American Enigma
The great democratic experiment continues with the election of Joe Biden. A Human Being who is the antithesis of his predecessor, a man called Trump. Good overcomes evil, depending on your ideological swing.
Or is the Great Democratic Experiment more of a wave than a swing? A continuation of what the Ancient Greeks first began. Man dreaming of representation without need of heavenly powers. The beginning-of-the-end for rule by ‘divine appointment’. An end to dictatorial oppression by a singular Being.
Democracy is a fine ideal, until you try to apply it. Why? Because Homo wasn’t built to share. From the pleasures of conception, through maturation in the womb, to that first cry for attention after birth. From then on in it’s all about me, me, me; whoever me may be, because the only instructions we come with are genetically-programmed to help us survive.
Our species is designed to take. It is inherently greedy and selfish, until it is taught otherwise. As we get older we learn to cover our most basic instincts with a more sociably acceptable veneer. A facade that’s as old as Human history, but spread mainly by a race that is white. Being civilised is the White Man’s Colours, and he has championed it throughout history. Since the Greeks awoke with a new way of thinking. An egocentric perception of the world used to cloak all things White in divinity. A belief that rode the crest across vast oceans in ships laden with sail. Canvas swelled by the words of God, target-locked by a cannon, on the spiritual conquest of the indigenous by any means necessary. It’s the very concept on which the American nation was born, and therein lies the enigma. The Founding Fathers – Their Great Experiment.
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
White people, of course. Black people were excluded before the ink was dry. Time for the Aryan Race to shine.
In a Universe too big to conceive, where does Man fit? There has to be a hierarchy of species, and God sits at the top. Well that’s obvious, and he’s White, right?
To understand why America is fundamentally flawed, you have to grasp what it means to be an American. More difficult now than it was back-when. Back when the ‘New Americans’ (the White People) arrived to annex land already occupied by indigenous tribes. A settlement named Virginia, which became the commercial hub of the New World selling its plunder back to the Old one.
Then came the Pilgrims who settled farther north to found, ‘New England’. The Pilgrim Fathers in search of religious freedom. Or a plucky band of adventures who got lucky when foul winds blew them off-course? A storm that could just have easily taken them to the ‘promised land’, but instead delivered them to a land filled with (someone else’s) milk and honey. The occupation of land and the theft of all its treasures had begun. The ‘New Americans’ had arrived.
The first colonies enjoyed self-governance, but were still answerable to the Crown. To King George III, their oppressive Overlord. But like Spartacus they rose-up in revolution to fight for their freedom. Okay, not so much a Revolution against Monarchist control, as against taxation without representation. Not having a say in where the profits would go.
A revolution that meant ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ which they enacted into a Constitution. But only if your skin was white?
Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. Which makes them people who failed to rise above their time and place. Happily punting the racial and moral problems their Constitution had enacted for their successors to solve.
From the theft of land and wealth from the native carers, to some of the wisest words Humanity has ever written down. So sad that many of its authors were utterly hypocritical to their meaning.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that, “all men are created equal” but benefited from slavery until his death (oh, the irony?). But the great Democratic Experiment was up and running, and being expanded. President Thomas Jefferson signs the Louisiana Purchase. He buys land stretching from the Mississippi to the Rockies from the French, who stole it in turn from the Native Tribes.
Folk Heroes like, Lewis and Clarke, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone; the men who ‘tamed’ the American Wilderness. Heroic pioneers who mapped out a continent so more White’s could follow. As the New Americans strived to domesticate their freshly claimed, and duly-paid-for territories, along with its native inhabitants.
Expansion was further justified by the ‘Manifest Destiny’. A new and powerful motto, “That the United States is destined—by God, to expand its dominion, and spread democracy.” Despite the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek tribes who found themselves in the way, of civilisation.
Manifest Destiny, a claim the New American’s embraced. Along with their entrepreneurial spirit, which is so lauded in the American DNA. So symbiotic with the exploitation and enslavement of ‘lesser beings’ who helped stake the New Americans’ claim.
A war with Mexico to annex Texas (steal it from Mexico). Heroes like Davie Crocket and Jim Bowie, who died at the Alamo so Mexican’s would understood where the new border had been drawn.
Then a more ‘Civil War’ was fought, between the New Americans themselves. A war to curb the spread of slavery, that threatened to upset the economic balance of the new territories out West. Commerce led to Succession, and then to conflict, which triumphed with the Abolition of Slavery. Which, perhaps, makes Lincoln the first truly civilised New American. The ownership of Human Beings was brought to an end. But the ideal endured. Racism survived, and thrived, go ask the KKK. As racism hopped aboard a wagon and headed, Westward ho! All land between the Atlantic and the Pacific was up for grabs. Stake it, and steal it . . . Squatter’s Rights, right?
Treaty, Treaty, Treaty, to help protect the indigenous Tribes. Signed to protect them, but from who; themselves?
The numerous Indian Appropriation Acts, that stripped away the rights of Native Tribes like the Pawnee, Sioux, and Apache. Forced treaties designed to open up more of the West. The Shoshone, Navaho, Chumash lands offered up in a Land Rush the size of which the world had never seen. Let’s not forget how the White Man brought the grace of God to the ‘heathen savages’ already calling it their home.
The Indian Removal act.
The Reservations.
The ‘Trail of Tears’.
“All men are created equal,” right?
The enigma strikes again in more modern America. The world’s shining example for democracy and freedom, looks more like a cage-fight still struggling against The Confederate cause. Wrapped in a flag that immortalised all who fought beneath it. The Rebel flag that flew for a Rebel cause. So deep-set in the psyche of American Conservatism they’ve managed to mythologise the Civil War they fought. To redefine racism as a struggle of defiance and rebellion against oppression.
Wrong!
The Mississippi succession document stated, “These products (the negro) have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.” It was a fight for the right to keep human beings as chattel. A battle to perpetuate slavery. A war to cement the ideal that whiteness is next to Godliness. That colour has a hierarchy, and white is at the top. It is not.
When Martin Luthor King declared “I have a dream”. The reality was, and still is, a nightmare if your skin is not white.
A president sulks in his White House bunker because a Nation rejected him (narrowly). Forty-Seven percent of Americans were willing to ignore Trump’s many flaws. His misogynistic and bigoted moral character. From taking babies from their Latino mothers, to the defamation of “shit-hole countries” they come from around the world. The access Hollywood tape, and the Trolling abuse; the prolific lies and the self-serving personality. But even more objectionable are his racist traits that he doesn’t even bother to hide. Proof, alas, that racism still fires up conservatism, and Evangelistic God-fearing Whites. Trump, a symptom of their abject fear that Whites will become a minority in the continent they stole.
Kamala Harris spoke of Diversity, Truth, and Hope. Well America is diverse, that has always been true. But the Black population, and prolific immigration, has put new life and colour into the American Dream, and that colour is fertile. So fertile that Whites now fear their social and cultural norms will be marginalised. That the ‘system’ already discriminates against them.
Well boo-hoo!
Have the tables been turned? Will the ‘New’ New Americans treat the Old Americans any better than the latter have the former. Or will Americans wearing skin a different colour from white continue the same racist traits?
Old habits die hard; memories are long, and Modern America teeters on the rocky foundations first dug by the White Settlers. Puritans who poured the underpinning of White culture and enlightenment that shouldered their veneer of civilisation. They came spreading the word of God, which gave grace for all manner of un-Godly sins inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples. The theft of a continent and the wholesale abuse and slaughter of its Native Tribes.
Civilisation more then happy to conduct a commercial trade in human beings. Black people flogged and beaten into empowering a white economy. (The Nazis had a similar vision). Yet white people still have the gaul to feel aggrieved? Why, because it’s possible we’ve reached the point in America’s history where, ‘being white ain’t what it used to be.’
Whenever the base instincts of Homo has time to intertwine with a social institution, it inevitably crashes. Communism being an obvious example. That’s how it is in America, the system constantly crashes, but so far has managed to reboot each time, as it slides in and out of the racial cracks. A Constitutional wave that flounders through the rocks of an unnavigable shoreline. A Constitution constantly striving to find safe harbour.
So, America is a racial enigma. A continental Union that has never truly been united, because racism seethes below its surface. It always has, and only time will tell if the changing colour of America can colour a change in its racial behaviour.
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