You call it war. I call it massacre.

Even as I continue to read Jill Lepore's sweeping, single-volume, history of the United States, it is difficult to shut myself off from the shit that pours out of trump's mouth and tweets.  It is his mouth that is really a shithole!

The horrible human being in the Oval Office evoked the Wounded Knee massacre in a recent tweet, in order to mock Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In this post, I noted from Jill Lepore that between 1500 and 1800, as many as fifty million Native Americans died.  The hunting down of Indians continued on.  Many European settlers believed that “indigenous practices were by definition savage, superstitious and coercive.”  So, what did they do?

In part because of this belief, the U.S. government decided not to recognize Native Americans as citizens of sovereign governments in the 19th century, but as colonial subjects. In 1883, the Department of Interior enacted the first “Indian Religious Crimes Code” making the practice of Native American religions illegal. These codes remained in place until 1934.

Keep in mind that many European settlers were also the same people who fled religious persecution back in their old countries!

In response, Wenger writes, some Native American groups tried to convince government agents that their gatherings were places of “prayer and worship” similar to Christian churches. Others claimed that their gathering were “social,” not religious.
But this kind of masking of religious practices did not stop the U.S. government from using violence to suppress these Native American ceremonies.
In 1890, the U.S. military shot and killed hundreds of unarmed men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in an effort to suppress a Native American religious ceremony called the “ghost dance.”

This is the Wounded Knee that trump uses to mock Warren!  Millions of Jesus-loving born-again Christians voted for this horrible human being?

Lepore writes about the religious revival in the colonies, which gives us an idea of the track record of most of the religious in this country.  But, there were exceptions.  Very, very few.  But, the  kind of exceptions that give us hope.  One of them was Benjamin Lay.  A widely traveled man, and well read, he was one of the first to speak up and loudly against slavery.

In 1718, Lay sailed to Barbados, where he saw people branded and tortured and beaten, starved and broken; he decided that everything about this arrangement was an offense against God, who "did not make others to be Slaves to us."

In contrast, his contemporary, George Washington "inherited his first human property at the age of ten."

After a few years in England, Lay and his wife left for Pennsylania--the Quaker State.

He traveled from town to town and from colony to colony, only ever on foot--he would not spur a horse--to denounce slavery before governors and ministers and merchants. ... His arguments fell on deaf ears.

What a commitment to the cause!

But, even he ran out of steam.  Benjamin Lay became a hermit.

Outside of Philadelphia, he carved a cave out of a hill. Inside, he stowed his library; two hundred books of theology. biography, poetry, and history. He'd decided to protest slavery by refusing to eat or drink or wear or use anything that had been made with forced labor.

Such principled activists are how we will make America great again!

He continued to press Benjamin Franklin about the slaves that he owned.  "Lay pressed him and pressed him: By what right?"

In 1758, "the Philadelphia Quaker meeting formally denounced slave trading; Quakers who bought and sold men were to be disowned.  When Lay heard the news, he said, "I can now die in peace," closed his eyes, and expired.

A hundred years later, the country fought a Civil War over slavery.  But, it took another 100 years to end separate but equal.  And 60 years after that, we have a President who talks about fine people on both sides!

But, at least there were a few people like Benjamin Lay.  May their tribe increase!

All About You

I have written in plenty about the need, the urgency, to understand "the other."  About the need for empathy, especially for the migrants fleeing the tyrants.  And, in the political setting, about how 63 million people elected to the White House a horrible human being who was proudly open about his cruelest approach towards the others.  And about how a significant number of that 63 million are bible-thumping, churchgoing moralists.

Now, consider this:

As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: "Why them and not me?"

How about this?

Good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough. Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The "you" is always a real presence, a person to take care of.

The other has a face.  What if that face is you?  What if you are the one who needs help?

People's paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves "respectable," of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road.

"[Each] and everyone's existence is deeply tied to that of others."  Right?

I was quoting the Pope throughout.  Yes, that Pope.  And in a TED talk!

Atheist I am, yes.  But, it does seem to me that what I really care about is in line with the Pope's message.  And, a good chunk of the 63 million who are bible-thumpers, including Catholics, apparently are then contradicting the Pope's interpretation of what Jesus's teachings mean.

No wonder the Pope in one of his previous messages said “But to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.”

I will wrap this up with the Pope's own words from his TED talk:

The future of humankind isn't exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a "you" and themselves as part of an "us." We all need each other.

There was King ... and there is king!

Two days ago, I referred to the blatantly racist post by a Republican member of the House of Representatives, steve king.  Guess what?  The party expelled him today--he crossed the Rubicon.

Nah, of course not.  He is very much a part of the party.  It is just that he loudly says what most Republicans (elected and otherwise) say in their safe spaces.

The GOP is now the bloody American party of white nationalism!

Today it’s Donald Trump’s party, and there is not much breathing room between King and Trump when it comes to white nationalism.

White nationalism gone mainstream!  Who would have imagined that back in 2009?

This is how the Bannons and Kings view the modern world: The West is threatened by hordes of swarthy outsiders, especially Mexicans and Muslims, and they are lonely defenders of the white Christian race against this insidious threat. There is no evidence that Trump has given this matter as much thought as they have, but, based on his public pronouncements, he has reached similar conclusions. That helps to explain why the administration is building a border wall, expanding deportations, and trying to keep out citizens of as many Muslim countries as possible. This isn’t about fighting terrorism or crime; it’s about fighting changing demographics. And it’s premised on an unspoken assumption that only white Christians are true Americans; all others are “somebody else.”
This is ugly stuff.

Such ugliness right at the Oval Office has emboldened all the white nationalism all around.  White nationalism posters were found posted at a university campus only a few blocks away from the White House:

Vanguard America, a group whose name appears on the signs, responded to a request for comment with an email: “We hope to raise awareness amongst college students regarding the problems facing the world today, and to advocate for a National Socialist solution to these problems.”

You see how these groups operate in broad daylight and even response to requests for comments?

Of course, churchgoing white Christians who voted for trump whose heart is so pure that he is the very image of Christ himself!

In 1962--yes, 55 years ago--James Baldwin wrote:

White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.

At the rate at which this country is changing under this president and his party, "may very well be never" seems to be the case.  What a tragedy that 63 million voters have created!

On the "attempts to make India a saffron Pakistan"

As India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, approaches the completion of the first year in office, there are certainly a few trends that will worry everyone except the Modi fans.  One is about the sense of a de-secularization of the public space and the uneasiness among the Muslims and Christians in particular.

I often think that this was to be expected.  After all, Modi has never hid from the public his allegiance to the divisive RSS and to the idea of Hindutva.  The leopard, as they say, doesn't change its spots, and Modi has never seemed to even try changing his spots!

What was surprising was to read an opinion piece that simply went for the jugular.  But then the author, Julio Ribeiro, too hasn't changed his spots.  A former pull-no-punches high ranking, and highly decorated, police officer, stays on character when he writes:

Today, in my 86th year, I feel threatened, not wanted, reduced to a stranger in my own country.  The same category of citizens who had put their trust in me to rescue them from a force they could not comprehend have now come out of the woodwork to condemn me for practising a religion that is different from theirs. I am not an Indian anymore, at least in the eyes of the proponents of the Hindu Rashtra.

That ought to hurt the RSS fanatics; but then they don't care.  After all, if they cared, they would not be fanatics, right?

Ribeiro adds:

Is it coincidence or a well-thought-out plan that the systematic targeting of a small and peaceful community should begin only after the BJP government of Narendra Modi came to power last May?

Of course it is no coincidence.

It is tragic that these extremists have been emboldened beyond permissible limits by an atmosphere of hate and distrust. The Christian population, a mere 2 per cent of the total populace, has been subjected to a series of well-directed body blows. If these extremists later turn their attention to Muslims, which seems to be their goal, they will invite consequences that this writer dreads to imagine.

That atmosphere of hate and distrust that has been created since last May won't easily go away.  A tragedy, indeed!  It didn't take much time to destroy even the little bit of trust that was built slowly over the years.

In another interview, Ribeiro says:

People need to know that attempts to make India a saffron Pakistan will not work and should not be encouraged. India is where people from different religions, communities live. We are not Pakistan but we can get there if certain people and their actions are not opposed. I may be over reacting but I feel it is my responsibility to oppose this openly.

As one who has been observing the trends from the outside, I don't see anything in what Ribeiro says to think he is over-reacting.

It is a shame that India's politics have gone this route.  And an awful tragedy!