joseph beuys, I like america and america likes me, 1974
I've been having some fairly hard-boiled thoughts on the nature of the American mind. Finishing Howard Zinn's history, I went back to page one to read to the middle where I started. I wanted to read what I'd observed in my lifetime first, then go back and see how the USA I know got that way. Very first thing, Columbus lands at the Bahama Island Hispanola where Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island today, just below Cuba. The native Arawak Indians welcomed Christopher Columbus and crew, feeding them, giving them anything they wanted. A happy, peaceable people. But they didn't have enough gold to satisfy the barbarians. Before Columbus and crew were done with the Arawaks they became extinct. The Spaniards killed so many of them that the remaining few were too small a number to build the tribe back up. They withered away and became extinct. The only record of them is being slaughtered by the Columbus expedition crew upon discovery.
This is not Howard Zinn thinking up an alternate history to what the official history tells us. It came from Columbus's diaries. The history of the time was written by a Spanish priest, Bartolome de las Casas, History of the Indies. He tells some events he saw himself. He said, "Total control led to total cruelty." This tells me it was not just the English mind that encouraged the slaughter of the people living on this continent. I've wondered what it was about the European mind set at the time, the time of the Renaissance. What I've come to is Christendom. The Christian belief that everyone not saved by Jesus Christ is a heathen and a pagan, the same as dead already, justifies killing as the same as nothing. To call them sand niggers equals heathen, easy to kill, good for target practice. It don't matter what they are, boy. They aint us. I'm seeing Columbus, himself, set the precedent of genocide as the Christian model for conquering the New World.
One of the reasons I don't cultivate my land or use it to make money is that I know the people who lived here where I live for multiple thousands of years have been killed out by actual genocide, genocide with intent to be genocide. They didn't do political correctness in the18th and 19th centuries. It was a very different mind from how we think today. Pre the raising of consciousness we've collectively been through in the 20th century, the white people of the 19th century were unselfconsciously arrogant to the most Xtreme toward any people of color, whatever the color, even white when they're poor and defenseless. The ones they don't kill, they milk dry. A reason I don't care to leave the country anymore is I don't like being personally blamed for the crimes of my government that doesn't give a shit about me and is totally uninterested in how I see things. They don't even pretend to notice that the tax dollars they're paid very well from come from us, the 99%. They don't get it that when the 1% has taken everything from the 99% that the 99% will not lay down and die, like they're supposed to, and get themselves out of the way. I don't think it's going ot work out like that. They'll have to be killed.
It's interesting about this spontaneous rebellion calling itself Occupy Wall Street, that it's such a huge number of people in a large number of cities, spontaneously getting together to protest. Government surveillance is science fiction advanced so any time a few people start getting together to plan some form of resistance, demonstration, what have you, FBI infiltrates with a radical organizer who sets up a scheme for them to be arrested for conspiracy, a charge there is no defense for. When you hear on the news somebody is charged with some sort of conspiracy, you can kiss them good-bye, they're already up the river. In the time when we cannot assemble, there aren't going to be any plannings of nihilist acts. Except alone (crime) and spontaneously in crowds that can't be ignored. I love that there is no agenda with Occupy. Everybody participating has their own personal reasons. Nobody can be imprisoned for promoting communism or terrorism or any other convenient cliche. The people in the Occupy events are the true representatives of the American people. They represent "we the people" far better than our "representatives" do. The representatives in DC represent the 1% and everybody knows it. So people go downtown in whatever city they live in to chant, "Shame On You," to the corporate Bank that has taken our money and our government away from us. Now we have to represent ourselves. Mammon is not necessarily a benevolent god.
I'm seeing the Occupy "movement" a beginning. Beginning of what, I don't know. The unforeseen is around every corner. Like the Arab Spring spontaneous rebellions in Cairo, Tripoli, Damascus, the American people are gathering into spontaneous rebellions, all of them calling for democracy. I wonder what goes on in the minds of the people like Secretary of State who have to switch our allegiance from our puppet dictator the demonstrators want out, to the demonstrators who want democracy. The demonstrators in the Arab world don't want American democracy. They see it is not democracy. I can't help but pay attention to these spontaneous movements for democracy, especially in USA. Denial makes it easy for propaganda to keep half the population believing we are the world's model democracy. Now that USA is the world's police force, we're showing our mettle, which amounts to kill the poor. Like taking over the Wild West meant killing the Indians, taking over the Middle Eastern oil fields means killing, subduing and holding down the Iraqi people. Genocide would be an option, but the world is watching. They bomb Al Jazeera, but it keeps on coming back.
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