Concept Series Preface
The purpose of this series of articles is to establish a cordon of doubt around firmly stated, but subjectively held, principles of truth and democratic belief, albeit used to govern our politics and personal beliefs. What are they who are freer today “to be themselves” free to become? Why are they who are pre-tensed in life spoiling upon the human mindset? Not even the human aspect is knowable, as we fawn upon a vacant incubation, and afterward feign a hatched reality.
Seasonal Sense
Spring – study whilst passing through its initial phases … prospects still ahead
Summer – study during its heyday … engrossed in favors and suspected faults
Fall – study whilst moving into decline … problems and odds of transformation
Winter – study during its wane and death throes … reclamation or dissolution
Whose Past Needs Escaping
Troubled hearts might still carry some reflexive guilt for what early pioneers and settlers did to the original natives abiding here (in what came to be called the United States of America). Socialist progressives give it little mind — all that they can afford — having determined that life is a revolutionary struggle, no more affixed to temporal morality than a historic building being torn down and replaced with a much more practical parking garage. Naturalists might give it an evolutionary spin — considering what happened (the replacement of one culture for another culture) just a timely reaction to species fulfillment: all actors playing their roles in the necessary scheme of fight or flight, accessorizing themselves in justification of ongoing existence or at least existent self-glorification.
Recall my earlier recounting (accounting) of the takeover of the region that became Shenandoah National Park by the government, forcibly evicting the residents there, presuming their cause and claim on the land was:1) Preternaturally in forfeiture,
2) A racist occupation, and/or
3) Sparing in reparation.
One can always find an excuse for evil anytime, especially if the elite devisers and those in authoritative charge benefit from the usurping of indigent property for the pompous purpose of later war-game reenactments and for the cool wading into celebration showers on a hot afternoon in their own self-memorialized parkland.
An easy criticism of (unfair) encroachment is to be analogously revealed in the foundational appearance of airports over time. The rewarding placement of a regional airport within the area’s metropolitan boundaries becomes complicated and almost unmanageable as the city grows and the population expands (e.g., Washington National Airport in the early 1940s). The convenience of having a major airport near the city center is eventually cancelled out by the noise, by the congestion to and from staging areas and hotels, and by the limited length and number of runways serving the rapidly growing regional (international) needs. A solution slowly evolves to build a larger, more modern airport further outside the city in what is mostly still a rural or small suburban area (e.g. the early 1960s Dulles International Airport in Arlington County, Virginia). One can imagine airport planners making the argument that this new facility will still be easily accessed from the city, while its comparative remoteness and surroundings of open terrain will make it available for future growth. Years pass. This new airport is inexorably built and not much altered, but scarcely grows any larger either. Instead, all around the airport, urban growth in the form of condos, subdivisions, business high-rises, and chain development reach out to touch its once nearly vacuous vicinity. For a (humble) time, the area’s original pre-boom inhabitants, consisting mainly of farmers and local townspeople, accept the plague of pandemonium and traffic hubbub as part of the cost of progress, which also had the benefit of bringing mall-shopping, entertainment events, and ready transportation across the entire region. It’s not long, however, before the previously agriculturally-reliant (aboriginal) inhabitants begin to experience the ‘Amish’ effect: simple people being swallowed up in the noisiness and busyness of a much more complicated life and mayhem all around them. Both the scape of ruralness and the age-old agricultural means are overwhelmed by the influx of more and more people gobbling up the land, increasing the price of property values and the cost of living, and accordingly increasing the levy of burdensome taxes hobbling their farming way of life which they loved. The urban sprawlers were at first enamored by the local attractions … acting like modest strangers in a foreign land, marveling at their lifestyle and traditions, and were respectful of local customs. When “numbers” and political power began shifting toward the newcomers and recent business transplants, the agricultural community found itself foundering, its habits and people debased, becoming criticized like ignorant tribes conditioned to their queer ways and un-hurried practices, slowing down progress and belaboring the modern ideals of what a neighborhood should be. An insistence then follows that all new homes, schools, markets, and indeed conversations be turned toward the urban linchpin and their model of thinking. The original rural inhabitants either passed away or moved out. Only a few decades later, in full ignorance of what had just (unjustly) preceded them, a new urgent call goes out demanding that the engineers design a new, more modernized airport presentation, still further out, so that all the (controlling) urbanites can sleep quietly at night, without all the roar of jet engines booming overhead.
Where once crops were planted and cattle grazed in luxurious pastures, the greater expansion of the Metropolis and the venturing out of city dwellers seeking quiet country living brought an end to country existence. No longer would the arriving residents tolerate slow-moving tractors and combines blocking their passage-movement to a brighter, faster future. No more catching sight of farmers gently baling hay off in the distant fields; no more glimpsing them spraying and harvesting the fruit trees. How quaint and wonderful it once was. Visitors took joy in stopping at old-time general stores, rustling through open farmers’ markets, and ambling through thrift stores. They experienced pleasure simply by going to the country fairgrounds, riding the merry-go-round, watching the equine shows, and participating in the auctions. Now frustrated urbanites cry out, “How dare these mechanical monstrosities travel the same roadways as ourselves (in our fast-moving autos)!” “How callous of these farmers to spray chemical poisons on their fruit trees so near to our homes and vulnerable children!” “How did these country bumpkins ever survive out here in these boondocks anyway, so far away from plazas, convenience stores, nightclubs, theaters; not to mention much better-funded schools and service facilities?” In one sense, it was 4-year old arrivals criticizing the wisdom of 40-year old planners and engineers of airports; in the larger sense, it was a 40-year civilization setting boundaries and a death knell around 400-year old original settlers. First priority does not dictate ultimate ownership. The demands of the census-prevalent take precedence over the scattered, more reserved, less ambitious common folk, the surviving environs, and any remaining wildlife.
Extend this analogy to European colonial actions — the treatment by these newcomers (the early adventurers) toward the 4000-year old native Indian culture. No doubt, the colonists promised a better place for all (old and new), while simultaneously clearing the forests and draining the natural resources: importuning fate, not destiny, to side with the most populace. Genuine “Americans” (the natives) had no representation or legal rights. Responding government leaders listened only to the masses of new settlers, and arrogantly misjudged or ignored the retreating inhabitants. And so, it will lie for the next generation of frontier builders who must look for places even further away, even more secluded, to satisfy the greater public need. In this respect, the consequences of most native-settler encounters or controversies of encroachment is like reverse abortion. Existing holders of native treasures stand in the way of younger incoming adventure-seekers — in satisfaction of their own wants — and the natives must be removed else their own starting pioneer life be aborted. There, too, in whittled aggravation of empirical indulgence and cultural sustainment, the permission to kill and to overtake is within the pillaging options and prescription-grants of their authorizing political domain.
Before the Europeans, meaning initially the Spanish, came here to the New World to dominate and infect one and half continents, they had to throw off centuries of domination and persecution back in their own homeland by the Moors (i.e., the Muslims). Hardly coincidentally, we see now, perhaps even auspicious, the last disenfranchised territory within Spain — Granada — was taken back from the Moors and received into Christian (Catholic) hands in 1492 (Reconquest of Spain, 2020). Their 800-year ordeal was at last over. One of the last re-capturers of Spain and one of the first conquistadors in America was Ponce De Leon, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second expedition to the West Indies in 1493 (Britannica, 2023). Contrary to modern historians who love to paint the Spanish as being savage for freeing its own native homeland from the albeit kindly and civilizing Moors, the struggle to remove the invading Muslims also set the groundwork for the Inquisition, as a means for consolidating the country back under Christian hands. It later spread to North Africa and to America (Peters & Hamilton, 2023). Who’s to say if the Spanish, and subsequently the other Europeans, who came to America more than 500 years ago, escaping tyranny, religious persecution, debt imprisonment, and numerous other penalties imposed upon the impoverished and the homeless, are not entitled to be awarded freedom in the new land — just as so many Democratic liberals passionately and inconsiderately push for free entry today of oppressed aliens from Haiti, Mexico, central and South America? As a further blasphemy, blaming them (the Spanish) for bringing with them so many European diseases (prior to medical enlightenment), thereby ignorantly or indifferently killing off millions of natives (Cook, 1998), makes them seem morally deficient and reprehensibly degenerate — for wiping out a wholly admirable, flourishing, and disease-free civilization, which pre-Columbian society was not. I am reminded of a comment from one of my neighbors about the Canadians when a Northern blizzard struck and hung over our area relentlessly: “I can stand the snow and the steady cold of winter, but I wish those Canadians would keep their arctic blasts to themselves.”
In a recent episode of the history of Africa (politically), the narrator exhibited a remarkable show of sensitivity and maturity toward understanding the causes of European capitalism and expansionism — intertwined with a sympathy and sorrow for the past. The cold-weather and geographically-snowbound peons of Europe had their own needs (too) for the equatorial wonderland, for the esthetic beauty, that the Africans enjoyed all their lives. They also sought an escape from their longsuffering. On the cynical side, the narrator might have been just trying to avoid raising the ire of many of his white-viewing audience (both in Europe and the U.S.), so as not to appear entirely one-sided, judgmental, or poignantly anti-Western. Subcutaneously, he may have been seeking the subtle effect of soothing already guilt-ridden consciences, as well as implicitly passing the buck for the sin of colonialism onto a relatively small handful of politicians — swollen with greedy expansionism — caught in a space race, if you will, for more imperialistic space. Respectively, his oration would be akin to our usual commentaries on China and Russia today: after viciously denouncing their regimes and despotic extremism, being very careful, of course, to convey our deepest admiration and love for their people — carefully setting a place-holder (as well) for ourselves like horse-reined victims of their steppe-driven Mongol tyranny.
And it is equally amusing how insecurity breeds a special defensiveness. When the narrator spoke of horizons beckoning others to greater conquest and personal freedom for themselves, this same potential lack of drive and freedom-fire on the part of the Africans (from the Europeans point of view) was nevertheless cleverly turned into a proud proclamation of what eventually brought about the establishment of a naturally freer, more passive, more coherent, much happier, much more egalitarian society — not unlike what the West claims to have achieved historically for the belligerent cultures of Hawaii and Japan (Kennedy, 2023). Now their own people look back at their own ancestors as tangible enslavers, regrettable sacrificers, unrepentant warmongers, morally incestuous, and subtle carriers of many other human defects (Powers, 2011).
No Top to the Food Chain
In Florida, the law regarding the retrieval of long-lost sinker logs, also called deadhead logging, from the St. John’s River and other locations generally affirms the notion that “a log belongs to everyone”, meaning the government first and foremost, unless permitted out to individual loggers (McFarland, 2016). These logs are very desirable because their century-long stay at the bottom of the river in cold, oxygen-deprived waters has made them nearly impervious to rot and to normal wear and tear. Each sizable log could be worth thousands of dollars. For any particular company trying to make a living from deadhead logging, it isn’t simply a matter of tagging (buoying) them, winching them up, and hauling them back to land when able. Any new competitor can contest their prize (sunken treasure) simply by removing the markers (jugs) off unattended logs and proceeding to haul them ashore. Assuming there are no identifying brands on the wood from decades past, hence no known original harvester, this policy could be interpreted as first-touched ownership, or more accurately, first-scavenged rediscovery. But you say, these logs must have belonged to someone in the first place. It might have been the log train or barge hauling them to the mill that overturned and lost them. It might be the original lumberjacks who cut them down and trimmed them, shifting them into the river for travel downstream. It might be the original landowner from whom they were purchased or stolen. It might even be one of the local Indian (native) tribes that once controlled these entire primitive surroundings. If unbranded, from the law’s point of view, there is no original ownership; only those persons or things who currently surrender — and become taken at will.
In the native-settler controversy regarding seized rights and seized land and subsequent control, defensive European adventurers and colonialists have sometimes posited the excuse that those tribal inhabitants they first encountered, as far as the Europeans knew, or would later mostly confirm, were not the native aboriginals. As ‘explored’ in my earlier article on Modern Slavery, the Aztecs were not the sacred home-builders (first temple-builders) of the Mexican basin in the area roundabout what we call today Mexico City; rather they were the covetous, vicious conquerors of the region, having only arrived there, that is to say, having only vanquished the earlier inhabitants there, a mere century or two before the invading Spanish. Neighboring tribes which had been forced out accused the Aztecs of many sins and horrible crimes, hence often joined with the Spanish to remove them (The Early History of the Aztecs, 2018). The Incas were not the original overlords of the region they would later forge mercilessly into an empire (Britannica, 2019). Continual war among the tribes on the East Coast of the U.S. meant that the early English arrivals had to deal with whatever powers and property holders that presently confronted them (Scheel, 2022). Besides being intruders and disruptors of the local culture, the English were also co-minglers, co-exchangers, and hard bargainers of their co-struggling options. If property ownership can be de-constructed over time, whether by force, by subsidence, or by interspersal, it would probably be traced from one presiding culture to another presiding culture, and never knowingly resolved, only transmuted between succeeding (competing) generations of occupants. Of philosophical notice, this European interjection of un-clarity is really a clever application of the argument known as ‘equivocation’: “at least you don’t deserve it (altogether) either”.
Captured and forced to ride with the Red Army in the overthrow of Czarist Russia, Doctor Zhivago was still compelled to admit (in the movie) that this (social revolution) was just, even if it meant taking people’s personal homesteads, landed properties, and all their human possessions. What might have seemed repugnant in the actions of the time period itself must still be held in retrospect of the centuries of painful aristocratic rule, and in their panicked history of numerous class abuses. A deeper irony, however, for the character-victims of the book was in their knowing that they were on the cusp of sweeping historical change, whereby one despicable regime was just being replaced by a gruesome cacophony of many more (czarist-like) dictators. To whom do you look for sympathy? To cultural history? The heavens declare, you have several more millennia of self-absorbed vacation before acclimating yourselves to hard-working times. To foundational history? The escaping Hebrews had a 400-year stay and a 40-year learning curve before ever becoming qualified as worthwhile wanderers. To human history? It says, you were once my taskmaster; and now a turnabout has come.
Present-day claims by nation-states, like the extortion of former Khans and empire builders, to their seized territories and stolen land resources, are all contentious and insolent. If entitlement is by natural domination, then invasion is declared legal: the strong overcoming the weak, the predator over the prey — that being nature’s way. If entitlement comes by way of international law (global intervention), then such accession becomes subject to litigation or partisan voting. If entitlement is preserved by military pact, then the country no longer has sole mastery of itself or the authority to waiver anything more than a compromise. Similar to a man who was molested as a child, now mentally predisposed to becoming a child molester himself, so nations which once prided themselves on establishing colonies and conquering small, defenseless countries, will be overcome by greater conquering powers — or force-fed to stronger alliances with far less acuteness or concern for the fragility of cultural exigency.
A related incident of agonizing despondency was the Japanese internment during World War II. Because the official acts of an Imperial Japan were often impetuous, pernicious, malevolent, and needlessly brutal, did that give us the right (hardly knowing all beforehand) to encage so many innocent Japanese Americans living here in the U.S.? ‘Rights’ are meaningless in a time of war, just as consideration of human subtlety and polite manners are meaningless when you are being attacked and robbed in some back alley: survival is all (judgement). The attitude of history must be adjudged before any compensation or making amends should be adjudicated. Several factors set the Japanese-American internment apart from the (lesser) German-American internment. German (Nazis) were just as brutal, if not more so, than the Japanese. Differences, however, should be realized first in their names. By the time of World War II, most German immigrants had already become Americans thanks to the great influxes of the late 1800s and the early 1900s, thereby assimilating them into the American belief system. No doubt their more rapid integration was accelerated by their locations of final settlement (Middle America versus Hawaii and the West Coast) and by their racial compatibility with other residents of European ancestry. The Japanese status was often held in contrast to the American culture not just by looks, but also willfully by deliberate design or felt rejection. Incensing over their own (Asian) culture meant that they were Japanese first, Americans second. Hence, they were prejudicially perceived as artificially detached. Adding in the hot-blooded Americans already reeling from the death and destruction of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor (a supposed spectacle of quintessential honorable Japanese culture), some citizens became inflamed and sorely bent on revenge. Underground German spies and saboteurs, when discovered and arrested, were also treated forcefully and vengefully (German Saboteurs Executed, 2021). In contention with the racial aspects, China and the Chinese people, though Communistic, became one of our strongest allies and commercial partners (for the duration).
Amidst this mixed outlook of friend or foe and strong feelings of isolationism, there also lingered an upset mood and pending sense of doom for a crumbling world civilization. Perhaps the only thing that could, and did, shake America out of its indifference to world events was a direct attack, first upon Hawaii; soon to be followed, people thought, by an invasion of the continental United States. After Pearl Harbor, residents in California, Oregon, and Washington thoroughly began to fear they were next, fueling a rising suspicion of a disassociated Japanese population, even if many of them were naturalized and lived harmoniously as law-abiding citizens. Awash in a dreadfully sordid atmosphere, the temper of the times prevailed over common sense, not to mention the basics of Constitutional democracy with all its God-granted rights and securities. Liberals of that impulsive period who rightfully became appalled at America’s actions regarding internment and its deflowering of Constitutional liberties, now ironically devote their entire lives and the fortunes of the liberal party to mocking American values and the honorableness of ever abiding by the warrants of the Constitution. As a political act, internment was quite un-democratic — another in our long history of failed intentions and sacrileges. As a military act, it was quite frightening and disturbing, probably as much to the general public. As a social act, it was quite disappointing; but as a personal act, it was solely (singularly) victimizing of a people. Only now, in a true peering back in truth, might we conceive and convince ourselves that it was an overextended breach of civility, though hardly unexpected, if not wholly justified, in a time of war, a time of survival, in the aftermath of being hurt, and in prospect of much more sacrifices to come. A family that is fractured by murder and continual shakedowns … must use subduction in the execution of its ongoing freedom.
With a history now fully exposed, it is well to reflect on the suffering and the numerous atrocities committed by the Japanese (military) long after the horror of Pearl Harbor. More than ten thousand Americans died along the Bataan Death March (2022). Prisoners of war were often brutally treated. Horrific experiments were performed on Chinese and American soldiers (Kikoy, 2018). Militarily, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were slaughtered just during one siege: the Nanjing Massacre (Britannica, 2022). Whereas, after the war, numerous German perpetrators of war crimes faced trial and execution, many of the Japanese scientists received pardons in exchange for biological/chemical information (Jung, 2018). Even more astonishing, the Soviet Union held on to millions of German prisoners and captives as laborers and slaves until way into the mid-1950s (Grunewald, 2019).
What forsaken logic engulfs us now? Repeated apologies and plans of the United States government to make reparations to the descendants of those interned during World War II, may cause a backlash of disparity and disgust by Americans whose families lost loved ones needlessly and suffered dreadfully. What is the purpose of making guilty an entire generation of American children (descendants) when not a single Japanese child (descendant) living in Japan today, nor living in travel carryover here in the U.S., must make any concession or conciliatory attempt at apology for a society endeavoring to commit systemic genocide on its enemies and for bringing the whole world to the brink of destruction? If an entire generation, not just individuals, is to be held accountable, then both should.
Consider the home-body of a gardener and his presumed strawberry field. A man ventures out into the woods and one day comes upon what looks like wild strawberries. Being small and tasting very blandly, the birds and the other animals mostly ignore the plants because of their unattractiveness even when fully ripe. The gardener takes samples of the plant home, pots them carefully, nourishes them, and eventually sets them out in a spaced arrangement. Over time he cross-breeds them into a tasty treat. All the spring and summer, he keeps the area clean, he cultivates the plants, fertilizes them, so that they cover the entire garden area and even a special side-patch about his home. Soon he and his entire family are enjoying the much tastier larger-sized version, becoming an earned part of their dietary consumption. Now the birds, probably because of their easy-sighting and expanded berry size, start to take notice of the garden plots and arrive in multiplicity. Every day during the mature ripening season they come in flocks to steal the gardener’s now precious berries. Have they that right? The philosophical argument here is one of entitlement via the assigning of what once were objects of neglected value and utilitarian concern. This thesis reflects the Devil’s deception: casting serious doubt on the personal deservedness of salvation because of insufficient good deeds performed on your (the birds) part or not enough extension (expression) of love.
Then what becomes of the aboriginal justification of “God put us here in the first place”; i.e., the forest creatures had the berries in their possession, but did not take full advantage of their nutritional worth and staked no claim on what they appropriated or contrarily mis-appropriated? Would this mean that the first true Neanderthal, Homo Sapiens, or some other “human” variant who managed to stand upright and walk willy-nilly over the ground should have, or could have exercised the right to the ground they tread, and so, declare themselves owners of all the earth by virtue of their first presence? If not, or barely so, how much? The physical space which the person occupied, or all of his visual surroundings, or infinitely everything about? Refresh your memory on the exploits of the French in America who would claim entitlement to an entire river system, its tributaries and sources, its outlets and deltas, and all the surrounding lands simply by visual sighting or transporting along it. The whole of the Mississippi watershed as well as all of Canada was “claimed” in this fashion (Sibley, 2023). Should this include offshore flows intermixing with the oceans? How about the oceans themselves? At what water limits — a thousand miles out to sea, the whole ocean, everywhere the ocean mists evaporate and rise, falling back down as their rain? Should they have placed a virtual flag on the visible moon, the solar system, the Milky Way? Appreciation is further troubled by what the Heavenly Environment (the Lord) intended, were He in a mood to remove the unsatisfactory current possessors or occupants (the Canaanite birds). And if entitlement is by divine right only, is Edom only for Esau, and Israel only for Jacob?
Giving the creatures of the field and of the air some leeway to partake of the gardener’s long-fostered and well-kept strawberry patch, what should we make of those birds which tended (unattentively) to migrate to warmer climates during the wintertime, often not returning for a season or two or three, even while other species, feathered and non-feathered, stayed behind, enduring the harsh winter, pecking or eking out small tidbits of seeds and other minor nourishment in the spring and early summer? Upon coming back, whose settled space was re-marked by equal-access claims (earmarked for the returning birds)? Would each springtime bring new arguments and conflict? Does the native longsuffering give them prosecutorial premise (promised reward), a soothing rest in the place of their faithfulness and considerate service? Are they entitled to the first-fruits of land’s harvest, as well as the insects, worms, snakes, and any other “milk and honey” of hibernating appearance? Or might it be disputed that the stay-at-home bunch: the birds, the squirrels, and the other creatures were just too lazy, too lax, or too weakly fraught to seek better grounds? Conversely, natural opportunity might have enabled any stealing bird or creature to spread seeds near and far, engendering new growth, or providing the “mulch” for better brands, more bountiful strawberry development. Does “casual” appreciation of a good’s value equate to the gardener’s (human’s) considerable labor and costly effort, persevering in a realm of more efficiency and greater use of resources? Some suggestion of superior ability and personal integrity is still contestable.
Overall, none of these questions matter. There is no top to the food chain. The following year the gardener may be attacked and eaten by a bear who had merely set out in search of some luscious, fat-building strawberries. From the bear’s perspective, all are meat for us, who yet consume by mere interest and bended prowess, any encounter with their own subordinate vegetable matter. Further above everyone’s claim, all are roasted on the spit, and garnished at the table of dining Spirits.
‘Do not pride yourselves into thinking, “By the strength of my own hand, I have obtained this wealth”, for it is really because of their wickedness that the Lord is driving them out before you. No, it is not because of your merits or the integrity of your hearts that you will take possession of the Promised Land. But the Lord, your God, is removing them on account of their wickedness and giving it to you in order to fulfill His promise to your forefathers’. It is not in the habit of a universal God to reward righteous behavior — pursuant to some formula which leavens oblations with obedience, and brushes kindness upon the slain kine. Rather, there is only a working domain of casting salt, which is to say, punishment to evil, whereby earlier possessors are ransomed as merely the recent betrayers of an offered covenant — thereto leaving any fortuitous blessing, if imputed, strangely to strangers who have become sequentially chosen as incidental parties to a new contract under bequeathal. What frailness was overlooked in Joshua’s time, who nevertheless led the Israelites across the Jordan, remains purposed in the Ark of the Covenant, and shall not curry forth the favor you or I need and desire. You, who have loathed redemption and the call for personal sacrifice, have only tarnished Grace for a salvation headstone, while a bartered Covenant still lay rustily sheathed over your resting place.
Hostile Trust
If you confine a chicken to a coop, are you guilty of kidnapping and illegal confinement? If you take an egg from its nest, are you guilty of stealing? Reluctantly, you may acknowledge that such acts relate only to transgressions of personal human value. But does not the mother hen “know” that something has been taken from her sitting nest? Consider, likewise, you are travelling through the wilderness and decide to take quail’s eggs or maybe ostrich eggs; or perchance you chase away the birds and the deer from your “favorite” berry bushes or apple trees in order to quench your hunger and satisfy your tastes; are you not stealing the rightful blessing and intended fruits of animals who have always had first endowment? Finally, if you relent, “animals have no such (understanding of) rights”; then how could bestiality be wrong, since animals have no concept of being raped either? Is it wrong to steal candy from a baby or to abuse a mentally-disabled individual if they do not comprehend the loss or hurt, and may not even perceive the infringement, or in any event have no legal proceeding to sue?
There are at least three parties to every social act. You can’t just say, let the left and the right (i.e., the two sides) fight it out and determine the winner. From the Bible, we heed the admonishment, ‘A man shall not dishonor his father’s bed’, thereby imparting a moral dishonor to the act itself, the sinfulness of it, even if no one else finds out about it. This means the whole concept of inalienable rights is presumptuous, and the contrasted balancing of one party’s rights against another is flawed (incomplete) because it does not bring into evaluation the imposing standards and concomitant arrangements of the whole comprehensive (comprehended) situation. It also means that the basic concept of “survival of the fittest” has a fault, if internalized strictly on the basis of the physiological and mental aspects, but not encompassing the entire socio-environmental circuit.
And now it’s the cowboy’s turn. The brutal elements of raising animals for the purpose of slaughter have seldom kindled stoppage due to unpleasant thoughts and squeamish hearts. Though … and neither has been life. Matching these tribulations with the evident
animal ‘torture’ would go a long way to maybe understanding human history and foreboding. Why practice professions like sports, such as roping and tying, stalking and hunting — in turn to be respectfully admired — apart from its devouring necessity? There is a sociological interruption here as well. Doing things instinctively (unthinkingly) could bestir natural justification, and heal (heel) the only immoral act associated specifically to cowboying. Hence, by and large, overkilling (unnecessary killing or depletion of resources) has already earned an historical bad reputation; for which the man responded on (or in disregard of) suspected qualms of morality. Today, that inhibition might include any form of abusive capture and training, or any charge of mishandling whatsoever. Once on this road away from Nature, social bearing becomes like a forward patrol or spear point of an advancing column moving farther and farther away from its logistical supply chain (deliberative source). Eventually the logical connection will snap — bringing support into completely irrelevant areas of condemnation. From whence it will stop depends on passionless remembrance and renewal of observation. Hard professions tend to make men hard, not necessarily the other way around, as originally evoked by a heartless society.
Earlier in F8, I catalogued the discrepancy of black-led cities being able to mandate residency for all of their official employees, but not white-led cities. Their stated reasons were to enhance public relations, ensure a property tax base, and enable all politics to start and end locally. Their real reasons were probably less noble: to prevent government rule/influence by outsiders, particularly those of another skin color and party affiliation. Ergo the beginnings of ghetto (Jewish) persecution. Assuredly, the top officials will abide by the residency requirement — for appearance sake and in the interest of securing close inner-city control, and as long as a corrupt media does not report their outer ‘Camp David’ vacation homes. From a socialite perspective, however, they fret over the nitty gritty need for home-grown teachers, stationed police officers and firefighters, and the lesser-reserved hospital staff. And, of course, it is only from the glorious height of Olympus that exceptions will be hammered out.
Is there anything ennobling about police officers who sit in their cars just waiting for a break-in, a street assault, or news of a senseless murder to come in? For firefighters in emergency stations praying for the alarm bells to ring? County/municipal/contract truck drivers intently listening to broadcasts projecting the arrival of a big storm so they can earn some extra pay clearing the roads of snow? Executives at oil delivery companies may wish for an extended deep freeze spiking purchases, furnace repair, and boosting the company’s service and bottom line — quite aware that every such tempest may bring down power lines, close necessary facilities, and take a toll on life, not to mention the human hardship. These might be described as sins of vanity or perhaps wanton negligence. More ominously, some doctors might put the lives of their patients in jeopardy by performing unnecessary or very risky surgery. Stories abound about pilots, train engineers, and bus drivers endangering their passengers by using drugs or imbibing alcohol before and during the duty shift. Researchers occasionally experiment on helpless animals for no reason or in scant fulfillment of pointless confirmation scientific requirements. Politicians will often band together to pass meaningless or even harmful bills because they were lobbied and well-paid by profiteering drug companies. Editors and journalists are indifferent to the riots, to all the murders, to the burning down of poor neighborhoods urged in part by their reckless, biased, and dastardly reporting. Social media instigators go further by directly threatening the ongoing safety and continued existence of entire professions or populations. It wasn’t just the Spanish conquistadores; we are all dealers in death in one way or another — in effect drug-makers and gunrunners, dispensers of Agent Orange and manufacturers of devastating military arms. An issuer and stamper of an official arrest-warrant back in the headquarters of high command was an equal inflictor of pain and punishment as the most brutal guard at a Nazi concentration camp.
Over the years, countless incidents of black-on-Asian violence have occurred and went virtually unreported by the Democratically-dominated media. Vehement attempts have been made to drive out all Asian merchants from their sacred black communities, such as Anacostia or all of Washington D.C. and elsewhere (DeBonis, 2012). Using as a possible provocation the urgent need of one store owner to protect himself from robbery, a generalization is made on all Asian store owners that, as an ethnic class, they were demeaning, overbearing, wealth-stealing, and dismissive of local (black) concerns. Most groups and cultures ‘house’ their prejudice in recursive pronouncements of hatred for other people’s national origins, skin color, language, religion, etc. We might as well — unwell — be living alongside the Jews, the original ghetto occupants, in pre-WW2 Nazi Germany. Nothing ever changes. We might as likely — un-liked — be riding the segregated buses of Alabama during the Jim Crow era. Nothing ever changes. We might as prayerfully — without a prayer — submit to the black-draped Antifa protestors of today. See, nothing has changed. Self-righteous indignation is the racists’ MO and habitual calling card.
Like the treatment of the aboriginal natives we did not like, or the holding of slaves we did not lovingly behold, neither should invoke modern-day revolutionary destruction. Looking back and trying to hastily place sour judgment on a constitutional system which has worked so well for so long can be just as shortsighted and situationally unjust as any injustice spoken against from the past. Imagine future generations devilishly looking back at us: our cavalier attitude toward animals, being allowed to keep them as “pets”, training them for our entertainment or laborious service, even putting them down (to sleep) without a care, or eating them as part of their national diet or cultural delight. How might future historians record and rebuke their treatment:
- They are often left out in all kinds of weather, typically chained or severely restricted, sometimes beaten and medically neglected.
- They may be left untended for long spells, allowed to roam throughout the neighborhood causing havoc, terrorizing youngsters and injuring/killing other creatures, impregnating the female of the species over and over again.
- They may be brought inside full-time and made to suffer the indignities of becoming substitute human infants, satisfying their master’s needs, though never their own freedom-loving instinct.
Similarly, our autocratic attitude toward raising children can be just as caustic, passing them off to strangers at daycares or to sexual maniacs in schools, subject to radical abuses and brutal enterprising confinement. Sadly, many children subsist at roughly the same level of human concern as these (pet) animals — whether spiritually chained or stifled internally, often restricted to loveless home-pens, or left to wander the streets causing mischief, committing crimes, and generally degrading themselves. Else they may be turned into mannequins by the hypnotizing media, the self-infatuated internet, and the socialist-mandated educational system. Like animals, they are forced to conform to a sadistic model of existence, rather than having their individual talents explored and expressed, and their deepest needs met. At least 25% of all American children grow up in fatherless homes (Brewer, 2022). Apparently no longer studied or cared about, at least 72% of black children are raised in single-parent, mostly fatherless, homes (NewsOne Staff, 2011). Most are motherless as well if one assumes the need for the mother to be the one and only (always busy) breadwinner. Children who grow up fatherless are much more prone to poverty, to getting in trouble, to running away, and to suicide. Poverty breeds poor habits … those being not just of health and diet, but indigence of mind and disdain for saintly attitude. Wisdom falters — the primal is the natural, and the penally possessed are usually primitively managed. Children who have no permanence of place have no permanence of heart. Adults without care (for the world) were most probably children without proper caring.
Even conscientious stay-together husbands and wives are rarely thoughtfully trained in the difficult task of parenting. Many poorer and older women conceive and bear children for no other purpose than for financial survival (or appearance sake). Fully in tact and well-heeled couples still make the mistake of letting possessions and material comforts act as substitutes for intimate guidance and loving care. In social conversations, children are often referred to as ‘brats’, ‘rugrats’, and much worse. Taking care of them is a challenge parents reluctantly endure and quite possibly often regret. From their infants’ birth (they might have unwillingly had) through the long childhood and adolescence (they can’t wait to be done), these cosmetic children are merely ‘pet-like’ creatures they begrudgingly feed, clothe, and sustain. Little effort is made to shape or develop their distinctive and deserved human characteristics and providential stature (as evidenced by the appeal for abortion on demand).
A generation that countenances philandering, infidelity, social violence, media complicity, political corruption, and childhood perversion; that covets barbarism and moral depravity, has no right to judge another. What will be our excuses when a future society looks back on these atrocities? Will they demand that our “once-glorious” statues to parenthood be pulled down in shame and downcast unfulfillment? A proper analysis of the past should be formatted not on the basis of people’s biases and prejudices, which everyone had and still has, but on their willingness and determination to combat unfair treatment, ethnic discrimination, immoral thinking as best they could in the context of their situation and presumed capacity to grasp. Leave punishment, like revenge and Grace, to be dispensed by the Lord. Our fore(most) fathers took the collective first step of setting forth a viable system (the Constitution), for the inducement of change in an orderly and safe manner. Perfect justice is not visible either in normal light or under microscopic peering; but through the telescopic range of long-term patience, present (gifted) wonder, and belief in the future triumph of an unfolding righteousness.
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