Well,
Trump did it, just like we knew he would[i]. Five days into his
corrupt, illegitimate presidency he signed an “executive order” directing
career functionaries within our (that’s OUR) government agencies[ii] to stand down and let the Keystone XL and DAPL
pipelines have their way with the Land.
This
Trump has a lot of admirers, you know, so don’t fool yourself. We can joke
about his orange skin and tiny hands, his pathological lying and his temper
tantrums. But he’s a dangerous man, this Trump. He has admirers. What are we
going to do?
I suggest
we start at the beginning.
When
Chief Leonard Crow Dog of the Scangu Lakota tribe formally forgave the U.S.
Army via Wesley Clark, Jr. and several thousand other veterans at a ceremony on
the Standing Rock reservation last December, he said something that has been on
my mind for a long, long time.
“We
do not own the Land,” he told Clark and the other gathered veterans. “The Land
owns us,” and “We are Lakota Sovereign Nation…we have preserved the caretaker
position”.
These
are important distinctions in our time of trouble for a couple of big reasons,
I think.
First
of all: The land is not ours to do with as we want. We are hers to do with as
she needs. How could it be otherwise? We last a few decades and then we’re
dust. The Land, it lasts forever, nurtures our future generations and so by
definition is wiser than us. Why would we not listen to Her? Why is this so
hard for so many of our people to understand?
Second of all: A movement the size of which we need now and have
seen before, those huge, unstoppable transformational movements, are grounded on
achievable goals and spirituality, not dispersed agendas a la the model
“liberals” so love to replicate for ever and ever, ad naseum til the next trainwreck
of an election. Moral authority is another name for it, what real movements
claim and, if they last, what they have. That’s because of simple math: if they
don’t have it, they don’t last.
There
are many novel interpretations for current events that are coming at us fast
and that we must figure out, and do it quick. Is there such a thing as
“alternative facts”, for instance? You may laugh at that one, but remember: Trump is a dangerous man. More to the
point of the kind of corporate news you’ve no doubt consumed too much of these past few
months: should a lie be called a lie? Most of your pundits don’t seem to think
so, and our (that’s OUR) politicians seem to agree. They offer up the limp
argument that they cannot call a presidential candidate, a
president-elect or (now, thanks largely to a limp press) a president a liar
because, unless you can climb into his head and know his intent, how can a fair
and balanced pundit know whether or not he’s merely crazy? And a fair and balanced pundit
can’t call a president crazy, can she? Better just stick to some unoffending
platitudes or code phrases lest some sponsor think you’re biased and cut off your funding.
This, to be as kind as I can about it, is the opposite of moral authority. It's what we used to call moral relativism, and I guess we call it "news" now, the kind of news that Fox, CNN and, tragically, NPR have been hawking for years, the venal, ugly ill-wind that everyone who passes within smelling distance of it knows for what it is.
This, to be as kind as I can about it, is the opposite of moral authority. It's what we used to call moral relativism, and I guess we call it "news" now, the kind of news that Fox, CNN and, tragically, NPR have been hawking for years, the venal, ugly ill-wind that everyone who passes within smelling distance of it knows for what it is.
One of the big
differences between lying and moral authority is that moral authority has always come from the
Earth, while lying never has. Lying is a human construct whereas, with moral authority, we are just one of her many host species. Both, to be fair, are easily identifiable, so here's a quiz: Who’s talking about real-earth issues these days and who isn’t? Is it someone like Mike Pence and
his religio-fascist backers? Or is it someone like Chief Leonard Crow Dog?
“We
have preserved the caretaker position.”
I’m
just a writer, not an expert, and an environmentalist at that, whose “keep it
wild” philosophy has supposedly long been at odds with indigenous peoples’
views about the Land. So I’ll claim the right of the Innocents to simplify a
very deep and profound subject: Maybe we’re finally here, at this place where a
highly-complex, technologically-oriented society that has ignored a truth staring
it in the face every time a sunrise occurs finally bumps itself up the side of
its head hard enough to acknowledge that truth, and a simple one at that.
“We
do not own the Land. The Land owns us.”
Why
would this not be so?
C’mon,
think like a tree.
You
got a better idea?
[i] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/01/28/standing-rock-sioux-trump-creating-second-flint-does-not-make-america-great-again
[ii] Such as the Army Corps of Engineers
which is holding up the permit for Energy Transfer Partners to drill under the
Missouri River at Standing Rock
Yet
NPR, the public corporation to whom so many well-meaning “liberals” donate
millions of dollars a year to in the hopes of hearing honest discussions about
vital issues is one of moral relativism’s worst practitioners[ii] . More on this in a later
post, but for chrissakes! Don’t give them any more money at the very least if
you hold the Earth dear. NPR is not our friend anymore.
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