White people, history, Trump: An Ill Wind blows no good for the coming election.

Back to the future:

“The Shenandoah County [Virginia] School Board voted 5-1 [to rename several schools] Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School, four years after the board — under different members — changed their names to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School to break ties to Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.” Washington Post, 5/10/24.

Shenandoah County is 90% white and voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2020. The vote to change the names from Confederate heroes came after the death of George Floyd. But now the community wants some of its heritage back. Ironically, the name Stonewall Jackson High was adopted in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, the Supreme Court decision that required desegregation in schools and public facilities. Jackson–killed by friendly Confederate fire in 1863–must have turned over in his grave several times by now.

Is the Shenandoah decision a straw in the wind for the upcoming election? Possibly; by now 34 states have adopted laws designed to protect white kids from learning about discrimination, hate, and murder of African Americans (which did happen!). Meanwhile, institutions around us quest on in their efforts to evoke guilt in non-Indian peoples. Here is the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s [CSO] “Land Statement,” from Fanfare, the orchestra’s magazine, April/May 2024.

Compare Miami University’s land statement: “Miami University is located within the traditional homelands of the Myaamia and Shawnee people, who along with other indigenous groups ceded these lands to the United States in the first Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The Miami people, whose name our university carries, were forcibly removed from these homelands in 1846.” 

That’s all anyone ever needed to say. The idea of “traditional homeland” in the Ohio Valley is incorrect, since “tradition” can be stretched and molded forever. but Miami’s statement is pretty tolerable. Note the word “ceded” as compared to the CSO’s “unceded.”

The orchestra would bring people together through music and divide them by accusing the majority of their typical audience of living off the proceeds of theft and genocide.

The CSO gets “homelands” wrong for the Ohio Valley. The Miami, for example, were not a strong presence here until about 1750. The Shawnee–a name that has something to do with the south–were among the greatest of all Indian wanderers, and they lacked a strong presence in the Valley into the 18th century. As for the Osage, they were drive out of Ohio country by the Iroquois long before whites reached the area in any numbers.

By the way, diversity, inclusion, great. I’m not sure what equity is really supposed to mean; according to the Cambridge Dictionary, equity is “the situation in which everyone is treated fairly according to their needs and no group of people is given special treatment.”

According to their needs? I need a beach house and a Ferrari. Ah, heck with it.

More to the point, here’s what then Pres Donald Trump told a crowd on the 4th of July of 2020 at Mt. Rushmore: “Our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but were villains. The radical view of American history is a web of lies.” Quoted in American Historical Association Perspectives 62, no. 5, May 2024.

Now, the Exec Director of the Am Historical Association, James Grossman, says it ain’t so. Historians are teaching a balance of materials and anyway, they can’t indoctrinate kids (I agree with that!).

But that’s just not the way the Shenandoah Co. School Board has seen matters. And the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, for some reason, has felt it necessary to print an aggressive, politically loaded land statement. The purpose, it would appear, is to make non-Indians feel guilty about living on land that rightfully belonged to Native peoples because they “lived upon this land since time immemorial.”

Do people really want to try to come to grips with the word “genocide” today? There’s a fair amount of controversy among scholars about whether genocide vs. American Indians occurred. If it did, why did so many Native people survive and are proud of their survivance, which means that they endured a hell of a lot, including mass murder in numerous cases, and that they are still here and are proud to keep their traditions alive.

Romanticizing Indians doesn’t help anyone. It is attempted indoctrination. Native Americans were and are people, a full range of people, with all that implies.

Terrible things happened to the “First Peoples” of the Americas. But that is a really old story; see what happened when the ancient Hebrews destroyed the Canaanites. And in Spain, the Germans moving east from the 11th c or so on, the Aztecs, the Comanche, the Iroquois. Nothing makes any of that right, it just makes it all typical human behavior.

In the meantime, Trump appears to be correct about the way history is taught in the U.S. I personally have heard some nasty things about the early Republic and Revolution from profs in North Carolina. Well, I would now bet a lot that Trump will win that state. And I have a feeling that he will win the election.

So I say thanks for nothing, CSO.

Welcome to the “Magical Multiracial Past”* (and Present), or The Winner of Our Discontent.

A Post about and not about Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the U.S. Important as those peoples are, larger issues about how we deal with the past are embodied here.

I wish all the best to Native Americans! But I think that the American Historical Review–it’s about history, right?–is not looking seriously at their past.

*A line from Kabir Chibber, “Shady Past,” NY Times Magazine, April 7, 2024. Excellent article.

Cover of the American Historical Review March 2024. From a painting by Kent Monkman. Here’s the painting itself, now one of two by Monkman, a member of the Cree Nation, recently installed in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY City. This one is entitled “(Wooden Boat) Resurgence of the People,” done in 2019.

Inside the cover of the Am Hst Review is a bit about Monkman and the painting: “The March History Lab brings a new installment of Art as Historical Method that focuses on the place of history in art made by and about Indigenous peoples. . . . Monkman’s work explores issues of colonization, sexuality, and resilience [in order to challenge] received ideas about history and Indigenous peoples.

First, whose “received ideas”? this is bull; a substantial number of books and articles in recent decades have challenged old “received ideas,” which presumably refers to the old notion of Manifest Destiny, the brave pioneers, white heroes of the West, etc. All that has been gone for a long time.

“The self-identifying term used by the Cree is Ininiwuk , meaning men, or the original people.”

Many First Nations are known by names bestowed by others but call themselves “the people” or a variant of that idea in their own language.  The best known example is the Navajo, whose word for themselves is Dineh, “the people.”  The Ojibwe (Chippewa) name for themselves, Anishinaabe, means “the true people.”  Other nations used the same vocabulary.  This usage bestowed “superior status” on the ones who used it “and demeaned outsiders as lesser beings, sometimes less than human.”[ii]  “Tribal history emphasizes one group of people who formed a political entity.  Only in such a record does the language of the American Indians reflect their conviction and attitude that from their own tribe sprang the ‘true men’ and all others were strangers, that their folk heroes were giants while those of other tribes were pygmies.”[iii

Thus Monkman’s own nation, as well as his painting, starts with a problematic idea, one which contributed to violence between Indigenous groups. Many First Peoples, for instance the one called Navajo by outsiders, is Dineh,“the people,” in the nation’s own language. Others were not people; they were lesser beings.  The Ojibwe (Chippewa) name for themselves, Anishinaabe means “the true people.”  Other nations used the same vocabulary.[i]  This vocabulary bestowed superior status” on the ones who used it “and demeaned outsiders as lesser beings, sometimes less than human.”[ii]   “Tribal history emphasizes one group of people who formed a political entity. Only in such a record does the language of the American Indians reflect their conviction and attitude that from their own tribe sprang the ‘true men’and all others were strangers, that their folk heroes were giants while those of other tribes were pygmies.”[iii] 

Not incidentally, to say that the Cree and other peoples were Algonquian speakers does not mean that they could communicate well with other Algonquian speakers. While not as broad a term as Indo-European languages, Algonquian covers the spoken tongues of peoples like the Cree, Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Mi’kmaq (Micmac), Arapaho, and Fox-Sauk-Kickapoo.  Iroquoian and Siouxan are other broad groups. Even if “dialect” is introduced, that doesn’t help much. There is the old q and a, “What’s the difference between a dialect and a language? A: a language has an army.”

Back to Monkman: “In the early 2000s, [Wikipedia] Monkman developed his gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.” Get it? Mischief, Miss Chief, Testickle, testicle? We’re all on board with this, right? “Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is the two-spirit alter ego that Monkman uses as a fierce hunter, an artist, an activist, a seducer, a hero, and a performer.^[30] She is also a mythological time traveler, existing during the creation of the world itself as well as in the ‘colonial spaces [of] the past and present.’” That’s Testickle with the red cloth, feather, and high heels near the bow of the boat. So the painting puts the queer (also a quite acceptable word now) world and the Indian world together to–um, I’m not sure why. Because they are not mainstream?

Let’s compare Monkman’s painting to a classic image of socialist realism.

Sergei Gerasimov, A Collective Farm Festival, 1937, Oil on canvas, 234×372 cm State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. The glorious future has arrived! Actually, the painting is about what will be. Ok, Gerasimov doesn’t do as well with individual faces as Monkman does. In a way, that’s the point: the people are a collective whose individuality shall be downplayed. Hey, that’s my take. No gender bending here, though!

The collective farmers are doing just fine. The boat people in Monkman’s work are not yet at the same wonderful future, but they are on their way to it. Thus in one painting, actually in almost everything I’ve seen by him, there are, first, Indians doing all right, thank you. Everyone on the boat is depicted as a human being, with distinct features. All are dedicated and determined. No pinched or haggard faces, no evidence of drunkenness or drug use, everyone looking good in “Survivance” and paddling happily to a fine future. Obviously they will get to some fine new existence. In the boat are children, even a baby. The future looks bright, if the boat can keep going through what looks like nasty water–perhaps it signifies the U.S. and Canada? We also get gender bending, as Miss Chief is the dominant figure.

“Gerald Vizenor . . . coined the term ‘survivance.’ He gives this definition of the term: an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” 

Fine; anyone can renounce the past. That doesn’t change the past, or rather, renouncing it is a statement of defiance–now you are not going to tell us what to do or what to say. That attitude is a political statement, and should be seen as such. Nothing wrong with trying to be independent, except that American and Canadian Indians, as well as the Sami people of Norway, and so on, live in countries that with technology, laws, and traditions that affect Indians deeply and which they often make use of.

In Monkman’s painting, white Nazi-types with automatic weapons are having a good laugh–I think–it’s hard to tell from their small, undeveloped faces– from atop a rock in the water. Almost stick figures, these idiots appear to be celebrating something but are not smart enough to realize that they are stranded, their weapons doing them no good, and the boat with the resurgent people is leaving them behind–I suppose to die on their barren rock.

There is a Black man on the boat, who appears to be trying to pull a dead white man aboard. Another white man with a necktie flipped over his shoulder, a sure sign of evil, is holding onto a paddle of one Indian man. It’s not clear whether the white guy is trying to get on board or trying to hold back the paddling.

Why is the boat wooden? On it, there is no sign of any technology beyond paddling–the only tech in the picture is the useless guns of the whites. We are back to true nature, I suppose, when the Indians kept everything in balance and the buffalo gave themselves to the People to eat and make many other uses of. I.e., the folks in the boat are pure. Nonsense.

What is the connection (in my febrile mind) between the painting and the “Magical Multiracial Past?” In the piece by Kabir Chibber (neat that we have no idea if this is a male or a female, what ethnic origin, etc. Turns out, with a little research here, that he’s a male from India. Eh, so what), the subject of his article is the insertion of Black or other non-white persons into depictions of the past where such a figure was not present. The best example is the queen in the first year of Bridgerton, but this insertion is also in the latest version of Willy Wonka and in an adaptation of an Agatha Christie tale. We will see much more of it.

Chibber writes that in these imagined pasts, “every race exists, cheerfully and seemingly as equals in the same place at the same time History becomes an emoji, its flesh tone changing as needed.” But you can’t “get lost” in such presentations; something “is off.” “The tales are often boring, marked by a well-meaning blandness–by an avoidance of uncomfortable truths.” There is the danger of pretending “bad things didn’t happen.” That’s quite in the Monkman painting, where only one race has virtue.

I get that Chibber and Monkman are saying different things, but it seems to me that the same emphasis on dreamy boredom and desire to “correct” the past by goofing with it and inserting present values and images in it is common to both the Magical Multiracial Past (which criticizes all that) and the studious painting (endorses all that). Both images assert that the present overrides and triumphs over the past, with the winners being non-white because they hold on to their traditions. Yet I would say that the clothing of the Indians in the wooden boat is not “native” gear but is store-bought, or at least the cloth is, a pattern that began in the 17th century. What then is the past, and what might we draw–many things, many different attitudes and political outlooks, of course–from the past if we don’t insert the present into it?

It is right that America and Canada as states and as societies to work to boost people of color (but do keep in mind that membership in a tribe is a legal status, nothing more or less)–although I would much rather see efforts to help people who are suffering and/or are on the bottom levels of society.

Monkman’s work in this case is barely about the past–yet there the painting is on the cover of a historical journal, America’s leading one. And the painting hangs on the wall of America’s most prominent art museum.

The work is good but not great art, compared to much of the stuff inside the Met. Most of all, it is propaganda, a la socialist realist art of the 1930s and later.

Both the American Historical Review and the Met have let us all down.

Romanticizing Indians, “Settler Colonialism,” and What Is Genocide

I remember clearly that one morning when I was in the 11th or 12th grade at Shaker Heights HS, Shaker Hts, Ohio, that for some unknown reason the administration decided to play the song “Take an Indian to Lunch” over the PA system while kids were in homeroom. It was written and performed by Stan Freberg in 1961. It makes no sense; a Pilgrim politician in Massachusetts, November 1621, is trying to figure out how to attract the Indian bloc in his upcoming election for mayor (of something). Right, Indians couldn’t vote then, there was no mayoral election, and the Pilgrims were not yet exactly flourishing. Anyway, if you want to listen to such goofy stuff, now considered unacceptable, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qHsW3kEaQw.

More to today’s point is a recent wave of romanticization of Native Americans and corresponding demonization of white people. Ok, I get it that whites killed many an Indian–by the way, that word is back in fashion; it’s now used in many a book title, in the books themselves, and among Indian peoples.

There’s a problem, in my view, with the term “Native American,” although I am willing to use it. We have the word “America,” as you surely know, because an Italian geographer was the first European to say that the lands of the Western hemisphere were continents. A German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, published a map of the world in 1507.  To honor Vespucci, or something to that effect, Waldseemüller printed “America” on top of South America. Not even in very big letters! So we get our name via Germany in a Latinized version of an Italian first name. We should be lucky his name wasn’t Luigi or Alfredo. We could have been Luigiana or Alfredomania.

Anyway, many countries names don’t mean much. Austria: Österreich in German; it means the eastern “marches,” or parts of a realm. England: land of the Angles–hence it is called Anglia, Angleterra, etc. in various languages. Ukraine: the land around the edge: у край, u krai , much like Österreich. Germany, Deutschland, land of the people who speak German. Russia: not clear where that came from.

I prefer the old Canadian term “First Nations.” (But “nation” is a freighted word. What makes a nation?) In any case, the Canadian idea indicates that a given people, let’s say the Apache, were the first to arrive someplace. Does that give such people the high moral ground? I think not. That’s because the First Nations moved around a lot, and there were Second, Third, and many more peoples in all kinds of places around the world. Ancient Hebrews? Check. Germans in Berlin? Check. Comanches on the southern Great Plains? Iroquois? Big checks.

So a line from Patrick Wolfe, an Important Academic on the subject of settler colonialism and genocide–which go together in his writings–is wrong to say that the Native peoples “were the only ones who did not come from somewhere else.” Nope, with the exception of certain folk in East Africa, we all came from somewhere else.

Joseph Brant, painted in London by Gilbert Stuart in 1786

Not only did the First (or whatever nation) people move a lot, they changed as they came into contact with others, especially with Euro (i.e., white) newcomers. Here is a Mohawk (Iroquois) leader in London 1786. The American Revolutionary War was over, and he was with the Brits in an effort to see what they could do for his people in the wake of the war. He is in Mohawk dress, I suppose, but he became a British officer in 1775, and the silver plate hanging from his neck is an officer’s gorget. See Richard White’s classic The Middle Ground for the ways in which white settlers and Amerindians copied and borrowed from each other–until, in the old Northwest, Ohio and further west and north, an army under Anthony Wayne defeated an Indian confederation at Fallen Timbers, near today’s Toledo.

Backing up a little, the By 1780, the Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket was raising cattle.  He and his wife slept in a four-poster bed with curtains, used silverware at his table, and kept Black slaves. Enslaving people was absolutely common among Indigenous North Americans; I have read of many tribes that kept slaves, from the Lenapi and Miami in the Northwest to the Comanche.

Indians traded “peltries,” the word for all sorts of skins and hides, to whites in return for “trade goods.” Above all, the Native people wanted two things: cloth or ready-made garments and guns, with shot and powder. The First Comers then used the firearms on their enemies, including other Firsters, and on animals. Shortly after contact with whites, Creeks in the southeast began to hunt
deer just for their hides, which they traded to the British for imported
goods.  See, for example, Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Deerskins and Duffels:  The Creek Indian Trade with Anglo-America, 1685-1815.  Second ed.  Lincoln, NE:  University of Nebraska Press, 1993, 29, 177; Nolan M. Cool, “Pelts and Property:  The Fur Trade and the Mohawk Valley, 1730-1776,” New York History, 97, No. 2 (Spring 2016), 124. 

Braund found that from the Carolinas an average of more than 45,000 deerskins were shipped annually to London from 1699 to1705.  The eventual result of this slaughter was two-fold:  herds “disappeared from many areas by the mid-eighteenth century,” leaving the Creeks “no resources except land with which to pay debts to American traders.”   Creek participation in international trade helped to destroy their original way of life. Overhunting
in the Mohawk Valley in the late seventeenth century “led to a declining local fur supply, leaving the Mohawk and Oneida with fewer pelts to barter.”[ii]  Joseph Brant told Lieutenant Governor Simcoe of “Upper Canada,” i.e. British territory, in 1793 that “the Indian hunts being worn out, and their People fallen into disuse of that method of subsistence,” and that they were not well advanced in agriculture, “the Letting of their lands appeared to him the most reasonable mode of making provision for their Women, Old Men, and Children.” Beaver were “overharvested” as far west as eastern Wisconsin by 1740, and across the “state” by 1790.

So when the latest entry in the Predator series, Prey, 2022, shows evil French traders killing bison only for their hides somewhere in North America, near today’s border between the U.S. and Canada but far west, say Montana, that’s a lot of B.S. Of course, the brilliant Comanche girl, apparently well trained in kung fu, defeats the Predator, we have a sort of heroic Indian story.

Ken Burns’ film The American Buffalo, 2023, takes the same route. The Plains Indians supposedly had a spiritual connection to the animal–wait, anyone can claim such spirituality–and killed buffalo so that they could use every part of the beasts–is also bull. In the documentary, it is the rapacious, vicious white hunters who almost destroy the buffalo completely. True in a sense, but the whites with their long, accurate rifles, developed in the 1840s, produced the last phase of killing that the Indians had been engaged in for many years. On Indian participation in the destruction of American bison for commercial purposes, see Andrew Isenberg, “Social and Environmental Causes and Consequences of the Destruction of the Bison,” Revue française d’études américaines, No. 70, L’écologie aux Etats-Unis (Octobre 1996). And see Charles C. Mann, “We are here,” National Geographic, July 2022; Mike Ives, “Bison’s Return Refreshes Native American Rituals,” New York Times, July 9, 2023; and Prey, dir. Dan Trachtenberg, U.S., 2022, latest film in the Predator series.  Killers of the Flower Moon, dir. Martin Scorsese, U.S., 2023, depicts whites as overwhelmingly evil, while the Osage are nearly but not entirely romanticized. See also Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History, 2023.

Many horrible things were done to American Indians. But it does no one any good to deny the full range of their humanity, for good and bad, and to depict them as endlessly wonderful stewards of the earth, democratic, selfless communal people, etc. And all this–to the extent that it gets in front of the eyes of many whites, Chicanos, Asian-Americans, and yes, even Black people, it is irritating.

I will return to this subject and to the history of romanticizing Indians, which dates back to the 16th c, but with many depictions of “savages” as well.

Ukraine: War and Demographics Descend into Fantasy

. 2024.

Ukrainian soldiers Dec. 2023, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters.

The loss of Avdiivka to Russian troops has been described in the Western press as not terribly important. The town, which used to have a population of 30,000, is a complete ruin.

But:

New York Times 2/17/24

The point is that Russia is advancing in various sectors, the Ukrainians are retreating. There is literally not much room for Ukraine to maneuver, or to persuade the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill already passed by the Senate to give $95 billion in aid to Israel and Ukraine (more than 40 b would be for Ukraine). This is more than a bit cynical: the plea for more money is at least in part tied to jobs in the U.S. President Biden wants to assure Americans that more than 2/3 of the money intended for “Ukraine” would go to factories here at home.

So Americans will get to work–nothing against that in principle, of course–while people die in Ukraine.

Fantasy 1: the Ukrainians can still “win.” Please, if winning means getting back the Crimea and the Donbass, forget it. In fact, forget about driving the Russians out. But Major Rodion Kudriashov, deputy commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, Ukrainian, which covered the retreat from Avdiivka, told the Economist (2/24/24) “We have lost a small battle but we have not lost the war.” President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on 2/26 to win the war and to be prepared for the lack of new aid from the U.S. Zelensky said that 31,000 Ukrainian servicemen and women have died in the 2 years of war. CNN cannot independently verify that figure, but US officials estimate the toll could be closer to 70,000. I think the figure is probably a lot higher.

Fantasy 2: the Ukrainian people are solidly behind the war effort. “Morale is driven by the desire of Ukrainians to be free. The Ukrainian people are fighting for freedom, people’s rights, their choice – of the way to live, of whom to elect, of whom to love, of where to rest. They are fighting absolutely bravely and strongly.” Zelensky to Western big shots at Davos, Jan 16, 2024.

Nope. “Ukraine struggles with morale and recruitment,” says the NY Times on 2/20. Actually, there have been numerous articles for months and months on daft dodging, men fleeing Ukraine, and so on, for some time now. See, e.g., Reuters Nov. 28, 2023, months before the fall of Avdiivka.

• “Psychological toll grows on families of soldiers
• Darker mood seen creeping into Ukrainian society
• Army chief fears stalemate, wants more reserves”

People do not fight, at least not for very long, for abstract notions like freedom and justice. They fight for vengeance, to defend their homeland, for the men and women next to them in battle, for money.

Look, the Russians have behaved atrociously. But there is a background to this war that needs to be understood–see my posts from March 2022. This background means that Ukraine is a special case for Russia, which leads us to another fantasy:

3: that Russia will keep on going into Eastern Europe, maybe Western Europe, maybe Santa Monica and Hawaii, if not stopped now by the good countries of the earth. “Europe remains unprepared,” says the Economist, i.e. for a Russian attack. This is pure fantasy because, to cite just one figure, in 2023 NATO possessed 3,398 fighter jets and interceptors. Now Sweden, with its highly capable Saab fighters, will join NATO.

The russian federation has at its disposal one and a half thousand fighter jets and helicopters of strategic aviation

This number is from the British Defence Express, but the article relies on a Ukrainian spokesman. So who knows? Anyway, a lot fewer fighters than NATO has–and the above number includes helicopters; I would also say that American fighter aircraft, although often plagued by problems, are technologically superior to anything Russia has. I do not think that 1 F-35 could take down 20 Russian jets, but I would not put a lot of money on the Russian air force.

Ok, so there is one statistic. Readers might like to look up population, gross national product, etc. All the figures are far, far in NATO’s favor.

So that leaves us with Russian history to judge by. A reminder: Russia has repeatedly sent troops into Eastern and Western Europe (Prussia in the 1760s, Paris in 1814) and then withdrawn them. After 1991, Russian soldiers left Eastern Europe, which then joined NATO. Russia, contrary to some assertions or unsubtle hints, is not pathologically inclined to expand. That honor might go to Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. To the U.S.? Nah, no way.

Stephen Kotkin of Princeton is the American left-center-right all-purpose historian of Russia. He has written and spoken several times on Russian expansion from the time of Ivan the Terrible (a mistranslation of groznyi, which would be better rendered as awesome): “Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years.” This is “Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics,” in Foreign Affairs, America’s all-purpose self-appointed guardian journal of righteousness, May/June 2016, and elsewhere. So there is no stopping Putin, equated so often now with Stalin (whose forces moved into Eastern Europe and Germany to defeat the Nazi regime), until he is utterly stopped.

No indication from Kotkin that Russia expanded east into Siberia, much as we did into the West–or more accurately, like Canada did–for furs. More importantly, Russia expanded to the south, including into what became Ukraine, to defend territory and people from the Mongols (Tatars, if you wish).

Fantasy 4: that Ukraine can and will recover demographically from this war and from its earlier population losses. See Kennan Cable 88 from the Wilson Center, America’s all-purpose (ah, forget it), February 2024. Ukrainian refugees are supposed to return to the country–to what, exactly? What are the economic prospects of the country at best?

Most useless in the Kennan Cable is the idea of boosting Ukraine’s birth rate. No “advanced” country has been able to do that, not even France, where the birthrate, or total fertility rate, is falling after years of effort to raise it. Now women 15-40 in France have–this is a statistical guess at a moving target–1.83 births on average. 2.2 is needed just to replenish the population.

Ukraine’s tfr has been falling pretty steadily since 1960 and is now said to be 1.22. There has not been a census in the country for years, for good reason. If there were 51 million people living in Ukraine in 1991, including in the Crimea, now we see figures like 32 million, even 28 million when refugees are taken out of the total.

I liked Ukraine in many ways when I was there on numerous trips. I do not want Ukrainians, or Russians for that matter, to die needlessly. Peace and compromise are in order right now.

Hunting?? Oh, deer, the highs and lows, the what and why of hunting whitetails and waterfowl in Ohio.

Unlike the Beatles, I can’t go into the jungle with my elephant and gun, which of course fires one shot at a time and takes at the very least a minute to reload. No problem; I will try woods in Ohio, on the farm of a friend.

Why hunt? Well, estimates of the number of deer that starve to death each year in the U.S. run between 300,000 and 400,000. The deer population in Ohio is said to be bigger now than when whites arrived in the 18th century (?? how would anyone know that? Never mind; that sounds correct.)

The natural predators of deer are gone from the state. No more bears, wolves, pumas. Also no hunting parties of Native Americans, who sometimes took hundreds of deer in a day–not every day, and probably not so much in winter as in spring and fall. So the deer population, says the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR), is growing. Either hunters reduce the herd or some other means of control will have to be found. Deer eat plants around houses, eat crops, spread Lyme Disease and ticks, and cause accidents on the roads. Several places–I know of one case in Princeton, NJ–have brought in professional hunters who guarantee head/death shots from tree stands.

I wanted to know if I could bring myself to kill an animal, never having killed anything larger than a carpenter bee in my life. And could I do it right, using my single shot black powder rifle? Could I be a man and not at least try to “harvest” a deer. If I had gotten one, the plan was to call my friend, who would come out with his 4-wheel drive truck and his knife. We would do the initial disposal of internal organs on the spot, then take the carcass to a “chop shop,” then donate the meat to a foodbank. In short, a mix of lofty and crude motives drove me into the forest two weeks ago to see if I could shoot a doe. Only by culling the females, not the bucks, can the herd be reduced.

My friend, an experienced hunter and a great shot, told me that I should find a good place to set up in the woods well before the deer might appear–either very early in the morning, before dawn, or well before sunset. Then don’t move. Deer have great eyesight and will spook if they see unusual movement. They have great noses, so stay downwind from them. Ok, but suppose the wind shifts, as it tends to do. Can I move then? Nope, just hope. So the deer either see you or smell you, no matter how clean you are. 

And you must wear vivid orange clothing, at least a vest and hat, so that you look like Elmer Fudd or worse. That color, I am told, does not exist in nature, so it’s easy to spot. Anyway, you wear it so that other hunters won’t shoot you.

To alleviate your suspense, I have to say that not only did I not get a deer, I did not see one. I fired my gun each day, but into a tree as I was about to get in my car, just to get the powder and lead ball out of the weapon.

Maybe the most entertainment, in a way, from the whole affair came from the Hunter Education course, ODNR, that I took on line, and passed.

So much can go wrong! From the course: ”Tree stands are useful tools for deer hunters, bowhunters, and others. When used with safety in mind, they can provide the edge a hunter needs for a successful hunt. However, falls from tree stands can occur due to improper use and can be deadly.”

Apparently no one strolls through the woods like Natty Bumppo (J F Cooper’s Longstocking Tales) and effortlessly shoots deer.

No; here’s how the good hunters do it today. (All pics from the ODNR Hunter Safety Course).

Here’s a doughty guy in a tree stand. He is well strapped in. Up above the ground this way, you will generally be out of the deer’s usual field of vision. Your scent will waft away better. But this doesn’t seem so sporting. Oh, well.

From the course again: ”Hanging motionless and suspended in your FAS (Fall arrest system, all those straps) after a fall can cause the leg straps to constrict blood flow. The pressure can make blood pool in the legs, limiting circulation and depriving organs of oxygen. This is called suspension trauma and can lead quickly to unconsciousness followed by death. To avoid suspension trauma while you wait to be rescued:

• Step into your suspension relief strap, and stand up to relieve the pressure caused by the leg straps.
• If you do not have a suspension relief strap, move your legs continuously by pushing off from the tree, or raise your knees and pump your legs frequently to keep your blood flowing until help arrives.”

Take a whistle or cell phone with you, the ODNR advises. Now, if you were walking in the woods and heard a whistle, would you run to the sound to investigate? Probably not, unless you were another hunter or game warden. If you did get to this dude hanging from a tree, what the heck would you do?

Do not drink alcohol while in a tree stand. Wait until you, frozen, have reached a warm place.

If you simply fall from a stand and don’t have a FAS, then maybe:

What is the number one cause of death among deer hunters? Right, falling from tree stands.

Or you could hunt ducks or other waterfowl from a boat. This is especially fun in cold weather. Here we can see what an unsuccessful hunt can look like:

No problem, really. Just hang on, because you have a couple of minutes before hypothermia sets in. Of course the game wardens or someone else with a good boat will speed to your side and rescue you. Or maybe not.

In case of accidents he always took his mom, the Beatles continued. But it’s kind of hard to see what Mom could do in these situations.

Even at 30 degrees F, I most froze my fingers off. But maybe I’ll try again next year. Gotta be a man somehow.

Cuba: Things I learned in 9 days (December 1-10, 2023) there, things I should have known before I went.

Me at Revolutionary Square.

Cuba imports about 70-80% of the food its people eat. To say the least, this is not sustainable. What are the Cubans doing about the problem? Well, we saw small farms, really mostly in peoples’ yards. This is called Permaculture, but it seems to be herbs, some fruit, and beans. That’s not enough to feed a nation.

–“MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Cuba imports roughly 80 percent of the food it needs for the island’s 11 million people. JANUARY 25, 2022

A healthy portion of that food comes from the United States.

But wait a minute, you say, what happened to the Cuban embargo?

“The U.S. is the largest supplier of food to Cuba,” Dr. Carlos Eire.

A Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University and a Cuba expert, Eire is also the author of “Waiting for Snow in Havana” and “Learning to Die in Miami.”

“They pay upfront, they get the shipment, and it goes through the military,” he added.

In Cuba, the military controls through various shell companies which handle food distribution on the island.

In the year 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Trade Sanctions Reform Act that allowed agricultural and food products to be exported to Cuba despite the embargo. The hope was that improving conditions for individual Cubans would undermine the support for the Castro Regime.

That was then. The regime is still in charge years later and the food products continue to flow to the island, most winding up in state-operated stores. It is expensive for most Cubans.”

Flights to Cuba from the U.S.: American, Jet Blue, United, Southwest and Delta. American has the highest frequency of flights. You can go from Charlotte, Tampa, Houston, and especially Miami. You are supposed to travel with an authorized organization; I went with Witness for Peace.

Cubans with any means have smart phones with access to the Internet.

There is no Iron Curtain around Cuba, to say the least. The discos were full and wild, art was striking, and people seemed far from crushed.

At the Factory of Art.

Cuban baseball players used to have to defect to the U.S., which made it impossible for them to return. Not so any more; they can and do return for visits, and they donate money to various causes on the island.

At one of Havana’s major markets.

Inflation is huge, maybe 140% a year when I was there. 

The old American cars, pre-1959 and the Revolution, are still moving, but more vehicles are Ladas, Peugeots, etc. A few of the old cars are in beautiful shape, at least on the outside.

I have never been in a country where people hugged so much.

Cuba is green–I mean the color green is everywhere in the fields, in contrast to Mexico, where I saw really parched land last January.

So: the U.S. blockade/embargo is stupid, a relic of the Cold War and of the highly conservative Cuban-American vote in Florida. But I do wonder what will happen to the island if the embargo is lifted. I can imagine a company like Bayer (which owns Monsanto) offering a lot of money to lease land for experimental crops, e.g., or a better Internet provider moving in. 

The Cubans my group met were all about coops and organic farming, by necessity; they acknowledged that they can’t afford to buy commercial, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. People talked a good deal about reviving the spirit of the Revolution (now more than 64 years old!), anti-consumerism, and social equality. Good luck with that in the long run.

But I did see vibrant art, lots of people working hard, smiles and optimism. Carry on, Cuba!

Israel vs. the Palestinians: Not the problem; a symptom of a much greater problem.

So that I don’t get charged too much with antisemitism, I’ll start by saying that Israel does exist, should exist, has a right to defend itself, and is not going away. I remember being astonished by the country’s success in the 6-Day War of 1967 against Arab forces. At the time, I was in my last semester of high school–Shaker Heights High in Ohio. The other kids in the school were mostly Jewish, and they were almost delirious with joy. I could not help but admire them and their beloved (other) country.

There is much else to admire about Israel: technological and scientific prowess, music and the other arts.

But let’s put a number of propositions out there–facts, to my mind.

1. Israel is of no strategic importance to the U.S. On the map, Turkey and Greece–barely visible at top left–are both NATO countries and have been for decades. If Israel did not exist, America would have a stronger, not weaker position in the Middle East. We would be able–if the will was there–to have better relations with the Arab countries in the region. Today, the U.S. can dock its warships in Greece and or Turkey, and on the other side of Saudi Arabia at Qatar (for which we pay a price in terms of supporting non- or anti-democratic regimes).
2. It follows from the above–and we all know it anyway–that our alliance with Israel only benefits that country, not the U.S. Israel may improve the avionics in some of the planes we make for that country, ok, but we could do fine without that aid.
3. Our relationship with Israel has already put the U.S. in an embarrassing, if not downright dangerous, position several times. Consider votes in the UN General Assembly in recent years on our embargo of Cuba (wow! How long will the Cold War go on?) “The UN General Assembly on Thursday [November 2] voted by a large margin against the United States’ economic and trade embargo against Cuba, first imposed in 1960. A total of 187 States voted for the resolution put forward each year against the embargo with only the US and Israel voting against and Ukraine abstaining.” Hey, Ukraine, WTF?
4. “Israel’s Losing Battle: International Support Grows for Gaza Amid Hospital Rampage.” and see https://www.reuters.com/pictures/global-protests-support-palestinians-gaza-2023-10-22/. Israel’s reaction of rage and hatred to the attacks and murders of its citizens (and those of other countries) on October 7 is understandable. But the response, practically levelling whole sections of Gaza, and killing many more Gazans than the number of Israelis who died on that truly horrible day, has gone much too far. Nor will it succeed.
5. Does no one remember U.S. Gen. Stanley McCrystal’s “insurgent math”? He told the world in 2010 that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” That is, the fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, mothers of the dead will become the enemies of the killers. See Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010. Compare Benjamin Netanyahu: “We are at war, and [after the ceasefire] we will continue to fight until we reach all our goals.” Thus: “We have two main goals there. One is to prevent this threat from reemerging. And for that, we need to demilitarize Gaza. And the second thing we have to do is deradicalize Gaza.” But this has been tried many times, many ways. A few successes in this vein come to mind: Germany and Japan 1945. But those were distinct and separate countries that were absolutely, completely defeated. They were occupied by foreign troops who, obviously, could and did carry out reprisals against German guerrillas after May 9, 1945. See a paper by Perry Biddiscombe. He lists only attacks on American troops; we can only imagine the number of attacks on Soviet soldiers. Reprisals were swift; if there had been more such incidents, response from Allied forces would have far-reaching indeed. Gaza is very different. There is the West Bank, with Palestinians; there are the Houthis, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, people in Syria who would love to do harm to Israel. And more who will react with hatred.
6. The murderous activity in Israel and Gaza raises the level of hatred within the U.S., the last thing we need here. As long as war continues, we will have pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli (supportive, but to what extent? With what end?) factions, and we will see our universities hurt as groups on one side–as far as I can see– are shut down. But they and their feelings will not go away.

Stanley McChrystal–Art of Charm?? In reality, poster boy for Tough Guy Failures.

But most distressing, and the reason I call Israel a symptom, not the problem, is the lack of imagination and of a will to peace in the U.S. and Western Europe. Sec. of State Antony Blinken, after first voicing total support for Israel, has finally come to the realization that Israel’s assault on Gaza is dangerous in many ways. Blinken, a victim of Cold War elite education at Harvard and Columbia, graduated from the former school in 1984. If he was not exposed there to the rabid hatred of Russia emanating from Richard Pipes, seconded more mildly by Adam Ulam, I would be amazed. That sort of hatred carries over to other issues and places.

Blinken likes to speak of the “world order.” Is he referring to American behavior in Latin America or Afghanistan, etc.? What world order could he possibly be thinking of? There is no such thing, and there has been no constructive American leadership of any part of the world — well, ever.

Blinken as Sec. was responsible for statements by the U.S. and Ukraine in the summer and fall of 2021 that announced, “As the United States and Allies reaffirmed in the June 2021 NATO Summit Communique, the United States supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.  We also remain committed to assisting Ukraine with ongoing reforms.” Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership, Sept. 1, 2021. Yes, the Russians are the aggressors, and — judging by Ukrainian reports–they have been beasts in occupied Ukraine. Yet what has been missing in U.S. policy for a long time is the imagination of peace. That was true in the 1950s with Vietnam, in 1973 in Chile, and again in Iraq and Afghanistan, to cite a few examples.

The hell with what Russia cared about, in Blinken’s world. Biden has been around a lot but is a victim of the “world order” fable. The hell with talking to the Russians. Even Reagan, or especially Reagan, did that. Biden and Blinken figured–what did they figure?–that Russia would just say, ok, we’re fine with Ukraine joining NATO? Quick, tell me the positive achievements of NATO.

What is the road to peace in Palestine/Israel? Does anyone not know what it is? I will cite the Iraq Study Group Report, 2006, a joint project and publication of leading Republicans and Democrats. First, on the Arab-Israeli situation, “there is no military solution to this conflict.” A two-state solution is the way forward. “When the political process breaks down there will be violence on the ground.” To this I will add, as many others have, that each of the two states should be contiguous, with Jerusalem an international city under the UN. Land and population transfers, as happened after both world wars, for the sake of peace. Otherwise, we will have insurgent math and continual war.

Peace in Ukraine? Also land for peace. Russia to retain the Crimea and to pay reparations to Ukraine.

To achieve the two peaceful solutions to on-going conflicts, which really should be done simultaneously, before there is no Ukraine left to defend, two main things are necessary: the ability to imagine peace, which seems to be coming slowly to Biden and Blinken, and a strong international commitment. Thus Russia has to be brought back into the international community; China must agree (why in the world are we talking about fighting China?); Iran must join in. The Saudis, the French (who are beginning to flinch on Ukraine), the Dutch, whose new leader says no more anything for Ukraine. What if we imagined no more weapons or money to Israel without a real commitment to the 2-state path–and the necessary international pressure to make it happen?

Impossible? the alternative is endless war.

Monumental Mishaps in American History (and politics):

When old heroes become bums, or let’s get in someone’s face about our history

Here is an op ed of mine published today in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Part of my on-going efforts to win friends everywhere. Meanwhile, in Florida and many other states, open discussion of our history is now essentially against the law, because someone’s feelings might be hurt. Get real: history always hurts someone.

Who Votes Red and Where: A Short Discourse on History

When we look at red states, it’s obvious that they are in the West and South. But even within states, we can see an old division–as old as the U.S. of A. in the case of eastern states–that still holds today.

Here are the results by state, with the number of electoral votes each has.

Things look a little more messy when we examine the vote by county.

What we have here, in an expression I think I coined, is the Mobile or Angry West. I like the word “Mobile” because this West, a geographical and emotional zone, has moved around the country. (Yes, I am working on a related book, about the crises of the year 1794.) California used to be all West, but now on the coast it’s blue. To see my West, which starts in eastern Oregon and goes all around the south–but is also rural counties in states like Pennsylvania–check the county map above.

Books like Jonathan Raban’s Bad Land: An American Romance, tell the story of disenchantment in the West, especially in Montana in the 1980s and ’90s, with the federal government. The feds can’t do anything right, they just get in the way, we are independent people here, and so on. This is the stance of Cliven Bundy in Nevada, of his sons –at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge takeover a few years ago–and neighbors. It’s Waco and Ruby Ridge, McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s the “Constitutional Sheriffs” movement, which says that the only authority in this country is county sheriffs. Never mind that the Constitution says nothing about sheriffs but does make clear that the highest authority is the federal government. There is one of these guys in Montgomery Co., MD, just 20 or so miles from the center of DC. And Richard Jones, in my country of Ohio, Butler. Of course, these sheriffs have been election deniers, as in Trump won and the election was stolen. They see nothing wrong with Jan. 6.

Ok, what is less well known is that we can link the Angry West to rebellions–yes, real rebellions–against colonial, state, and finally federal authority going back to the early days of the Republic or even farther.

For instance, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-94 centered in western Pennsylvania. Of the four counties most involved in the Rebellion, Washington, Westmoreland, Fayette, and Allegheny, all but the last have continued to be strongly conservative, while the rest of the state has become more blue.  Allegheny’s present tint is due to Pittsburgh’s position in its center and as its county seat.  But Pittsburgh is the only sizeable city in western Pennsylvania.  On the red side, Washington County voted 55.77 percent for Mehmet Oz, loser in the race for the Senate, and 50.26 percent for Donald Trump’s candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, who polled only 41.7 percent across the state as a whole.  The congressional representatives for Washington, Fayette, and Westmoreland Counties are Republican, in districts that overlap the counties.  Michael Doyle won in Fayette with 67.53 percent of the vote. Trump made three campaign stops in Pennsylvania in 2022, all in friendly Westmoreland County.

Alabama: where George Wallace became famous for racism and his various runs for the presidency, ending in 1972 when he was shot and paralyzed. He was as racist as a person can get, short of being a Nazi–but he would have made a good one. He also ran on a law-and-order platform, and said that the only four-letter words hippies didn’t know were “work” and “soap.” Professors–or was it intellectuals?–couldn’t park a bicycle straight.

Wallace was from Clio (the I is pronounced like the I in Ohio) Alabama. See Jefferson Cowie, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power on that area, Wallace, his racism, and his anti-federal government stance. (Hm–why do the people who hate the national government want to run it? To make it smaller, which doesn’t happen; perhaps to wreck it.)

Mo Brooks, Repub, of course, was Alabama’s congress rep 2011-2023 for the 5th District, which stretches across the northern end of the state. He was a founder of the House Freedom Caucus and had been a staunch supporter of D. Trump.

Is it possible that in 2020 Brooks won 100% of the vote in his district?? CNN says yes. My Lord, are we in Hitler’s Germany–I mean just judging by that election result!

On Jan. 6, 2021, Brooks tweeted “Today is the day. American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. . . . [people need to decide] what kind of America they want: One based on freedom and liberty or one based on Godless dictatorial power” (from Cowie, 414). Pretty Trumpy, I’d say. If you want to see Brooks on Jan. 6, go to https://secure.actblue.com/donate/nomo-rally?refcode=ga1.

But Brooks turned against Trump in 2022–then Brooks lost the Repub primary. Since then, to give him a little credit, he has been an outspoken critic of Trump. Too late, pal. Not staunchly Trumpy enough for Alabama any Mo (more, I mean).

Where there are attacks on what can be taught in school, they are often in the Mobile West. Anti-abortion–you guessed. No approval of Medicare for the state? Yup. Lots of guns, with high rates of shootings, including suicide by gun? Whoopee!

I thought in the summer of 2016 that Trump didn’t have a prayer of winning the presidency. Now I wonder about that all over again.

How Much Do You Hate the American Revolution and the Republic It Gave Birth To?

Here is a statue of Major General Anthony Wayne outside the Philadelphia Art Museum. Known, although not to his face, as Mad Anthony for his boldness in the Revolutionary War, he won a victory over the Northwest Indian Confederation at Fallen Timbers, near today’s Toledo, in 1794. The battle resulted in relatively few casualties, maybe 30 dead on each side. But the results were big: 1) the notion of a standing army, which aroused such antipathy in the British colonies here and then in the early Republic, could no longer be dismissed. Earlier expeditions in 1790 and 1791 against the Native coalition had ended in dismal failure. Arthur St. Clair’s army suffered near annihilation in November 1791, with more than 900 military casualties of his force of some 1200. Almost all of the camp followers, women and children were hacked to death, scalped while alive, and more.

2) Wayne and his Legion of Honor, a name chosen in 1792 to avoid the detested word “army,” showed that an American (must we say Euro American?) force could soundly defeat an Indian coalition. Never again to the east of the Mississippi was there a serious Native threat to American settlers (oy, good or bad? Hang on).

3) At virtually the same time, the Whiskey Rebellion was in full swing in western Pennsylvania. This was a revolt against an excise tax on the production of spirits, Alexander Hamilton’s idea of how to raise revenue for the empty treasury of the United States. The rebels dispersed by early November 1794 as an army of nearly 1300 federalized militia approached the four rebellious counties around and south of Pittsburgh. Taken together, Fallen Timbers and the (peaceful) end of the Whiskey Rebellion meant that fine words on paper in the Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified by enough states to go into effect in 1788-89, would now be translated into actual power–although many Republicans and people in what I call the Mobile or Angry West, which stretches from eastern Washington state east and south, even into Alabama–say that they deeply dislike and distrust that power.

4) The victory at Fallen Timbers helped greatly in getting the British to leave American territory that they had promised to give up at the Peace of Paris, 1783, but had continued to occupy.

Ok: Anthony Wayne used to be accounted a hero in the U.S. for his victory in 1794 as well as for victories and valor in the Revolutionary War. Numerous towns, a university, at least three counties in various states, a national forest, and more are named after him.

I participated in July in a workshop on writing biography, held in Philadelphia and run by the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, SHEAR. I was trying to bring out the controversy about Wayne and to highlight the difference between public perceptions of him and current views held by SHEAR historians. The response from four scholars in my group at the workshop, was scorn and insult to me for daring to suggest that Wayne was anything more than an agent of “settler colonialism,” a close relative of genocide in many studies.

Here’s how I started my talk: “the city council of Fort Wayne, Indiana, ran into a storm when in 2019 it established an annual Anthony Wayne Day.  For the historian Rob Harper, ‘General “Mad” Anthony Wayne is best known for forcing Miami, Shawnee, and other Native leaders to accept the United States’ territorial demands, primarily by torching the homes and crops of thousands of Native people.  An array of critics, ranging from local historians to the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, quickly denounced the decision.”[i]   Eran Zelnik points to ‘Wayne’s scorched-earth campaign in 1794’ as an outstanding example of American white elites’ engagement in ethnic cleansing.  Zelnik also remarks that the Whiskey Rebellion of the same moment “met a very different ending.”  President Washington and company were “unable and unwilling to catch any of the leaders of the insurrection—the majority of whom fled down the Ohio River to Kentucky.” The last assertion is absolutely wrong; leaders of the revolt were captured. One, David Bradford, escaped after he had been captured on the Ohio River, when a group of men sympathetic to the tax revolt freed him from a small group of soldiers.

Still, the non-violent end of the insurrection, Zelnik thinks, happened because the Pennsylvania rebels were white.

But there is an easy retort: the Northwest Indians shot at Wayne’s force, the Whiskey Rebels did not shoot at the federalized militia. If the Rebs had shot at the militia, you bet the troops would have fired back and caused a lot of bloodshed. President Washington and Alexander Hamilton wanted a peaceful end to the Rebellion, which would result from overawing the insurrectionists with a very large force of federalized militia. Bloodshed would have produced martyrs and stirred up people in the West of the day against federal power.

Race was not a factor in the end of the Whiskey Rebellion.

Anyway, the response to my talk in Philadelphia–which had a lot more stuff in it–was first, from a senior professor, “Tell me one good thing about Anthony Wayne.” Taken aback, I responded that he was a good commander who fought well, trained his men effectively and won a victory for the young Republic. (Okay, so did German commanders in WWII. But the ideology was different then!)

Not good enough to satisfy the dogs of scholarship! I was accused of endorsing Manifest Destiny, a mid-19th c concept that invoked God’s approval of white people’s movement west. Nope, no god in it for me.

“Fatuous,” thundered another senior scholar, John Wood Sweet, winner of various prizes for his books. He never did say exactly what was fatuous. The man did not look at me then or later when he tossed out empty phrases about what I had to say, e.g. “There is always an alternative” when I said that the tide of white settlers coming from the east could not have been held back by anyone. I asked Prof Not-so-Sweet what the alternative was but received nothing in reply. So I said, “The alternative was for everyone to stay home in Europe and be nice.’ But for so many, many people in Britain alone, that meant living at the bottom of the social order, at other people’s beck and call.

Moving to America gave Europeans a chance to own land–yes, yes, at the Indians’ expense. Owning land conferred dignity on people who could never get it at home. Migration is an old story that usually, after humans left East Africa, damaged people already on the scene. That issue did not stop the ancient Hebrews in the Bible, nor the Angles and Saxons moving into England, nor the Visigoths in Spain, and on and on. Yes, the people settled upon always suffered. That has been the way of the world.

American Indians moved around all the time. It’s not that Ohio was “empty land,” but it had not been the homeland of any tribe, as far as I can tell. Not the Miami, not the Shawnee, not the Delaware, not the Wyandot, etc. So the Americans represent the last in a long line of people who tried to control the Ohio territory.

But now members of SHEAR don’t want to think that way or write about that kind of topic. Of my group, the 2 senior professors were working on biographies of little known African Americans; a more junior person was trying to rehabilitate the Prophet, Tecumseh’s brother in another war, 1812-14, who is usually described as a bum, a drunk, a wife beater, etc., but who emerges in this scholar’s work as an exemplary individual; and finally, a person who is working on a white family who brought their Black slaves to Ohio in the early 19th c and badly mistreated them, even killing one. I.e., now we are supposed to write about race. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, but if that’s the only thing worth considering, we leave out so much–e.g. social class, politics, geography. East-West differences.

But race is the correct topic of the day. That might not matter, except that the general public still admires the Revolution, Washington (with all his faults, including slave ownership), and even Anthony Wayne.

History, as I’ve said before, is the most important topic in the U.S. today. But now some 35 states have passed or are considering bills that would limit what profs in public colleges can say about the past–and these laws are not in the vein of what the SHEARites work on and say. That attack comes from the Right, while the SHEAR people would claim that they are progressives.

The guys and one woman I clashed with in Philadelphia hate Anthony Wayne, which would mean that they hate the people who sent him and his Legion to Ohio, Washington, Hamilton, and others–certainly including Thomas Jefferson at times. Yes, we know about the hypocrisy regarding slavery even for that day. But the Revolution involved a whole lot more than a lack of ideal outcomes for major groups.

Hating Wayne and settler colonialism, which is rightly condemned in recent work, but which was, again, basic to human behavior, means that the haters hate the Revolution and, I suppose, believe that we would have been better off had we not rebelled against Britain.

I too am sorry that the Revolution did not empower women, free the slaves, and somehow produce excellent, polite, magnanimous behavior toward the Native Americans. But for the 18th century . . .

Oh well, I am sure all my fans want to hear me vent more. And I will, but that’s enough for now.

[i]

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[i] Eran Zelnik, “Self-Evident Walls: Reckoning with Recent Histories of Race and Nation,”

Journal of the Early Republic, 41, Number 1, Spring 2021, 20-22

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/783827  cites Slaughter on the W Reb

 

The last point is wildly and completely incorrect. Maybe I’ll write more on that another time.

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[i] Rob Harper, “Across the City Council Divide,” Reviews in American History, 49, Number 2, June 2021.