The Genocide(s) on the Horizon

I made a comment on another site recently that it appears a good deal of the "left" of this country is working itself up into a genocidal rage at Russia for crimes real and imagined and not limited to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an earlier comment, I suggested that Russia's invasion, aka "Putin's War", may indeed prove to be his fatal error.

Marching to Moscow, burning the Kremlin and hanging Putin seems to be one of the animating fantasies of the Azov-Nazis defending Ukraine-Kiev. Where does this come from? Well, of course, Hitler failed in his great march across the steppe to Moscow as did Napoleon before him. The Grand Imperialists never seem to be able to conquer Mother Russia, but the urge to do so seems implacable among a certain sort, and so, apparently, here we go again.

The Ukie-Nazis are doing the fighting and largely losing against Russia, but all the USandNato players are doing their part to fund them and supply them and keep the fighting going "to the last Ukrainian." So then my question is "what is the purpose of depopulating and destroying much of Ukraine? Cui bono as it were?

I've noted that the Ukrainian population declined some 30% after the fall of the Soviet Union, and since the invasion, another 25% or so have fled to other parts of Eastern Europe, and some back to Mother Russia itself. Parts of cities and villages have been destroyed. Planting and harvesting has been disrupted. There is no going back to the status quo ante, and it is my suspicion that many of those who have fled the fighting won't go back to Ukraine, either. 

In the meantime, genocidal forces are let loose. Zelensky claims (constantly) that the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine. There is no evidence that this is the case. On the other hand, Putin has made the claim that Ukraine has committed genocide against Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. The eight year Ukrainian war against the Donbas oblasts (and now republics) is cited as evidence, together with the appalling massacres in Odessa and Mariupol in 2014 following the coup against the government of Viktor Yanukovych. Russia, on the other hand, has vowed to "denazify" Ukraine, with particular emphasis on liquidating the Azov Regiment and other neo-nazi elements  of the Ukrainian state. The threat is not to Ukrainians per se, but to groups within the Ukraine who espouse Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology -- and presumably who take action to violently enforce their will.

Which then leads to revenge.

A good many of our overlords seem to like it that way.

We see genocidal rage building in many other areas of the world as well. The United States is no exception. The urge to kill The Other in the US has long been paramount. One could say it is foundational. Now we have a situation where practically everyone is The Other to someone else, a level of alienation and lack of community that may be unprecedented. The internet provides a refuge of sorts, and the simulation of community, which has, from time to time led to extraordinary acts of violence int the real world, acts that by their nature can be characterized as genocidal -- and would be considered so but for the relatively small numbers of targeted groups murdered by the killers.

The internal stresses and tensions could metastasize at any time into generalized mayhem. What then? It seems we've been conditioned to accept it. "Nothing can be done." And our lords and masters are fine with it. So long as it doesn't touch them.

For now, crises compound without much mitigation. Society pretty much everywhere is enduring a stress test. Some will survive. Many won't -- possibly including our own. 

In the Matter of Junipero Serra (Saint)

Oh fer gawdsake. I mean really. This man has been proclaimed a saint? Why?

For God's Sake, why?

Please understand, I grew up in California, and in 4th Grade California History class the story of Father Serra was told with such a romantic glow that it would be a wonder if he weren't eventually sainted and venerated and made holy, holy, holy by the Pope in Rome. The picture we were given of Father Serra and the California Missions was one of intrepid bravery and steadfastness in the face of untold perils and fear.


I attended 4th Grade at San Jose Elementary School in the San Gabriel Valley about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. Our class visited the San Gabriel Mission on a field trip, and later on a friend and I discovered a mano  and  metate while digging in the schoolyard one day. The archaeologists who came from Cal Poly to assess our finds declared that we had found artifacts remaining from a now long gone Gabrieleno Indian village that had no doubt once been affiliated with the San Gabriel Mission.

One of our class projects was to construct miniature versions of the California Missions. Many of the students made generic missions out of sugar cubes, cardboard and construction paper, but my friend and I chose to make miniature adobe bricks and build a version of the unique and iconic San Gabriel Mission we had recently visited.

Mission San Gabriel via Wikimedia

Well, it was quite a hit. We even had little bells in the belfry, and there were balsa wood doors that opened to reveal a painted interior.

San Gabriel Mission was founded by Father Serra, and it along with the eight or nine others he founded became the centers of mission life in California for the next sixty years or so.

According the the stories we were told, California history began with Father Serra and the Missions. Before that was... nothing, I guess.

Well, there were Indians, of course, but they didn't read or write. They were little more than naked savages foraging and suffering in barbarous ignorance. Until the arrival of the White Men from Spain what could one expect, no?

One thing we added to our mission model were Indian huts made out of sticks and grass. For the missions in their splendor -- and they tended to be rather splendid given the fact that they were built on the wild frontier -- couldn't exist without the labor of the Indians whose souls Father Serra set out to save.

In exchange for their salvation and various trinkets and hoo-hah the Spaniards brought with them, the Indians were required to work for their new -- kindly, we were told -- overlords. So they did.

The Mission system we were told about was a remarkable, indeed an amazing thing. Enormous plantation like ranches were attached to the missions, and each mission was not only expected to be self-sufficient unto its needs, it was expected to produce a surplus to trade and provide for the needs of civilian colonizers who came from Spain and Mexico -- and later from other regions of the world.

Each mission was actually a huge enterprise, and Father Serra was the CEO if you will.

We were told the Indians came to the missions voluntarily, submitting to the authority of the Spanish Crown and the Heavenly Father proclaimed by our hero, Junipero Serra (Saint.)

The bells. They came because of the bells. I heard that story often.

And when the missions were dissolved after Mexico gained independence, the Indians were turned loose to fend for themselves. Tragically, many did not survive.

What we were not told is that by the time the missions were dissolved in the 1830's there were very few Indians left. Many tens of thousands had already died, and very few were born to replace them. We were not told of Father Serra's cruelties toward the Indians -- "Nah, he was always kindly toward them...." We were not told of the shackles and the floggings and the executions, the disease and almost complete social and cultural destruction in the wake of the Spanish and the blessed Franciscan Fathers -- Serra, Lausen and Crespi.

No, we were not told, and I didn't find out for many years. I've been to most of the missions, San Diego and Mission Dolores in San Francisco being exceptions. Most of them have graveyards beside the churches, and many of those graveyards have simple wooden plaques that state that so many thousands of Indians are buried therein. Thousands and thousands of dead Christian Indians... wait. The Mission system was only in operation from the 1760s to the mid 1830s. How could thousands of Indians be buried in each mission graveyard? I found out.

They died primarily of imported diseases: smallpox, measles, cholera, typhus, syphilis and the like. But many were worked to death. Some were executed for rebellion or disrespect of the Glory of God. Some died of despair when their voluntary service at the mission became a life sentence of imprisonment. Some were killed in conflict that could not really be called battles with the soldiers who protected the priests.

Father Serra delighted in every baptized Indian's death for it meant yet another resident of Heaven.

I learned that Father Serra administered some of the punishment to rebellious or recalcitrant Indians himself, wielding whip or club or whatever was at hand to chastise the rebellious savages.

He also mortified his own flesh, so it's not as if the punishment of the Indians was all that much different from what a prideful priest might have to endure. Not all that much different at all.

The California mission system didn't last very long but it wrecked havoc on the California Indian societies it touched, and some were completely wiped out. Others never recovered.

Things only got worse for California Natives when the Anglos took over after the Mexican American War and the discovery of gold in them thar hills. Much worse indeed.

The Anglos didn't even try to mask their genocidal tendencies with clever references to the salvation of souls. They just came, stole, and killed.

I came to understand that Father Serra was not necessarily a kindly missionary to the benighted savages, though he may have been somewhat kinder than the hidalgos and grandees and caballeros who came to California in his wake. Serra was an arrogant Spaniard, primarily a politician intent on expanding and securing the power and territory of his king and country -- and saving a soul or two along the way.

So when I learned earlier this year that Junipero Serra was to be declared a saint by Pope Francis, I was perplexed. What was the Pope thinking? But then he also proclaimed John Paul II a saint, and John XXIII. What could he possibly thinking?

Many have pointed out that there are others much more worthy of sainthood than Serra, so why him?

As I listened to parts of the ceremony of sainthood at the cathedral in Washington, it became somewhat clearer. Serra was seen by the Pope as a heroic Hispanic figure in the Western Hemisphere. Apparently Serra is highly regarded elsewhere in Latin America and has long been considered an example of the best that Spain sent to the New World during the period of discovery and conquest.

His legend is known far and wide.

He was a Franciscan as well.

The Pope apparently had the notion to elevate Serra to sainthood in order to...

Well, I don't rightly know, but it seems that his goals include solidifying the Catholic Church's position among Hispanics in Latin America and the North.  By making Serra a saint, apparently, Hispanics who have felt abandoned by the Church (it's a long story) will be inclined to return...

Maybe.

Meanwhile, the descendants of the survivors of the California Mission period are less than amused by this fairly overt political maneuvering. One even suggested that Cesar Chavez was far more worthy of sainthood than was the founder of the California Missions.

I would agree. The political problem for the Church, though, would have been greater had Pope Francis chosen Chavez for elevation (which he might-could do... later) rather than Father Serra. Even some Hispanics, and certainly nearly all the Anglo ranchers and farmers in California and much of the West, despise Chavez and would no doubt bitch to the Heavens above were the Holy See to confer sainthood on someone who made their lives so miserable by shame and long-suffering and truthtelling.

Serra, on the other hand, is such a romanticized historical and cultural figure, the "Founder of Modern California" and all that, that few besides the Indians would dispute his saintly reward. Few indeed have any idea what the Mission period was really like and how so much of California's deepest culture -- at least in Southern California -- is still rooted in the efforts of Serra, Lausen and Crespi to evangelize and proselytize among the California Indians of the late 18th Century.

Genocide, Massacres, Police Violence, and The Cult

We've made it to Thanksgiving Day, 2014.

Thanksgiving celebrates genocide. I don't know when I first came to the realization that that's what this holiday represents, but it was most likely during the Civil Rights era when so much of the American mythos was put to the test.

We had been lied to all our lives in other words, lies and damned lies about the past that made it out to have been a struggle won by the righteous. Well, no. Not so. The righteous continued to struggle, nothing had been won but a sham, it was all false -- and how many millions had been slaughtered and enslaved in the process?

How many millions? The mythos didn't know. The mythos didn't care.

We were to believe that's done is done, and we can't go back and we can't fix it. White folks are good and true and righteous, everyone else is a savage or suspect or unworthy.

That's the story we were told, but I didn't believe it from a very early age because I spent a good portion of my early childhood among people of color. They weren't called this at the time, however. They were called Greasers, Beaners and Niggers, but when you're a kid, those words don't necessarily carry the sting they do when you get older. They're just words, and they don't really have anything to do with people. It takes a while to learn that words like that can hurt badly.

I lived the first ten years of my life among people of color and I didn't become socialized to the fear of the Other that seems to influence so much of world view of white folks to this day.

It didn't occur to me that there anything at all to fear from brown folk and black folk, but I knew from a very early age that there was plenty to fear from white folk. The ones in charge, you know? Some of them were purely evil in so many ways that you had to be on the alert all the time -- or you might not survive.

We, the children, black, brown, and white, all seemed to be aware of who we had to watch out for and be afraid of, and it was always white kids and white adults in positions of power. Always. They could hurt you, and they did.

But the mythos says no, white folks were kindly and generous and righteous, and I knew that some of them were, but when they were kindly and generous and righteous, so often they wound up almost as persecuted and disparaged as black and brown folk were.

This was, after all, the era of Red Baiting and worse. Oh, much worse.

Thanksgiving celebrates the genocide of the Indians by these righteous, kind and generous white folks. They did their duty. They cleansed first the eastern seaboard, then the rest of the country of the taint of the Savages. They brought their slaves over from Africa to serve their needs and demands. They fought one another and they killed whatever they designated as the Other with impunity.

The Other scares the holy shit out of them. Murderous rampages are the result. It has ever been thus, but if you're not socialized to fear the Other, as I wasn't, you run the risk of being designated the Other and being rampaged against yourself.

How well I know. How well so many Americans know.

Police violence is a direct descendant of the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that made this land what it is, that we celebrate at Thanksgiving.

I've been studying police violence for decades and have written extensively about it. It has become the central social issue of the American people this year thanks to an appalling spate of police killings, so many of them driven by nothing but stark terror of the Other, that has led to the deaths of hundreds, nay more than a thousand, many of them innocent of wrongdoing, this year and every year. People are killed by police because the police in so many cases are terrified of their own shadows, specters they've created in their own minds.

It's insane -- just as the genocidal, massacring, murderous rampages that created this country were.

Recently I came across a video at the Police One site that actually explains how policing has become such a perverted killer culture, and why so many get killed by police year in and year out, and nothing is done about it.

I posted the video here as an example of how police are trained and brainwashed to regard certain designated Others as existential threats fit for nothing but killing. And how the police are trained and brainwashed to believe that killing the Other is their highest accomplishment.

This is psychological abuse of the highest order and this is what leads to scenes like the killing of Tamir Rice in a park, the killing of Michael Brown in the street, the killing of James Boyd on a hillside, and the killing of so many others, at least 1001 since January 1, 2014, according to the tracking site, "Killed by Police."

An analysis of this insane training video is, I believe, long overdue, for this trainer, (Lt Col) Dave Grossman, had been spreading his theories and philosophy of "Killology" among police and military recruits unchallenged for a very long time.

From his perspective, a perspective shared by police and military alike, the highest accomplishment of a police officer is to kill -- to kill the designated Other, with neither remorse nor regret. According to Grossman, police are sheepdogs, the Other is the Wolf -- a veritable demon -- whose death at the hands of police is the purpose of the sheepdog's life.

When Brave Officer Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on Canfield Drive that hot August noon, he was fulfilling the purpose of his life, just as Brave Officer Lowman Loehmann fulfilled the purpose of his life when he shot and killed 12 year old Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park a few days ago.

That is what they are trained to believe their purpose in life is: to kill, without conscience or remorse, whatever is deemed a threat to the lives of the Good People, the Sheep as it were, that sheepdogs -- the Police and the military -- are assigned to "protect."

But what happens to these theories when the sheepdogs become the threat?

Who do the sheepdogs work for, anyway? It's not the sheep, that's for sure. Who or what are they protecting?

I resisted the cult and the theories that this insane freak (Lt Col) Dave Grossman propounds, but when I realized that his theories are largely responsible for the huge number of killings and other abuse by police in this country, and they probably form the psychological basis of so much of the killing by Our Valiant Forces abroad, and that it all amounts to a secular cult of killing, I realized I'd better take a closer look.

But the fact is, I don't want to look closer. It's vile. What Grossman propounds is clearly an effective means to warp and perverting the minds of police and military, too.

How to corral and overcome it becomes a fundamental question for the survival of the people who face this deadly police culture every day.

That's what the protests against police violence and murder all over the country and spreading around the  world are all about.

Overcoming the madness.

I give thanks that so many people are waking up to the necessity to overcome this madness, to end the slaughter, to curb the police.

But the struggle isn't done, but more and more police seem to be waking up, too.

Let's hope so.

Thanksgiving

Norman Rockwell's famous "Freedom From Want" illustration from 1943. Part of the "Four Freedoms" series. Needless to say, for many-- or most -- Americans in 1943, Thanksgiving wasn't quite like that...

There's one of those posts over at Alternet that lambastes the Europeans -- specifically the English settlers in North America -- for genocide of the Indians, a genocide that was the impetus for the First Thanksgiving that is still (apparently) given much play in elementary schools across this broad and fertile land.

The genocide was real, and it's still not really taught or even talked about much in schools, I'm told. The preferred way to deal with it is still to claim that the Indians "died out" due to lack of resistance to European diseases. That's true too as far as it goes. Many tribes perished en masse from disease. Many others still struggle with the twin scourges of Native Peoples, alcoholism and diabetes, both of which were introduced by and have been idly perpetuated by the dominant Euro-culture.

However, something keeps astonishing me about the Anglo/Euro-American view of American Indians, and that is the strange belief that the Indians have been all but wiped out entirely, that they are "gone, though not forgotten." The internalized belief is that the genocide -- however it was accomplished -- was essentially complete, and now there are almost no Indians left.

What nonsense. I know too many people who sincerely believe this though, who assure themselves  that they don't have to concern themselves with Indians any more because there aren't any left -- or at least that there aren't enough of them left to bother with.

But scholars suggest that there are more American Indians alive now than there ever were, and for the most part, native tribes are holding their own if not flourishing. Tribal living has been severely -- and probably irreparably -- disrupted for many Natives, but there is no lack of Natives in this country. Many are wise, some are militant, all of the American Indians I know are creative. The stereotypes from the past are still abroad in the land, of course, but the reality mocks the stereotypes.

It's a reality worth celebrating, and yes giving thanks for. Without a Native presence, America would be much worse off than it is.

Moving from California to New Mexico, we knew we were moving from a society in which the very concept of "Native" is for all intents and purposes alien (though there be no lack of Indians in California, don't get me wrong, they are very numerous) to one in which Native Peoples, society and culture are the foundation of everything else. Indians are not "gone" from New Mexico by any means. They are everywhere. The 19 current Pueblos are only part of the picture of Native Living in New Mexico. The ruins which dot the state, some of them not far from our own home here, demonstrate that the Indians of New Mexico and round about were "civilized" (in terms that Spanish and Anglos can understand) from a very early date, and modern day Pueblos continue that society in an unbroken line from those early days. Scholars are said to be still mystified by the "Anasazi" > Pueblo connection ("if there is one") but the Pueblo Peoples aren't. They understand it fully, and they are happy to let the scholars know if they are interested, but often they are not because they are more interested in fostering their own pet theories.
 
The Navajo and Apache Peoples who have lived among the Pueblo Peoples for many generations -- and have had more than a little conflict with them over the centuries, let's not fool ourselves -- have a distinct life-style and culture and language that is not that of the Pueblos, and most people in New Mexico understand that, while many outside the state don't. Navajo may have the dominant numbers and may hold far more land than other tribes, but they do not rule Indian society, nor is their culture the dominant Indian culture. It is one of several. (Navajo and Apache are considered "new-comers" -- and invaders -- by the Pueblos, because they only started arriving from the north in the 1400's, not that long before the Spanish incursions from the south.)

The Kiowa and Comanche Peoples who once raided and preyed on the Pueblos of New Mexico from the north and east are now pretty much integrated into Indian life in the region and many have become part of Pueblo communities. There still might be a sense of rivalry or even animosity from time to time, but for the most part, no. In fact, it appears that Indians of All Nations are welcome among the established tribes, and together they form a huge part of the artistic and cultural richness of New Mexico. It's impossible to imagine New Mexico without an enormous cultural, social, and artistic influence by Native Peoples.

Of course what I know about these things is limited. My ignorance is profound, as it will no doubt be for the rest of my life. I may have lived among Indians for most of my existence, but I still feel like I "know" next to nothing -- and in many respects, that's as it should be. I'm still finding out about my own people, after all,  and the lies they've told over the generations.

We'll have a modest Thanksgiving this afternoon -- partly to acknowledge the many blessings we've had over the years, and to give thanks to the Spirits for all of it, good and bad, as we have stumbled along our complicated path of life. Myself, I once was convinced I wouldn't -- couldn't -- live past 30, and here I am well into my 60's, puttering along, amazed at every day. Astonished. And often delighted.

The United States has many sins to atone for, as each of us as individuals have our own catalog of sins  to expiate. At the same time, we have so many blessings to be grateful for.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! Then gird thy loins, there is so much more to do...;-)