[blockquote type=”center”]”Those who are living in anxiety and fear, most especially fear of scarcity, have no time or energy for the common good. Anxiety is no adequate basis for the common good; anxiety will cause the formulation of policy and of exploitative practices that are inimical to the common good,
a systemic greediness that precludes the common good.”

– Walter Brueggemann, Journey to the Common Good[/blockquote]

 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he history of White America is one of rendering people helpless. It is a history of driving out neighbors who are different. We drive out because we are greedy, because we are afraid, because we are ignorant. We drive out because we have so few examples of empathy and solidarity, so few examples of sustained compassion. We don’t know how to be neighbors because our country wasn’t founded on the ideals of neighborliness and community. God and President have merged, and this Christian nation, is of course, a myth.

We are trained to be anxious and afraid. I’ve spent my whole life afraid of what people think of me, anxious about money, stressed about everything. That heart-stopping, sweat-inducing feeling is so routine, we don’t even know it’s there. We don’t know how it could be different. A mild form of terror hangs over our heads, the perpetual lone rain cloud dispensing ‘what-if’ all over our minds.

What if my child falls off his bike? What if someone breaks in? What if everyone laughs at me, hates me, rejects me? What if I lose my job, my car, my house? What if my kids’ upbringing isn’t good enough? What if they don’t get into this college, that career path? There are only so many spots available, only so many positions to be filled, only so many neighborhoods deemed safe, only so many ways to live the way society says you should.

And so we do everything we can to dull the fear, to make our lives as safe and secure as possible. Buy more safety equipment, buy more locks, buy more guns, bigger houses, do more activities, get more money. We need more because there’s not enough. We need more to make us better than those without. And we live in fear of what happens if we can’t get it.

The same anxiety and scarcity that drove the Egyptian empire, the Solomonic empire and the American empire drives us today.

It’s hard for us to see, let alone admit, the old sin of colonialism because it just.makes.sense. There wasn’t enough land. What else were they supposed to do? We never question that enoughness, because there’s never enough of anything for us. As a society, we have never learned to be content. We have never learned to be generous. We have never had a vision of the common good modeled for us.

America was founded in large part on scarcity-inspired fear. Fear of not enough land. Fear of Satan. Fear of not enough money. We were afraid there would not be enough resources, so murder, theft, and greed became law of the land.

 

 See much more at Invasion of America.

 

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]eginning with the common good in mind requires viewing everyone as humans. And yet the founding fathers didn’t see all the residents of the new world as humans. Drawing on an idea of savagery that stretches back to ancient Greece, the founders reduced the Native Americans to a trope that could make them eligible for deletion.

It starts at the beginning. Really, the beginning beginning, but for now, we’ll start with the famous 1776 beginning.

Included in the Declaration of Independence is this complaint against the king, that he did “bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” (Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization  211)

[pullquote type=”right”]George Washington compared Native Americans to “Wild Beasts of the Forest”, saying that as a result of white settlers gradually expanding over the land it would “certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire; both being beasts of prey tho’ they differ in shape.” (Savage Anxieties 212)[/pullquote]

Over and over again, it was stated that the white European way of life was the standard. The civilized way. Anything different was reason enough for extermination.

“Throughout his life Thomas Jefferson believed in the Saxon myth, a story of American descent from Saxons by way of England…As a founding father, Jefferson theorized Americans’ right to independence on the basis of Saxon ancestry.” (The History of White People 111)

[pullquote type=”left”]”The Founders believed that their version of Anglo-American Christian civilization’s fated triumph in America made the disappearance of the Indian as savage as inevitable and desirable necessity…In the language of savagery embedded by the Founders into the United States’ first Indian policy, this great American creation myth tells the story of Indian tribalism’s ultimate doomed fate when confronted by an expansion-minded form of civilization.” (Savage Anxieties 217)[/pullquote]

Our history is littered with the names of regret. Red Cloud. Geronimo. Tecumseh. Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse. Famous Indian chiefs and their people who were wronged. It’s so much easier to regret after you’ve won. So much more convenient.

Can we see how the history of white interaction with the first peoples affects us both today? But when did we give up the idea of Indian as savage, as redskin? What happens when a country refuses to remember and acknowledge its past? What sins do we keep committing because of our refusal to change course?

What about the Indians of today? What about the wrongs now? When have we acknowledged the harm we’ve done and the WASP beliefs that inspired it? What will it take for us to acknowledge the pain of white supremacy?

If we were really sorry, we’d want to make it right. We’d want to make restitution. To understand the significance for locations like Wounded Knee, Navajo land, mascot names. If we were really regretful, we wouldn’t just feel bad. We would be motivated to push for systemic change.

How can you say you’re not a racist unless you know what racism is? How can you defend patriotism unless you know what country and legacy you’re defending? Are we after blind allegiance here? Or are we after defending the defensible and critiquing the indefensible?

What does it mean to be an American? Why is it easier to refer to ourselves as a superpower instead of an empire?

Is it possible that when we say ‘American history’ white people hear something different than black people than Native American than immigrants?

Is there room in our national discourse for that?

[blockquote type=”center”]“I imagine that this narrative journey from scarcity through abundance to neighborhood is the key journey…that all humans must make in order to be maximally human…It must be made again and again because the kingdom of scarcity has an immense capacity to nullify the alternative and to obliterate the journey. And therefore the journey must be taken again and again, lest we submit to the kingdom of scarcity, join the rat race, and imagine that living in a national security state is a normal environment for humanness.”  (Journey 31)[/blockquote]

 

 

 

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Empire: The United States and Walter Brueggemann

   1. A Systemic Greediness

   2. Nightmare Into Policy

   3. Food as a Tool of Control

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