One of the most disturbing pieces of news I’ve read in a long time came from a poll about trust in news organizations. As Andy Barr, of Politico, reported on January 27, Fox is now the most trusted TV news network in the nation. That’s right, in a nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters conducted by Public Policy Polling, the home of Hannity and O’Reilly and Glenn Beck ranked HIGHEST in TRUST, at 49%, of any news network. It beat out CNN, trusted by only 39%, and the three “major” networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, none of whom even reached the high thirties (NBC led at 35%. Apparently, PBS wasn’t even included.)
For anyone who values accuracy, for anyone who values actual objective reporting rather than slash-and-burn “opinion” growled by conservative curs like the three mentioned above, the results of this poll are more than befuddling; they are alarming in the extreme. For what this confirms is what many of us have suspected for many years: Americans have now lost all connection with reality (the contempt of the Bush Administration for “reality-based” opinion seems prescient here), and prefer to be roused out of their shopping stupor by rabid demagogues. Americans do not have the patience to read; they do not want to be bothered with “facts.” They want someone to tell them what to think and how to think and to entertain them with simplistic savagery and rant that can penetrate their beaten-down skulls. They want quick solutions to complex problems that any four-year-old can understand. They want to know who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, and a program for rounding up and eliminating the bad—starting with the eggheads in government who make them feel stupid.
So here’s the situation. We now have many of the ingredients in place for an eruption of mob agitation and anger similar to the ones that erupted in Europe in the 1930s. We have an economic collapse. We have urban bankers receiving huge bailouts from a government that seems to be in their pockets, while average people get stuck with the bill—those who still have jobs and can pay the bill, that is. We have a nation reeling from the offshoring of the very economic engine—manufacturing—that brought it to the top of the global economy. We have corporations handed a Supreme Court decision that promises them even more power to buy politicians and collude in looting the national treasury than they already have. We have states going broke, major corporations going on the dole, the federal government going ever deeper into debt, and the stage set for a collapse of the dollar that could make savings and earnings worthless. And we have half the world pissed off at the USA for its years of high-handed domination of the global economy and the corresponding ruin and/or enslavement of countless local economies—not to mention its overwhelming military power and political meddling in nations all over the globe. And what Fox-devoted Americans want is a simple and easy solution to these problems, something that will restore quickly, easily, directly the “greatest nation ever” to its rightful place as NUMBER ONE.
In short, the ingredients of scalding discontent are in place (and more can be added at a moment’s notice via flood, storm, earthquake, or even a nice little military incident ginned up to get the blood boiling) and require only a little spark, a nice scapegoat towards which the good citizens of the nation can direct their wrath. These are the things that Fox does so well. Its pundits can rail about foreigners, immigrants, ragheads and assorted third-worlders without even a script. Its slanted news coverage can highlight the most wacky of paranoid fantasies—they’re arming, they’re developing nukes, they’re all on welfare, they’re sneaking onto our airplanes, into our subways, our ports, our ships, our nuclear plants—and make them reverberate throughout the land with the utter simplicity and ferocity that its audience requires.
You get the picture.
Fortunately, we still lack the demagogue who can bring all this together. We still have a few reasonable voices counseling caution (and an unknown number who don’t watch networks at all). We still have no logical and helpless-enough target against which to direct the collective anger. But these things were lacking in Nazi Germany before 1930 as well. Then along came a house painter with a knack for boiling brain cells with his very voice. And the convulsion started.
Will it start here? Perhaps it already has. Just think of it: 49% of those polled said they actually trusted the Fox News Network. Fox more than any other. Fox über alles.
Can the bonfires be far behind?
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Stop the Games
Barack Obama and his Democratic Party colleagues are reeling. With the Republican victory in the special Senate election in Massachusetts, they now have no hope whatever of putting together the “required” super-majority of sixty votes to pass healthcare. Indeed, with the loss of the “sure” seat long occupied by Ted Kennedy, the Democrats may not be able to pass any legislation whatever. The President tried to address this situation in his State of the Union Address this week, haranguing and sometimes begging Republicans to stop being obstructionists and start being bipartisan. He reportedly did the same thing in his meeting with Republicans on January 28, accusing them of being obstructionist for political purposes and putting party loyalty before the good of the nation, and appealing to them to at least vote for the measures—tax cuts, support for states going bankrupt—that would normally be Republican pet projects. It appears, in short, that the President has learned almost nothing in the year since he’s been in office, and still sees himself as the great statesman who can bring the warring parties together under his bipartisan leadership.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Republicans have made no secret of their intention to bring the president down, to make him fail, and their equal determination to sacrifice the country they profess to serve in order to do it. This has been the Republican strategy since at the least the days of Richard Nixon, although it became most extreme during the Reagan-Newt Gingrich-George W. Bush era.
This being the case, it simply defies belief that Democrats, especially those in the Senate (backed no doubt by the Administration), continue to try to muster up the “super-majority” they say they need to pass legislation. Normally, legislation simply requires a simple majority—51 votes—which the Democrats could muster even in a flu epidemic. What they need 60 votes for is to override a Republican filibuster. The Republicans have threatened such a filibuster every day since the President was elected, a move which means that Senators can take the floor and read from a telephone book, one after another, for days and weeks on end, to prevent any vote from taking place. By doing this—or rather by threatening to do this—they force the nervous Democrats to abandon every progressive measure they were elected to implement, in order to get the votes of heretofore mealy-mouthed mid-west senators like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, or literal traitors like Joe Lieberman. They can also try to ass-kiss the so-called “liberal” Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine. It is a humiliating and doomed strategy, as a full year of trying to craft a “passable” health-care reform bill plainly indicates. And now, with the loss of the Massachusetts seat, the doom is palpable.
There is only one solution. Abandon the ‘super-majority’strategy. A bill can be passed with 51 votes. Therefore, the Senate should simply begin the process of bringing the bills that they truly support—and healthcare should include a public option—to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Call the Republicans’ bluff. Force them again and again to either vote on the healthcare bill, and all the other bills that are in process, or to filibuster. Force them to go public with their idiotic strategy of reading phone books on the floor of the senate while the country goes down in flames. Force them to take responsibility for bringing the business of the country—the business they are sworn to act upon—to a total halt. And then have the President, with his bully pulpit, call them out daily for their obstructionism. For having no policy but a policy of “no.”
Yes, it will take some guts. Yes, it will require that the Democrats take the risk that the public will blame them as well. But the risk is worth it, especially from a position of action. This nation is being held hostage by a group of yahoos who wish only to win back their majority. The health of actual people, of actual citizens, means nothing to them. The welfare of the nation means nothing. The only welfare they care about is the welfare of their white, moneyed classes and their wealthy corporate sponsors—the ones who make a killing in privatized health care, medicine, warfare, and corporate and banking fraud. But the truth is, the big numbers are all on the other side. Democrats have to return to the ideals that they pretend to espouse: help for those who need it, help for the common people who work for a living and who yielded to so much hope when Obama was elected. They have to let the American public know that Democrats actually stand for something, and are willing to risk a defeat in the Congress to prove it. As it is, Americans see through the games, see through the compromises that have been employed to gut the health-care bill of any meaningful reform. And they have contempt for it, for a party that is unwilling to stand up and be counted.
The Republicans threaten to filibuster? Call their bluff. Let’s see how many are willing to announce to the nation that they have but one policy: NO; that they give not a damn for the pain of the people, or the ruin of the nation’s economy; that they have but one solution to the country’s ills: more wealth for the wealthy, their one and only constituency. Otherwise, the fate of the Democrats and their President will be more of the same: slow death by a thousand cuts from a party that a few months ago was in an advanced stage of rampant cell death. Otherwise, we could soon see the resurgence of this, the crew that gave us Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Yoo and that gang of criminals that nearly sank the nation, and would like nothing better than to try it again. This time with an even bigger yahoo like Sarah Palin.
Get some backbone, Democrats. Call their bluff. And then get on with the people’s business.
Lawrence DiStasi
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Republicans have made no secret of their intention to bring the president down, to make him fail, and their equal determination to sacrifice the country they profess to serve in order to do it. This has been the Republican strategy since at the least the days of Richard Nixon, although it became most extreme during the Reagan-Newt Gingrich-George W. Bush era.
This being the case, it simply defies belief that Democrats, especially those in the Senate (backed no doubt by the Administration), continue to try to muster up the “super-majority” they say they need to pass legislation. Normally, legislation simply requires a simple majority—51 votes—which the Democrats could muster even in a flu epidemic. What they need 60 votes for is to override a Republican filibuster. The Republicans have threatened such a filibuster every day since the President was elected, a move which means that Senators can take the floor and read from a telephone book, one after another, for days and weeks on end, to prevent any vote from taking place. By doing this—or rather by threatening to do this—they force the nervous Democrats to abandon every progressive measure they were elected to implement, in order to get the votes of heretofore mealy-mouthed mid-west senators like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, or literal traitors like Joe Lieberman. They can also try to ass-kiss the so-called “liberal” Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine. It is a humiliating and doomed strategy, as a full year of trying to craft a “passable” health-care reform bill plainly indicates. And now, with the loss of the Massachusetts seat, the doom is palpable.
There is only one solution. Abandon the ‘super-majority’strategy. A bill can be passed with 51 votes. Therefore, the Senate should simply begin the process of bringing the bills that they truly support—and healthcare should include a public option—to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Call the Republicans’ bluff. Force them again and again to either vote on the healthcare bill, and all the other bills that are in process, or to filibuster. Force them to go public with their idiotic strategy of reading phone books on the floor of the senate while the country goes down in flames. Force them to take responsibility for bringing the business of the country—the business they are sworn to act upon—to a total halt. And then have the President, with his bully pulpit, call them out daily for their obstructionism. For having no policy but a policy of “no.”
Yes, it will take some guts. Yes, it will require that the Democrats take the risk that the public will blame them as well. But the risk is worth it, especially from a position of action. This nation is being held hostage by a group of yahoos who wish only to win back their majority. The health of actual people, of actual citizens, means nothing to them. The welfare of the nation means nothing. The only welfare they care about is the welfare of their white, moneyed classes and their wealthy corporate sponsors—the ones who make a killing in privatized health care, medicine, warfare, and corporate and banking fraud. But the truth is, the big numbers are all on the other side. Democrats have to return to the ideals that they pretend to espouse: help for those who need it, help for the common people who work for a living and who yielded to so much hope when Obama was elected. They have to let the American public know that Democrats actually stand for something, and are willing to risk a defeat in the Congress to prove it. As it is, Americans see through the games, see through the compromises that have been employed to gut the health-care bill of any meaningful reform. And they have contempt for it, for a party that is unwilling to stand up and be counted.
The Republicans threaten to filibuster? Call their bluff. Let’s see how many are willing to announce to the nation that they have but one policy: NO; that they give not a damn for the pain of the people, or the ruin of the nation’s economy; that they have but one solution to the country’s ills: more wealth for the wealthy, their one and only constituency. Otherwise, the fate of the Democrats and their President will be more of the same: slow death by a thousand cuts from a party that a few months ago was in an advanced stage of rampant cell death. Otherwise, we could soon see the resurgence of this, the crew that gave us Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Yoo and that gang of criminals that nearly sank the nation, and would like nothing better than to try it again. This time with an even bigger yahoo like Sarah Palin.
Get some backbone, Democrats. Call their bluff. And then get on with the people’s business.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti: The U.S. and its Priorities
The United States’ record in Haiti over the years is not one to brag about. Starting in 1804, when its southern leaders especially watched in horror as Haiti’s black population mounted the first and still the only successful revolution by black people in history (our own slaves might get ideas!), and through the years of American gunboat diplomacy and support for Haiti’s cruelest dictators, like Papa Doc Duvalier, the U.S. has treated Haiti more like a rambunctious and troublesome colony than a hemispheric neighbor. It has twice managed the ouster of Haiti’s most popular leader of recent years, Jean Bertrand Aristide, mainly it seems because his programs for the poor and disenfranchised conflicted with the neoliberal plans for third world countries. Those plans included the dumping of U.S. grain in Haiti, thus making it impossible for Haitian farmers to compete, and necessitating their move to the city, Port-Au-Prince, as paupers who would be willing to work for slave wages in the factories the U.S. and the World Bank promoted as Haiti’s economic salvation. Pauperized, most had to live in the hillside shacks of the bulging city, the very dwellings that have collapsed and killed untold numbers in the earthquake.
Now, with the earthquake catastrophe, the United States has made its usual claims about its herculean relief efforts, but the reality on the ground, now five full days after the earthquake, tells a different, more sordid tale. Here is what the New York Times reported January 17, quoting an officer for the World Food Program:
"The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.
“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.” He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
That seems to say it all. With 3.5 million people affected by the earthquake, with hundreds of thousands without food or water for 5 days, with dead bodies piling up in the streets and wounded victims everywhere, the United States, as if by reflex, chose to send in the marines—to take over the airport. It thereby blocked other relief agencies from landing desperately needed supplies of the most basic kind. America thus made clear its priorities: get our people out, get our people helped, get our military in there to “secure” the country, and then worry about the suffering of the natives. All the while, of course, mounting a public relations campaign showing the President making speeches and Hillary Clinton on the ground for a few minutes to display her compassion.
If this were still the regime of George W. Bush, one might be able to comprehend such skewed, utterly cynical priorities. But the Obama administration? It is enough to make one weep.
Lawrence DiStasi
Now, with the earthquake catastrophe, the United States has made its usual claims about its herculean relief efforts, but the reality on the ground, now five full days after the earthquake, tells a different, more sordid tale. Here is what the New York Times reported January 17, quoting an officer for the World Food Program:
"The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.
“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.” He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
That seems to say it all. With 3.5 million people affected by the earthquake, with hundreds of thousands without food or water for 5 days, with dead bodies piling up in the streets and wounded victims everywhere, the United States, as if by reflex, chose to send in the marines—to take over the airport. It thereby blocked other relief agencies from landing desperately needed supplies of the most basic kind. America thus made clear its priorities: get our people out, get our people helped, get our military in there to “secure” the country, and then worry about the suffering of the natives. All the while, of course, mounting a public relations campaign showing the President making speeches and Hillary Clinton on the ground for a few minutes to display her compassion.
If this were still the regime of George W. Bush, one might be able to comprehend such skewed, utterly cynical priorities. But the Obama administration? It is enough to make one weep.
Lawrence DiStasi
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Night Thoughts
It is that time of year again when the change from one calendar year to the next, though wholly artificial, leads many of us to take stock. What has the year amounted to? What have our lives amounted to? Is there some way to make things better?
This always leads me to the thoughts F. Scott Fitzgerald identified as those dark demons of the mind that occur when we wake at 3 in the morning and all seems impossible, lost. How can one possibly get through? Does it matter?
Simone Weil once wrote: “It is our function in this world to give our consent to the existence of the universe.”
But does the universe even care about our consent? Perhaps, perhaps not. Without the old concept of a personal god, it hardly seems likely. Who would there be to care? And even if there were, would that translate into the critical question: does he/she/it care for me? For my family and friends? For my country? And if the answer is yes, then whence all this nastiness, as in the year just ended? Economic collapse. Afghanistan out of control. Rapacious banks and bankers still maintaining their death grip on our lives. What’s left of the health care bill laughable, a pathetic joke. And on Christmas day, yet another fanatic from the Middle East trying to blow up a plane full of innocents. Us.
It’s something most of us in the United States have great difficulty imagining: there are people in the world who actually hate us. US. The greatest nation ever to bestride the planet. We who saved Europe, saved civilization, and have no aspiration for anything but the welfare of others, to extend to the unwashed masses of the Third World a democracy like ours so that all will be able to enjoy the benefits we enjoy—liberty, free choice in the global supermarket, and the opportunity to be whatever our hearts desire.
And yet. There are these people. Malcontents. Fanatics. Willing to blow themselves up so they can blow a few of us up as well. Must there not be a way to prevent such things? And not just suicide bombers either. Prevent the Bernie Madoffs of the world from doing their dirty work. Prevent the right wing-nuts from torpedoing every meaningful reform. Prevent the corporations from exploiting the rest of the world so they’ll love us again? Because that’s really the underlying notion: we humans, and especially we Americans are geared to think that if we just get smart enough, farsighted enough, our military powerful enough, our scientists well-funded enough, our foundations generous enough, our nation integrated enough, we can avoid or outwit all the problems the universe can blow back at us and finally live the carefree life we have been promised: peace and liberty and justice for all.
But can we? Has there ever existed a nation or a world without problems? Without shit happening on a regular basis? Is not shit happening the very nature of the universe—that universe we are supposed to give our consent to? It seems. And yet, how hard it is to come to terms with that. How nearly impossible to assent to the real nature of things, which is change. Change in every cell of our bodies and all else in every second and nanosecond of our lives. On both the very large and the very small scale. The American moment is changing. The American empire is changing. The sun itself is changing. And so are we all, entropic every one. And it is almost impossible to assent to, almost impossible to give our consent to this aspect of the universe’s existence, of all existence. No, we want to preserve it, keep it from slipping from our grasp. One way being to record it. Manically, desperately.
How else explain the mind-bending proliferation of gadgets, even in this season of economic discontent? With more and more of us insisting on our ipods and ipod nanos and flips and cell phones and computers and digital cameras and HD screens to take in everything, grasp everything, record everything in the vain hope that our lives will be preserved and amount to something, our nations will be permanized and celebrated as having counted. For something. Nevermind Ozymandias. Nevermind "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." We matter. We must. Our way must matter, it must be “right.” For if not, if all our photos and films and recordings and constructions are nothing but matter for the growing trash heap of history, then all we have left are absurd, meaningless moments, arising, and fading. Things and events being born and dying. Endlessly. Like grass. Where is the good, where is the nobility, where is the crown of creation, the god-chosen centrality of our perfectly adorable species in that?
Sadly, there are no answers. Save perhaps the old notion we’ve been hearing for aeons: pay attention. Pay attention to as many moments as you can. Pay attention to dirt, to grass, to spiders, to rain, to scum, to shit, to the least of creatures. And pay attention to what animates the conceptions and prejudices we all carry: that “they” are nothing, that “we” are the chosen, that our way is the superior way, that my god is the one true god who gives me the right to not feel/see/hear/attend to you and all else if it means I and mine can thrive. Survive for even a bit longer.
Yes, pay attention. Pay attention even to paying attention. It is, inherently, consent.
Lawrence DiStasi
This always leads me to the thoughts F. Scott Fitzgerald identified as those dark demons of the mind that occur when we wake at 3 in the morning and all seems impossible, lost. How can one possibly get through? Does it matter?
Simone Weil once wrote: “It is our function in this world to give our consent to the existence of the universe.”
But does the universe even care about our consent? Perhaps, perhaps not. Without the old concept of a personal god, it hardly seems likely. Who would there be to care? And even if there were, would that translate into the critical question: does he/she/it care for me? For my family and friends? For my country? And if the answer is yes, then whence all this nastiness, as in the year just ended? Economic collapse. Afghanistan out of control. Rapacious banks and bankers still maintaining their death grip on our lives. What’s left of the health care bill laughable, a pathetic joke. And on Christmas day, yet another fanatic from the Middle East trying to blow up a plane full of innocents. Us.
It’s something most of us in the United States have great difficulty imagining: there are people in the world who actually hate us. US. The greatest nation ever to bestride the planet. We who saved Europe, saved civilization, and have no aspiration for anything but the welfare of others, to extend to the unwashed masses of the Third World a democracy like ours so that all will be able to enjoy the benefits we enjoy—liberty, free choice in the global supermarket, and the opportunity to be whatever our hearts desire.
And yet. There are these people. Malcontents. Fanatics. Willing to blow themselves up so they can blow a few of us up as well. Must there not be a way to prevent such things? And not just suicide bombers either. Prevent the Bernie Madoffs of the world from doing their dirty work. Prevent the right wing-nuts from torpedoing every meaningful reform. Prevent the corporations from exploiting the rest of the world so they’ll love us again? Because that’s really the underlying notion: we humans, and especially we Americans are geared to think that if we just get smart enough, farsighted enough, our military powerful enough, our scientists well-funded enough, our foundations generous enough, our nation integrated enough, we can avoid or outwit all the problems the universe can blow back at us and finally live the carefree life we have been promised: peace and liberty and justice for all.
But can we? Has there ever existed a nation or a world without problems? Without shit happening on a regular basis? Is not shit happening the very nature of the universe—that universe we are supposed to give our consent to? It seems. And yet, how hard it is to come to terms with that. How nearly impossible to assent to the real nature of things, which is change. Change in every cell of our bodies and all else in every second and nanosecond of our lives. On both the very large and the very small scale. The American moment is changing. The American empire is changing. The sun itself is changing. And so are we all, entropic every one. And it is almost impossible to assent to, almost impossible to give our consent to this aspect of the universe’s existence, of all existence. No, we want to preserve it, keep it from slipping from our grasp. One way being to record it. Manically, desperately.
How else explain the mind-bending proliferation of gadgets, even in this season of economic discontent? With more and more of us insisting on our ipods and ipod nanos and flips and cell phones and computers and digital cameras and HD screens to take in everything, grasp everything, record everything in the vain hope that our lives will be preserved and amount to something, our nations will be permanized and celebrated as having counted. For something. Nevermind Ozymandias. Nevermind "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." We matter. We must. Our way must matter, it must be “right.” For if not, if all our photos and films and recordings and constructions are nothing but matter for the growing trash heap of history, then all we have left are absurd, meaningless moments, arising, and fading. Things and events being born and dying. Endlessly. Like grass. Where is the good, where is the nobility, where is the crown of creation, the god-chosen centrality of our perfectly adorable species in that?
Sadly, there are no answers. Save perhaps the old notion we’ve been hearing for aeons: pay attention. Pay attention to as many moments as you can. Pay attention to dirt, to grass, to spiders, to rain, to scum, to shit, to the least of creatures. And pay attention to what animates the conceptions and prejudices we all carry: that “they” are nothing, that “we” are the chosen, that our way is the superior way, that my god is the one true god who gives me the right to not feel/see/hear/attend to you and all else if it means I and mine can thrive. Survive for even a bit longer.
Yes, pay attention. Pay attention even to paying attention. It is, inherently, consent.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Health Care and Other Sorrows
President Obama and various Democratic Senators trumpeted their “victory” this weekend, when they managed to bribe Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to pledge his vote for the Health Care Bill in exchange for concessions on abortion (how abortion became part of the health care debate is another matter). Here is how an AP report characterized the concessions: Not only would health plans not have to offer coverage for abortions, but
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…”
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
"The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.”
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“..what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…”
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
"The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.”
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“..what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Family, by Jeff Sharlett
By now, most of you have seen on TV or read in a magazine or newspaper about the clique of politicians embroiled in sex scandals while living in a C-Street mansion in Washington, DC. While Senator Ensign and a host of other notables were using this address as a hangout and refuge and ignoring the commonly accepted rules for personal responsibility, they also prayed together. Yes, the family that prays together also preys together. What a concept! Unfortunately for them, since the book was published, their tax exemption for the house as a church has been revoked.
Jeff Sharlet (The Family, Harper Collins: 2008) conducted extensive research that required years of interviewing members of the Family in wide ranging settings from Washington, where he was accepted as a sort of research intern, to Colorado Springs where he joined fundamentalists in their everyday religious activities to develop information that uncovered an extra-legal and off-government influence of worldwide events.
The group began formally in 1935 when a Norwegian immigrant (Abraham Vereide) established the International Christian Leadership that became a front for American fundamentalism that has since expanded beyond any reasonable expectation. Now who could have any objection to prayer? That is a fair question that only reading the book will begin to answer. To start with, the name “Christian” has a different meaning for most of us because the theological base of the New Testament seems paramount in the mix of things. Not so for many fundamentalists who seem to be focused on the Old Testament and especially King David whose reputation for adultery and murder might seem at odds with a religion that touts the Beatitudes.
The answers seem rooted in the concept of power that the Family espouses. The powerful do not have to live by the rules of the ordinary folk. God chose David. This act gave David power and power does not have to answer to ordinary rules. You can see where this is going on the level of individuals in power, but what you cannot easily see is that a concept like this would go nowhere unless it was enabled by people in power. Note that the National Prayer Breakfast (formerly the Presidential Prayer Breakfast) is organized by the Family, so that the group creates access to those currently in power.
Some of you will probably see in this fabric the hint of a Calvinistic pre-ordained nature of humanity. Either you are saved or not, and nothing you do will change the outcome. This surely reinforces the powerful and it also makes the rest of us a little out of the picture unless we take sides and join with the powerful to get God’s work done. This is less an illusion and more a matter of secrecy and organization. Concentric organizational circles are drawn that offers something to everyone. Those on the inside touch power and make things happen. Those nearby such as in Ivanwald in Arlington, Virginia, support the Family directly and hope to grow from being congressional aides to men with real power. And, yes, men, because women have a different role in this scheme and direct access to power is not a fundamentalist role for women. Those several circles away take pride in doing God’s work as they see it, and they pray to support the aims of the leaders.
Sharlet carefully explains the links between economic Darwinism and political power through the policies that are promoted by the Family. This allows the group to endorse strong leadership without any flinching and also promotes the image of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and even Mao as examples of how power gets things done. Abraham Vereide (Abram) expressed preference for Hitler over Roosevelt who dared to curtail the suffering of Americans during the Depression while Hitler took action against those who were adding nothing to the German community (as he saw it). Later, Doug Coe, taking over the Family from Abram, did likewise. Coe often told the story of how just seven men (Hitler’s closest group from the putsch) were able to do so much to change history (and that the Family should also do so by using power and secrecy).
Again, all this would mean little unless something happened to change “prayer groups” into action committees (cells) at home and abroad. The Family does that handily using Supreme Court judges, senators, representatives and ambassadors and generals in several of the concentric circles. If somebody in the Family feels that it is God’s will that the people of Uganda should have abstinence education instead of condoms to slow the ravage of AIDS, look to Senator Brownback and others to introduce legislation to do that for God and the Family. Unfortunately, the AIDS rate spiked up when he succeeded, but then, pain and suffering are part of God’s plan, so that is not a problem.
In the 40s and 50s the Family effort was to provide get-out-of-jail cards for Nazis. In the 60s and 70s, the Family took the side of Suharto against the citizens of East Timor. Over 600,000 were massacred according to Sharlet (men, women and children, if that makes a difference to the pure), while Wikipedia allows only 100,000 for those killings. What is also
chilling is the language that Suharto used. He spoke of the “New Order.” That language was also used by Hitler, Abram Vereide and our own neocons. How could that be? Suharto was invited to the Family’s prayer groups and, incidentally, they never condemned his actions. The reason they supported Suharto was because he was anti-communist although communists did not control East Timor, Suharto was a strong man doing god’s will. The “New Order” calls for hegemony built on absolute acceptance of “Jesus plus nothing.” That is a concept where Jesus is stripped of everything but power and it is a tenet of the Family that separates it from most of Christianity.
This Family scenario is replicated with African and Central/South American dictators and with similar devastating results and, in each case, whether the excuse be homosexuality, communism, or even the lack of “free” markets, the results were the same and help was obtained through our own and allied elected and appointed officials who went to extraordinary efforts to support foreign murderers and thieves. The list includes Papa Doc Duvallier, Emporer Selassie, General Park of Korea and General Medici of Brazil. American resources were spent through foreign aid and other means to do what the Family could not do on its own but did through influencing power sothat, in the end, the will of the Family prevailed.
Jeff Sharlet studied several religions for years and then got on the ground with hundreds of fundamentalists here and abroad to discover how this strange group with its concentric circles of faithful was able to get business done. The concentric circles have decreasing power and knowledge of the secrets of the Family as they become more distant from the small group of leaders. The common element appears to be a prayer breakfast. That is something most of us have participated in, so how could anything so innocuous become so powerful in a this-worldly and vicious manner?
Much of the present magnetism of the Family is derived from early American fundamentalists with the ingenious addition of the focus on power. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in today’s reality. I commend this book to anybody that is curious as to why things are as they are. It is a sobering look at how things get done, even when they are too horrible to contemplate.
George Giacoppe
Jeff Sharlet (The Family, Harper Collins: 2008) conducted extensive research that required years of interviewing members of the Family in wide ranging settings from Washington, where he was accepted as a sort of research intern, to Colorado Springs where he joined fundamentalists in their everyday religious activities to develop information that uncovered an extra-legal and off-government influence of worldwide events.
The group began formally in 1935 when a Norwegian immigrant (Abraham Vereide) established the International Christian Leadership that became a front for American fundamentalism that has since expanded beyond any reasonable expectation. Now who could have any objection to prayer? That is a fair question that only reading the book will begin to answer. To start with, the name “Christian” has a different meaning for most of us because the theological base of the New Testament seems paramount in the mix of things. Not so for many fundamentalists who seem to be focused on the Old Testament and especially King David whose reputation for adultery and murder might seem at odds with a religion that touts the Beatitudes.
The answers seem rooted in the concept of power that the Family espouses. The powerful do not have to live by the rules of the ordinary folk. God chose David. This act gave David power and power does not have to answer to ordinary rules. You can see where this is going on the level of individuals in power, but what you cannot easily see is that a concept like this would go nowhere unless it was enabled by people in power. Note that the National Prayer Breakfast (formerly the Presidential Prayer Breakfast) is organized by the Family, so that the group creates access to those currently in power.
Some of you will probably see in this fabric the hint of a Calvinistic pre-ordained nature of humanity. Either you are saved or not, and nothing you do will change the outcome. This surely reinforces the powerful and it also makes the rest of us a little out of the picture unless we take sides and join with the powerful to get God’s work done. This is less an illusion and more a matter of secrecy and organization. Concentric organizational circles are drawn that offers something to everyone. Those on the inside touch power and make things happen. Those nearby such as in Ivanwald in Arlington, Virginia, support the Family directly and hope to grow from being congressional aides to men with real power. And, yes, men, because women have a different role in this scheme and direct access to power is not a fundamentalist role for women. Those several circles away take pride in doing God’s work as they see it, and they pray to support the aims of the leaders.
Sharlet carefully explains the links between economic Darwinism and political power through the policies that are promoted by the Family. This allows the group to endorse strong leadership without any flinching and also promotes the image of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and even Mao as examples of how power gets things done. Abraham Vereide (Abram) expressed preference for Hitler over Roosevelt who dared to curtail the suffering of Americans during the Depression while Hitler took action against those who were adding nothing to the German community (as he saw it). Later, Doug Coe, taking over the Family from Abram, did likewise. Coe often told the story of how just seven men (Hitler’s closest group from the putsch) were able to do so much to change history (and that the Family should also do so by using power and secrecy).
Again, all this would mean little unless something happened to change “prayer groups” into action committees (cells) at home and abroad. The Family does that handily using Supreme Court judges, senators, representatives and ambassadors and generals in several of the concentric circles. If somebody in the Family feels that it is God’s will that the people of Uganda should have abstinence education instead of condoms to slow the ravage of AIDS, look to Senator Brownback and others to introduce legislation to do that for God and the Family. Unfortunately, the AIDS rate spiked up when he succeeded, but then, pain and suffering are part of God’s plan, so that is not a problem.
In the 40s and 50s the Family effort was to provide get-out-of-jail cards for Nazis. In the 60s and 70s, the Family took the side of Suharto against the citizens of East Timor. Over 600,000 were massacred according to Sharlet (men, women and children, if that makes a difference to the pure), while Wikipedia allows only 100,000 for those killings. What is also
chilling is the language that Suharto used. He spoke of the “New Order.” That language was also used by Hitler, Abram Vereide and our own neocons. How could that be? Suharto was invited to the Family’s prayer groups and, incidentally, they never condemned his actions. The reason they supported Suharto was because he was anti-communist although communists did not control East Timor, Suharto was a strong man doing god’s will. The “New Order” calls for hegemony built on absolute acceptance of “Jesus plus nothing.” That is a concept where Jesus is stripped of everything but power and it is a tenet of the Family that separates it from most of Christianity.
This Family scenario is replicated with African and Central/South American dictators and with similar devastating results and, in each case, whether the excuse be homosexuality, communism, or even the lack of “free” markets, the results were the same and help was obtained through our own and allied elected and appointed officials who went to extraordinary efforts to support foreign murderers and thieves. The list includes Papa Doc Duvallier, Emporer Selassie, General Park of Korea and General Medici of Brazil. American resources were spent through foreign aid and other means to do what the Family could not do on its own but did through influencing power sothat, in the end, the will of the Family prevailed.
Jeff Sharlet studied several religions for years and then got on the ground with hundreds of fundamentalists here and abroad to discover how this strange group with its concentric circles of faithful was able to get business done. The concentric circles have decreasing power and knowledge of the secrets of the Family as they become more distant from the small group of leaders. The common element appears to be a prayer breakfast. That is something most of us have participated in, so how could anything so innocuous become so powerful in a this-worldly and vicious manner?
Much of the present magnetism of the Family is derived from early American fundamentalists with the ingenious addition of the focus on power. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in today’s reality. I commend this book to anybody that is curious as to why things are as they are. It is a sobering look at how things get done, even when they are too horrible to contemplate.
George Giacoppe
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving and its Myths
One of the dubious pleasures of the internet is the opportunity it offers for finding endless variations on something one used to call “truth.” The past couple of days have offered me such a variety—“truths” about the “real Thanksgiving,” and how they contrast with the mythology we have all been taught: Pilgrims and Indians sitting down together for a feast of turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, all in thanks for the bounty God had given them. First, there is the truth that this wasn’t a religious thanksgiving at all, but rather a harvest festival, which probably took place in September or October. Second, is the truth that there was no turkey, but rather ducks and geese, and deer supplied by the Indians—the local Wampanoags of the Patuxet area north of Cape Cod (which is where the Separatist Pilgrims actually landed, not at Plymouth Rock), who joined the Pilgrims as a way of offering peace so they could forge an alliance with powerful Europeans, whom they needed in their conflict with the more powerful Narragansett tribe nearby. Third, the truth that the Pilgrims didn’t wear those black outfits with big top hats and buckle shoes, but rather much more humble and colorful garb.
Fourth, and most damaging to the myth of peace and harmony conveyed by the usual image of a festal meal in lovely togetherness, comes the alleged truth that the first real Thanksgiving ceremony took place many years later, around 1637, this one an actual religious ceremony to thank the Christian God for helping the white settlers massacre 700 or so Pequot Indians with whom they had been at war. As William Bradford in his Of Plymouth Plantation described the massacre,
“Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prays (praise) thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”
The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children,” and establishing a law setting aside this day as “a day of celebration for subduing the Pequots.” It is claimed that this day of Thanksgiving, or another one declared more formally in 1676, at the conclusion of yet another Indian “war,” King Philip’s War, was the real precursor of our Thanksgiving Day. Here is what Almon Lauber wrote in 1913, in his Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia University, 1913):
"According to the Massachusetts Records of 1676-1677 a day was set apart for public thanksgiving, because, among other things of moment, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them (the Indians) but are either slain, captivated or fled."
Lauber’s book also recites, in horrifying detail, the common and continuing practice, by all the English settlers, from Maine to Florida, of capturing those Indians they did not kill (mostly women and children), and selling them into slavery—some given to local soldiers and other gentry for their homes, some shipped to slave markets in Spain, some shipped directly to West Indian slave markets in the Caribbean. Here is but one example referring to the practice, by the United Colonies of New England, during King Philip’s War:
"During King Philip’s War the various New England governments, with Massachusetts and Plymouth in the lead, again took charge of the disposal of the captive Indians. Various methods were adopted to convert their Indian captives into a source of immediate revenue. One was to sell them outright outside of the colonies, or, on occasion, within the colonies, and thus replenish the exchequer,and, so far as might be, defray the expenses of the war. At a meeting of the Plymouth Court in 1676 to consider the disposal of more than a hundred captives, the conclusion was reached, “upon serious and deliberate consideration and agitation” concerning them, “to sell the greater number into servitude.” A little later, in the same year, several more were sold. In each case the colonial treasurer was ordered to effect the sale for the benefit of the colony. A fiscal report of Plymouth for the period from June 25, 1675, to September 23, 1676, gives among the credits the following, which relates to the sale of the one hundred and eighty-eight Indians already mentioned: “By the following accounts, received in, or as silver, viz.: captives, for 188 prisoners at war sold, £397 13s.” (p. 138)
As noted above, however, there are debunkers of most of the above material, those like Jeremy Bangs, former director of the Plymouth Rock National Monument, and a scholar who has studied the Pilgrims both in Holland and in the United States (see his “The Truth About Thanksgiving is that the Debunkers are Wrong,” http://www.sail1620.org.) Bangs discredits one of the primary debunkers, William Newell, a Penobscot Indian said to be the head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Connecticut. According to Bangs, Newell was 79 years old when the department was founded in 1971, and further, elicited no memories from faculty members when they were asked about him. Newell’s claims thus seem cloaked in doubt—including the main one that the real Thanksgiving Day commemorated the 1637 massacre noted above, and the general idea that a religious holiday for Pilgrims would have included neither feasting, merriment, nor Indians. But Bangs notes that his research in the community of Scituate, MA in 1636 found records of a “religious service followed by feasting.” Others have objected that the debunking material about the 1637 and 1676 “real thanksgivings” referred not to the Pilgrims of Plymouth, but to the Puritans of the later Massachusetts Bay Colony (founded 1631). The idea here is that the Pilgrims were gentle people, ancestors of the later Quakers, and thus unlikely to be engaged in a massacre of Indians.
At this point, one wants to consult the original documents referring to the Thanksgiving event, and fortunately, two can be found rather easily. The first is from Edward Winslow’s letter in Mourt’s Relation, published in 1622, and it goes like this:
" ..our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie. "
The second is found in William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, written by the governor of Plymouth in 1641, but lost shortly thereafter and not recovered and published until 1854:
"They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; For as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which they tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids, they had about a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports." (both in original 17th century spelling.)
The discovery of this last document by Bradford—which does mention turkeys, giving some support to those who insist that the eating of turkeys was original—actually prompted the first official U.S. sanctioning of Thanksgiving as a holiday. For it stimulated the interest of one Sarah Barbara Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and said to be the 19th century’s Martha Stewart, in the historic celebration. She wrote articles about the alleged original meal, including turkeys, stuffing and pumpkin pie (leaving out waterfowl and deer), and then, in 1858, petitioned the President to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. When he became President, Abraham Lincoln responded positively to the idea (the value of uniting the divided nation via a holiday commemorating its roots was clear to him), and declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1864. It wasn’t until 1941 that Congress established the fourth Thursday in November as the official date for the holiday.
So, then, what do we have? It appears there was some sort of festivity that included eating, though the motive for it remains in question. The Wampanoag Indians, and their chief Massasoit, no doubt brought deer to the feast, and probably were motivated to join the settlers due to the drastic reduction smallpox had wrought in their numbers—the disease brought to them by prior visits of Europeans who had been trading with them for several years. These prior trading trips also aided the communication in 1621, because Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe who had earlier been seized and taken to England, had learned English there; it was also by means of this language ability that he was able to show the desperate Pilgrims how to plant corn and otherwise survive. So for this, and for their survival (52 of the original 102, at least), the Pilgrims celebrated. However, there is no record that the celebration was continued annually in subsequent years. For that, it is necessary to go to the “thanksgivings” of 1637 and 1676, when the English settlers thanked god for aiding them in slaughtering and enslaving the Indians, by now their arch enemies. Nor was such thanksgiving a new sentiment among the allegedly freedom-seeking, religious settlers in North America. I have had occasion before to quote from the New England Charter of 1620, in which it is noted that God’s favor towards English settlers can be discerned in the ‘wonderful plague’—smallpox—which has, even before 1620, so auspiciously dispatched so many of the aboriginal inhabitants:
"We have been further given to knowe, that within these late Yeares there hath by God’s visitation reigned a wonderfull Plague, together with many horrible Slaugthers, and Murthers, committed amoungst the Sauages and brutish People there, heertofore inhabiting, in a Manner to the utter Destruction, Deuastacion, and Depopulacion of that whole Territorye…whereby We in our Judgment are persuaded and satisfied that the appointed Time is come in which Almighty God in his great Goodness and Bountie towards Us and our People, hath thought fitt and determined, that those large and goodly Territoryes, deserted as it were by their naturall Inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our Subjects and People as heertofore have and hereafter shall by his Mercie and Favour, and by his Powerfull Arme..." ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass01.asp)
From the very outset, that is, and even before landing, the English were thankful that so many potential obstacles—other human beings—to their occupation of North America had been removed. This sentiment, as Lauber documents in his study of slavery, continued unabated throughout the colonies, and for hundreds of years thereafter, until the entire continent was “cleansed.” Of course, it is not exactly polite to give overt thanks for such cleansings these days, but it might be useful to bear them in mind when contemplating that first—whichever one you choose—“thanksgiving.”
Lawrence DiStasi
Fourth, and most damaging to the myth of peace and harmony conveyed by the usual image of a festal meal in lovely togetherness, comes the alleged truth that the first real Thanksgiving ceremony took place many years later, around 1637, this one an actual religious ceremony to thank the Christian God for helping the white settlers massacre 700 or so Pequot Indians with whom they had been at war. As William Bradford in his Of Plymouth Plantation described the massacre,
“Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prays (praise) thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”
The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared “A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children,” and establishing a law setting aside this day as “a day of celebration for subduing the Pequots.” It is claimed that this day of Thanksgiving, or another one declared more formally in 1676, at the conclusion of yet another Indian “war,” King Philip’s War, was the real precursor of our Thanksgiving Day. Here is what Almon Lauber wrote in 1913, in his Indian Slavery in Colonial Times Within the Present Limits of the United States (Columbia University, 1913):
"According to the Massachusetts Records of 1676-1677 a day was set apart for public thanksgiving, because, among other things of moment, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them (the Indians) but are either slain, captivated or fled."
Lauber’s book also recites, in horrifying detail, the common and continuing practice, by all the English settlers, from Maine to Florida, of capturing those Indians they did not kill (mostly women and children), and selling them into slavery—some given to local soldiers and other gentry for their homes, some shipped to slave markets in Spain, some shipped directly to West Indian slave markets in the Caribbean. Here is but one example referring to the practice, by the United Colonies of New England, during King Philip’s War:
"During King Philip’s War the various New England governments, with Massachusetts and Plymouth in the lead, again took charge of the disposal of the captive Indians. Various methods were adopted to convert their Indian captives into a source of immediate revenue. One was to sell them outright outside of the colonies, or, on occasion, within the colonies, and thus replenish the exchequer,and, so far as might be, defray the expenses of the war. At a meeting of the Plymouth Court in 1676 to consider the disposal of more than a hundred captives, the conclusion was reached, “upon serious and deliberate consideration and agitation” concerning them, “to sell the greater number into servitude.” A little later, in the same year, several more were sold. In each case the colonial treasurer was ordered to effect the sale for the benefit of the colony. A fiscal report of Plymouth for the period from June 25, 1675, to September 23, 1676, gives among the credits the following, which relates to the sale of the one hundred and eighty-eight Indians already mentioned: “By the following accounts, received in, or as silver, viz.: captives, for 188 prisoners at war sold, £397 13s.” (p. 138)
As noted above, however, there are debunkers of most of the above material, those like Jeremy Bangs, former director of the Plymouth Rock National Monument, and a scholar who has studied the Pilgrims both in Holland and in the United States (see his “The Truth About Thanksgiving is that the Debunkers are Wrong,” http://www.sail1620.org.) Bangs discredits one of the primary debunkers, William Newell, a Penobscot Indian said to be the head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Connecticut. According to Bangs, Newell was 79 years old when the department was founded in 1971, and further, elicited no memories from faculty members when they were asked about him. Newell’s claims thus seem cloaked in doubt—including the main one that the real Thanksgiving Day commemorated the 1637 massacre noted above, and the general idea that a religious holiday for Pilgrims would have included neither feasting, merriment, nor Indians. But Bangs notes that his research in the community of Scituate, MA in 1636 found records of a “religious service followed by feasting.” Others have objected that the debunking material about the 1637 and 1676 “real thanksgivings” referred not to the Pilgrims of Plymouth, but to the Puritans of the later Massachusetts Bay Colony (founded 1631). The idea here is that the Pilgrims were gentle people, ancestors of the later Quakers, and thus unlikely to be engaged in a massacre of Indians.
At this point, one wants to consult the original documents referring to the Thanksgiving event, and fortunately, two can be found rather easily. The first is from Edward Winslow’s letter in Mourt’s Relation, published in 1622, and it goes like this:
" ..our harvest being gotten in, our governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoyt, with some ninetie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie. "
The second is found in William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, written by the governor of Plymouth in 1641, but lost shortly thereafter and not recovered and published until 1854:
"They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; For as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which they tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids, they had about a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports." (both in original 17th century spelling.)
The discovery of this last document by Bradford—which does mention turkeys, giving some support to those who insist that the eating of turkeys was original—actually prompted the first official U.S. sanctioning of Thanksgiving as a holiday. For it stimulated the interest of one Sarah Barbara Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and said to be the 19th century’s Martha Stewart, in the historic celebration. She wrote articles about the alleged original meal, including turkeys, stuffing and pumpkin pie (leaving out waterfowl and deer), and then, in 1858, petitioned the President to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. When he became President, Abraham Lincoln responded positively to the idea (the value of uniting the divided nation via a holiday commemorating its roots was clear to him), and declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1864. It wasn’t until 1941 that Congress established the fourth Thursday in November as the official date for the holiday.
So, then, what do we have? It appears there was some sort of festivity that included eating, though the motive for it remains in question. The Wampanoag Indians, and their chief Massasoit, no doubt brought deer to the feast, and probably were motivated to join the settlers due to the drastic reduction smallpox had wrought in their numbers—the disease brought to them by prior visits of Europeans who had been trading with them for several years. These prior trading trips also aided the communication in 1621, because Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe who had earlier been seized and taken to England, had learned English there; it was also by means of this language ability that he was able to show the desperate Pilgrims how to plant corn and otherwise survive. So for this, and for their survival (52 of the original 102, at least), the Pilgrims celebrated. However, there is no record that the celebration was continued annually in subsequent years. For that, it is necessary to go to the “thanksgivings” of 1637 and 1676, when the English settlers thanked god for aiding them in slaughtering and enslaving the Indians, by now their arch enemies. Nor was such thanksgiving a new sentiment among the allegedly freedom-seeking, religious settlers in North America. I have had occasion before to quote from the New England Charter of 1620, in which it is noted that God’s favor towards English settlers can be discerned in the ‘wonderful plague’—smallpox—which has, even before 1620, so auspiciously dispatched so many of the aboriginal inhabitants:
"We have been further given to knowe, that within these late Yeares there hath by God’s visitation reigned a wonderfull Plague, together with many horrible Slaugthers, and Murthers, committed amoungst the Sauages and brutish People there, heertofore inhabiting, in a Manner to the utter Destruction, Deuastacion, and Depopulacion of that whole Territorye…whereby We in our Judgment are persuaded and satisfied that the appointed Time is come in which Almighty God in his great Goodness and Bountie towards Us and our People, hath thought fitt and determined, that those large and goodly Territoryes, deserted as it were by their naturall Inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our Subjects and People as heertofore have and hereafter shall by his Mercie and Favour, and by his Powerfull Arme..." ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass01.asp)
From the very outset, that is, and even before landing, the English were thankful that so many potential obstacles—other human beings—to their occupation of North America had been removed. This sentiment, as Lauber documents in his study of slavery, continued unabated throughout the colonies, and for hundreds of years thereafter, until the entire continent was “cleansed.” Of course, it is not exactly polite to give overt thanks for such cleansings these days, but it might be useful to bear them in mind when contemplating that first—whichever one you choose—“thanksgiving.”
Lawrence DiStasi
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