Today I had a revelation, or a recovery, or some such thing. This being Sunday and all, I guess it's a good day for it. But really, I've known this since college (28 years ago now), and I should be more aware. But I'm not. I let the whole 60's/70's schtick fog my memory, and then the 80's hit and it's been a struggle since then, so I let go of this precious knowledge but...
Oh, what the hell. I promise to quit complaining about the direction our government has taken. Really. I do. At least I'll try. But a little explanation is in order.
Read on.
I've been laboring for many years now under the mistaken belief that what was happening in our country was unusual. The abuse, the injustice, the greed, the corruption and cronyism; the torture and violence against prisoners, the illegal war, the manipulation of the markets and money supply. I even began thinking there was a time when the constitution actually meant something.
Right! Today I got a huge wake up call from my Native American wife. Today she reminded me of the brutality visited upon her people by Europeans and their descendants for five hundred years. And that got me to thinking - a dangerous pastime, because when you think you can make all sorts of connections you've been ignoring.
For example, I've been going on and on about the President assuming the power to arrest and hold American citizens in military prisons on American soil. I mean, holding a citizen incommunicado for five years without charge or trial seemed a bit extreme. And I've been very vocal about how Guantanamo harms us more than those being tortured there, because it erodes our sense of justice and the rule of law. And I've harped and harped on the Bush administration's corruption and cronyism, shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, kickbacks and fake contracts to select cronies in the corporate world; all the while subjecting Americans to the most beauracratic and wasteful healthcare system in the world.
I've even gone out of my way to protest police brutality, and the overreaching of cops killing little old ladies in their beds, brutalizing motorists and trampling the rights of those who dare question the government. Heck, I thought all that was, well, ABNORMAL. I know, naive, right?
You see, I'm a boomer, I bought into all that "We can change the world.." crap of the 1960's and the self-righteous freedom talk of the 1970's, and I really did think that before Reagan the country was a better place. But I see now that's all a delusion. Dreamland. Maybe a flashback from some previous search for nirvana.
Because it never was. Better, I mean. Our country never was better. We've always been a warlike, abusive, violent people who didn't blink twice at killing women and children when it suited our purpose. We all know about slavery, but for the most part, we've spoken of that lately as if it - and racism - were an aberration; a betrayal of our better natures. But how can a four hundred year activity be an aberration?
Racism was, and is, our nature. We need a nigger race, and if African Americans won't stand for it, well Latinos will do just as well. For a while there, we had a field day, what with Jim Crow holding the former slave class in check, and the cavalry to ride down and massacre Native Americans, and such beasties in our midst as Reds, Japs, Germans and the ever present Chinese, Indians, Turks, Buddhists, Arabs and Communists to hate.
From Columbus to today, we white Europeans peoples have wreaked violence on every people, religion, race and nation we've encountered. I mean, the Spanish did the decent thing and offered Native Americans the chance to become Christian, and poured molten silver down their throats if they resisted. We really tried to civilize the plains (Lakota, Comanche, Paiute, etc.) tribes, and massacred their women and children by the village full only when they insisted on, well, not dying out. We shot them in the back, too, to prove how brave we are. As a people that is.
Of course, we had that convulsion of conscience during the Civil War, but we quickly overcame that and put Jim Crow in place to hold the underclass for another hundred years. Or maybe it was about economics all along, like my Southern friends are fond of saying.
In fact, one could say that the writing of the constitution was a huge delusional enterprise that engulfed the country for, oh, about ten years. Then we got our heads back in place and forced the Cherokee into a genocidal walk from their farms and churches in the Carolinas out to the stark desert of Oklahoma. We kept promising different tribes they would have land forever, until we wanted it. We've started wars with both our major neighbors (Mexico and Canada), as well as Spain, to gain land and wealth that was theirs.
And brutality has been our hallmark the whole way. It was the French that taught Native Americans to scalp their prisoners, assuring a slow and painful death. It was the United States who mechanized death during the Civil War. And, so what if you're a citizen. Just ask the Japanese Americans or my 'Kraut' ancestors if being a citizen kept the government from taking their home and imprisoning them because they were, well, different.
No, my friends. We are not a peaceful people. We never were. We've been an empire on the march, using all the violence, brutality, genocidal hate, cultural chauvinism and racist superiority that is at our disposal. Whey is Iraq any different? Because we want oil and not land? What's the difference?
Obama is only partly right. We want things to get better, or at least some of us do, in regard to race. But we really, as a people, have never come to grips with the face the we are a violent and hateful empire, now sitting astride the entire world with enough munitions to destroy everything multiple times. And the whole Iraq fiasco is about proving we can impose our will on the world.
Or not. At least until we get our comeuppance anyway. Obama, Hillary or McCain, it doesn't really matter, does it? Until we look in the mirror and realize how brutal a people we are, can we ever change?
I don't think so. And I no longer think the stratification of our society is an anomaly, either. I think it's in our nature to lavish huge wealth on a few (mostly unscrupulous) individuals and let children go hungry. I mean, to feel good about ourselves, we need an underclass, right? It would be so 'socialist' to try to make sure everybody had enough to eat and live and feel secure.
No, we are a Darwinian people, with a Darwinian system. And we are damn proud of it. We give the finger to any nation that tries to do better by its citizens; we know the real way to success is by giving 80% of the rewards/wealth/income to 1 percent of the population, and we're striving hard to get there.
This is why Charlie Gibson's and George Stephanopoulos' questions at the Philadelphia debate really mattered. We want the semblance of patriotism, the semblance of justice. We want to appear righteous. But god forbid a leader actually is concerned with the country, that we do try to be just. Righteousness, after all, is for sissies.
Whew! What a relief. I don't have to be a concerned citizen anymore. Concerned citizens are traitors, after all. They don't know that the real purpose of America is to enrich the few at the expense of the many; that we revel in violence, and that we are a rapacious people with an endless appetite for self-indulgence.
Now, I do. I can sleep peacefully tonight.