Congenial-speak #43

Meddles in Unknown Origins

Yes, I am naturalized citizen of the United States of America. Yes, I know that I'm a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. I take that honor, that responsibility, that serendipitous meddling for better or worse, depending on factors of race, gender, and ability. As an adopted person of some color I know my family's (the ones who adopted me, ethnic background quite well, even though I have nothing to do with it. I have my own blanks to fill. Although if one traced every generation back centuries they may discover that one's biological lineage made a barely traceable intersection with their adopted family's lineage (although in my case I very much doubt it). My dad came from Germany. My mom descends from Russian and Polish Jews. Biologically my mother's ancestors were Swedes, Irish, English. The little I know about my father says that he had some Creole heritage, but it is a safe bet that someone in the chain of causation came from Africa. But strange things happen, fate creates the melts of the most diverse pots. Who can say what and invading army brought, for example, who beds with whom, or what refugee seeks refuge in the loins of another. World politics does divide, segregate, infiltrate, integrate, and still make strange bedfellows.

Archaic cotton-pickin' origins

The melt began long before 1620. Actually today marks 452 years. Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés claimed St. Augustine in 1565. He negotiated with Culusa natives. He offered them gold in exchange for supplies needed to survive. Also in the deal were the missionaries. Natives were eased into the Roman Catholic religion Menéndez practiced. By 1566 he had watchtowers at Cape Canaveral and Biscayne Bay. The goal was to convert all the natives to Catholicism, and all ships coming to Florida were instructed to carry priests. Menéndez died in 1574 and the plan stagnated. Jamestown began it attempt as a colony in 1607. There had been an attempt at a Roanoke Colony in 1585 by Queen Elizabeth I. It was on an island that is today Dare County, NC. It was lost, to history, and largely due to the Spanish-Anglo War.

All the president's men check their DNA at the door of the Oval, where the fate of 800,000 victims of a Catholic limbo system are decided. The current sham, the charlatan, the embarrassment in the Oval and all his bigoted cronies represent the ugliest “Americans.” They will likely look back to the pilgrims or PURITANS and off their starch white cuff imply that the operative word is pure. They begin their self-indulgent journey through history with trinkets being traded for Manhattan after the Indians shared corn with the puritans. They haggled while the puritans picked their teeth with the long end of a wish-bone. If there is one bit of history Trump knows I bet it is the Jacksonian theory of Manifest Destiny. Was it divine intervention that made expansion of the Americas “Justified and inevitable?” Give the indigenous people religion, teach them, make them believe in the same god so we are all on the same page. Ah, that's how it was—justified. Andrew Jackson was a good man, with a trail of tears to his infamy. He—if he had not died 20 years prior—could have avoided the Civil War. You can be sure of it, just as sure as Jefferson Bolreguard Sessions III cheered troopers at Edmund Petus Bridge.

All the president's men need to realize the parameters surrounding their origins, what, in the end, they are entitled to and why. The indigenous people of North America have had a stormy relationship with their—let's call them guests over the past two and a half centuries. For 9 years (1754-63) the British and French fought. British American colonies aligned with Indians to defeat the French and New France. Conflicts, incidents, wars, many with the Indians ultimately working to assist the colonists' in their severance from British rule, happened through the decades. Facilitated by ideologies like Manifest Destiny, in 1830 Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. Its aim was to negotiate with Southern tribes for their removal from federal territory. In exchange they got their land west of the Mississippi. It was ALL their land to begin with. They were politely cojoled into sharing it. They were hustled by pitchmen like Trump.

Built from the outside

America was built by immigrants, refugees, outside help, many of whom faced division from the word go. Plantations were built, fields were cleared, cotton was chopped by people who, as sure as DJT is a racist, did not come here willingly or legally. Now the thousands who entered a deal with an Obama government only 6 years ago face expulsion from the only homeland most ever knew. The DACA or deferred action for childhood arrivals program will be rescinded in 6 months. These kids are not the bad apples. To get in the program they had to prove their record to be free of the most minor misdemeanor. These adults now, in many cases, are vital to the US economy. Their abrupt mass exodus would irrevocably damage the GDP standing of the US. The sore applicants, from whom top level jobs are claimed to have been taken, most likely will NOT be filled anytime soon following their departure. Why should they suffer the slings and arrows of their parents' misfortune, outrageous or otherwise? Who knows under what circumstances (or gun) the parents came to this country. Perhaps, like the Israelite did not have time to watch bread leaven, they did not have time to wait for documents. I was likely in an era before tweets or fax machines. Bottom line: It's dirty pool. It's going back on the word of the US government (doesn't our money say in God we trust). Yes, that is the gold standard on which all trust in government is predicated. That term that folks use when they ask for something back that they have given, ask for a word or deed. Besides casting a negative stereotype on a minority group in America, a group that has entitlement to be the majority, is just stupid sounding. It made really no sense to me, until now.