Whose Manifest Destiny Is It Anyway?

You’ve seen it -- or if you haven’t I’ll show it to you (see below).  A very large, pink, fleshy woman drifts over the landscape in a diaphanous gown like some kind of Macy’s Parade float, and in her train come railroads, a stagecoach, covered wagons, a Pony Express rider, farmers, hunters, prospectors… and (implied but not pictured) troops.  And she is holding -- believe it or not -- a “school book”, and pulling a telegraph wire along.  And before her there is a cringing, terrified band of Indians -- oops, I mean Native Americans -- and vaguely in the background one sees an Indian village with the natives dancing about, presumably calling upon almighty forces to rid them of this nightmare vision and impending doom.  There is even a herd of buffalo, likewise panicked and hightailing it westward (to no avail, of course -- you‘ll notice the remains of two of their number who have already succumbed to the forces of progress).  The artist even added a snarling bear and a fleeing deer to the mix.  The title of this work is American Progress, by John Gast, and it is the iconic image of what is called Manifest Destiny -- the notion that the conquest of North America by Europeans (Euro-Americans if you like) was meant to be -- that it was inevitable (the same way Hillary’s election in 2016 was inevitable, come to think of it).  Not only inevitable, but a matter of patriotic duty.  This was, in effect, the program of the 19th Century, and there was no other -- until we discovered imperialism, that is. 

Here she is!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_progress.JPG

If you look closely, you can see the East Coast, and New York City, and even the Brooklyn Bridge (which was started in 1869, three years before the painting was done) -- the starting points for the inexorable westward march of the white race.  It’s crudely done, frankly -- except for the floating woman, who might just as well have stepped down from an Italian fresco.  But one would be hard pressed to find another work that packs in as much symbolism as this one.  And it sums up the mindset of America (OK, white America) in the 19th Century, and in a sense is prophetic when it comes to our current woes -- the conflict between white supremacy on one end of the spectrum and the struggles of the Third World on the other end, as manifested by immigration (legal, illegal, and ambiguous), with everyone else in between -- good-intentioned and otherwise -- arguing endlessly about issues like how much illegal immigration is enough.  (And here we also have a continuum ranging from slamming America’s doors to eliminating America’s borders.  Our history shows both, at various times.)   

And Manifest Destiny, I might add, was an at least unconscious assertion of the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest -- that the conquering race was succeeding, and bound to succeed, because it really was more fit (but also because it was white) -- that being a sufficient reason for taking over what, in another more recent context, was called “a land without a people”.  But of course America in pre-Columbian times was most assuredly inhabited.  And yet their claim on the land and its resources had to yield to the forces of history and of human destiny, although I’m betting that few saw it that way.  (The Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel and the resulting ethnic cleansing is “nakba“, or “catastrophe”. )

And Manifest Destiny, however one might argue about the validity of the concept, did work -- it succeeded as an idea (and ideas do have consequences, after all ) beyond the wildest dreams of its promoters.  North America was conquered, from sea to shining sea, and the losers (those who survived) were herded into reservations, and eventually compensated with casino licenses (“Now we’re even, OK?  So shut up.”). 

And yet, in the great flow and fluctuation of human events, migrations, invasions, and so on, an antithesis was bound to arise, and arise it has, in the form of a human wave crossing, relatively unimpeded, our southwestern border (and showing up by other means elsewhere, via boats, planes, trains, and automobiles).  And this new wave, unlike previous waves of immigrants, has shown little interest in being “assimilated”, which was always the first criterion for immigrant groups until recently.  Thus we have a change of immigrant mindset, from “assimilation is the key to becoming a full-fledged American citizen” to “we’re going to hold on to everything we had before, including our language, and if you don’t like it, tough”.  And in the case of the Southwest, you might almost call it a re-colonization (note that prior to 1848 Mexico extended as far north as Wyoming), but this time it’s the descendents of the pioneers who are bearing the brunt of it.  The “land without a people” is now populated, but that population is being threatened by the descendents of the non-people who were forced out many generations earlier.   

And there is a school of thought -- adhered to primarily by liberals, progressives, and the open borders crowd -- that this is all good, and proper, and that “it’s about time”… and that white America is getting its comeuppance.  (And you’ll notice that it’s mostly white people who are saying this.)  Again, this is Darwinism with a vengeance, with the addition of karma and “social justice” and, yes, self-loathing to the mix.  A new immigrant, without passport or portfolio, now enjoys the same rights as people who’ve been here since the first rowboat crunched into Plymouth Rock -- nay, more rights in some cases.  Not only that, but vast tracts of our cities have been turned into, basically, no-go zones for law enforcement -- not in as extreme a way as in Europe, but still significant.  So we have, on one side, the “conservative” mind set, which boils down to the idea that the U.S. should, basically, be frozen in time, and stay just the way it was a couple of generations ago, or even earlier, depending on one’s notion as to when things started to go wrong.  (Some will go back as far as the time when all those damn Irish Catholics flooded our shores in order to escape from genocide at the hands of the British.)  And on the other side, we are lectured day and night on the charms of “diversity”, and “inclusiveness”, and being “welcoming”, and how we should stop being so selfish, etc.  (And notice that Christians and Christian organizations tend to be caught in the middle -- between compassion and charity on the one hand and desire to preserve some semblance of law and order, not to mention Western, i.e. Christian, culture on the other -- with the latter losing pretty much every battle.)

Nowhere in this discussion is ever found any consideration of sustainability, i.e. can our social welfare system accommodate, basically, an unlimited influx of people who at least start out dependent -- though many have already shown a lot more ambition, energy, creativity, and gumption than the people who are being told they have to make way and be “tolerant”.  In the age-old struggle between ambition and complacency, complacency tends to wind up on the losing side unless it’s bolstered by substantial firepower.

If one adopts a ten-mile-high view of things, it appears that, yes, this is just another case in the long history of human migration, occupation, and conquest.  At ground level, it boils down to more immediate concerns -- the “haves” who want to hang on to what they have, vs. the “have nots” who want to get their piece of the mythical pie, which means (according to the zero-sum model, which everyone seems to agree is the correct one) that someone else has to give something up.  So there is pain and conflict -- but I can’t imagine any case throughout human history where pain and conflict have not been inevitable consequences of human migration.  There have always been people who were “born there” vs. intruders, invaders, aliens, etc.  People flee from hardship and move toward what they see, rightly or wrongly, as a better life.  And their drive toward the better life is going to result in someone else having a not-as-good life (by their own standards at least).  It’s a simple concept, really -- and based on nothing more complicated than limited resources.  America as the Gold Mountain has paid off for immigrant groups in times past; the question now is whether the very fact of massive immigration will turn that gold into dross.  After all, if the pie is shrinking with each passing day, it becomes less effective as a motivator -- to the point where we may, willy-nilly, reach a kind of parity.  But the mythology will outlive the actual point of parity, as it always does, just as western expansion in some form didn‘t come to a screeching halt with the official closing of the frontier in 1890.   

Now, the ultimate ideal, or goal, of the open-borders crowd seems to be a sort of Utopia where resources are equally available to all, and equally distributed to everyone on the planet -- and where everyone winds up with pretty much the same standard of living (the real goal, vs. intermediate goals like equal pay, non-discrimination, full employment, etc.).  This has, in fact, been the stated goal of various movements over the years, of which international communism provides the best -- “purest”, if you will -- example.  Equal opportunity, equal outcomes -- and, magically, everyone will get along, wars will cease, swords will be beaten into plowshares, and so on.  But like all Utopian ideas, this tends to ignore human nature with all of its quirks and dysfunctions -- fallen human nature, if you will.  It ignores the natural tendency of human groups of any size to form hierarchies, with leaders and followers, winners and losers, the doers-to and the done-to.  It ignores the natural tendency of any human group to divide itself into the In Group and the Out Group; check out any middle school if you want proof.  It is, in effect, an urge to remake human nature and to create -- to provide another example from 20th Century history -- the New Soviet Man.  And opposed to this is the equally venerable drive to not only establish hierarchies but to justify them on the basis of -- you name it -- skin color, ethnicity, national identity, language, and so on, from which you get concepts like the Master Race, or (in our time) white supremacy.

Again, from the ten-miles-up perspective, this is all sadly inevitable, and repetitive… and possibly intractable.  “Liberty, equality, fraternity” on the one side and a fixed social hierarchy on the other, with a ruling elite whose right to rule is based on, again, race and ethnicity, but also blood lines (and don’t think we’re immune to that consideration in this country -- far from it -- we even speak of politically-inclined families as “dynasties“).

So -- getting back to the floating pink lady -- she seems to have run up against a brick wall at this point.  Not just the West Coast, which has become the reductio ad absurdum of American ambitions, but the reality that a lot of other people on the globe have their own ideas of entitlement, and of the way things ought to be.  She has run up against Hispanics in the Southwest United States and Muslims in Europe, and, I’m sure, comparable phenomena elsewhere on the planet.  And what these new contenders have in common -- it hardly needs mentioning -- is determination, self confidence, a strong sense of identity, and… drum roll, please… a willingness to reproduce.  Yes, demographics is still destiny after all these years (the response of the Regime to this being unlimited access to abortion and contraception -- if we can‘t keep them out we can at least keep them from reproducing).  And as far as the new immigrants are concerned, their destiny is every bit as “manifest” as the destiny that those involved in the westward expansion considered theirs to be.  Plus, those old timers were, at least, not obsessed with “getting even” with the Indians; all they wanted was resources -- land, water, game, and so on.  The Indians were an inconvenience and yes, certainly considered to be inferior human beings, but there was not the overlay of politics and activism we see with the current struggles.  The propaganda of those times mostly revolved around liberating the land from all those “naked savages”, and with justifying that effort -- not unlike the propaganda used to promote and sustain black slavery.  And yes, there were the humanists and those with compassion who wished for a better way -- and who eventually won out in the case of slavery (less so, perhaps, with Native Americans, who had to wait a lot longer).  They were, if you will, the philosophers of their time, and it was an uphill battle every time they went up against those of a more materialistic bent -- settlers, merchants, traders, trappers, buffalo hunters, plantation owners, and the like -- this group being strikingly non-philosophical, though on occasion an apologist would appear who would provide “intellectual” justification for it all, the way the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany produced its own intellectuals and apologists.  (Even the white supremacists of our time have their “theorists”, who hold forth on the Internet and at rallies -- at least until the police show up.)  (And I always say that if this is what “white supremacy” looks like I’ll pass, thanks.)   

No one likes to be the one left high and dry when the tide goes out -- or to be on the losing end of a historic phenomenon.  And yet that’s what seems to be happening to Americans with nostalgic tendencies (highly correlated with Trump‘s “deplorables“ is my guess).  More and more of them are finding out that, indeed, you can’t go home again -- because that’s now someone else’s home.  (You need go no further than the history of “urban renewal” to see this in action.)  And I don’t expect them to be philosophical; their pain is real.  No one wants to be a part of “history”; they’d prefer that history stop the minute they were born.  But that’s not the way it is, or has ever been.

And yet -- also with many historical examples -- there is, eventually, a settling down of sorts -- not the mythical “melting pot” which satisfies no one except the most abject globalists and collectivists, but at least peaceful coexistence.  There may even be, eventually, a cause to celebrate real diversity, not the endlessly-mouthed pabulum that the term signifies in our time, which is really a code word for enforced conformity.  Even intermarriage cannot completely erase the ancient memories of origins.  (If “diversity” is so damn important, why are so many Americans signing up for DNA testing, from which they can brag about their more-exotic-than-they-thought origins?  Why is no one satisfied to simply be considered (by themselves and others) “American“?)  (Full disclosure -- I recently had one of those tests done and guess what, after always thinking of myself as nothing but British and Welsh, it turns out that my DNA has more in common with Lithuania than anywhere else in Europe, and more in common with Libya than anywhere else in the Middle East and North Africa.  Talk about hybridization!  I think I‘m going to try another DNA outfit to see if these results are robust or just the result of some accident in the biology lab.) 

So there is hope.  And it doesn’t take a whole lot of investigation to come to the conclusion that pure blood lines are a myth -- save, perhaps, for the few remaining truly isolated cultures and gene pools around the globe.  But again, these are ten-mile-high considerations, and most people most of the time live with “ground truth”, which is always more difficult to deal with than any theory.