Xiuhtezcatl, the kind of endorsement that matters

to me.

Perspective: Why I Can't Support the Second-Best Candidate

I won't settle for second-best. I won't settle for pragmatic, incremental progress.

According to yet another divisive opinion, this one in the Guardian, and subject of a DU post, my self-righteous insistence is a result of white privilege, because only affluent white progressives can afford the privilege of being so picky.

Affluent? Hardly. I have a government document, Form 1044, that challenges that assertion, if it doesn't outright refute it.

White? Granted. Half of my ancestors were born and bred in eastern Europe. At some point one of them was progressive enough to leave Poland for the New World, come to look for America. I'm quite aware of many advantages their skin-color genes have given me. It's good to be as white as the President, and beneficial to look as white as the ones before him.

Progressive? OK. More of a liberal really, though apparently now it's acceptable to own even democratically-modified small-s socialist.

Privilege? The other half of my family has been in what is now the U.S. for thousands of years, ever since migrating down the glaciers from interior Canada. For most of those millennia things were quite good, privileged with plenty of food and enough wealth to share around.

Then the Russians came with their diseases, and things got worse.

Then the Boston Men came in their gunboats, and things suddenly got much worse. The U.S. Navy destroyed my family's town: bombarded it and then burned what was left, leaving the survivors with no winter stores. Eventually the town was rebuilt.

Then the Yankee missionaries came, and things got still worse again. The church men convinced the people that they were hell-bound sinners. They burned their totem poles, burned their regalia and any other sign of their culture; they suppressed their language and marriage customs; they moved out of their clan houses and into respectable American single-family dwellings (each needing a separate source of heat, the fuel oil conveniently sold by...guess who!). They sent their kids away to boarding schools. The cultural destruction and public burning was continuing in 1992.

Then the businessmen came, and grabbed up all the resources. They continue grabbing today.

Still, over the last hundred years or so, things have gotten gradually, incrementally better, less dramatic than bombing and burning, anyway. Not so much better for the young ones who decide suicide is a good choice. Or drugs. Or alcohol. (Hooch is the one word from their language that has been absorbed into English.) But better, generally -- mostly for those who more fully adopted the American life-style -- so there is an awareness of incremental improvement.

All this history, it is a kind of privilege: fear isn't going to work. Eight years of Big Hands or Booger Eater in the White House is not that scary to the kind of people who preserved an un-exploded Navy bomb in their homes for 140 years, because it was part of their town's history, and sacred in the sense of at.oow, a thing that defines them, paid for by lives. Fear isn't going to work. Another generation of conservative bigotry on the Supreme Court is not that scary to people who have hardly seen anything but bigotry there.

Is perfection the enemy of the good? Yeah, maybe, but the best is by definition better than second-best, isn't it? Self-righteous? Yeah, maybe. Sacrifice? A single vote in one election -- yeah, maybe. Life is full of loyalties, some more dear than others.

There's a long memory active here: our ancestors are never gone, they're always here, now. Our descendants are not away in the future: they're here, now. They're watching.

I can't afford to support second-best. I can't afford to choose the lesser of two evils. I can't afford to settle for "not as bad as the other guy," that idle threat. To be a good ancestor, for the sake of my descendants -- and yours too, by the way -- I can't afford it. I can't afford not to be idle no more.

It's not simply a matter of privilege: it's a matter of perspective.

"Historic agreement gives tribe foster care control"

Great news.

From Juneau Empire

Justice Scalia on Indian Law: "We're just making it up"

April Youpee-Roll, Missoula Independent

Just making it up:
On Justice Scalia, Indian law and the Supreme Court's future

That was Clyde Bellecourt, cofounder of AIM

The angry native man who started speaking at the end of the Black America Community Forum was Clyde Bellecourt, cofounder of the American Indian Movement.



DU has gotten all riled up lately about respect for prominent civil rights activists. Geez, Bernie, don't disrespect Clyde Bellecourt. Meet with him. Soon. He was angry--damn right he was angry--he was arrested just a couple years ago, for sitting on a bench in a mall, listening to the drums of a Round Dance Revolution event in support of Idle No More. So he was angry--listen to him. Damn it. Listen. Answer his question.

OK, I know, Bernie had to get to another event. He's busy; he's on a tight schedule. I know that. But Clyde Bellecourt is not just some angry dude. Cofounder of the most controversial, notorious and influential Indian organization of the 20th century--he deserves to be heard and answered. And he's Native--understand this: when a Native, especially an elder, has something important to say, white man's time is irrelevant to him; if you're going to listen, you'd better be patient. And you really should listen.

I'm in for Bernie, and I'll stay in, but please, Bernie, do the right thing, again.


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Ahh. I can feel good about my '96 Escort now

Because of this:

President Obama: Presidential Medal of Freedom for Billy Frank, Jr.