Interview with author Edward Abbey, Phoenix Arizona on PBS 1982:
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Several of my friends were crying in their cereal yesterday, horrified by the recent election results. Many said “we’re screwed,” to which I reply “we’ve always been screwed.”
Let’s face it. The country has always been run by thugs and liars, but if you consider our history, and then compare it to our current state of affairs, even with a virulent new strain of Republicanism in charge of the House, things look a lot better today than in the past. At least as social and environmental issues are concerned.
At one point in our country, we nearly killed all the buffalo. We mowed down forests like it was nobody’s business. We took African prisoners and made them slaves. We carried out an active program of extermination and genocide against Native Americans, throwing babies in fires, smashing their heads with rifle butts, shooting women and killing unarmed men under the flag of surrender. Compare the language of the Tea Party to the popular opinions in the 19th century, and you realize that while they’re misguided and misinformed, it’s nothing like 150 years ago.
Lincoln appointed a guy named Joseph Pratt Allyn to serve as one of the first federal judges in Arizona. “Almost immediately upon his arrival, Allyn noted the harsh measures of Arizona’s white population toward the Apaches. ‘A war of extermination has inf act already begun. Indians are shot whenever seen.’” He witnessed several “organizational” meetings dealing with civilian campaigns against the Apaches. Many volunteered their services to collect scalps. And Allyn’s collegue, Governor John Goodwin gave a speech to one group, “that in Allyn’s words ‘took all by storm’ through its powerful advocation of extermination of the Indians.”
At one point, there was talk of making Indian children slaves.
I think the Tea Party only advocates shipping Mexicans back to Mexico and helping gays find Jesus. To date, there’s no talk of extermination, just some stupid fence building and baptism.
We progressed from slavery to the period of Jim Crow laws (if one call that progress). We didn’t allow women to vote until 1920. In our recent history to the present, we unnecessarily dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killed Chesapeake Bay, and we’re now involved in economic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So, it’s always been bad, and as a nation, we’re about as low as you can get. It’s no wonder that American travelers and immigrants often get the cold shoulder when traveling abroad.
Liberals and progressive thinkers have faced a long, uphill climb from day one. There’s been so many switchbacks we’ve lost count, but we trudge onward, step by step. Every once in a while, there’s a setback. We’re pinned down by a storm, we lose the trail, etc. But it passes, and we resume the climb.
Yesterday was a set back, but one thing history teaches you is that these things pass. The Republican advance in this election cycle probably set us back ten years, but we’ll get things turned around again and headed back in the right direction. It’s just a long, long climb. And don’t forget that help is on the way. $200 per barrel oil could make it kinda hard to operate the “machine.”
One of our biggest problems in this country today is the fact that most Americans have a amazingly deficient knowledge of history. Our real history is whitewashed in schools and in the media, buried under an avalanche of jingoism, willful ignorance and just plain old lies. And apparently we suffer from short term memory loss, as well, since all these people that voted for Republicans seem to forget that it’s largely the Republicans that caused all the problems to begin with.
Which is due, again, to really poor education. The cold, sober fact is that we’re an ignorant nation, and our ability to think rationally has been dulled by television, marketing, ridiculous soundbites and fundamentalist religion. We care more about making money than being well educated and dealing with facts. Frankly, I don’t see this changing any time soon. I think the educational issue is too far gone.
But the point is we’re in the mess because we’re ignorant. It’s really that plain and simple.
I figure maybe in 150 to 200 years we will have progressed enough to the point of perhaps having a sane, rational, sustainable human society on this continent. A society that retains some of its best features and advances from the Age of Plenty/Age of Oil but retreats back to a more sustainable mode of living. Something that resembles society before the Age of Oil. Hopefully, we’ll be as embarrassed by our current homophobia, militarism, fundamentalism and corporatism as we are today by slavery and genocide.
Time is on our side and so is Ma Nature. Don’t give up hope, and don’t retreat. It’s much better to be a thorn in the side of the oppressor than let them think they’ve won by driving you underground or out of the country.
Maintain course.
Sources: Shadows At Dawn, A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History, Karl Jacoby