To state the obvious, what distinguishes our country from truly civilized countries is one thing: guns, guns, and more guns — everywhere. Especially assault rifles.
While I certainly agree that our firearms fetish is a major indicator of our nation’s savagery, Michael, but there are so many indicators of our barbaric incivility throughout our history.
We might start with the “original sin” committed by the first “colonists” (read as invaders). The pillage and plunder heaped upon the aboriginal peoples of these continents, that marked the early years of the European foray into these lands, was perhaps as uncivil as any in human history. Add to that the importation of captive humans from Africa and the misogyny heaped upon women throughout the centuries, and we have a “perfect storm” of man’s inhumanity to man.
Sad but true, so wish that the history I learned many years ago, had been more honest. Maybe self-flagellation is not good for the soul, but a little truth and reconciliation would go a long way towards healing us all.
Jeri, I also wish for truth. What a wish. And this holiday, Thanksgiving, is an example of distorted stories. Add that to the states and political party that ban books and Critical Race Theory CRT, we continue to repeat history.
As counterpoint, Mr. Willis, your mea culpa is a bit histrionic. Yes, yes, our ancestors and contemporaries have done some really nasty shit, just like they've done some really wonderful shit, as well as a crap-load of really ordinary shit in between. All you've done is painted a single theme in really purple colors. But does it have anything to do with what Dr. Richardson wrote about? Is your polemic anything more than performative?
Perhaps I'm just too crabby this morning to appreciate figuratively standing in a circle rubbing each other's anger and self-righteous nubbins.
Wow, Mr. Addertongue. Your response appears to be the one full of histrionics. The shadows of our "civilized" country begin with our foundations of brutal colonization and dominance by white male privilege and power. White male supremacists are the ones who are appear in the powerful NRA and self-appointed militias, and sociopaths who control our lack of safety and that of our children. Maybe the color of one's skin as well as gender prevents the privileged from understanding this on a visceral level.
(grumble) As I mentioned, I was a bit crabby last night, for which I apologize. But the "foundation" of our civilization came when some smart cobber realized that if he, or more likely she, deliberately planted those tasty seeds in convenient places along her migratory route, she could have preferred plants to eat in more places. In other words, the origins of agriculture, another name for "altering your environment to suit yourself instead of the other way around."
Dominance and privilege predates even that, because even the most ragged band of chimpanzees know the importance of territory and the value of kin. And these important values are always enforced brutally. The "whites" happen to have achieved a global economic dominance for a few hundred years because of some technological and organizational advances, a dominance they've already lost. To think that "whites" are somehow more terrible than anyone else is to parrot Rousseau, not state an eternal truth.
To rephrase, nothing you've said about the NRA, white male privilege, or local militias is wrong. It's just too incomplete to be useful, and I refuse to flagellate my own culture on the basis of something that's boringly, terrifyingly common in human experience. As I said, it's not useful and simply accelerates the development of competitive control areas.
Mr. Addertongue, I don’t believe it is histrionics or self-righteous to connect Gun violence with availability and protest against regulations. The USA is a standout in demonstrating that sociopolitical connection.
Sure, there's a connection, but how strong is it? As I understand it, Canadians have a higher per capita gun ownership that the U.S., yet murders with guns are comparatively rare. Violence, with guns or otherwise, seems to be a strong characteristic of American society, whether in our use of guns, our personal relationships, or our foreign policy. Where does that violence come from? What reinforces it? The weapon is secondary, the will to slaughter is primary.
For accurate data on worldwide Gun issues including USA and Canada here’s an excerpt, a rebuttal and clarification. Council on Foreign Relations. US Gun Policy and Global Comparisons:
“The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has 46 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns, according to the most recent report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (2018). It ranks number one in firearms per capita. The United States also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate of the world’s most-developed nations. Many gun rights proponents say these statistics do not indicate a causal relationship.”
Canadians absolutely DO NOT own more guns per capita than Americans! A number of sources place Canada seventh in gun ownership, with about 35 guns for every 100 people. The US is way out in front, with more than 120 guns for every 100 people. That's almost double the amount of the second-place country, Falkland Islands, with 62/100.
Bill Willis simply stated the all too often over looked TRUTH. We have been a nation of violence and cruelty and bigotry and hate from the moment the first Europeans stepped on Indigenous American soil.
May I recommend a book for you sir? "The Barbarous Years" by Bernard Bailyn
I'm not sure if you were offering Mr. Bailyn's book to me, to Mr. Willis, or simply in general. At first blush, it looks like a good read, although it doesn't seem to limit itself to cruelty by European colonizers. I don't know if it's treated therein, but when it comes to breathtaking cruelty, I'd stack the Comanches against Nazis any day.
[I’m not sure there’s much point in posting this at this late hour, Mr. Addertongue, but I felt I needed to be “on the record” in this string of comments. You’ve heard a lot from a lot of people and perhaps that’s your primary goal. In any case, here’s my two cents.].
I must apologize for the delay in my reply to your comment this morning, Dirk. I was downloading an upgrade to my iPad and then found myself too semiconscious (thankfully, as I have difficulty nodding off before dawn most nights) to respond to your thoughts.
The early part of my day has been full as well.
First off, my comments hardly fit the definition of “mea culpa”. My maternal grandparents were born enslaved: my grandfather in 1853, and my grandmother in 1861. Their oldest son was the victim of a lynching around the turn of the century. My mother, born in 1904–the last of 11 live/sustainable births–never knew her “big brother,” and I, born in 1938, did not ever meet my uncle.
So I, and my recent ancestors, have ever been the recipients of the human excrement you so colorfully describe. I cannot apologize for our suffering.
If I seem histrionic, I will not, as well, ask anyone to overlook my writing style, especially in regards to the terrors and inconceivable indignities heaped upon me and all those who look like me. The horrendous “drama” we have been subjected to can never be adequately described to one who has never been its target.
Lastly, my theme is hardly singular; it involves the harsh landscape crafted by the unconsciously evil, unbelievably rapacious “explorers” and their capitalist descendants who have wreaked ungodly pain and suffering on their unfortunate prey. That it does not include the popular, self-satisfied images of “America the beautiful…” is intentional, since we have been subjected to the fantasied hymns of glory and success ad nauseum throughout the history of the colonies and our nation.
As my postscript, I refer you to the last line of Dr. Richardson’s “Letter…”, quoting President Eisenhower: “In civilized countries of the world this doesn’t happen….”
Dear Mr. Willis, it is never too late to post and to share the Truth. Thank you. I can only apologize for the evil and heinous acts of terror and violence and denial that this Country, this government, inflicted upon your ancestors (and even after a devastating Civil War, continued to inflict upon you and your family and people of color and the descendants of enslaved people.) The American celebration of Thanksgiving is complicated most by the myths perpetuated from the beginning. Americans have also created myths about slavery. Again the Truth is often denied or simply not believed. After reading the 1619 Project and witnessing the denial and pushback, the prohibition of using it as CRT in many states, especially Southern states, it’s clear that the Truth continues to be denied by some people and reconciliation if ever possible may be far down the road. I would like to be wrong. I wish you and your family and this nation a time of reflection that will someday offer true Healing, Justice and Equality. Gratitude for your letter and your story. Our nation’s story.
Once again, you have reached in and touched my heart with your eloquence and words. Once again, I wish I could have tea with you and just chat. I knew Dirk did not know to whom he was addressing. He does not appear to know the evil and historical trauma just living in a tinted skin evokes from others with less tint. Thank you for your heart-wrenching response which evoked something from Mr. Addertongue, more than just trolling or trying to elicit something. Mr. Alstrom's response to Mr. Addertongue, says it all. What it really brings up appears to be the incredible guilt and/or denial of many white people who just do not know what to say or do about true history and tinted people's actual experience due to their skin, every minute. I think we make hollow attempts to liken our occasional troubles or traumas with theirs. It is not the same. "Equal rights" in America are a mere fantasia of words and not reality. Fortunately, Dirk's innocent-seeming response depicts exactly the problem we face. This is a hard walk and requires bravery. This is not nice soundbites and move on. Maybe to start, we need to acknowledge all the people whose blood, sweat and deaths are on all the bricks and mortar of our foundations. We need to brainstorm how to apologize, thank them and build places of honor for their ancestors.
At the same time, white supremacists are alive, arrogant, and petrified of equality, reprisal, and trying to hold on by all means possible to keep themselves at the top of our caste system.
We have witnessed the huge whiplash from voting for an educated, intelligent, erudite black president. Haters are out in the light of day telling us who they are and whom they hate.
What we will do with stories like Mr. Willis' is all of our responsibility. I do not claim to know the exact pathway, but we need to be educated and develop empathy. And, enough of us need to agree that America is not the best, most wonderful, patriotic home of the free and the brave. We cannot be ostriches anymore in this country. Though we have many patriotic people who stand up for our country and Constitution, we need to face ourselves here at home openly and honestly. To be the longest, most successful democracy in the world, we need to face our demons. And then follow-through with new guidelines and reparations and policies against hatred so all our people can be treated equally as our Constitution states.
I just visited S. Africa for three weeks. For all Nelson Mandela did, bless his heart, the tinted-skinned people still are the servants to the white-skinned people, despite their so-called Freedom. It felt just like America's deep south. And I felt just like a white, colonial woman being served. Those who served me and my friend were shocked at how we wanted to know them, and their lives, and what they would love outside of waitressing or being porters or safari guides. They were so excited to see us every day. We cried when we left one another. They just want the same things all of us want—to be seen and respected, to be paid fairly, to be musicians, therapists, actors, writers, dancers, artists, managers, doctors, leaders, owners of businesses or a reserve, time with their children, vacations, birthday parties. Our white Afrikaner host told us not to tip them. What!?!??! If you have ever been a waitress, you know how hard that work is for little pay. Our host told us the average wage is about $10.00 a day. A DAY. A hamburger at McDonalds cost $7.00 (170.16 rand). Nothing but human slavery, starving in a nice outfit. That is what S. African freedom gets you? All colonized countries can do their "freed" people a hell of a lot better than all that. We can go to the moon and mars. We just have to have the will.
I see the horrors of the current, white supremacist, radical terrorists and seditionists, and their infiltration across American government for the past 40+ years coming to a head. The blatant, open hypocrisy of these ignorant "Christians" and the "Moral Majority" who exalted a dangerous, narcissistic cult figure, who contained all the worsts traits of our humanity in one disgusting corpus. And it magnetized, gave permission to others to be their worst. In front of all the children in America and the world. The Beast was openly unleashed. And now we have no choice but to smell it, name it and this time deal with it properly. As a country, we cannot pretend anymore.
I have called it "deep gardening." America needs a vast amount of gardeners willing to dig up take out our diseased roots. It is not easy, but who ever said being human was easy?
Is it possible to keep this conversation going so we can grapple with our real history, not that written by the rich, white victors? Can we create a new path, together, with All of The People? Can we help towards some iota of reparations and honoring what indigenous and enslaved people sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy United States of America? Can we start that now even as we fight for our democracy against authoritarianism? Can we deal with the corrupt "Citizens United" who are not citizens at all? Human beings are our citizens—in all shapes, sizes and colors.
We need to all stand, together, for this fight. Our people's historical trauma belongs to all of us. We must not repeat it. We need to respectfully hear voices like Bill's, listen and then hold their hands and walk this path together with honesty, respect and a desire to create something better, together, in our world. We also need to protect one another and stand up for each other when injustices by ignorance occur. For instance, racists need to do social justice reparations to the very person they harmed, every time they commit a hate crime. Our education system needs a complete revamping of the skills necessary to live together on earth and how to communicate diplomatically together. I could go on forever...but you get the gist if you have read this far.
I am so grateful for this community. It is like breathing oxygen every morning and makes me feel hopeful and creative that we can do something, together, for all of us and the planet. What great minds and opportunities we have to grow, learn, express and try to understand one another—just in this forum!
Thank you Pensa and Mr. Willis. I was part of that conversation and appreciate not only sharing my opinions but having the comments that connect. This is all a learning process every day. And to see where each person is on the continuum and conversation is educational and enlightening. Be well. I’m grateful for this forum, for HCR and your input.
Bill, Thank-you for the reality check. I do understand the lies we (white people) tell ourselves to avoid the guilt of our ancestor's (and our own) deeds can be tremendously painful to the targets (any people who are not white, male, middle/upper class English speakers) of those deeds. While it is not really up to people of color to become "anti-racism coaches" to this nation of ours, I do appreciate your stepping up in this instance.
Please don't apologize for any delay and thank you for posting late, since I have a similar problem with nodding off. Double thanks for drafting such a complete and thoughtful essay, and for revealing so much of yourself in such a moving, elegant style. I ask that you accept the following as my reply to the un-posed question, "Why is that Addertongue fellow so worked up about my post decrying the well-documented truth of America, especially when he even agrees with me?"
Please understand, my heart aches for the suffering and injustice you describe. While I've experienced my own share of injustices, the crushing weight of generations of status-based oppression is not in my living history, so I would never dare to claim an understanding of your particular flavor of agony. All I can avow is that my family and I, too, have our own agonies, and I suspect that all varieties, in the end, taste just as horribly bitter.
No wonder I have heart problems, because my heart also aches when I read Columbus' diary, where he praised the beauty and intelligence of the native islanders he discovered, then used guns, whips, and dogs to herd them into slave pens where he worked them to death.
I quietly weep when I imagine the nightmare lived by the villagers in the what is now New England when, after a single European scout visited their shore, over 95% of them died of disease, leaving their vacant homes and fields for the amazed settlers to find when they arrived three years later.
I read with hollow-eyed horror accounts of Comanche grandmothers playfully burning the nose off a captive young white girl by repeatedly pressing hot coals against her face, searing the stump off a little at at time. Just for fun.
The Rape of Nanking haunts me. The bloody conquests of Tamarlane and the Rape of Nanking, they haunt me. And it doesn't stop there, for my conscience requires that I acknowlege that this is just human suffering, a very recent entry in the ledger of blood that defines life on Earth.
Everything alive, with only a couple of exceptions, must have something dead to live on. For us warm-blooded animals, the requirement is even stricter -- we have to eat someone else, usually every day, to continue living. Since no one voluteers to be someone else's meal, the act of feeding ourselves is always violent and bloody, filled with suffering. Just watch lions bring down a wildebeest; they don't kill it, they simply eat it, usually from the belly out, while it gasps in agony. I'll never forget seeing a dying wildebeest raising his head to look a lioness in the eye just as the big cat pulled her bloody head out his entrails, then flopping back down to continue screaming, weakly.
Just like the rest of the animals, we have to compete with others for this living food. We've gotten pretty good at it lately, but even though we've outmatched every other large predator on the planet, we're actually losing ground to the older, more successful predators, like insects and bacteria. But even they don't pose as big a threat to our survival as we do ourselves, because for the individual, there is no greater competition than that from members of our own species. Each of us has the same requirements, the same joys, the same weaknesses, so we naturally require and compete for the same resources. And just like for the rest of the world, that competition always ends in somebody's blood being spilled, somewhere.
That's the basic reason why we have to fight each other, why we've always fought each other. We didn't band together into kinship groups and tribes to protect ourselves from tigers, wolves, and bears. Those guys are the small fry, for while they can pick off individuals, a small group of humans equipped with language, coordination, and spears can and did exterminate them at will.
No, we band into groups to protect ourselves from other groups. What do those other groups want? They want, at some level, to enslave us, because slavery is the human way of eating other humans. We work each other to death, bury the bodies, and use other slaves to till the ground the bodies fertilized. Since we don't seem to be able to function without competing with some other group, if our group beats all the others and runs out of groups to compete with, we simply split. We divide our group into haves and have nots, each sub-group preying on the other sub-groups.
Why this histrionic (but hopefully not boring) polemic on the suffering of the World, this horror show of Nature?
Because your family's pain, stemming most recently from the vile treatment of several generations of your fellow imported Africans by the dominant social groups in America, is a grievously common experience, not just for humans, but for every creature God has made. (Yes, I rank the suffering of other animals as equal to our own.)
That's why, although it's almost never recognized as such, I think we humans are trying something completely new in the world -- we are trying to be better than God. God doesn't care if we eat each other, humans and non-humans together, because that's how He made us. He doesn't care if we enslave each other, because that's just a form of eating, and again, that's how God made us. He doesn't mind at all, because all of his living creations are here for the sole purpose of feeding each other. It's what we do.
We mind. We are the ones who care. We are the ones who, in spite of our billion-yea- old nature, have fitfully learned to devise better moral rules than the ones God gave the world. It's no surprise that we aren't very good at it, being better than God, because we are having to make it up out of our own heads, no good examples but the ones we make ourselves. But our better-than-divine moral formulations have allowed us to build a global civilization, because it's our moral codes that allow us to build bigger and better groups, to work cooperatively on multigenerational goals, and to learn that free humans are more valuable than slaves.
Yes, our civiliztion drips blood, as does the rest of the world. But it also glows with kindness and beauty, and marvelous achievements, precisely because our philosophical yearning for something better more often than not matches our God-given hunger for rapine and meat. And when I see too many posts about "evil" of America, I become angry that the astounding achievements of the Human Species are being denigrated, achievements that exist independently of and simlutaneously with the horror of our natural selves, all sometimes accomplished by the very same people.
When Ahmaud Arbery was hunted to death by the local villagers, they were doing what I think of as doing God's work, for they were mindlessly following the natural impulse to kill and (figuratively) eat "outsiders." But when the rest of our society, slowly and reluctantly, demanded justice for the killing, we were behaving supernaturally, understandably a very difficult thing to do. That why, for every word of condemnation we utter for those who exercise their natural bloodlust, I believe that we should at least have a breath of praise for those of our fellow humans who strive for a life better than the predator/prey abbatoir God devised. (Btw, I went to the Satillo Shores neighborhood where Mr. Arbery was killed after the murderers were arrested, and for every Trump yard sign, there seemed to at least two "Run with Ahmaud" signs.)
For if we cannot love our own society -- blood and splendor blended together into one huge world -- and communicate that love to our young, our society will tear itself apart in self-loathing, and will descend again into the natural pit from which we've wrenched it.
Well Dirk, this early bird has read your sweeping assessment of humanity, nature and "God" with admiration for your perspective. You could forgive us for thinking that your previous "zingers" might be coming from a troll.
I do take issue with this statement: "All I can avow is that my family and I, too, have our own agonies, and I suspect that all varieties, in the end, taste just as horribly bitter."
I adamantly disagree.
I will not pry. And I will not bore you with my own travails. But I don't think you quite grasp how insulting that sounds. It is that "whataboutism" that I described previously. While our personal horrors might personally "feel" like equivalents to Mr. Willis's family's incredible suffering, THEY ARE NOT. I am not denigrating whatever difficulties you and yours have and may continue to experience. But once we start comparing in this way, it diminishes one or the other in its meaning and lesson.
Example: For me to compare my wife's family's history of escaping pogrom after pogrom, social exclusion after social exclusion, and forever fear of being exterminated - with my own family's suffering of a very different nature but still very painful and real - is to insult my wife in a manner that is alienating and hardly empathetic.
I find your overall assessment of humanity to be quite spot on. I just don't think you realize that we who believe in telling the truth (the whole truth) about our nation's history simply want it told in an unvarnished manner. And I don't think you have considered that we who feel that way want that truth told because we DO "love our own society" and ARE proud of its achievements. We just want to move forward helping each other, ALL of US THIS TIME, rather than eating each other for lunch. That involves learning from the past and celebrating our accomplishments by improving on them.
PS: I don't detect a single bit of "self loathing" in this group of Substackers. Least of all Mr. Willis.
Mr. Addertongue. What an impressive presentation. I stand in awe of your thoughts that seem to outline your view of the human condition throughout history.
While I may have differing concepts of a struggling humanity over the eons, I am nevertheless astounded by your portrait of a fallible creature, endeavoring to control its environment and to survive its competitors; all the while virtually ignored by the Being that is apparently the Creator in this dire scenario, that established the ground rules but now has left Its creation to fend for itself.
As I implied before, my concept of this evolution portrays a different creature and a different Creator. The creature–us–is an evolving entity, appearing animal-like at its origin, but progressing throughout time to become less animalistic and more human.
The Author of this eternal production, likewise, is instead an all-loving, ever-caring Being Who parents His vulnerable progeny throughout the ages, sheltering them from their follies and disciplining them when their actions become too capricious and destructive.
This All-knowing Parent of ours has provided guidance throughout the ages in the form of successive Revelations, or religions, each one tailored to our stage of maturity. These are flawlessly designed to assist His creatures in addressing the realities of existence on Planet Earth in any era.
The process is known as Progressive Revelation.
This supreme Entity has established rules, or laws, that guide the human creation through the minefield of life. Unfortunately for us, we have ever failed to follow the instructions, often neglecting to read them in their entirety, and always misinterpreting the guidance.
As a species, we can now be understood as having reached the end of our collective “adolescence”. As can be observed in any young adult struggling with the conflicting tugs of self and generosity, the human race can be seen as a confused and conflicted adult/child, bewildered by the array of new, shiny things, and rudderless in the complexities of the ocean of life.
But (spoiler alert) the story will have a happy and productive ending. After weathering the gales of selflessness and selfishness, we will, in due time, reach the calm of a new global order, where all the talents and ingenuity latent in our interior being will burst forth and a bright, renewed civilization will be realized!
This, of course, is the “Reader’s Digest” version of this momentous history; and, I’m sure, a dangerously flawed one as well. But if this storyline piques your interest, I’d be happy to share some unadulterated excerpts from the Holy Text and links to the reference materials and the overview of the Source.
Dirk, you asked what Mr. Willis’ comment has to do with Dr. Richardson’s letter today. It “represents a dramatic break from what came before. Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets hacked a chasm between an idyllic Camelot and the chaos and division of the modern era.” Like the government, I’m here to help.
Heather’s mention of Oswald is probably the only time I have ever disagreed with anything she’s said. Without going into reams of data regarding the assassination, there is no reason to conclude that Oswald was anything other than what he claimed he was before he was silenced- a patsy.
This was a coup of our government little different than the ones our clandestine agencies pulled off in other countries.
Eisenhower was spot-on when he warned of the Military Industrial Complex.
Yes, Bill, our history has always been violent. There have been a few great people (also with personsl struggles and heartaches) who were empowered to perform great and kind acts for some good accomplishments.
Don't we compare about the same to other countries at the time -- invading new lands, killing aboriginals, making slaves, importing slaves. Many countries did this. I see the difference being that in this country we have never, as a nation, admitted our wrong-doing. Denmark slave trade/slavery itself abolished it about 1803. England in 1833; 1811, Spain; 1848, France; 1863, U.S. and so forth. Did these and other countries have the ongoing problem of integration like the U.S.?
I'm not sure about those other European powers, but I understand that England, while being for many decades a prominent purveyor of slaves, never actually allowed slavery within England itself. It was limited to the colonies. As one of those colonies, we lived cheek-to-jowl with our slaves, forever marking our society.
I wonder if some insights could be had by looking at prison societies. Here in the U.S., prison populations very strictly self-organize by race -- no matter your views outside, if you want to survive prison, don't cross those color/ethnicity lines. I wonder if English prisons organize the same way? French? Saudi Arabian? Nigerian?
"Civilized" means to me that each civilian is responsible for their own behavior, unlike ancient Celtic law which holds the perpetrators relatives for 7 to 9 generations and degrees of cousins responsible, and who have to pay the value of the crime. In a big country like the US, it's easy to just disappear and get lost, so media accountability is doubly important, especially now that so many more people are suddenly in poverty, suffering from loss if homes due to fires, floods, hurricanes, climate change, and RepubliCON leaders refusal to help anyone by leveling the playing field. It's time to take the media mogols to task and reset standards to a decent level and make a clear separation between fantasy and reality, and focus on healing our nation. In some places police and military are already beginning to reform. The media should lead in regaining some national common sense. IMHO
Susan, thank you for your thoughtful & hopeful comments on civilization! You describe how easy it USED TO BE to get lost in this vast country which touches upon one of the central contributing factors to growing incivility that we don't seem to talk about much as we pass the 8 billion mark in human population (~11/15/22); OVERPOPULATION, or at least perceived overpopulation. Most every species of animal which has been studied (think lemmings, most recently mountain lions - Science News) demonstrate that as population density grows the rate of deviations from "normal" behavior grows with that density. When one adds the growing encroachment of climate change on the human population worldwide as well as in the United States it amplifies the pressure felt by humans., let alone the growing deviations of "wild" animals and even flora. That men with guns from the fringes of society appear as the most dramatically visible evidence of that deviation from acceptable civilized society I suspect that the deviations in political norms may also be an outgrowth of that perceived pressure. While we must find political solutions to manage these growing deviations from the norm, it will likely help us to recognize the major contribution to those deviations from climate change and perceived population density.
It was the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK that turned me into an ardent supporter of the true purpose of the Second Amendment -- a well-regulated militia. I blanch each time the SCOTUS has chipped away at that protection against anarchy. EDIT: I didn't say this very well but I'm not going to delete it. What I meant to say is that I became a staunch gun control advocate because I believe that the Second Amendment was about having trained militias to guard the homeland. That amendment actually became mute once the National Guard came into being. But because of successive decisions by the SCOTUS we now have people who openly carry weapons of war on our city streets.
I don’t understand your comment. What does the assassination of leaders have to do with a well-regulated militia? Do you believe these men deserved to die?
It's my fault for not stating my position clearly. I meant to say that those assassinations made me a staunch gun control advocate and person who believes that the 2nd Amendment is about having a well-regulated militia. But, just to be clear, neither JFK nor RFK were protected by "tons of guns." It was their assassinations that lead to much stronger protection details for presidents and for presidential candidates. Now a president can't go anywhere without an armored entourage that includes a fully-stocked and staffed ambulance.
Thank you Pensa_VT; " ... harmful disinformation & propaganda" .. We must address platform immunity whether the platform is physical, visual or digital. The malevolent circumstances has a name: "STOCHASTIC TERRORISM". See, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) not an insignifact year for basic 1st Amendment grounding. The 1st Amendment bars restrictions on GOVERNMENT action not on Carlson nor Elon Musk, not incitement, not verbal nor written threats of violence, not defamation, not even commercial defamation. The law develops in historical circumstances; we have new historical circumstances.
Yes. Yes. Yes. As we are writing at this early morning (for west coast) hour, with even some debate about gun control, another shooting is reported at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. Mass shooting with at least six dead. This from news on YouTube where I had connected to todays link to Eisenhower’s reaction to the JFK assassination.
Yep. Men defending themselves against innocent children, shoppers, protestors, theatre, concert, nightclub and church goers. And now elections and leaders they don't like due to their need for power and dominance and brainwashing propaganda. They are their own feared apocalypse imposed upon all of us.
Another heartbreaking mass shooting and at a Walmart, where shoppers, after working all day, were probably obtaining what they need for Thanksgiving, or getting in some Christmas shopping. I will never be numb to these tragedies and I too have wondered why most mass shootings are perpetrated by white men. Thanks for the link, Zella.
Thank you for both your quick actions and the support you gave your co-worker in an awful situation. That is a traumatic incident, and your reactions to the most recent spate of mass shootings is to be expected. I'm glad you've figured out your personal self-care (music, both listening to it and playing it) are both part of my personal coping strategy. One of my "big three" professional traumatic incidents was the suicide of a friend (he and his wife were officers in a municipal agency that was in my county; they lived in the county, and both he and his wife were friends of mine).
Zella, I suggest that since earliest times humans have been organized as nuclear family groups collected as tribes. Also since earliest times, it was the young men who were most likely pushed out of that comfy family group as the dominant male perceived growing threat for dominance of the group as well as the genetic advantage of reduced inbreeding. That has continued in more "civilized" form in this country as the tendency for males to move farther away from their families to find mates, good for both genetics as well as family harmony while females have tended to remain closer to those mothers, aunts & grandmothers who can help with child-rearing. There are cultures in which the woman goes to live in the male's family (Pakistan? Afghanistan? India?) but that has been less the norm in North America. So men are more often pushed to the fringe. And I think you are correct about our culture in which boys are taught "big boys don't cry;" it works better for eventual military conscription & training that way (think Viet Nam era). And if you're not going into the military how else are you going to get that greatest of all phallic symbols, a GUN! When you feel powerless or losing power you can go get a gun.
...then there are motorcycles, fast, powerful cars, ever bigger trucks, and I suppose the ultimate phallic symbol, though not generally accessible to the majority of males, ROCKETS!😏
More privileged and yet they whine. Rupert (the most privileged of old white men) says so. Best wishes for a lovely holiday weekend, unless you are burying your dead…
Sadly, the shooter at UVA was African American as were the boys he killed, all high achieving students with brilliant futures ahead. The shooter had previous anger issues and was about to be called in for disciplinary action by UVA authorities.
TC, To be clear, my intent is not to diminish the growing signs of our culturally decadent civilization ravaged by the constant fear of violent assault and cruel insult, let alone the mean-spiritedness and coldheartedness that dominates much of our discourse. Still, I believe it equally important to take heart from the 50+% of the electorate who, earlier this month, supported candidates who accept the results of elections, who accept the rule of law, who don’t congenitally lie, and who don’t pander and indulge in conspiracy theories.
I imagine virtually all of us on this thread would agree that when we undermine these fundamental values—when we throw them away—not only does that create havoc domestically, but it makes us weaker internationally. Indeed then, we must call upon leadership that, for the past two years, has been leading a wide coalition abroad likewise to lead here at home, starting with legislation passed in the House since 2021 dealing with criminal justice, immigration reform, the economy, education, healthcare, climate, and more.
Thank you, Barbara. Well spoken. I worry when people get so attached to negativity they can't see that we have the building blocks we need - and the foundation. All of us have things in our lives that can pull us down, but we don't have to let that set the standard for how we approach all of life. Your post is a reminder of that, and a pointer to the choices we can make to move closer to our idea of equity, safety, and justice.
Thanks for reminding us that we DO have much to be thankful for. We were near the precipice. But we stepped back. I am more hopeful now than I have been in a long time. Warnock will win. The Senate will be even more powerful for the forces of good. And even if Biden doesn't get another piece of legislation signed, he will have accomplished more than almost all his predecessors. And then there will be the trifecta of 2024. The House will be returned to sane hands with powerful experienced young leadership.
I am preparing my list of suggestions for "Speaker Jeffries". Climate Action(jobs to save the Earth), Immigration Reform (the welcoming kind) and economic equality (tax the oligarchs!) to begin with. And gun control, of course....
Bill, While I am hopeful regarding 24, I am not as confident and expect we will be working as hard as, maybe harder than, we have in previous cycles. On another matter, I loved reading that you already have started preparing your “list” for Jeffries. As for me, I’m still post carding and phone banking for Warnock and pressing Dems, while they still control Congress, to advance protective measures like reforming the Electoral Count Act and prophylactically raising the debt ceiling to block Republicans, who have threatened to hold it hostage to extract concessions like cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Jeri, In my view, “the zoo” won’t “take center stage” unless we allow it. For example, given the Republican’s very narrow majority in the House combined with virtually no vision or leadership, I expect mostly chaos. Additionally, I do anticipate we will have 51 Senate Democrats, giving us substantially more control on Senate committees than the 50-50 split had afforded, not to mention rendering Sinema, though not Manchin, irrelevant. As a final point, I would note that winning every statewide race in battleground states provides some safeguards for free and fair elections in 24 and beyond.
Kathy, I should have clarified that by chaos I meant an upending of any semblance of order necessary for a body to function. I also would note that, in my view, the next two years also will be a test of our own spirit.
The GQP House lunatics (zoo) will do two things. Entertain the other lunatics while embarrassing the rest of the nation. They will be roundly defeated in 2024. In that year we will see the largest coalition in modern history vote out the whackos. The Insurrectionists will be serving time. The Blue Wave will drown out the evil doers. Things will get done that have been waiting for way too long. I hope I am here to see it happen.
One necessary step towards becoming a civilized country would be to make it illegal to possess a firearm that can fire more than once without being reloaded. A second step would be to override the 2nd Amendment, which was passed partly to augment the US military in its mission, endorsed from the beginning by the first US president, of terrorizing the indigenous population with enough brutal violence to suppress any notions they might have of resisting domination by European settlers. The uncivilized character of the US enterprise was locked in from the outset, on purpose, with forethought and violent intention. It worked then, and it continues to plague us now.
If the amiable cohesive development of commonality for all Americans leading to a Public Good can be considered civilized we have miles to go.
Our problem is we rise in the morning, flood our secure space with light and warmth, brew a beverage of ground beans from far shores then enter a day the end of which costs mighty amounts of fossil fuel burning and call it “Civilized life.”
Our luxurious life style creates poverty of 1/3 of our fellow Americans and it burdens the atmosphere with the equal amount of carbon as 1600 Ethiopians.
With about 2/5’s of Americans dissatisfied with their share of the world goods and millions eager to destroy the structure that is America we had better decide if reaching some form of decent civilization is a genuine goal or an unreachable quest beyond our grasp.
Sad. Oops, there it is, history (but especially current politics) making me uncomfortable. Goid thing we're not in school in floriduh TC, we'd both be expelled.
Maybe, in light of what is to come after the USA it will seem civilized. Ancient Egypt is called the first civilization; constantly raiding its neighbors for slaves and keeping the population under religious terror. - Keep writing true history instead of building pyramids!
I see the "hate on America club" has convened today. That's too bad.
I am with refugees from other Countries who are amazed at being in America. Perspective is everything. What's ironic is that, most likely, the people who may send me a "but everything is awful, and we suck" response can walk out their door and walk around freely. When was the last time the police showed up for something you posted here? Have any of your family or friends been "disappeared?"
We are indeed in dire straits here. The whole planet is seething and heaving. People are begging to get into America. Perspective is everything.
Those of us who were born here and do very much appreciate all that our country has to offer, also see all that it needs to change to truly become all that it says it is. Never more so than right now. We understand that in the near future, we may not be able to walk around freely. Speak freely. Love freely. Make decisions for ourselves freely. Be free.
And conscious americans are working hard every single day to keep that free democratic ideal alive. As we debate, school boards across "free" floriduh are banning books. Democracy and free speech took a hit this time around.
Being conscious also includes respect and appreciation for what we have at this moment. Practicing hate speech on this Country serves no activism/political purpose. It is in fact dispiriting. Perhaps the enemies of Democracy love it when we do this. It could mean they are winning. We send the message of "what is there worth fighting for?"
We can isolate various situations and use it as a hammer for hating on this Country. Or we can respect and work with what we have. There is much to do.
Looking at the big picture people wiser than me are claiming a resounding victory for Democracy.
The US doesn’t get a pass on having, by design, the most violent civilian population the planet just because a lot of people want to live here. You point out that the US isn’t as bad as, say Pinochet’s Chile (which was put in place by the US government). Yes, good on us for that. Doesn’t make us civilized.
I hear Eisenhower’s statement as aspirational and a way, as a leader, of guiding the nation away from anger, fear and violence. If more of our present day leaders could speak as sincerely about the strength and unity our country needs we could, perhaps, regain some of our shared purpose and commitment to each other. I’m sure Eisenhower saw in the commitment, courage and loyalty to each other of the men he commanded during the war, the most uncivilized undertaking of any country, the best of what the US could be.
"In civilized countries of this world this doesn't happen."
Anyone who mistakes this country as "civilized" is either a fool or an ignoramus too stupid to know what is what.
To state the obvious, what distinguishes our country from truly civilized countries is one thing: guns, guns, and more guns — everywhere. Especially assault rifles.
While I certainly agree that our firearms fetish is a major indicator of our nation’s savagery, Michael, but there are so many indicators of our barbaric incivility throughout our history.
We might start with the “original sin” committed by the first “colonists” (read as invaders). The pillage and plunder heaped upon the aboriginal peoples of these continents, that marked the early years of the European foray into these lands, was perhaps as uncivil as any in human history. Add to that the importation of captive humans from Africa and the misogyny heaped upon women throughout the centuries, and we have a “perfect storm” of man’s inhumanity to man.
Sad but true, so wish that the history I learned many years ago, had been more honest. Maybe self-flagellation is not good for the soul, but a little truth and reconciliation would go a long way towards healing us all.
Jeri, I also wish for truth. What a wish. And this holiday, Thanksgiving, is an example of distorted stories. Add that to the states and political party that ban books and Critical Race Theory CRT, we continue to repeat history.
Thanks for your nice note... and this posting.
As counterpoint, Mr. Willis, your mea culpa is a bit histrionic. Yes, yes, our ancestors and contemporaries have done some really nasty shit, just like they've done some really wonderful shit, as well as a crap-load of really ordinary shit in between. All you've done is painted a single theme in really purple colors. But does it have anything to do with what Dr. Richardson wrote about? Is your polemic anything more than performative?
Perhaps I'm just too crabby this morning to appreciate figuratively standing in a circle rubbing each other's anger and self-righteous nubbins.
Wow, Mr. Addertongue. Your response appears to be the one full of histrionics. The shadows of our "civilized" country begin with our foundations of brutal colonization and dominance by white male privilege and power. White male supremacists are the ones who are appear in the powerful NRA and self-appointed militias, and sociopaths who control our lack of safety and that of our children. Maybe the color of one's skin as well as gender prevents the privileged from understanding this on a visceral level.
(grumble) As I mentioned, I was a bit crabby last night, for which I apologize. But the "foundation" of our civilization came when some smart cobber realized that if he, or more likely she, deliberately planted those tasty seeds in convenient places along her migratory route, she could have preferred plants to eat in more places. In other words, the origins of agriculture, another name for "altering your environment to suit yourself instead of the other way around."
Dominance and privilege predates even that, because even the most ragged band of chimpanzees know the importance of territory and the value of kin. And these important values are always enforced brutally. The "whites" happen to have achieved a global economic dominance for a few hundred years because of some technological and organizational advances, a dominance they've already lost. To think that "whites" are somehow more terrible than anyone else is to parrot Rousseau, not state an eternal truth.
To rephrase, nothing you've said about the NRA, white male privilege, or local militias is wrong. It's just too incomplete to be useful, and I refuse to flagellate my own culture on the basis of something that's boringly, terrifyingly common in human experience. As I said, it's not useful and simply accelerates the development of competitive control areas.
See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331074460_WEAK_STATES_STRONG_NONSTATE_ACTORS_THEORY_OF_COMPETITIVE_CONTROL_IN_NORTHERN_SYRIA, and note that there's no mention of race or privilege. Yet it more accurately hints at the root of our American troubles than any theories related to skin color or sex.
Mr. Addertongue, I don’t believe it is histrionics or self-righteous to connect Gun violence with availability and protest against regulations. The USA is a standout in demonstrating that sociopolitical connection.
Sure, there's a connection, but how strong is it? As I understand it, Canadians have a higher per capita gun ownership that the U.S., yet murders with guns are comparatively rare. Violence, with guns or otherwise, seems to be a strong characteristic of American society, whether in our use of guns, our personal relationships, or our foreign policy. Where does that violence come from? What reinforces it? The weapon is secondary, the will to slaughter is primary.
For accurate data on worldwide Gun issues including USA and Canada here’s an excerpt, a rebuttal and clarification. Council on Foreign Relations. US Gun Policy and Global Comparisons:
“The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has 46 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns, according to the most recent report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (2018). It ranks number one in firearms per capita. The United States also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate of the world’s most-developed nations. Many gun rights proponents say these statistics do not indicate a causal relationship.”
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-gun-policy-global-comparisons
Canadians absolutely DO NOT own more guns per capita than Americans! A number of sources place Canada seventh in gun ownership, with about 35 guns for every 100 people. The US is way out in front, with more than 120 guns for every 100 people. That's almost double the amount of the second-place country, Falkland Islands, with 62/100.
Bill Willis simply stated the all too often over looked TRUTH. We have been a nation of violence and cruelty and bigotry and hate from the moment the first Europeans stepped on Indigenous American soil.
May I recommend a book for you sir? "The Barbarous Years" by Bernard Bailyn
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780394515700
I'm not sure if you were offering Mr. Bailyn's book to me, to Mr. Willis, or simply in general. At first blush, it looks like a good read, although it doesn't seem to limit itself to cruelty by European colonizers. I don't know if it's treated therein, but when it comes to breathtaking cruelty, I'd stack the Comanches against Nazis any day.
This fish bit the worm once and it tasted great. But I have no appetite for "whataboutism". Have a nice Thanksgiving.
[I’m not sure there’s much point in posting this at this late hour, Mr. Addertongue, but I felt I needed to be “on the record” in this string of comments. You’ve heard a lot from a lot of people and perhaps that’s your primary goal. In any case, here’s my two cents.].
I must apologize for the delay in my reply to your comment this morning, Dirk. I was downloading an upgrade to my iPad and then found myself too semiconscious (thankfully, as I have difficulty nodding off before dawn most nights) to respond to your thoughts.
The early part of my day has been full as well.
First off, my comments hardly fit the definition of “mea culpa”. My maternal grandparents were born enslaved: my grandfather in 1853, and my grandmother in 1861. Their oldest son was the victim of a lynching around the turn of the century. My mother, born in 1904–the last of 11 live/sustainable births–never knew her “big brother,” and I, born in 1938, did not ever meet my uncle.
So I, and my recent ancestors, have ever been the recipients of the human excrement you so colorfully describe. I cannot apologize for our suffering.
If I seem histrionic, I will not, as well, ask anyone to overlook my writing style, especially in regards to the terrors and inconceivable indignities heaped upon me and all those who look like me. The horrendous “drama” we have been subjected to can never be adequately described to one who has never been its target.
Lastly, my theme is hardly singular; it involves the harsh landscape crafted by the unconsciously evil, unbelievably rapacious “explorers” and their capitalist descendants who have wreaked ungodly pain and suffering on their unfortunate prey. That it does not include the popular, self-satisfied images of “America the beautiful…” is intentional, since we have been subjected to the fantasied hymns of glory and success ad nauseum throughout the history of the colonies and our nation.
As my postscript, I refer you to the last line of Dr. Richardson’s “Letter…”, quoting President Eisenhower: “In civilized countries of the world this doesn’t happen….”
That is the connection to my “polemic”.
Dear Mr. Willis, it is never too late to post and to share the Truth. Thank you. I can only apologize for the evil and heinous acts of terror and violence and denial that this Country, this government, inflicted upon your ancestors (and even after a devastating Civil War, continued to inflict upon you and your family and people of color and the descendants of enslaved people.) The American celebration of Thanksgiving is complicated most by the myths perpetuated from the beginning. Americans have also created myths about slavery. Again the Truth is often denied or simply not believed. After reading the 1619 Project and witnessing the denial and pushback, the prohibition of using it as CRT in many states, especially Southern states, it’s clear that the Truth continues to be denied by some people and reconciliation if ever possible may be far down the road. I would like to be wrong. I wish you and your family and this nation a time of reflection that will someday offer true Healing, Justice and Equality. Gratitude for your letter and your story. Our nation’s story.
Dear Mr. Willis,
Once again, you have reached in and touched my heart with your eloquence and words. Once again, I wish I could have tea with you and just chat. I knew Dirk did not know to whom he was addressing. He does not appear to know the evil and historical trauma just living in a tinted skin evokes from others with less tint. Thank you for your heart-wrenching response which evoked something from Mr. Addertongue, more than just trolling or trying to elicit something. Mr. Alstrom's response to Mr. Addertongue, says it all. What it really brings up appears to be the incredible guilt and/or denial of many white people who just do not know what to say or do about true history and tinted people's actual experience due to their skin, every minute. I think we make hollow attempts to liken our occasional troubles or traumas with theirs. It is not the same. "Equal rights" in America are a mere fantasia of words and not reality. Fortunately, Dirk's innocent-seeming response depicts exactly the problem we face. This is a hard walk and requires bravery. This is not nice soundbites and move on. Maybe to start, we need to acknowledge all the people whose blood, sweat and deaths are on all the bricks and mortar of our foundations. We need to brainstorm how to apologize, thank them and build places of honor for their ancestors.
At the same time, white supremacists are alive, arrogant, and petrified of equality, reprisal, and trying to hold on by all means possible to keep themselves at the top of our caste system.
We have witnessed the huge whiplash from voting for an educated, intelligent, erudite black president. Haters are out in the light of day telling us who they are and whom they hate.
What we will do with stories like Mr. Willis' is all of our responsibility. I do not claim to know the exact pathway, but we need to be educated and develop empathy. And, enough of us need to agree that America is not the best, most wonderful, patriotic home of the free and the brave. We cannot be ostriches anymore in this country. Though we have many patriotic people who stand up for our country and Constitution, we need to face ourselves here at home openly and honestly. To be the longest, most successful democracy in the world, we need to face our demons. And then follow-through with new guidelines and reparations and policies against hatred so all our people can be treated equally as our Constitution states.
I just visited S. Africa for three weeks. For all Nelson Mandela did, bless his heart, the tinted-skinned people still are the servants to the white-skinned people, despite their so-called Freedom. It felt just like America's deep south. And I felt just like a white, colonial woman being served. Those who served me and my friend were shocked at how we wanted to know them, and their lives, and what they would love outside of waitressing or being porters or safari guides. They were so excited to see us every day. We cried when we left one another. They just want the same things all of us want—to be seen and respected, to be paid fairly, to be musicians, therapists, actors, writers, dancers, artists, managers, doctors, leaders, owners of businesses or a reserve, time with their children, vacations, birthday parties. Our white Afrikaner host told us not to tip them. What!?!??! If you have ever been a waitress, you know how hard that work is for little pay. Our host told us the average wage is about $10.00 a day. A DAY. A hamburger at McDonalds cost $7.00 (170.16 rand). Nothing but human slavery, starving in a nice outfit. That is what S. African freedom gets you? All colonized countries can do their "freed" people a hell of a lot better than all that. We can go to the moon and mars. We just have to have the will.
I see the horrors of the current, white supremacist, radical terrorists and seditionists, and their infiltration across American government for the past 40+ years coming to a head. The blatant, open hypocrisy of these ignorant "Christians" and the "Moral Majority" who exalted a dangerous, narcissistic cult figure, who contained all the worsts traits of our humanity in one disgusting corpus. And it magnetized, gave permission to others to be their worst. In front of all the children in America and the world. The Beast was openly unleashed. And now we have no choice but to smell it, name it and this time deal with it properly. As a country, we cannot pretend anymore.
I have called it "deep gardening." America needs a vast amount of gardeners willing to dig up take out our diseased roots. It is not easy, but who ever said being human was easy?
Is it possible to keep this conversation going so we can grapple with our real history, not that written by the rich, white victors? Can we create a new path, together, with All of The People? Can we help towards some iota of reparations and honoring what indigenous and enslaved people sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy United States of America? Can we start that now even as we fight for our democracy against authoritarianism? Can we deal with the corrupt "Citizens United" who are not citizens at all? Human beings are our citizens—in all shapes, sizes and colors.
We need to all stand, together, for this fight. Our people's historical trauma belongs to all of us. We must not repeat it. We need to respectfully hear voices like Bill's, listen and then hold their hands and walk this path together with honesty, respect and a desire to create something better, together, in our world. We also need to protect one another and stand up for each other when injustices by ignorance occur. For instance, racists need to do social justice reparations to the very person they harmed, every time they commit a hate crime. Our education system needs a complete revamping of the skills necessary to live together on earth and how to communicate diplomatically together. I could go on forever...but you get the gist if you have read this far.
I am so grateful for this community. It is like breathing oxygen every morning and makes me feel hopeful and creative that we can do something, together, for all of us and the planet. What great minds and opportunities we have to grow, learn, express and try to understand one another—just in this forum!
Thank you Pensa and Mr. Willis. I was part of that conversation and appreciate not only sharing my opinions but having the comments that connect. This is all a learning process every day. And to see where each person is on the continuum and conversation is educational and enlightening. Be well. I’m grateful for this forum, for HCR and your input.
Bill, Thank-you for the reality check. I do understand the lies we (white people) tell ourselves to avoid the guilt of our ancestor's (and our own) deeds can be tremendously painful to the targets (any people who are not white, male, middle/upper class English speakers) of those deeds. While it is not really up to people of color to become "anti-racism coaches" to this nation of ours, I do appreciate your stepping up in this instance.
Please don't apologize for any delay and thank you for posting late, since I have a similar problem with nodding off. Double thanks for drafting such a complete and thoughtful essay, and for revealing so much of yourself in such a moving, elegant style. I ask that you accept the following as my reply to the un-posed question, "Why is that Addertongue fellow so worked up about my post decrying the well-documented truth of America, especially when he even agrees with me?"
Please understand, my heart aches for the suffering and injustice you describe. While I've experienced my own share of injustices, the crushing weight of generations of status-based oppression is not in my living history, so I would never dare to claim an understanding of your particular flavor of agony. All I can avow is that my family and I, too, have our own agonies, and I suspect that all varieties, in the end, taste just as horribly bitter.
No wonder I have heart problems, because my heart also aches when I read Columbus' diary, where he praised the beauty and intelligence of the native islanders he discovered, then used guns, whips, and dogs to herd them into slave pens where he worked them to death.
I quietly weep when I imagine the nightmare lived by the villagers in the what is now New England when, after a single European scout visited their shore, over 95% of them died of disease, leaving their vacant homes and fields for the amazed settlers to find when they arrived three years later.
I read with hollow-eyed horror accounts of Comanche grandmothers playfully burning the nose off a captive young white girl by repeatedly pressing hot coals against her face, searing the stump off a little at at time. Just for fun.
The Rape of Nanking haunts me. The bloody conquests of Tamarlane and the Rape of Nanking, they haunt me. And it doesn't stop there, for my conscience requires that I acknowlege that this is just human suffering, a very recent entry in the ledger of blood that defines life on Earth.
Everything alive, with only a couple of exceptions, must have something dead to live on. For us warm-blooded animals, the requirement is even stricter -- we have to eat someone else, usually every day, to continue living. Since no one voluteers to be someone else's meal, the act of feeding ourselves is always violent and bloody, filled with suffering. Just watch lions bring down a wildebeest; they don't kill it, they simply eat it, usually from the belly out, while it gasps in agony. I'll never forget seeing a dying wildebeest raising his head to look a lioness in the eye just as the big cat pulled her bloody head out his entrails, then flopping back down to continue screaming, weakly.
Just like the rest of the animals, we have to compete with others for this living food. We've gotten pretty good at it lately, but even though we've outmatched every other large predator on the planet, we're actually losing ground to the older, more successful predators, like insects and bacteria. But even they don't pose as big a threat to our survival as we do ourselves, because for the individual, there is no greater competition than that from members of our own species. Each of us has the same requirements, the same joys, the same weaknesses, so we naturally require and compete for the same resources. And just like for the rest of the world, that competition always ends in somebody's blood being spilled, somewhere.
That's the basic reason why we have to fight each other, why we've always fought each other. We didn't band together into kinship groups and tribes to protect ourselves from tigers, wolves, and bears. Those guys are the small fry, for while they can pick off individuals, a small group of humans equipped with language, coordination, and spears can and did exterminate them at will.
No, we band into groups to protect ourselves from other groups. What do those other groups want? They want, at some level, to enslave us, because slavery is the human way of eating other humans. We work each other to death, bury the bodies, and use other slaves to till the ground the bodies fertilized. Since we don't seem to be able to function without competing with some other group, if our group beats all the others and runs out of groups to compete with, we simply split. We divide our group into haves and have nots, each sub-group preying on the other sub-groups.
Why this histrionic (but hopefully not boring) polemic on the suffering of the World, this horror show of Nature?
Because your family's pain, stemming most recently from the vile treatment of several generations of your fellow imported Africans by the dominant social groups in America, is a grievously common experience, not just for humans, but for every creature God has made. (Yes, I rank the suffering of other animals as equal to our own.)
That's why, although it's almost never recognized as such, I think we humans are trying something completely new in the world -- we are trying to be better than God. God doesn't care if we eat each other, humans and non-humans together, because that's how He made us. He doesn't care if we enslave each other, because that's just a form of eating, and again, that's how God made us. He doesn't mind at all, because all of his living creations are here for the sole purpose of feeding each other. It's what we do.
We mind. We are the ones who care. We are the ones who, in spite of our billion-yea- old nature, have fitfully learned to devise better moral rules than the ones God gave the world. It's no surprise that we aren't very good at it, being better than God, because we are having to make it up out of our own heads, no good examples but the ones we make ourselves. But our better-than-divine moral formulations have allowed us to build a global civilization, because it's our moral codes that allow us to build bigger and better groups, to work cooperatively on multigenerational goals, and to learn that free humans are more valuable than slaves.
Yes, our civiliztion drips blood, as does the rest of the world. But it also glows with kindness and beauty, and marvelous achievements, precisely because our philosophical yearning for something better more often than not matches our God-given hunger for rapine and meat. And when I see too many posts about "evil" of America, I become angry that the astounding achievements of the Human Species are being denigrated, achievements that exist independently of and simlutaneously with the horror of our natural selves, all sometimes accomplished by the very same people.
When Ahmaud Arbery was hunted to death by the local villagers, they were doing what I think of as doing God's work, for they were mindlessly following the natural impulse to kill and (figuratively) eat "outsiders." But when the rest of our society, slowly and reluctantly, demanded justice for the killing, we were behaving supernaturally, understandably a very difficult thing to do. That why, for every word of condemnation we utter for those who exercise their natural bloodlust, I believe that we should at least have a breath of praise for those of our fellow humans who strive for a life better than the predator/prey abbatoir God devised. (Btw, I went to the Satillo Shores neighborhood where Mr. Arbery was killed after the murderers were arrested, and for every Trump yard sign, there seemed to at least two "Run with Ahmaud" signs.)
For if we cannot love our own society -- blood and splendor blended together into one huge world -- and communicate that love to our young, our society will tear itself apart in self-loathing, and will descend again into the natural pit from which we've wrenched it.
Well Dirk, this early bird has read your sweeping assessment of humanity, nature and "God" with admiration for your perspective. You could forgive us for thinking that your previous "zingers" might be coming from a troll.
I do take issue with this statement: "All I can avow is that my family and I, too, have our own agonies, and I suspect that all varieties, in the end, taste just as horribly bitter."
I adamantly disagree.
I will not pry. And I will not bore you with my own travails. But I don't think you quite grasp how insulting that sounds. It is that "whataboutism" that I described previously. While our personal horrors might personally "feel" like equivalents to Mr. Willis's family's incredible suffering, THEY ARE NOT. I am not denigrating whatever difficulties you and yours have and may continue to experience. But once we start comparing in this way, it diminishes one or the other in its meaning and lesson.
Example: For me to compare my wife's family's history of escaping pogrom after pogrom, social exclusion after social exclusion, and forever fear of being exterminated - with my own family's suffering of a very different nature but still very painful and real - is to insult my wife in a manner that is alienating and hardly empathetic.
I find your overall assessment of humanity to be quite spot on. I just don't think you realize that we who believe in telling the truth (the whole truth) about our nation's history simply want it told in an unvarnished manner. And I don't think you have considered that we who feel that way want that truth told because we DO "love our own society" and ARE proud of its achievements. We just want to move forward helping each other, ALL of US THIS TIME, rather than eating each other for lunch. That involves learning from the past and celebrating our accomplishments by improving on them.
PS: I don't detect a single bit of "self loathing" in this group of Substackers. Least of all Mr. Willis.
Mr. Addertongue. What an impressive presentation. I stand in awe of your thoughts that seem to outline your view of the human condition throughout history.
While I may have differing concepts of a struggling humanity over the eons, I am nevertheless astounded by your portrait of a fallible creature, endeavoring to control its environment and to survive its competitors; all the while virtually ignored by the Being that is apparently the Creator in this dire scenario, that established the ground rules but now has left Its creation to fend for itself.
As I implied before, my concept of this evolution portrays a different creature and a different Creator. The creature–us–is an evolving entity, appearing animal-like at its origin, but progressing throughout time to become less animalistic and more human.
The Author of this eternal production, likewise, is instead an all-loving, ever-caring Being Who parents His vulnerable progeny throughout the ages, sheltering them from their follies and disciplining them when their actions become too capricious and destructive.
This All-knowing Parent of ours has provided guidance throughout the ages in the form of successive Revelations, or religions, each one tailored to our stage of maturity. These are flawlessly designed to assist His creatures in addressing the realities of existence on Planet Earth in any era.
The process is known as Progressive Revelation.
This supreme Entity has established rules, or laws, that guide the human creation through the minefield of life. Unfortunately for us, we have ever failed to follow the instructions, often neglecting to read them in their entirety, and always misinterpreting the guidance.
As a species, we can now be understood as having reached the end of our collective “adolescence”. As can be observed in any young adult struggling with the conflicting tugs of self and generosity, the human race can be seen as a confused and conflicted adult/child, bewildered by the array of new, shiny things, and rudderless in the complexities of the ocean of life.
But (spoiler alert) the story will have a happy and productive ending. After weathering the gales of selflessness and selfishness, we will, in due time, reach the calm of a new global order, where all the talents and ingenuity latent in our interior being will burst forth and a bright, renewed civilization will be realized!
This, of course, is the “Reader’s Digest” version of this momentous history; and, I’m sure, a dangerously flawed one as well. But if this storyline piques your interest, I’d be happy to share some unadulterated excerpts from the Holy Text and links to the reference materials and the overview of the Source.
BTW, you sure know how to write!
Dirk, you asked what Mr. Willis’ comment has to do with Dr. Richardson’s letter today. It “represents a dramatic break from what came before. Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets hacked a chasm between an idyllic Camelot and the chaos and division of the modern era.” Like the government, I’m here to help.
Heather’s mention of Oswald is probably the only time I have ever disagreed with anything she’s said. Without going into reams of data regarding the assassination, there is no reason to conclude that Oswald was anything other than what he claimed he was before he was silenced- a patsy.
This was a coup of our government little different than the ones our clandestine agencies pulled off in other countries.
Eisenhower was spot-on when he warned of the Military Industrial Complex.
Don't touch my nubbin.
Are nubbins where our wings attach?
Well, at least ask politely, first.
Self-righteous nubbins!
Barbarity is inherent in our brain. But we can help prevent slaughters through gun safety regulations.
Yes, Bill, our history has always been violent. There have been a few great people (also with personsl struggles and heartaches) who were empowered to perform great and kind acts for some good accomplishments.
Don't we compare about the same to other countries at the time -- invading new lands, killing aboriginals, making slaves, importing slaves. Many countries did this. I see the difference being that in this country we have never, as a nation, admitted our wrong-doing. Denmark slave trade/slavery itself abolished it about 1803. England in 1833; 1811, Spain; 1848, France; 1863, U.S. and so forth. Did these and other countries have the ongoing problem of integration like the U.S.?
I'm not sure about those other European powers, but I understand that England, while being for many decades a prominent purveyor of slaves, never actually allowed slavery within England itself. It was limited to the colonies. As one of those colonies, we lived cheek-to-jowl with our slaves, forever marking our society.
I wonder if some insights could be had by looking at prison societies. Here in the U.S., prison populations very strictly self-organize by race -- no matter your views outside, if you want to survive prison, don't cross those color/ethnicity lines. I wonder if English prisons organize the same way? French? Saudi Arabian? Nigerian?
"Civilized" means to me that each civilian is responsible for their own behavior, unlike ancient Celtic law which holds the perpetrators relatives for 7 to 9 generations and degrees of cousins responsible, and who have to pay the value of the crime. In a big country like the US, it's easy to just disappear and get lost, so media accountability is doubly important, especially now that so many more people are suddenly in poverty, suffering from loss if homes due to fires, floods, hurricanes, climate change, and RepubliCON leaders refusal to help anyone by leveling the playing field. It's time to take the media mogols to task and reset standards to a decent level and make a clear separation between fantasy and reality, and focus on healing our nation. In some places police and military are already beginning to reform. The media should lead in regaining some national common sense. IMHO
Susan, thank you for your thoughtful & hopeful comments on civilization! You describe how easy it USED TO BE to get lost in this vast country which touches upon one of the central contributing factors to growing incivility that we don't seem to talk about much as we pass the 8 billion mark in human population (~11/15/22); OVERPOPULATION, or at least perceived overpopulation. Most every species of animal which has been studied (think lemmings, most recently mountain lions - Science News) demonstrate that as population density grows the rate of deviations from "normal" behavior grows with that density. When one adds the growing encroachment of climate change on the human population worldwide as well as in the United States it amplifies the pressure felt by humans., let alone the growing deviations of "wild" animals and even flora. That men with guns from the fringes of society appear as the most dramatically visible evidence of that deviation from acceptable civilized society I suspect that the deviations in political norms may also be an outgrowth of that perceived pressure. While we must find political solutions to manage these growing deviations from the norm, it will likely help us to recognize the major contribution to those deviations from climate change and perceived population density.
Interesting thoughts, John.
attempted like
It was the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK that turned me into an ardent supporter of the true purpose of the Second Amendment -- a well-regulated militia. I blanch each time the SCOTUS has chipped away at that protection against anarchy. EDIT: I didn't say this very well but I'm not going to delete it. What I meant to say is that I became a staunch gun control advocate because I believe that the Second Amendment was about having trained militias to guard the homeland. That amendment actually became mute once the National Guard came into being. But because of successive decisions by the SCOTUS we now have people who openly carry weapons of war on our city streets.
I don’t understand your comment. What does the assassination of leaders have to do with a well-regulated militia? Do you believe these men deserved to die?
I said it poorly. What I meant to say is that it made me a staunch support of gun control measures.
Sometimes the anarchists wear the garb of patriots, duh
JFK and RFK were protected by tons of guns. More guns--a militia--would've served no purpose.
And it would have been terrific if the almost-always-all-white militias were protecting MLK.
It's my fault for not stating my position clearly. I meant to say that those assassinations made me a staunch gun control advocate and person who believes that the 2nd Amendment is about having a well-regulated militia. But, just to be clear, neither JFK nor RFK were protected by "tons of guns." It was their assassinations that lead to much stronger protection details for presidents and for presidential candidates. Now a president can't go anywhere without an armored entourage that includes a fully-stocked and staffed ambulance.
...And an internet and some media that allows cultish wackos and harmful disinformation and propaganda to run rampant.
Thank you Pensa_VT; " ... harmful disinformation & propaganda" .. We must address platform immunity whether the platform is physical, visual or digital. The malevolent circumstances has a name: "STOCHASTIC TERRORISM". See, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) not an insignifact year for basic 1st Amendment grounding. The 1st Amendment bars restrictions on GOVERNMENT action not on Carlson nor Elon Musk, not incitement, not verbal nor written threats of violence, not defamation, not even commercial defamation. The law develops in historical circumstances; we have new historical circumstances.
Do we ever, the “enemy” is a “transformer” whose shape and circumstance keep us guessing.
Yes. Yes. Yes. As we are writing at this early morning (for west coast) hour, with even some debate about gun control, another shooting is reported at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. Mass shooting with at least six dead. This from news on YouTube where I had connected to todays link to Eisenhower’s reaction to the JFK assassination.
Every week - sometimes more than once - another mass shooting. The families of those killed will not be having a happy Thanksgiving.
And the beat goes on…
Per CNN, yes, dead & injured & the shooter commited suicide Chesapeake is not that far from University of Virginia where 3 athletes were killed.
And yes.
Oh, you mean those military weapons of war we carry all over the place?
Yep. Men defending themselves against innocent children, shoppers, protestors, theatre, concert, nightclub and church goers. And now elections and leaders they don't like due to their need for power and dominance and brainwashing propaganda. They are their own feared apocalypse imposed upon all of us.
You nailed it
You are on a roll today. Don't stop now!
Thanks Bill and Jeri, I did not even have my morning caffeine, yet!
And moments ago, yet another report of mass murder, this time at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia.
We are killing ourselves - and at a maddening rate.
Damn.
Double damn
The will of bad actors, the will to kill the 'other'. Can we marshal the power of love? Can we rise up? We must.
Another heartbreaking mass shooting and at a Walmart, where shoppers, after working all day, were probably obtaining what they need for Thanksgiving, or getting in some Christmas shopping. I will never be numb to these tragedies and I too have wondered why most mass shootings are perpetrated by white men. Thanks for the link, Zella.
Thank you for both your quick actions and the support you gave your co-worker in an awful situation. That is a traumatic incident, and your reactions to the most recent spate of mass shootings is to be expected. I'm glad you've figured out your personal self-care (music, both listening to it and playing it) are both part of my personal coping strategy. One of my "big three" professional traumatic incidents was the suicide of a friend (he and his wife were officers in a municipal agency that was in my county; they lived in the county, and both he and his wife were friends of mine).
Please do take care of yourself today.
Zella, I suggest that since earliest times humans have been organized as nuclear family groups collected as tribes. Also since earliest times, it was the young men who were most likely pushed out of that comfy family group as the dominant male perceived growing threat for dominance of the group as well as the genetic advantage of reduced inbreeding. That has continued in more "civilized" form in this country as the tendency for males to move farther away from their families to find mates, good for both genetics as well as family harmony while females have tended to remain closer to those mothers, aunts & grandmothers who can help with child-rearing. There are cultures in which the woman goes to live in the male's family (Pakistan? Afghanistan? India?) but that has been less the norm in North America. So men are more often pushed to the fringe. And I think you are correct about our culture in which boys are taught "big boys don't cry;" it works better for eventual military conscription & training that way (think Viet Nam era). And if you're not going into the military how else are you going to get that greatest of all phallic symbols, a GUN! When you feel powerless or losing power you can go get a gun.
...then there are motorcycles, fast, powerful cars, ever bigger trucks, and I suppose the ultimate phallic symbol, though not generally accessible to the majority of males, ROCKETS!😏
More privileged and yet they whine. Rupert (the most privileged of old white men) says so. Best wishes for a lovely holiday weekend, unless you are burying your dead…
Sadly, the shooter at UVA was African American as were the boys he killed, all high achieving students with brilliant futures ahead. The shooter had previous anger issues and was about to be called in for disciplinary action by UVA authorities.
TC, To be clear, my intent is not to diminish the growing signs of our culturally decadent civilization ravaged by the constant fear of violent assault and cruel insult, let alone the mean-spiritedness and coldheartedness that dominates much of our discourse. Still, I believe it equally important to take heart from the 50+% of the electorate who, earlier this month, supported candidates who accept the results of elections, who accept the rule of law, who don’t congenitally lie, and who don’t pander and indulge in conspiracy theories.
I imagine virtually all of us on this thread would agree that when we undermine these fundamental values—when we throw them away—not only does that create havoc domestically, but it makes us weaker internationally. Indeed then, we must call upon leadership that, for the past two years, has been leading a wide coalition abroad likewise to lead here at home, starting with legislation passed in the House since 2021 dealing with criminal justice, immigration reform, the economy, education, healthcare, climate, and more.
Thank you, Barbara. Well spoken. I worry when people get so attached to negativity they can't see that we have the building blocks we need - and the foundation. All of us have things in our lives that can pull us down, but we don't have to let that set the standard for how we approach all of life. Your post is a reminder of that, and a pointer to the choices we can make to move closer to our idea of equity, safety, and justice.
Annie, Thank you for your reply that, to a great degree, amplifies that the next two years, in many respects, will serve as a test of our spirit.
Thanks for reminding us that we DO have much to be thankful for. We were near the precipice. But we stepped back. I am more hopeful now than I have been in a long time. Warnock will win. The Senate will be even more powerful for the forces of good. And even if Biden doesn't get another piece of legislation signed, he will have accomplished more than almost all his predecessors. And then there will be the trifecta of 2024. The House will be returned to sane hands with powerful experienced young leadership.
I am preparing my list of suggestions for "Speaker Jeffries". Climate Action(jobs to save the Earth), Immigration Reform (the welcoming kind) and economic equality (tax the oligarchs!) to begin with. And gun control, of course....
Bill, While I am hopeful regarding 24, I am not as confident and expect we will be working as hard as, maybe harder than, we have in previous cycles. On another matter, I loved reading that you already have started preparing your “list” for Jeffries. As for me, I’m still post carding and phone banking for Warnock and pressing Dems, while they still control Congress, to advance protective measures like reforming the Electoral Count Act and prophylactically raising the debt ceiling to block Republicans, who have threatened to hold it hostage to extract concessions like cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
And the zoo is about to take center stage, and almost half of us applaud. Wish it weren’t so.
Jeri, In my view, “the zoo” won’t “take center stage” unless we allow it. For example, given the Republican’s very narrow majority in the House combined with virtually no vision or leadership, I expect mostly chaos. Additionally, I do anticipate we will have 51 Senate Democrats, giving us substantially more control on Senate committees than the 50-50 split had afforded, not to mention rendering Sinema, though not Manchin, irrelevant. As a final point, I would note that winning every statewide race in battleground states provides some safeguards for free and fair elections in 24 and beyond.
Zoo = chaos?
Kathy, I should have clarified that by chaos I meant an upending of any semblance of order necessary for a body to function. I also would note that, in my view, the next two years also will be a test of our own spirit.
The GQP House lunatics (zoo) will do two things. Entertain the other lunatics while embarrassing the rest of the nation. They will be roundly defeated in 2024. In that year we will see the largest coalition in modern history vote out the whackos. The Insurrectionists will be serving time. The Blue Wave will drown out the evil doers. Things will get done that have been waiting for way too long. I hope I am here to see it happen.
Great post. Thank you.
Mike, Your affirming reply means a great deal to me. My thanks.
One necessary step towards becoming a civilized country would be to make it illegal to possess a firearm that can fire more than once without being reloaded. A second step would be to override the 2nd Amendment, which was passed partly to augment the US military in its mission, endorsed from the beginning by the first US president, of terrorizing the indigenous population with enough brutal violence to suppress any notions they might have of resisting domination by European settlers. The uncivilized character of the US enterprise was locked in from the outset, on purpose, with forethought and violent intention. It worked then, and it continues to plague us now.
Not just the indigenous population, but to keep the slave population in line as well. Such noble causes. <heavy sarcasm font>.
More dead by gunshot in Chesapeake, VA tonight. The USA is an uncivilized shooting gallery.
A quote attributed to Oscar Wilde (and others) the U.S. is “the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
Oscar knew a thing or two about barbarism and civilization, and maybe decadence
Definitely decadence
First define “civilized.” I don’t joke.
If the amiable cohesive development of commonality for all Americans leading to a Public Good can be considered civilized we have miles to go.
Our problem is we rise in the morning, flood our secure space with light and warmth, brew a beverage of ground beans from far shores then enter a day the end of which costs mighty amounts of fossil fuel burning and call it “Civilized life.”
Our luxurious life style creates poverty of 1/3 of our fellow Americans and it burdens the atmosphere with the equal amount of carbon as 1600 Ethiopians.
With about 2/5’s of Americans dissatisfied with their share of the world goods and millions eager to destroy the structure that is America we had better decide if reaching some form of decent civilization is a genuine goal or an unreachable quest beyond our grasp.
We cannot decide something is unreachable. Think of Lincoln.
Sad. Oops, there it is, history (but especially current politics) making me uncomfortable. Goid thing we're not in school in floriduh TC, we'd both be expelled.
Maybe, in light of what is to come after the USA it will seem civilized. Ancient Egypt is called the first civilization; constantly raiding its neighbors for slaves and keeping the population under religious terror. - Keep writing true history instead of building pyramids!
I see the "hate on America club" has convened today. That's too bad.
I am with refugees from other Countries who are amazed at being in America. Perspective is everything. What's ironic is that, most likely, the people who may send me a "but everything is awful, and we suck" response can walk out their door and walk around freely. When was the last time the police showed up for something you posted here? Have any of your family or friends been "disappeared?"
We are indeed in dire straits here. The whole planet is seething and heaving. People are begging to get into America. Perspective is everything.
Those of us who were born here and do very much appreciate all that our country has to offer, also see all that it needs to change to truly become all that it says it is. Never more so than right now. We understand that in the near future, we may not be able to walk around freely. Speak freely. Love freely. Make decisions for ourselves freely. Be free.
I agree Gailee. We need to fight hard to protect what we have. And we need to fight hard against what could happen.
Political activism is mutually exclusive with pounding on this Country. Frankly it is dispiriting.
And conscious americans are working hard every single day to keep that free democratic ideal alive. As we debate, school boards across "free" floriduh are banning books. Democracy and free speech took a hit this time around.
Being conscious also includes respect and appreciation for what we have at this moment. Practicing hate speech on this Country serves no activism/political purpose. It is in fact dispiriting. Perhaps the enemies of Democracy love it when we do this. It could mean they are winning. We send the message of "what is there worth fighting for?"
We can isolate various situations and use it as a hammer for hating on this Country. Or we can respect and work with what we have. There is much to do.
Looking at the big picture people wiser than me are claiming a resounding victory for Democracy.
The US doesn’t get a pass on having, by design, the most violent civilian population the planet just because a lot of people want to live here. You point out that the US isn’t as bad as, say Pinochet’s Chile (which was put in place by the US government). Yes, good on us for that. Doesn’t make us civilized.
I hear Eisenhower’s statement as aspirational and a way, as a leader, of guiding the nation away from anger, fear and violence. If more of our present day leaders could speak as sincerely about the strength and unity our country needs we could, perhaps, regain some of our shared purpose and commitment to each other. I’m sure Eisenhower saw in the commitment, courage and loyalty to each other of the men he commanded during the war, the most uncivilized undertaking of any country, the best of what the US could be.
TCinLA:
Good morning to you too. Perhaps, the common good and sense of many of us will still prevail.