Why Natives Do Not Own This Land: Second Part.

Why Natives Do Not Own This Land: Second Part.

When I was in the fifth grade, I had my first class in the American Revolution. This was all so, incidentally, my first class in causality. I remember because of all of those wretched timelines that we had to make. It has all ways been an example for why I do not believe in causality, and by extension I do not believe that any one ought to.

The timelines were comprised of paper cutouts. Each of us received a generic copy of a sheet of paper. We were to be assessed for our ability to follow instructions and to produce what the instructor could, drawing on ubiquity, assess as a proper fulfillment of the assignment. The only thing that varied was the cornucopia of punishments available to us at home should our logic not accord with the curriculum, or should our desire for spontaneity and play take precedence over this Grave Task.

The illustrations, which had probably been synthesized generically on a Macintosh computer, were supposed to be cut out and arranged in the chronological order of the events. Yet aside from our readings and lectures, the only actual context clues INTRINSIC TO THE DRAWINGS THEMSELVES were mythological (and not in the Grand Sense of Mythology). The myth – which I shall refer to as an “urban myth”, so as not to slander Mythology – was that each event PRODUCED THE ONE THAT FOLLOWED and was its self the PRODUCT OF THE PRIOR event. It was as though it were the EVENTS and not the PEOPLE that had WILL and were therefore responsible for their actions. Likewise, we were being conditioned to believe (but really CONDITIONING OURSELVES) that the merit of an event was not IN ITS SELF but in its CONSEQUENCES, and that the ultimate CONSEQUENCE (that all of us were seated in this classroom cutting pictures out of paper) somehow JUSTIFIED THE EVENTS.

To this day, I struggle to believe this theory. I am told that it is Aristotelian in origin. Here is my question:

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE MAN TO GROW UP?!?

The idea was that we were supposed to believe that the American Revolution was JUSTIFIED by the events that had led up to it. But of course no liberal education is complete without hearing both sides. So we staged a hearing of both sides. Our teachers had us prepare an in-class debate wherein half the class was assigned to be a Loyalist and the other half was assigned to impersonate a Patriot. When I received the word “Loyalist”, I did not yet know what it meant, though some of the more American boys in the classroom snickered at me. Perhaps some girl comforted me, insisting that it meant that I was “loyal”, and that made me feel better; loyalty was close to royalty to my mind. (After all: the words were in such obvious semblance to one another.)

There was of course one very patriotic friend of mine in my class, and he was by the name of Brandon Davie. Davie had a perpetual grin that did not quite reach his eyes, which for some reason or an other looked upon me, past those premature wrinkles, with pity (even though I WAS invited to his Birthday Party one year). I could say a lot more about this character, but I’ll adhere to the basics:

His family lived in a two-story house. When I arrived at the party I was encouraged to play basketball in his backyard. As the evening progressed there was pizza (or was it hot dogs?), mint (or oreo?) ice cream-flavoured cake, and finally a crowd of youngsters in our age group climbing all over the couch and staircase as the birthday boy tried intently to keep everyone’s attention on E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, which played feebly on the widescreen television of the Living Room.

And he behaved with such expectation you would think this all were NORMAL!

My friendship with him was all ways a nuanced and tricky one. His respect was hard to come by. For instance, there was one morning that I arrived on the school grounds fairly early. I made my entry of the grounds via the back parking lot, and the Sun would have shone brilliantly upon a crystalline blue , dulled only by the tar-coloured cement, except that today it was probably shielded by a sheet of whispy winter morning clouds.

Brandon approached me with that classic look upon his face combining desperate confusion with condescending pity, the latter meant to counterbalance the former. I was minding my own business. I had found a way to amuse myself. I spread my feet about a foot apart (as they would NORMALLY be) and began to rotate myself by 360 degrees, moving them in a circle but nonetheless always pointing the insides of my sneakers’ arches towards the same focal point at the centre. I would stare down at my feet spontaneously ere this befell, thinking little of the surrounding World. Sometimes I would go part of the way clockwise and the other part counterclockwise. It was amusing.

Brandon would not let me live it down. It might have been several weeks if not years that he would casually make reference to my “walking in circles”. He had to get to the bottom of it, though he all so had to pretend he hadn’t even cared to ask.

That’s the sort of person Brandon Davie was.

When Brandon learned that he was a Patriot, his Spirit soared. And since he was one of the leading students in the class, he got to personify the leader of the Patriots. I do not recall who it was that had led the Loyalists. It might have been me. Such is quite probable.

I represented my side splendidly, winning the reputation of a British Squire. Yet the fun did not end with the conclusion of the Trial. The Patriots had won, but I was still intent on my position. I had managed to convince my own self.

It got somewhat severe. I recall that we had at one point that year to write an essay whose prompt was “Why I am Proud to Be an American”. I bastardized the entire thing. My teachers obligated me to do a re-write. I might say now in retrospect that ARGUABLY British schoolmasters would have been more stern. But then: I would not have found reason to write against them.

My essay had been entitled “Why I Am NOT Proud to be an American.” The All Caps on “Not” may or may not have been there at the time. It was some of the most blazing literary passion and authenticity I had ever found. By contrast, the re-write felt soft and congealed, as though I were simply stepping into a role. May be THIS is why boys become homosexual (not that I ever did); they are obligated to imitate other boys, and they lose the individual identity which has as its natural corollary the development of heterosexuality and courtliness, a Universal Theme of growing up and attaining maturity.

I assure you, reader, that I never went over to the Dark Side. When I saw Brandon again in high school I found that I had no feelings for him. But I was all wound up about the concept of Republican and Democrat, having learned the dichotomy only the prior year, I think. Democrats represented at the time every thing that was Good and Maternal and Pure. And as part and parcel of that was the Intuitive Faculty. So I rejoiced when I found my Intuitions about Brandon to be true: he was a Republican. And he conveyed it with the same self-satisfied, hollow, nervous smile.

Back in fifth grade, things had gotten climactic.

A demonstration was put on by the teachers. If I were still writing in the fashion of a poseur, I would pretend I did not see through it at the time. The innocence of the narrator would emulate my fictional suspense, and you the reader would infer my ACTUAL suspense (as though it were not actually fictional) from the experience you’d had reading.

Frankly, I am not sure that even half of the class had been fooled. If I had to choose which half, I would choose the Loyalists, at once to be ironic and to be logical about their intellectual acuity. (For the Patriots in the audience: this means that the Loyalists were smarter.)

The demonstration was not necessarily the RESULT of my outspoken views, but it might as well have been. It must have happened right AFTER our studies on Colonialism (because I still remember cottoning on, with rosy cheeks) and right BEFORE our study of the Revolutionary War. (Because I asked my teacher, as we were writing our reflections, if it was about the “Civil War”, not knowing yet one war from an other, [as I still refuse to discern them to this day] and she told me with hushed enthusiasm and a coy tone to just keep writing, as though not to spoil any thing for the remainder of the class.)

Here was the demonstration:

We had been allowed to plan a party just for us. This was a win-win situation; the teachers WANTED us to plan it, and WE wanted to have a party! It all seemed a bit suspicious, but I went along with it with all due enthusiasm, supposing that every one deserves a break and remembering a time when all I did was to have fun.

(“Fun” had been of course the first word in English that I’d learned entirely upon my own.)

Then at the end of the half hour entered a woman whom I had recognized as a substitute teacher. In fact, Ms. Whitten, the austere, broad-shouldered leviathan of a woman, had been and would CONTINUE TO be a substitute teacher at least once (and usually more than thrice) each year leading up to High School.

She announced that the School Administration had caught wind of our privileged plans and decided to intervene. We were to have no pizza and no grandiose childish dreams. We were to confine our activities to mild bean bag tosses in groups of two. Essentially we were to have an easy day, but not the way we’d planned it. It was a total loss of innocence, like First Grade all over again, but minus the homework.

Heartbroken as I was by the very EXISTENCE of an arbitrary school system that had made us practice causal reasoning, (as I should start calling it: to practice causality) this was hardly disillusioning in context. I’d all ready gotten over it in the Fourth Grade. (but then admittedly my teacher that year had been a wild and crazy nut who wrote her first name “Queen” on legal orders for theatre supplies delivered to the school on her behalf.) Besides: I’d gotten the joke.

Our teacher asked us then (with Ms. Whitten possibly still within the ROOM, which would be ironic on more levels than I would want to LIST, though it’s possible she only came in again later after paying visit to the next classroom) to write a paragraph on how we feel. And I got the point: Americans were schoolchildren. If we were American colonials and Ms. Whitten were the British Isles, we would have tarred and feathered her.

I should have written that into my essay. And then I could have explained how I would have made Ms. Lewis drink boiling hot tea just to send a message to the Principal. Guilt by association works wonders.

Here is why I STILL believe the American Colonists were atrocious dickheads:

Supposing that I were born into the BRITISH EMPIRE. From a young age I am made AWARE (not wrongly) that all of the comforts that my very body tells me that I reserve as a God-given right (and that my Church insists upon professing and protecting) are the province of Civilization. I am alive by avenue of the Greatest Empire to have ever existed, whose sole purpose is the fulfillment of human nature in the Civilizing Instinct. Of course, it flatters its self, but can it not AFFORD to? If its Greatness is not moral, as though given by God, and any claims it makes to its own virtue are arbitrary, then it is surely POWERFUL, derived from the Earth. The I Ching refers to a Prince whose ascent is “not a meteoric rise to the top” but a steady progression, not unlike the growth of a Great Tree who spreads its roots as well as it puts on rings, branches its boughs and hardens its bark. Pardon my omission of the Oxford comma.

So it is with my Homeland. So how am I to regard news that the ANIMALS that inhabit the Western Hemisphere have begun to emulate the ignoble savagery of their red fellows, taking to barbaric violence towards their OWN PEOPLE: the fellow citizens of Great Britain!?!

You see: “causality” does not get at the savagery of protest. Yes: The Boston Massacre (or was it the Boston Incident?) was retaliation, and it was just, and it was late, and it was merciful enough to allow the Rebels a fighting chance. But what were the Colonists retaliating against?? What were the Rebels fighting FOR? Was it JUST? They protested for the RIGHT TO PROTEST, and so no sensible, logical person would permit it. Only someone possessed by Ares Himself, that heathen war-God, could say: I shall avenge myself against you for forbidding me my vengeance! I shall FIGHT for my RIGHT TO FIGHT!

And at that moment civilization began to die.

But Brandon Davie did not think it so.

Brandon was PROUD, and he was PROUD because we WON, and all because we WON our war was justified.

But a touch of irony still stings me, and Benjamin Franklin would have understood it with that mastery of Cognitive Dissonance that had probably allowed him to manipulate so many people: (Not least of which were the generations of schoolchildren who would go on believing that he’d discovered Electricity by flying a kite, though let’s not rule out that fantasy about so sick a genius and notorious a womanizer.)

That same school year, in the fall semester of 2001, we were told (if we’d not heard about it from our parents or the news within the morning; I for one first heard it on the schoolbus, with my forehead pressed against the leathery seats) that the World Trade Center had been attacked. And that was when we all learned the word “terrorist”. “Terrorist” came to represent everything un-American.

It’s quite possible that that too had contributed to my feelings about the American Revolution:

The American colonists were terrorists, and I wanted nothing to do with them.

Dm.A.A.