The Chief Speaks (RR)

“SACRIFICING THE MANY”

by OPOVV, ©2016

(Jul. 18, 2016) — “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a special edition of ‘Pulse of the Nation.’ It is indeed a rare occurrence when the opportunity arises to convey to many people at one time what’s on your mind. I remember reading about Bob Dylan saying to the Beatles something along the lines of, ‘You’ve got the forum, why don’t you say something?’ And so, too, for me: I’ve got your ear, so I’ll bend it.

“So here I am, on the corner across from the railroad station, with the wind blowing cold air from the north, accompanied by stinging rain, standing around waiting to interview some foot traffic, which there isn’t any, so I’ll just ad-lib here for a while and hope what I’m thinking you’ll understand.

“I cannot speak for other peoples, but I can speak for the American Indian, so I will.  All the tribes have a long and colorful tradition of storytelling, along the lines of Aesop’s Fables and Homer’s Iliad. And, anthropologists’ conclusions aside, we all had a written language of sorts. It was the Cherokee Tribe that broke their picture graphs down to individual letters. If any one of us could go back in time and read the drawings on a particular Sioux teepee, we would learn a great many interesting facts about the inhabitants just by interpreting the pictures drawn on the outside.

“I read George Santayana’s tome and thought, upon conclusion, that such a work of tremendous proportions could not possibly be condensed to one short sentence: ‘Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ How trite, I thought, because that short sentence nullifies the true meaning of what the thought was that he was conveying.

“Santayana wrote about the ‘consensus of attitude’ (my phrase) within the unspoken conscience of a people. He shared the danger that lies within such a cavalier attitude of past mistakes and disasters. He offered examples of thought that would lead down the path of ignorance and destruction.

“The most recent and obvious example of the meaning of the above paragraph is of Hillary stating ‘What difference — at this point, what difference does it make?’ Critics would jump on the bandwagon of ‘the past,’ as in ‘Benghazi is ancient history, so let’s forget it and move on: get over it.’ Bad mistake, we Indians think.

“Call it the ‘Concept of Reality’ (my phrase), if you will. Here’s an example: a person, who you do not know, walks up to you, waves his hand, and offers you a million dollars for ‘your air.’ You laugh and smile and think, ‘This crazy white man is surely a fool,’ and sell him ‘your’ air and take the money.

“Many years later a white man returns and says to you that, because you breathed ‘X’ amount of times filling your lungs with ‘Y’ cubic inches air, you’ve spent all of your air and now it’s time to die. You say ‘No way,’ but he shows you the bill of sale, backed by the courts and enforced by the law.

“Now tell me, how is that any different than buying land for trinkets, which is how the white man bought the island of Manhattan? So we Indians learned quickly not to sell our land to the white man. Our tribes have too many sad stories about how the white man broke treaty after treaty when oil or gold or even a ski lift could make money, even at the price of total destruction of the property.

“It’s all in the attitude of how we remember what happened yesterday and what the consequence are for today. The American Indian, like the Chinese, revere our ancestors, unlike you, who revere the latest television ratings and who’s ahead in whatever poll was recently taken. Even the Germans placed retirement homes near schools so the children had a sense of time and continuity with the aged.

“You have the greatest document ever written by the human race: the Constitution, and you make fools out of yourselves by sacrificing the many to accommodate the one anomaly. Go figure. This same-sex marriage isn’t logical; it doesn’t make any sense. Women on Navy ships don’t make any sense. I’m sorry, but you people lost it, and it’s about time somebody told you that the history of you people is exceedingly short. Your country is less than 300 years old but you act like it’s another ‘Thousand-Year Reich.’

“And that’s just the attitude that Santayana was trying to convey to you people. My suggestion would be, next time, read the whole book and not extract one sentence and pretend you acquired wisdom. You have no wisdom: somewhere you’re clear-cutting a piece of America and you haven’t put the guilty in jail yet, starting with those who are responsible for the fiasco in Benghazi.

“And go back a step farther and remember all of the times when the vanquished were made to surrender their weapons. We remember what happened at Wounded Knee: what honor can there be at murdering the helpless? You are no better than the Muslims beheading a Christian child, which is why you have millions of Muslims in your county today. You surround yourself with the same savages that you see in the mirror every morning.

“I have spoken. Is their hope? There is always hope, but happy endings take effort, and it looks as if you people have none. ‘The illegals do the jobs that Americans can’t – or won’t – do,’ which seems to be your sorry excuse for not abiding by your immigration laws. And if you limit your 2^nd Amendment, even for a day, you might as well tear up your whole Constitution, which you’re doing anyway, aren’t you?

“And I see that my time is up. If the law is open carry, do so. If – and it does – the Constitution allows you to be armed, be so. I have spoken. And so, on behalf of the crew, I’ll be wishing you all a good night: Goodnight.

“Burger time for sure. My treat.”

Semper Fi

OPOVV