Arkancide

Arkancide (pronounced ahr-kuhn-side)

A neologism coined to describe the remarkably high death-toll (by causes such as "suicide", "misadventure" and "accident") among those associated with Bill (b 1946; US President 1993-2001) and Hillary Clinton (b 1947).

2005-2006: A compound word Arkan(sas) + -cide.  The name of Arkansas, the US state, was applied first to the Arkansas River and derives from the Modern French Arcansas, the plural form of the transliteration of akansa, an Algonquian term for the Quapaw people (a Dhegiha Siouan-speaking people who settled in the area in the thirteenth century); Akansa is thought also the likely root of Kansas, another US state.  Aspects of the word Arkansas have long been debated.  Pronunciation had varied from the start and it wasn’t until 1881 the state legislature defined the official pronunciation being with the final "s" silent, following the French practice and in 2007, the politicians passed a resolution declaring the possessive form to be Arkansas's.  The suffix –cide is a word-forming element meaning "killer", from the French -cide, from the Latin -cida (cutter, killer, slayer), from -cidere, a combining form of caedere (to strike down, chop, beat, hew, fell, slay), from the Proto-Italic kaid-o-, from the root kae-id- (to strike).  The element also can represent "killing," from the French -cide, from the Latin -cidium (a cutting, a killing).  Arkancide is a noun.

Bill & crooked Hill.

Bill Clinton built his political base in Arkansas, first as attorney-general, later as governor and in Arkansas, as subsequently in the White House, with each election of Bill, voters received a free copy of crooked Hillary.  Arkancide was coined to describe the phenomenon of the surprisingly high number of deaths (especially the many recorded officially as “accident” or ruled “suicide” even if the method “chosen” appeared, prima facie, to make self-inflicted injuries actually impossible) among those associated with Bill and crooked Hillary Clinton.  Depending on which conspiracy theorist does the body count, the numbers bounce around a bit and the more rigorous researchers do exclude from their lists those souls for whom the cause of death was, at least on the balance of probabilities, not suspicious, but every tally is in the dozens.  What all agree is the catalogue begins with Kevin Ives (1970-1987) & Don Henry (1971-1987) in 1987 and ends (thus far) with Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) in 2019 and it’s difficult to guess at the veracity of the connection between the Clintons and all these deaths.  Like any data set, much work will have to be done to determine the relationship between cause and effect and, as is drummed into every student during their first lecture in Statistics 101, correlation does not of necessity equate with causation and a mere list of apparent coincidences (even if in the dozens) does not prove Jeffrey Epstein was murdered on the orders of crooked Hillary any more than it proves the assassin was a Freemason.  Officially, the establishment's consensus was (and remains) it's all mere coincidence, many of the dead just really unlucky and statisticians who have run the numbers say the conspiracy theory is debunked, one notable factor the unusually large number of people still alive who could in some way be linked with any US president.  Beginning in the 1990s, the slang terms for the phenomenon were "Clintonization" & "Clinton Body Count" but neither never caught on to the extent  of Arkancide, probably because the latter, being a little more removed, functions better as a euphemism.  Also, pre-dating even the arrival of the Clintons in Arkansas politics, was the sardonic phrase Arkansas Sudden Death Syndrome (ASDS), used to describe those whose death was said to be at the hands of the state's employees, this means of demise apparently unusually frequent in Arkansas.

Randall Made Knives of Orlando, Florida: The Arkansas toothpick

To gain a sense of the way the folk in the state of Arkansas have long been perceived, consider the Arkansas toothpick, an impressive dagger produced usually in lengths between 12-20 inches (300-500 mm) and claimed to be ideal for “thrusting and slashing”.  The weapon is said to be the creation of US knifemaker James Black (1800–1872) and is described by many historians as an “improved version” of the famous Bowie knife, the design of which was credited to James Bowie (1796–1836) who enjoyed the sort of varied career often seen south of the Mason-Dixon Line, his activities including land speculation (lawful and not, slave trading (mostly lawful) and military adventures (official and not).  In truth, Mr Black’s original dagger seems to have been a slight variant of the Bowie knife because there’s little in documents from the nineteenth century to suggest the two were regarded as sufficiently different to be used for different purposes.  The term “Arkansas Toothpick” seems first to have been used in the late 1820s or early 1830s by European travellers who told tales of the rugged characters they encountered in the backwoods of Arkansas, including them using long-bladed daggers to “pick their teeth”.  Some have speculated the term might have pre-dated the debut of the Bowie knife in (circa 1830) and that the notion of two different knives evolved in the nineteenth century only because of this casual journalistic slang.  However it happened, the Arkansas Toothpick and Bowie knife are now established items in the knifemakers’ catalogues.

The idea of a biopic documenting the allegedly murderous trail of death in the wake of Bill & Hillary was so obviously and attractively filmic that it must be only the fear of litigation that has prevented a project coming to fruition.  The satirical site Weekly World News did suggest Bill & Hill might be in the works, the casting for crooked Hillary an obvious choice but left unexplored was who to play her husband.  To depict Bill Clinton would demand a wider range than most actors possess so it would be tempting to look outside the profession and cast former film producer Harvey Weinstein (b 1952) but his commitments make that now impossible, though presumably he could play Jeffrey Epstein, on-location as it were.  Still, so irresistible is the lure of a tale like this that screenplays presumably lie in drawers, awaiting the circumstances (God forbid) which will permit the pitch.

The Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport

Originally named Adams Field, in 2012 the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas was renamed the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport although the earlier name continues to be used when referring to the runways and air movements.  In its October 2013 edition, Travel + Leisure magazine released the results of a survey which found travelers ranked the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport as the worst of the sixty-seven surveyed.  A survey commissioned by the airport contradicted this, finding that more than ninety percent of passengers were satisfied with their experience.