Year 501 (44 page)

Three years later, 17,000 Cherokees were driven at bayonet point to Oklahoma by the US Army “over a route so marked with new-dug graves that it was ever afterwards known as the Trail of Tears” (Thurman Wilkins); perhaps half survived “the generous and enlightened policy” of the US government, as the operation was described by the Secretary of War, with the routine self-acclaim for unspeakable atrocities.

Reviewing the remarkable achievements of the Cherokee nation before and after, and the treatment accorded them, Helen Jackson writes that “In the whole history of our Government's dealing with the Indian tribes, there is no record so black as the record of perfidy to this nation. There will come a time in the remote future when, to the student of American history, it will seem well-nigh incredible”—a judgment with which it is hard to quarrel, though the future is still remote.
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In 1870, the Department of the Interior recognized that “the Cherokees, and the other civilized Indian nations (of the Oklahoma territory] no less, hold lands in perpetuity by titles defined by the supreme law of the land,” a “permanent home” granted “under the most solemn guarantee of the United States,” to “remain theirs forever—a home that shall never in all future time be embarrassed by having extended around it the lines or placed over it the jurisdiction of a Territory or State,” or be disturbed in any other way. Six years later, the Department declared that affairs in the Indian Territory are “complicated and embarrassing, and the question is directly raised whether an extensive section of the country is to be allowed to remain for an indefinite period practically an uncultivated waste, or whether the Government shall determine to reduce the size of the reservation.” The Department had previously described the “uncultivated waste” as a miracle of progress, with successful production by people living in considerable comfort, a level of education “equal to that furnished by an ordinary college in the States,” flourishing industry and commerce, an effective constitutional government, a high level of literacy, and a state of “civilization and enlightenment” comparable to anything known: “What required five hundred years for the Britons to accomplish in this direction they have accomplished in one hundred years,” the Department declared in wonder.
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Jackson ends her account in 1880 with a question: “Will the United States Government determine ‘to reduce the size of the reservation'?” It was soon to be answered, in just the way she anticipated. Again, the advanced civilization of the Indians stood in the way of civilization, properly conceived.

What followed is described by Angie Debo in her classic study
And Still the Waters Run
. In the independent Indian Territory, land was held collectively and life was contented and prosperous. The Federal Indian Office opposed communal land tenure by ideological dogma, as well as for its practical effect: preventing takeover by white intruders. In 1883, a group of self-styled philanthropists and humanitarians began to meet to consider problems of the Indians. Their third meeting was addressed by Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, considered a “distinguished Indian theorist,” who had just concluded a visit of inspection to the Indian Territory. Like earlier observers, he described what he found in glowing terms: “There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar. It built its own capitol, in which we had this examination, and it built its schools and its hospitals.” No family lacked a home.

Dawes then recommended that the society be dissolved, because of a fatal flaw, of which the benighted natives were unaware:

Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. It is Henry George's system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.

In brief, though superficially civilized and advanced, the people remained culturally deprived, unable to recognize their “basic human drive to consume” and to best their neighbors, ignorant of the “vile maxim of the masters.”

Dawes's proposal to bring enlightenment to the savages was approved by the Eastern humanitarians, and soon implemented. He introduced legislation that barred communal landholding and headed the Commission that oversaw the dispossession of the Indians that inevitably ensued. Their lands and property were looted, and they were scattered to remote urban areas where they suffered appalling poverty and destitution.

Such is the way with experiments; they don't always succeed. In fact, the regular experiments conducted in our various “testing areas” typically do succeed quite well, as this one did, for those who design and execute them, Adam Smith's architects of policy—honorable men, always guided by the most benevolent intentions, which, fortuitously, happen to coincide with their own interests. If the experiments do not succeed for the indigenous people of North America—or Brazilians, or Haitians, or Guatemalans, or Africans, or Bengalis, or welfare mothers, or others who stand in the way of the rich men who rule—we may seek the reasons in their genes, “defects,” and inadequacies. Or we may muse on the ironies of history.

One can readily understand the appeal to postwar intellectuals of the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, “the theologian of the establishment,” the guru of the Kennedy intellectuals, George Kennan, and many others. How comforting it must be to ponder the “paradox of grace” that was his key idea: the inescapable “taint of sin on all historical achievements,” the need to make “conscious choices of evil for the sake of good”—soothing doctrines for those preparing to “face the responsibilities of power,” or in plain English, to set forth on a life of crime.
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4. “The American Psyche”

The state-corporate nexus has always devoted substantial efforts and resources to ensure that the rascal multitude recognize their wants and needs, never an easy task, from the days when independent farmers had to be turned into wage earners and consumers. Many of them remained mired in darkest ignorance and superstitious belief, sometimes even heeding the words of such scoundrels as Uriah Stephens, a founder and the first grandmaster workman of the Knights of Labor, who outlined labor's task in 1871 as “The complete emancipation of the wealth producers from the thralldom and loss of wage slavery,” a conception that can be traced to the leading principles of classical liberalism. Many took the conditions of “free labor” to be “a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed in the South,” as a
New York Times
reporter described the new era in which “manufacturing capitalists” are the masters.
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Even today, after a century of intense and dedicated efforts by cultural managers, the general population often fail to perceive their inner wants. The debate over health care provides some useful illustrations. A case in point is a major article in the
Boston Globe
by Thomas Palmer, well to the liberal side of the spectrum. Palmer opens by reporting that almost 70 percent of Americans prefer a Canadian-style health-care system—a surprising figure, given that this retrograde socialism is regularly denounced as un-American. But the general public is just wrong, for two reasons, Palmer explains.

The first reason is technical: it was clarified by President Bush, who “emphasized the importance of avoiding the problems of bureaucratized, universal-care systems like Canada's.” Mr. Bush,
New York Times
correspondent Robert Pear reports, “accuses the Democratic nominee of favoring a state-run system that would have Soviet-like elements,” a “back door national health insurance” in the words of Presidential adviser Gail Wilensky. This is “a charge that Mr. Clinton and other Democrats deny,” Pears adds with proper journalistic objectivity, keeping the balance between the charges of crypto-Communism and the angry denials. It is a matter of logic that Commie-style systems of the kind that exist throughout the industrial world apart from the United States (and South Africa) are inefficient. Accordingly, the fact that the highly bureaucratized private sector system in the US is vastly more inefficient is simply irrelevant. It is, for example, of no relevance that BlueCross of Massachusetts employs 6680 people, more than are employed in all of Canada's health programs, which insure 10 times as many people; or that the share of the health dollar for administrative costs is over twice as high in the US as in Canada. Logic cannot be confuted by mere fact, by Hegel's “negative, worthless existence.”

More interesting is the second reason, which is “spiritual,” Palmer continues. There is a “difference in outlook” north and south of the border, “theoretical differences that students of the two nations see in the psyches of the average American and Canadian.” The studies of these penetrating scholars show that the Canadian system would cause “the kind of rationing of health care that Americans would never accept... The US system rations by price; if you can afford it, it's there. Canadians ration their health care by providing the same care for everyone and simply making those seeking elective or less urgent procedures wait.”

Plainly, that would not accord with “American-style impatience,” one “student of the two nations” explains. Imagine, he says, that “no matter how poor you are, you will sit in a hospital bed and receive care as the richest in your community. No matter what contacts you have and no matter how rich you are, you can get no better than that.” Americans would never accept that, we learn from this expert (incidentally, the president of a health-care consulting firm). Further insights into the American psyche are given by the deputy director of a trade group of commercial health insurers.
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The 70 percent of Americans who don't understand their own psyches are not sampled. That is not unreasonable, after all. They are not students of the American psyche, and it has long been common understanding that they need instruction in self-awareness.

Part IV

Memories

Chapter 10

Murdering History

A few months before the end of Year 500, the
Times Book Review
appeared with a front-page headline reading: “You Can't Murder History.” The review-article dedicated to this lesson keeps to a single case: “History in the old Soviet Union was like cancer in the human body, an invisible presence whose existence is bravely denied but against which every conceivable weapon is mobilized.” It takes up one striking example of “this disease within the Soviet body politic,” the depiction of the murder of the Tsar and his family, recalling “those all-powerful Soviet officials whose job it was to suppress the public's memory of this grisly episode,” but who, in the end, “could not hold back the tide.”
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These reflections did not touch upon a few other examples of murdering history that might come to mind, particularly at this historical moment Convention has it that multiples of 10 provide the occasion to reflect on the meaning of history and the questions it poses; and perhaps also on the murder of history by its guardians, who, in every society, are acutely sensitive to the faults of official enemies. The convention is useful. By adopting it and examining some of the anniversaries that fall within the 500th year, we can learn something about ourselves, in particular, about the doctrinal foundations of Western culture, a topic of much importance, given the resources of violence, coercion, and denial at its core.

2. The Date which Will Live in Infamy

As Year 500 opened in October 1991, other memories displaced the coming quincentennial. December 7 would be the 50th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the “date which will live in infamy.” Accordingly, Japanese attitudes and practices were subjected to close scrutiny, and found wanting. Some profound defect left the aberrant Japanese unwilling to offer regrets for their nefarious deed.

In an interview in the
Washington Post
, Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe expressed “deep remorse over the unbearable suffering and sorrow” Japan inflicted on the American people and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific during the Pacific War, a war that Japan started by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.” He said that the National Parliament would pass a resolution on the 50th anniversary of the crime, expressing Japan's remorse. But this turned out to be just more Japanese treachery. Penetrating the disguise,
New York Times
Tokyo Bureau Chief Steven Weisman revealed that Watanabe had used the word
hansei
, “which is usually translated as ‘self-reflection' rather than ‘remorse'.” The statement of the Foreign Minister does not count as authentic apology. Furthermore, Japan's Parliament is unlikely to pass the resolution, he added, in the light of President Bush's firm rejection of any apology for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

No one considers an apology for the 1000-plane raid five days after Nagasaki on what remained of major Japanese cities, a triumph of military management skills designed to be “as big a finale as possible,” the official Air Force history relates; even Stormin' Norman would have been impressed. Thousands of civilians were killed, while amidst the bombs, leaflets fluttered down proclaiming: “Your Government has surrendered. The war is over.” General Spaatz wanted to use the third atom bomb on Tokyo for this grand finale, but concluded that further devastation of the “battered city” would not make the intended point. Tokyo had been removed from the first list of targets for the same reason: it was “practically rubble,” analysts determined, so that the power of the bomb would not be adequately revealed. The final 1000-plane raid was therefore dispersed to seven targets, the Air Force history adds.
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