Any good journalist abhors ignorance, even personal ignorance. Consumers of our products in all of their forms probably have no idea of the number of stories, programs, and books that spring from seeing something and thinking “?” and then learning the answer.
Most people don’t have or don’t take the time to pursue an answer. But it’s the old “who, what, when, where and how” that defines the journalist’s mind and the journalist’s work product.
I often have told people that it is the unknown that journalist face at the start of every day that makes getting up long before the rooster crows and staying up long after the sun sets. At the end of the day we have done something that science says is impossible: We have made something out of nothing. It’s called “news,” the unpredictability of life captured and the story told, a vanquishing of ignorance—-sometimes whether you want it vanquished or not.
Ignorance is dangerous whether it is in common courtesies, traffic codes, health warnings, but especially in politics where ignorance not only is preyed upon by candidates and advocates but by those who have been given great responsibility.
We are alarmed by steps being taken to erase the unpleasant parts of our past and to be dishonest about our heritage and the responsibilities we have as citizens to conquer our baser relations with others, based on how we have overcome them in the past.
Today’s observation was triggered by the appearance of President Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who recently denied to host Joe Kernan of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the President’s interest in Greenland amounts to American imperialism:
“When has the United States engaged in imperialism? Never. Europe has engaged in imperialism. The reason the Danish have Greenland is because of imperialism.”
When has the United States engaged in imperialism? How about two centuries of it. We would not be the United States if it was not for imperialism.
I reached onto my bookshelf for Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire, a volume Landry should read if he wants to rise above the ignorance that soaks this administration. What might we call the administration’s takeover of Venezuela and its threatened takeover of Cuba and Greenland and the earlier blabbering of making Canada the 51st state if not “imperialism?” Added to that discussion is the frequent dismissal in this administration that Puerto Ricans are not Americans.
The administration in its efforts to cleanse or whitewash our history prefers we are ignorant of many things including that the imperialistic spirit was part of this nation from the beginning, when early explorers operating under an already-ancient papal proclamation that it was proper to seize lands from “infidels,” claimed lands occupied for thousands of years by others in the name of God and Country.
Just 55 years after the landing of businessmen the a few religious dissenters landed at Plymouth, the first war broke out between Europeans and Native Americans when the Europeans wanted to expand the borders of Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island. It was the beginning of a 200 year-plus takeover of territories occupied by dozens of previously independent nations.
Two especially egregious examples are the subjugation of the Cherokees, a people with their own constitution and their own written language, with their own plantations is six southern states, their own capital and their own system of slavery. They were given a new territory to occupy in the 1830s so the Europeans could have their ancestral lands.
Throughout the rest of the 19th century, similar measures were enforced with the forced movement of other nations, some of whom wound up in the same place, a place set aside for Indians. But the attraction of unassigned territory in that area created the 1889 Land Rush when 50,000 settlers roared in to take over the area. The now-“American” area was recognized in 1907 as the state of Oklahoma. Not until seventeen years had passed did the people displaced through the decades and now disrupted by the land rush—the people of the Indian nations forced there— become recognized by congressional action as American citizens although it was not until 1948 that Congress passed the Indian Voting Rights Act.
The 1846 Mexican war made one-third of Mexico part of the United States. Fifty years later, we went to war with Spain and fought the Philippine War to claim that land.
Immerwahr looks at 1941 as an example of our imperialist holdings: Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states. But these also were NOT foreign countries: Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama Canal Zone, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. (Panama was Panamanian but it was leased to the United States at the time.) One out of eight people in the United States lived outside the 48-state “logo map” as he calls it.
He also notes a “stream of smaller engagements” that have bought at least parts of other nations under our control for military bases. He cites 211 times that American troops have been deployed to 67 other countries since 1945.
The book came out before Venezuela and Iran.
Immerwahr concludes the introduction to his book, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen”
Landry asked, with his ignorance on full display, “”When has the United States engaged in imperialism?” The truth is in Immerwahr’s book should he care to read it although this seems to be an administration led by a President whose questionable reading habits and abilities have been much discussed and whose preference for historical literacy seems non-existent, a “blessing” he demands be extended to all of us in a year when accurate recall of our history should be our guiding interest.
We leave you with these cautionary words from President Calvin Coolidge:
“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”
And ignorant.