What's a Government Mule?

Question

I heard JR say this several times like "He's getting whipped like a government mule!" So what is it? is it an Oklahoma thing?

Answer 1

I just did a little googling and found the answer...

I was sitting in the geology laboratory at the university on Monday

when the answer came to me. We were studying topographic maps which are divided by the federal land survey, which was conducted in the late 1800s, into quadrants known as 'townships' and 'ranges.'

With me so far? Good.

When you divide these squares in quarters, you have 40-acre plots.

This is where it gets interesting: our teacher informed us that

Arkansas once had a policy known as the 'forty acres and a mule

promise.' Turns out the state offered black settlers forty acres and

one mule at no cost shortly after the Civil War as a tenet of the

Reconstruction policy.

Basically, the government started giving people 'government mules' to

aid in the plowing of the fertile Arkansas soil. Here's the problem:

recently-freed slaves would come to Arkansas and get their land and a

government mule, but received no money for seed, housing or land

development.

In short, these poor people ended up with nothing but a chunk of land

and a government mule. Which, of course, pissed them off.

According to my instructor, government mules became the scapegoats of the settlers' frustrations (and appetites). Hence, the people would sometimes savagely beat their mules in defiance of the two-faced government and when times became lean, often the mules would become stew meat.

So, when JR alludes to the beating of government mules, he is

essentially saying one person is beating another person with no

respect for his humanity or position in vengeance against his

oppressors, crazed ravenous hunger, and frustration for his hardships.

Answer 2

JR says very random things lol he makes me laugh hes awesome!!

Answer 3

It's what you get beat like in the middle of slobber knocker and if you don't have the guts to stick around then you might run like a scalded dog with a case of the liver tate.