfight without a scratch :-)
That's just like how it would happen in a movie, right?!

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[pudge]

:p

Seriously though, I don't mean he was a Good Guy, just in comparison to the Cowboys, in this particular fight, he was. They were (some of them, anyway) murderers and thieves. Earp was merely a somewhat shady businessman. :-) Maybe it is not so much Good Guys and Bad Guys, but Regular Guys and Worse Guys.

BTW, Tombstone is one of my favorite movies. One of the things I especially like about it is its realistic portrayal of Earp as a very flawed man. Also, Val Kilmer kicked ass as Doc.

Oh hey, I found an

Illegal law.

[JesseL]

I think it's interesting that one of the provoking factors for the gunfight was violations of a town ordinance that today would be a violation of the state constitution and ARS 13-3108.

One of these days I'm going to head down to Tombstone just to walk around with my 1858 Remington on my hip.