“Oh give me a home where the
buffalo roam...”
(poem and song published in
1870s)
Round em up, round them up
The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday
of the American Western. It was also one of our most popular exports.
Television shows like Bonanza, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, The Virginian,
Have Gun, Will Travel and Maverick were among the most highly rated
programs on television. I recently watched the 1959 TV pilot of
Rawhide, where Clint Eastwood made his first appearance, about
cowboys on a cattle drive.
It's quintessentially American …
sort of. Stoic white men and go-it-alone kind of guys solve problems,
protect children and the women folk and aren't afraid to use their
guns, which of course are omnipresent. This view was in fact part of
the West but only one small part, the part that has always been most
comfortable to white people, who decided how the West “was won.”
The real story is of course much
broader, much more ambiguous and oftentimes far darker, literally and
figuratively, and the laconic lone cowboy was more often than not an
unremarkable cog in a much bigger system. It is also about how large
corporations and politicians first colluded on a large scale to
plunder the resources of the West and where the ends justified the
means.
The state of Idaho is sponsoring a
Killing Competition on National Forest Lands. The contestants will be
competing for cash prizes. The prizes go to those that kill the most
wolves, coyotes and other wild life. To paraphrase Rap Brown, blood
lust “is as American as cherry pie.”Yeah, it's about continued
disrespect and disconnect but more important it's about mass
delusion.
It's part of an old story about
taming the frontier. Ranching interests today in the western states
are the ones behind most of the shooting, trapping and poisoning of
millions of animals. Ranchers drove the Mexican gray wolf to
extinction and continually oppose any recovery efforts. Grazing on
public lands has threatened or endangered hundreds of species, and
thousands of miles of rivers have been polluted by livestock waste
Politicians in the western states
love to talk about their Libertarian roots and how they are the
“true” protectors of the environment and the authentic America.
It's once again about white America making up stuff on a grand scale.
No doubt many of these characters and their constituents actually
believe the claptrap they utter—but why wouldn't they.
I hear the chickens are coming home
“You didn't hear about the
terrorists planning to blow up the subway in Paris?” I had not. “Do
you think it's safe to fly to New York”? I said I thought it was
perfectly safe.
We had one of the lowest voter
turnouts in years (36%) for our recent mid-term elections, terrible
even by the dismal American standard, yet some $3.6 billion was spent
to “buy the election.” The low voter turnout wasn't because of
widespread contentment among the citizenry. But who did vote were the
older, whiter, wealthier and more conservative voters. And who they
voted into office at both the national and state level will guarantee
all of us “interesting times” come January 2015.
I suspect the next two years will
be unpleasant for a great many Americans, especially for those of us
that don't want to revisit the 1950s let alone the nostalgic era of
President William McKinley, 1897-1901.
“What do those people want?”
“You ought to open an account in the Caymans, only the ignorant pay
more taxes than they should.” “Stopping the system of dependency
in this country is the most important thing we can do.” “We're
the real victims.” “Next time we'll have a President who is,
well, you know.”
I happened to run across a
particular group of tennis players this past summer, who I ended up
playing with periodically. They were white men, all over the age of
55, middle class, some of whom were retired … engineers, business
types, one or two had worked in the public sector, with grown
children and grandchildren. I listened to what they had to say.
They were a subset of white America
but have always been an influential constituency and certain about
their place in the order of things, until recently. It's about a
world they know that seems to be now unraveling, difficult for many
of them to comprehend. The television and radio info-entertainers
tell them that, while they're in the right, they also ought to be
afraid—of virtually everything. And they are resisting the
inevitable changes, sometimes mindlessly.
Continued....
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