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White Man’s Burden
"The Smithsonian, especially on the ethnological side, was a pleasant place to browse in. Every nation, like every individual, walks in a vain show – else it could not live with itself – but I never got over the wonder of a people who, having extirpated the aboriginals of their continent more completely than any modern race had ever done, honestly believed that they were a godly little New England community, setting examples to brutal mankind. This wonder I used to explain to Theodore Roosevelt, who made the glass cases of Indian relics shake with his rebuttals." ~ Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself There are always some events that are so momentous that you remember where you were when you first heard of them, and what you were doing. The assassination of John Kennedy, Neil Armstrong taking his "one small step for a man," the church at Waco going up in smoke. I shall remember where I was on September 11th, 2001, for quite a long time. I was high up in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming, herding cattle. There’s an art to it, which requires a good horse and a good rider (in that order). The gist of it is this: circle wide around the cattle you want to herd, until they are between you and where you want them to go. Then move toward them. How fast you move toward them depends on how fast you want them to go. If you are herding cow calf pairs, you want them to move slowly so that they do not get separated. So you amble toward them. In other circumstances, a charge at full gallop is appropriate. But off they go, in the direction you want them to move, and you check the area around you for other cows who need similar prodding. That morning we gathered 213 cows and approximately 200 calves out of a pasture, and confined them into a pen. The pen was a length of dirt road, fenced on either side, with a temporary gate at one end. I and two other riders took station at the other end. We made a line, and there we held those cattle in place. At the far end, the cattle were pushed through a narrow runway ten or so at a time, and sorted: bull calves and their mothers to one pen, heifer calves and their mothers to another. Like a vast hydraulic piston, my fellow riders and I slowly pushed four hundred bawling, mewling cattle through that narrow passage, as fast as the other cowboys could sort them. Think of it as an exercise in bovine fluid dynamics. Those cattle did not want to be herded or pushed. The bawling and the sullen looks on their faces made that clear. But three people and three horses, massing at most 4,000 pounds, pushed 350,000 pounds of cattle into an ever narrower passage. That seething, roiling mass of black reminded me of song-writer Dana Lyons’ delightful satire about bovine rebellion against being herded and eaten, Cows with Guns. But I also realized that those cows did not need guns to break out of their confinement. They needed only a bit of concerted action. And the twin ideas that they could be free, and would be better off free. Of course, we were herding the cattle "for their own good". Later that day, we vaccinated them for various diseases and parasites, and sprayed them down for external parasites. They are no doubt healthier today than they were the day we herded them. But they aren’t free. The cows which are not pregnant will be sold off later this year. Most of the bull calves will be castrated, the hamburger of the future. The few who aren’t will be sold to specialists in cattle breeding. And so on, with the cows themselves not making or even consulted in a single one of these decisions. We first learned of the attacks on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon when we returned to our cow camp for lunch. One of the riders had taken the morning off, and had learned of it from his wife via cell phone. It was quite a bit of culture shock, to be pulled from our microcosm of a XXth Century working ranch to the stark realities of XXIth Century geopolitics, which bid fair to become even more stark as it wears on. Since before the Berlin Wall fell, US foreign policy can be described with two phrases. Some would say the United States has become the planetary bully boy, throwing its weight around with reckless abandon for sheer monetary gain, like the Vikings of old. It should be as obvious as the nose on Clinton’s face that Desert Storm had nothing to do with saving "democracy in Kuwait" and everything to do with oil, if for no other reason that saving democracy in Kuwait is like saving virginity in a whorehouse: first there must be something to save. Others figure that the US has assumed a modern, Politically Correct, version of "the White Man’s Burden", the "burden" of civilizing the benighted heathens. The West has been good at it, although the values of civilization have changed over the years. Once it was the Cross and the Sermon on the Mount that were to be brought to the heathens at sword point. Now, it’s MacDonald’s, "democracy" (whatever that means) and reruns of "Laverne and Shirley". But the cost of the White Man’s Burden has always been high. Kipling knew that, because he was a student like no other of the British Empire. An ‘e warned us, ‘e did, a hundred two years ago. His poem of that title is subtitled "The United States and the Philippine Islands." But Americans hadn’t the wisdom to read it and learn. And it is safe to predict, alas, that they’ll not learn by bloody experience. Because they must have their illusions, their "vain show". And because those who bring them that "vain show" also manipulate them. The so-called journalists of today’s mass media should have as their motto Hearst’ "You provide the pictures. I’ll provide the war". The United States’ so-called "leaders" let themselves be manipulated into picking up that White Man’s Burden every time, from Guatemala and Iran to Kosovo and Iraq. "We’ve got to bring them Democracy" goes the refrain. And no-one ever bothers to ask, "Why?" "What will the price be?", nor, finally, "Will it be worth the price?" Perhaps, after a century of government schools and television, Americans are incapable of thinking of those questions. Or perhaps the reason the American people don’t ask these questions is because they know, somewhere deep down in their minds, that they won’t get a straight answer to any of them. In either case, the government schools, the media and the politicians have learned well how to herd Americans. And that makes George W. Bush a singularly appropriate Cattle Herder In Chief for this god-awful day. The White Man’s Burden and Bully Boy theories are not mutually exclusive. Christianity, or specific flavors of it, has been rammed down the throats of nations at swordpoint for almost two thousand years, as writers from Gibbon to Erasmus have noted. If they won’t peacefully accept the Cross, why, for their own good we’ll force it on them! Once, Norsemen could go to Iceland, then Greenland, then Vinland, to evade the remorseless black robes. But where does one go today to get away from "democracy" or the IRS? There is no place. So they lash out instead, wildly and destructively. Maybe the people who attacked the World Trade Center just plain don’t want to end up as displays in the Smithsonian. In one sense, the attackers were very intelligent and patient. Apparently they were able to hijack four aircraft from three different airports and two different airlines within a few hours of each other. The anti-hijacking policies of the US were as naught. Kipling’s "Fuzzy Wuzzy" for the XXIth Century. If the chattering class’ conjecture that the culprits are some Muslim fanatics is correct, then Americans had better understand that they have 1422 years of history behind them and they have long collective memories. And if the culprits are Afghanis, remember that the Afghanis have beaten the Russian Empire, the British Empire and the Soviet Empire. Why should they not take on what they see as the American Empire? In another sense, the attackers were blithering idiots. They have just handed the United States and the media exactly the excuse they need and want to tighten up the police state in this country – just as the drug war was wearing thin as that excuse. The United States’ police state already extends world wide, and that too will be strengthened. The bombers have handed their enemy exactly the excuse they need to become even more powerful and to wage a war of revenge. And the American cattle will be herded into giving it to them. In those two senses, the attack on the World Trade Center was both as brilliant and as stupid as the attack on Pearl Harbor, and for the same reasons. Admiral Yamamoto warned the Imperial War Cabinet that if they attacked the US, Japan would have a year to defeat the US. After that, the United States would defeat them. He was right. He was ignored. Whether anyone similarly warned the attackers of the World Trade Center we will probably never know. H. L. Mencken once said that the first casualty of war is the truth. If so, the second is liberty. It has already begun. For more than ten years, the US has enforced "no fly" zones on two thirds of Iraq. On September 11th, 2001, the US imposed a "no fly" zone on the entirety of America – without destroying a single anti-aircraft gun. All, of course, in the spurious name of "security." God help us all. One of these days, we may envy those cattle up in the Big Horns. Those of us left who can still think about it. September 17, 2001 Charles Curley is a software engineer and sometimes cowboy in Wyoming. Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com |