The Shame of Sooners

Andrew Jackson worked for more than twenty years to force the Indians of the Southeast (the names in the history books are Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, and Cherokee) off their lands. He fought three wars with the Seminoles, fought the Creeks, and made many fraudulent treaties with them all. He wanted all the Indians east of the Mississippi relocated to the western side. He didn’t manage all that but he did get the Five Civilized Tribes evicted from their lands. They were called the Five Civilized Tribes because, in their efforts to survive and preserve some of their culture, they adopted many of the ways of the white people and used the courts to fight for their rights.

Thomas Jefferson supported the idea of an Indian Territory in order to obviate friction between the Euroamericans and Indians. At that time no one knew exactly what lay beyond the Mississippi River but whatever it was, it would be adequate for Indians. All the Indians. As the continent was explored and better understood, it was determined that the Great American Desert, that vast grassland later known as the Great Plains, was uninhabitable. Since white Americans could use much of the rest of the Trans-Mississippi West, the Indians could have the Great American Desert.

Then it was discovered that it wasn’t a desert at all, it was fertile farmland that didn’t even have to be cleared before it could be plowed. That caused the Indian Territory to shrink from what is now Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and part of Iowa, to only Oklahoma.

Over a period of more than thirty years, dozens of tribes from all over the east moved west. Some went resignedly, knowing it was inevitable, and some went only under force of arms. But nearly all of the people of the Five Civilized Tribes went. The Cherokees carried their fight to the Supreme Court and won; Jackson defied the court and said that the justices had made their decision, now they could enforce it. But there was never any real question as to who held the power. The Army supported the president rather than the law and moved the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears.

You might think the Indians had undergone enough at this point. No, not yet. After the Civil War, white Americans took another look at the Indian Territory and discovered that they could use it. It was huge. Although the Plains tribes were being added to the residents, white men felt that the Indians didn’t need all of it. President Benjamin Harrison agreed. He signed the law that opened the Indian Territory to white settlement. On an appointed day, April 22, 1889, anyone who wanted (except Indians, of course), could stake out a claim for 160 acres. Thousands did. Most of them filed legally, obeying the few rules. Many opted to anticipate the appointed day and sneaked in and staked out their claims sooner.

For years afterwards, sooners were held in contempt by the law-abiding land grabbers. That changed when an element of the populace decided that sooner was a synonym for progressive. Progressive people do not tamely wait for fortune to smile on them, they go out and make things happen. Robust, vigorous, progressive people take charge of their own destinies. The University of Oklahoma adopted “Sooner” as the nickname of their athletic teams. According to their website, the name evokes history, tradition and championships.

In my opinion it evokes treachery, theft, and shame.

Governance by Blackmail

Originally, the Founding Fathers intended that the president would have no legislative agenda and would serve to advise congress, having the power then to either approve their action or veto it. President Washington kept very strictly to that model but afterwards the presidents began to see themselves more and more as initiators of legislation. This developed from piecemeal legislative issues to whole packages of related issues, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and now “Obamacare.”

In the beginning, the intent was that Congress would be composed of amateurs. Knowing the dangers inherent in relying on professional politicians, the Founding Fathers decreed that Congress would meet only a few weeks each year. This allowed the congressmen to absent themselves briefly from their work so they did not depend on the government stipend for their living. It also gave them the incentive to do the business of the nation efficiently and to keep to necessities. This model also meant that congressmen were living and working in the same world as their constituents. They were affected by the legislation they passed just the same as the rest of the people.

Politics has always been a dirty profession with a few men and women of integrity dotted through history to show what it might be if enough honest citizens could be persuaded to undertake political careers. Many elected officials begin honestly, sincerely wishing to serve their constituencies and even to curb abuses and corruption. Few are able to withstand the various pressures against their integrity.

First is ego. It is ego that prompts one to want to enter politics in the first place. Few motives are not mixed and the desire to better conditions for one’s fellows may quite well exist along with the egotistical desire to be the one who creates the better conditions and who is seen to be the one who creates them.

Second is power. Power is dangerous, not only to the governed but to the governing. We have all heard Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not an automatic process but it requires constant vigilance in order to stand against it.

Third is peer pressure. Few would argue against the principle that a senator ought not to vote for anything his or her conscience will not condone. For instance, the military wants to close a base in another state. The base is no longer militarily useful but it is important to the surrounding area, furnishing jobs and a military payroll so the soldiers can contribute to the local economy. Clearly, it is to the national interest to close the base. However, if the senator doesn’t vote to keep it open, the senator from the state it’s in will not vote for his legislation.

Fourth are blackmail and extortion. If an elected official has anything in his or her past that would be detrimental if it became known, others (elected or not) may use the threat of exposure to obtain the vote, favor, or preference that they want. If there is nothing detrimental in the official’s past, extortion can be very useful. The threat can be made, toward the end of the campaign for office, that an announcement will be made that the candidate is or stands for something the electorate abhors, for instance, soft on crime or pro-abortion. It is too late for the candidate to refute the accusation and the election will be lost unless the candidate complies with the extortionist’s demands.

Or the threat can be made that, unless one stops criticizing the president, one’s spouse will be exposed as an operative of the CIA. This is such a vile, traitorous act that it is hard to take the threat seriously. But, in order to keep others who are vocal but vulnerable quiet, the threat can be carried out; the CIA operative can be publicly named and exposed to the danger of assassination or capture and torture, and the president’s critics will see that it’s dangerous to take the constitutional guarantee of free speech too seriously.

There are all sorts of ways to use blackmail and extortion in the political arena. Pressure can be brought to bear through the myriad federal bureaus to foreclose on home mortgages, force businesses into bankruptcy, deny various licenses, require so much documentation that projects are halted. The media can be used to start rumors and manufacture sex scandals, false reports of mental instability, false reports of misconduct in military service. Jobs and contracts can be pulled, official reports falsified, data corrupted.

These are all methods that have been used throughout our history by government officials in order to get the results they deem necessary. Sometimes they believe that the result justifies the means. Sometimes they are indifferent to the ethics and care only about the result. Sometimes they don’t even care much about the result, they enjoy the process of enforcing their will through these methods.

If we are not to become a nation ruled primarily by blackmail and extortion, we must not tolerate them when we see them at work. We must let our elected and appointed officials know that our government is of the people, for the people, and by the people and the people will be led by men and women of ethics and principles, not ruled by intellectual thuggery. It’s been said that people get the government they deserve – let us take the actions that will result in the people of the United States deserving an honorable government.

The Burglar Alarms (me)

When the burglar alarm was installed, I was given detailed instructions in how to use it, including a numerical code to punch in and a password to use if the alarm was triggered in error. I was also given an electronic gadget with four buttons to push so I wouldn’t have to punch in the code and could turn the alarm on and off from either inside or outside. So far, so good. But one of the buttons on the electronic gadget is RED. (This is the place for foreboding organ music.) That’s the one to push in an emergency. Any emergency, it doesn’t have to be a burglary.

One recent afternoon I was here alone, well, except for the dog and the cat. The cat, having tact and a great sense of self-preservation, does not enter into this story. The dog, being a sweet but neurotic Doberman Pinscher, is a member of the cast. I settled into my new recliner to read and fell asleep. Someone knocked at the door. The dog and I both promptly went nuts. He began barking his head off, his customary practice when he sees anyone out the window or hears anyone at the door. I remembered the electronic gadget in my pocket and pressed the red button. Ooops. I opened the door and some fool wanted to tell me how clever he’d been in finding my Rottweiler. I don’t know if the Rottweiler said anything because the Dobie and the alarm were both pretty loud.

I disclaimed ownership of the Rottie and tried to quiet the Dobie and the alarm. Naturally, I couldn’t remember a single instruction. Hellfire and damnation! The alarm began to speak to me in a woman’s voice. Did I need help? I said no and she wanted to know the code word. I gave her the numerical code and got it wrong but it didn’t matter because she wanted the word. The fool with the Rottie was still trying to interest me in the dog and the Dobie was still baying like a hound hot on the scent. I finally remembered the right numbers in the right order but she insisted on hearing the code word. Just in the nick of time I remembered it and the voice was satisfied and turned the alarm off. The fool took the Rottie away at some point and eventually the Dobie stopped baying. I don’t expect to ever be the same again but it was a good cardiac workout.

Simple Arithmetic

Traditionally, in what is called mainstream American culture, when things go wrong we subtract until we either find the cause of the problem or declare it unsolvable. Scientists try to isolate the causes of obesity, parents isolate children who cause disruption, the courts isolate law-breakers, sociologists isolate behavior patterns that cause cultural stress. But what if we added instead of subtracting? As a wise person has pointed out, if you work to alleviate the pain, you stay focused on the pain. If you work to heal the cause of the pain, you focus on the healing.

We’ve been told for many years that eating more calories than we burn is the cause of obesity and the only way to shed the excess pounds is to subtract the excess calories from the diet. There are hundreds of books to tell us which calories and which foods to eliminate. If the premise were correct, only one book would be necessary. There is other evidence than the inundation of diet books to demonstrate the fallacy of the premise. Every one of us knows at least one very thin person who practically eats his or her weight in sweets on a weekly basis, and never gains an ounce. What would happen if, instead of subtracting foods when our figures flare, we added them? Suppose we added a baked potato, with or without sour cream? Or a big salad composed of fresh, crisp vegetables? Or a slice of whole grain bread rich with sunflower seeds? We might find that, having given our bodies the nutrients it needs, our appetites are satisfied. If we didn’t set ourselves up for failure and disappointment by working from an incorrect premise, and if we approached the project with love for our bodies instead of anger, it might be that by adding health-giving foods, our bodies would return to good health and the excess weight would gradually disappear.

We often hear people say of an unruly child that he or she only wants attention. The usual response of the adult in charge is to send the child to his room until he can behave. The child’s needs are not met and behavior problems may get worse or the child may withdraw, feeling that he is not important to the people around him. Maybe a more appropriate response would be to give the child the attention that we know he needs. Ask the child what he wants, listen to the answer and respond accordingly. This is not rewarding the unacceptable behavior, this is meeting the needs of the child and thus, of the family.

When a child breaks a rule, it is the custom in America to punish the child. The more important the rule is to us, or the more power over others we take, the more severe the punishment will be. It is not uncommon for us to respond to one child striking another by striking one or both of them. Sometimes we get caught up in legalistic transactions, demanding to know who started it and listening to a blow-by-blow account of the dispute. Sometimes we refuse to listen to the children at all, sending both to isolation until they can be nice. The absence of logic in these responses confuses the children and very often they grow up believing that bad behavior is acceptable if it is paid for in some way. What if, instead of subtracting the child from the group, we added logic and justice? What if we explained the reasons for the rules and allowed the children some genuine input and thought constructively about their points of view? Children are inherently logical and just; they know when things are not fair. They are comparatively easy to manipulate because of their lack of experience but adults are not fooling them. Even though they may not be able to articulate the illogic or injustice, they know it is there.

When adults break the law, we punish them. We remove them from the mainstream of life and place them in prisons. We have a Penal Code to guide us in sentencing our criminals; the more heinous the crime, the longer the punishment, the fewer the privileges. There are times when isolation is the appropriate response, when it allows the law-breaker to contemplate her crimes and truly repent. But this is not really the purpose of our prisons, we don’t even call them penitentiaries anymore. Ideally, our penal system is supposed to isolate the criminal in order to protect society while she is undergoing the rehabilitation process. In fact, we are far more concerned with making sure that criminals get what they deserve and pay for their crimes in full. The real purpose of imprisoning people is to exact revenge on them for their crimes.

What if we operated our prisons as penitentiaries and assumed that most, if not all, criminals could be rehabilitated? Would this shift in philosophy have any effect on the criminal element? What if we strove to truly understand the causes of crime and concentrated on adding those things to life that would keep people in the mainstream of society instead of alienating them? This is not an easy task, or a cheap one, but policing and incarcerating the criminal element isn’t easy or cheap, either.

We in America are such an amalgam of so many races, nationalities, religions, and differences that we have developed the "us against them" mentality to a remarkably destructive degree. We divide along any line that allows us to differentiate, at times whipping our fervor up to the degree that we actually kill people simply for being different in some miniscule way. The harder we try to erase the differences, to take away the criteria for divisions, the more new distinctions we invent. For instance, when we tried to bring immigrants into the mainstream by ridiculing their cultural artifacts, we drove a wedge between the generations. This has been refined to the point that it seems natural to group people according to age and assign them appropriate interests. Take music, for example. It is considered bizarre for elderly people to enjoy rock music and for pre-teens to enjoy classical music. The fact is that enjoyment of all musical styles cuts across the age lines and age is not a factor in music appreciation, although experience may be; we tend to like the familiar. What if we added the perception that it’s okay to think outside the box, that it’s okay not to fit the mold for your age, race, sex, religion, or sociological niche?

What if we behaved as if we really believed the preamble to the Constitution? All men are created equal. That does not mean that all people have equal talents or taste or intelligence or luck, it means that all people are of equal importance. There is no reason to value a singer above a plumber or a politician above a homemaker. There is simply no valid basis for one person or group to assume superiority over another. Scientists are now finding and beginning to understand evidence that we are all connected, not only to each other, but to other species and to all life forms. Everything on earth is connected to every other thing in one ecosystem. When any action is taken, it has repercussions far beyond what we can see and often beyond what we can imagine or comprehend.

So how would it be if we enjoyed our diversities? What if we accepted each and every individual as an individual and not as a member of some disparate group? What if we added love and joy to our repertoire of responses to the divergencies of life?

The Secret Service Does Have a Sense of Humor

It was early morning and I was on my way downstairs to the hotel ballroom, or more accurately, to the lobby outside the ballroom. It was a small hotel but very chic and used a lot by Washington, D.C. big shots and foreign dignitaries. Once I ran into a small band of men who were wearing gorgeous green and red uniforms. Later I learned that they were security officers for the President of Mexico. Al Gore had lived in the hotel when his father was a senator; Frank Sinatra had decked someone in the bar; it was Nancy Reagan’s favorite luncheon venue.

The nonprofit organization dedicated to education that I worked for used the hotel because we could get it cheaply during its slack times and it was only a block from our office. This particular morning I left my room (I stayed there because I lived in Maryland and wanted to be sure to be on time, which I couldn’t count on if I had to struggle with the commute.) early in order to make sure all the materials and arrangements for the conference were ready. The first unusual thing I saw was a man in uniform with a dog on a leash. They were walking slowly around the registration table that was my work space and the dog was diligently sniffing all the boxes and furniture. They moved on into the ballroom and a hotel staffer brought me some coffee. I asked what the dog was all about, thinking there might have been a bomb scare or something of the sort.

The waiter replied that the Secret Service was making a routine check of the premises because a very important person was scheduled to use one of the conference rooms later that morning. I was curious but had a hundred and twenty-nine college deans and professors due in half an hour and needed to be ready to give them their conference materials. When my boss came down, I told her about the dog and that a VIP was expected. She, too, was curious but busy with the deans and professors.

Our conference was in full swing in the ballroom when the next contingent of Secret Service people came in. They were all men, all wore black suits, and all had tiny receivers plugged into an ear with a spiral cord running down the neck. They spread out, examining everything, paying special attention to doors and hallways. One of the agents came out of one of our break-out rooms, told me it connected to the kitchen corridor, and asked my permission to station himself inside. I was surprised that he asked but naturally told him it would be fine. Three agents sat near the outside door and talked in low tones, looking alert and intrepid. Curious as to what they could be discussing so seriously, because there was absolutely nothing happening in that wing of the hotel that could conceivably interest the Secret Service, I made an excuse to get close enough to hear them for a moment. They were talking about major league baseball.

Eventually, I learned that Joe Lieberman, who was campaigning in the presidential primaries, was to hold a meeting in a conference room on the second floor. Next time my boss surfaced, I told her and she excitedly decided to give him a copy of her book and invite him to say hello to our deans and professors. To that end she buttonholed one of the agents, showed him a copy of her book and explained what she wanted to do. To clinch it that she was a respectable citizen, she showed him a photograph of herself with President George W. Bush, taken at the White House on her arrival for a state dinner. The agent examined the book, studied the photograph, and said, with a perfectly straight face, “Yeah, I can see it’s you but who’s the guy?”

Our Greatest Achievement

When the speculation of Man’s greatest achievement arises, we naturally think of space exploration, medical advances, or some other modern technological wonder. But much of modern technology is essentially without value. It adds nothing to our quest for understanding our own spirituality, which is the principle reason for living on the Earth, and it also threatens the destruction of the planet.

The development of farming is humanity’s greatest achievement. Most hunting and gathering peoples suffer regular times of famine, such as in the winter when stored supplies run short or when game becomes scarce, as it periodically does. With the advent of farming, the food supply is much more predictable and often more plentiful. Farming also allows us to gather in villages so we can be more compassionate toward our old people and those for whom constant travel is a hardship.

The modern U.S. government has encouraged the mechanization of the farm and the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers because elected officials believe that if they can claim to have made food cheap, people will continue to vote for them. As the efficiency of farming techniques has increased, the need for farm labor has decreased. New work has had to be found for the superfluous farm workers. The factories of the industrial revolution supplied many with jobs and the cancerous growth of the governmental bureaucracy provided more. Now America has become an economy of service workers, which means that most of us are simply transferring paper money from hand to hand, with no real production to show for our labor and hence no real psychological reward for our labor.

Human beings must have both monetary and psychological rewards in order to live satisfying lives. We must have sufficient material reward to live in cleanliness and dignity and we must have sufficient psychological reward to live with self-esteem and compassion. The price we pay if either of those is deficient is exacted in hopelessness and the fear-based emotions, which lead to alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and the disintegration of the family.

The type of farming as practiced prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine is ideal in many ways, although it’s unnecessary to divide farm chores into men’s work and women’s work. Farm life is family-oriented and makes room for the extended family – for the richness of family life that includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, even unrelated persons. Working the soil brings one close to the elements, close to God. It is no accident that church attendance began its decline when people moved from the farms to the cities.

Farming keeps communities small enough for public opinion to have an effect on each individual’s actions. This is a two-edged sword, however, and care must be taken that narrow-mindedness doesn’t blind people to the joys of diversity. Not that narrow-mindedness is limited to small communities. In actuality, it is in the cities that one finds enclaves of the kind of intolerance that kills people for having different hair styles or unfamiliar types of clothing. People in small towns and on farms, being in touch with the Earth, are less fearful and more able to exercise a wide charity and acceptance.

Non-mechanized farming does the minimum damage to the Earth. The plows don’t reach so far into the soil that one windstorm can carry away a foot of topsoil. Organic fertilizers and pest controls obviate the pollution of our water resources.

There is currently a great fear that without mechanized, chemicalized farming, we will starve. There is no reason to cut the amount of food produced. There is a shift in method, not result. We are adding labor, not cutting production.

There is also a great fear that without modern technology our lifestyles will drift back into savagery. What follows is a speech made by a Micmac Indian chief to some French fishing boat captains in Nova Scotia in 1676, quoted by T.C. McLuhan in Touch the Earth, published by Outerbridge & Dienstfrey in 1972:

“…Thou reproachest us very inappropriately, that our country is a little hell on earth in contrast with France, which thou comparest to a terrestrial paradise, inasmuch as it yields thee, so thou sayest every kind of provision in abundance. Thou sayest of us also that we are the most miserable and most unhappy of all men, living without religion, without manners, without honor, without social order, and in a word, without any rules, like the beasts in our woods and forests, lacking bread, wine, and a thousand other comforts, which thou hast in superfluity in Europe. Well, my brothers, if thou doest not yet know the real feelings which our Indians have towards thy Country and towards all thy nation, it is proper that I inform thee at once. I beg thee now to believe that, all miserable as we seem in thy eyes, we consider ourselves nevertheless much happier than thou, in this that we are very content with the little that we have….Thou deceivest thyselves greatly if thou thinkest to persuade us that thy country is better than ours. For if France, as thou sayest, is a little terrestrial paradise, art thou sensible to leave it? And why abandon wives, children, relatives, and friends? Why risk thy life and thy property every year? And why venture thyself with such risk in any season whatsoever, to the storms and tempests of the sea in order to come to a strange and barbarous country which thou considerest the poorest and least fortunate of the world? Besides, since we are wholly convinced to the contrary, we scarcely take the trouble to go to France because we fear with good reason, lest we find little satisfaction there, seeing in our own experience that those who are natives thereof leave it every year in order to enrich themselves on our shores. We believe, further, that you are also incomparably poorer than we, and that you are only simple journeymen, valets, servants, and slaves, all masters and Grand Captains though you may appear, seeing that you glory in our old rags, and in our miserable suits of beaver which can no longer be of use to us, and that you make in these parts, the wherewithall to comfort your misery and the poverty which oppress you….

“We see also that all your people live, as a rule, only upon cod which you catch among us. It is everlastingly nothing but cod – cod in the morning, cod at midday, cod at evening, and always cod, until things come to such a pass that if you wish some good morsels it is at our expense; and you are obliged to have recourse to the Indians, whom you despise so much, and to beg them to go a-hunting that you may be regaled. Now tell me this one little thing, if thou hast any sense, which of these two is the wisest and happiest: he who labors without ceasing and only obtains…with great trouble, enough to live on, or he who rests in comfort and finds all that he needs in the pleasure of hunting and fishing….Learn now, my brothers, once for all, because I must open to thee my heart: there is no Indian who does not consider himself infinitely more happy and more powerful than the French.”

Although the Micmac chief doesn’t mention it, his people practiced agriculture and raised corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and other vegetables. In light of the speech quoted above, we have to believe that he and his people had no need of modern technology and filled their lives with substance rather than the superfluity of the French royal court that the sea captains found so attractive. The European colonists and their descendants used the doctrine of “the highest and best use of the land” to justify stealing it from the Indian tribes. We are just now beginning to realize that the Indians had already put the land to the highest and best use.

All this is not to say that we can return to life as the tribes lived before the Europeans came, or even to life before the industrial revolution. There are more than three hundred million of us now and we are accustomed to electricity, indoor plumbing, supermarkets and all the rest of it. But surely we can look at the things we value and make new judgment calls when we look at the relative merits of life on the farm, life in the factory, and life selling hamburgers to one another.

Less is More?

I know that there is a school of thought among interior designers that holds that less is more but I didn't know that it extended to electrical and electronic engineers. A couple of nights ago there was a public service announcement on TV to the effect that many appliances, including TVs and computers, use more electricity when they are turned off than when they are running. I have heard this before but thought it must be a mischievous myth because it is an idea of such profound foolishness. Why would anyone design an appliance to use more power off than on? It doesn't seem to be even possible but I know very little about electricity and/or electronics. Not only have these designers made their products more power hungry off than on, they have provided remote controls that encourage us to waste power. What is the value of a remote if we have to get up and unplug the appliance? Or switch off the power strip? I wonder if this is a new development or if these appliances have always consumed more electricity off than on. I wonder what other surprises will surface to shake our faith in everyday operations. The insanity of modern life just keeps increasing.