14 American students met with Vietnamese in Hanoi to plan the “Peoples’ Peace Treaty” between the peoples of the United States, South Vietnam and North Vietnam.
It begins, “Be it known that the American people and the Vietnamese people are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam, but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth, and its honor.”
When future historioranters analyze the data from this past election, at least one thing will be abundantly clear: of all the nations in Africa, Kenya played the largest role in America’s 2008 electoral process. It hadn’t been expected to be so – the odds were on perennial favorites like Egypt, South Africa, the still un-interdicted Sudanese Genocide, or that nutjob in Zimbabwe – but there Kenya was, looming like Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti. And I mean over all the Serengeti: not only does the President-Elect have a close connection with the nation – Sarah Palin’s Witch Doctor is Kenyan by birth.
Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll contemplate a land that’s seen everything from the Dawn of Humanity to becostumed imperialists to a sad-but-all-too-typical history of governance since the Era of Decolonization. Maybe along the way, we’ll come to know a little more about the most famous Kenyan-American of all – a guy who even now seems to be operating by that old African proverb, “Just because he harmed your goat, do not go out and kill his bull.”
The intent to commit genocide at Washita is hidden in plain view, unless key elements are brought together. These are: that the Cheyenne were placed on land where they would starve while promises to avert starvation were broken; that George Bent observed how Civil War soldiers did not harm white women and children by a “code of honor,” while Indian women and children were slaughtered; that Sheridan declared “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead;” and that the War Department did not differentiate between peaceful and warring Indians. Hence, the orders “to kill or hang all warriors.” As the consequence, the intent was to kill all men of a specific race.
“In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians
were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them.”
“It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and
compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.”
-Puritan divine Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana
As Native Americans, I know, as they have been telling us, that there are a lot of stereotypes, um, what are some of the stereotypes that you constantly hear about?
This is, in short, a book review of Sing C. Chew’s new book Ecological Futures: what history can teach us. Chew is important because he wants to incorporate ecological data into historical discussions of the rise and fall of civilizations; his most recent book attempts to use this “ecologized” version of history to make a solid (if somewhat scary) prediction about the future of the human race. Chew doesn’t mean to scare us, however; what’s scary are the implications of his naturalistic point of view when it comes around to analyze the disastrous course our civilization has taken in its relations to the natural world.
I will end with a short set of prognostications of my own, related to reflections in the book review.
SING C. CHEW is Associate Professor of Sociology at Humboldt State University and editor of the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations.
On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, we can make history. Yes, we can. I am absolutely thrilled at the possibility before us. I cannot wait to walk across the road– maybe I’ll go in my pajamas– to the polling place at the Spencertown Fire Department and pull a lever for Barack Obama. I will then smile, and I will continue to smile. I’ll smile because I never thought this could happen. I never thought we’d actually get out of the Bush years alive. And I never thought a candidate, a black man no less, could unify the forces of light in America. And I think that by voting and getting out the vote in this election we can actually restore the rule of law, fairness, equality, justice, peace, and even prosperity in this country. Yes we can.
As I’ve said before, if Barack Obama’s presidency is one tenth as effective as his campaign, if his presidency is one tenth as creative as the musical explosion the campaign has brought about, we’re all, all of us, going to be just fine.
And so, with less than a week to go, let’s go back to this and let’s get it done:
Please vote. Please help to get out the vote. Please talk to your relatives, children, friends, colleagues, associates and urge them to vote. This election can make history and it can bring hope and it can change the course of the nation. Yes we can.
The Indian removals which destroyed one quarter of the Cherokee tribe, were actually conceptualized by Jefferson and then extended and carried out by Jackson. There were great debates about whether the “redskins” were human and whether they had souls.
Historian and activist political scientist Howard Zinn talks with Paul Jay about the election, his perception of the meaning of the choice between McCain and Obama it presents for the future of America, and the pitfalls and opportunities that lie ahead.
Zinn says: “…vote against McCain, vote for Obama. Even though Obama does not represent any fundamental change, he creates an opening for a possibility of change. Obama will not fulfill that potential for change, unless he is enveloped by a social movement, which is angry enough, powerful enough, insistent enough, that he fills his abstract phrases about change with some content. We need direct action, because only that kind of indignation is going to have some affect on the people in Washington.”
Picture this: Thousands of warriors, clad in jaguar skins and the feathers of birds of paradise, armed with atlatls and obsidian-studded clubs, move steadily through a rainforest toward a distant cluster of pyramids and temples. Like every warrior on the eve of every battle in all of human history, they wonder if they will survive the coming fight. Some of them probably think about the circumstances that had brought on the war in which they have found their generation cast, and perhaps a few of them even consider the part they are playing in the greater socio-cultural drama unfolding in northern Guatemala in the 7th century CE.
Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight’s historiorant centers around those quarrelsome city-states of the Classical Maya. On this Columbus Day (a/k/a 7 Muluc 12 Yax), I invite you to take a break from Republican vileness and winking wannabe-veeps, and join me for a tale of the first Star Wars – a struggle between ancient Mesoamerican superpowers punctuated by some very recognizable story lines and subplots…
It begins, “Be it known that the American people and the Vietnamese people are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam, but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth, and its honor.”
