Five. Orange. Pips.

Let's talk about "The Five Orange Pips" this morning, and contrast it with the modern day.

Not in terms of its writing. Not in terms of its Victorian detail. Not anything about Sherlock Holmes.

No, let's talk about how the Ku Klux fucking Klan had a sense of shame in that tale.

Now, I probably should apologize for using "fucking" in a Sherlock Holmes blog, where mannered British-isms might seem the order of the day, but we're just at that point here. I woke up this morning to read of torch-wielding Klan types in the news in 2017. And if that doesn't make you want to say, "Well, fuck that," you probably shouldn't be reading anything I write.

The entire reason "The Five Orange Pips" works is because Conan Doyle wrote the Ku Klux Klan as what it was . . . a secret society. Their threatening message, those five seeds from an orange, was remarkable in its ordinariness, a threat that the casual onlooker wouldn't see as terrifying. The Klan of that story worked in the shadows, made deaths look like accidents or suicide, and basically avoided the light like the cockroaches of evil they were.

The true Ku Klux Klan of decades before was more of a terrorist organization, burning and lynching so their works would be seen by the public, even if they were not. Their hooded robes hid their faces, as they knew that society was not behind them. They knew their agenda was not something that would stand the light of day.

And now, thanks to whatever factor analysis might cite . . . growing poverty, false entitlement, the inability to get a girlfriend . . . we're seeing a version of the Klan that, even if it doesn't use that name, wants to announce itself publicly with torches and uncovered faces. And just as much a threat in those torches as the five orange pips . . . the threat to burn the changing culture that so offends and frightens them. A changing culture which is people.

Despite what one blithering idiot might be saying to the world this past week, we don't burn people.

We. Don't. Burn. People.

The stories of Sherlock Holmes have always been a source for nostalgia, a longing for times of horse-drawn conveyances and guiltless tobacco smoking, etc. But I never thought I'd see the day when they'd also be a source of nostalgia for a secretive, sneaky Ku Klux Klan, that at least seemed to have a sense of shame about its evil nature.

And yet here we are. Time to pull a Sherlock Holmes and send those pips in the opposite direction, don't you think?