Studying the Amurkan Tribe

Despite what the Tea Partiers may tell you, America's great new civil war is not, like so many revolutions before it, an underground resistance to a fascist state. Yes, there are many aspects of fascism -- consolidation of power, security obsessions, military fixation, corporate oligarchy -- that we can recognize in today's America. But for them to work completely, they need a national identity. Something we simply can't agree on any more.

There's also a strong religious and racial component to this struggle, but it'd be a mistake to categorize things simply in those terms, because there's a large contingent of athiest Libertarians, liberal pagans, and old-school Christian conservatives who agree on why the country's headed down the wrong path, not to mention the 43 percent of white voters -- and nearly 10 percent of Republicans -- who were more than happy to elect a Black Democrat with a Muslimy name as President. (And this in the biggest percentage turnout since 1968.)

No, the divide is larger than that, a cultural one. The powers that currently rule America, or rather, the powers behind them, have cynically exploited that divide to the fullest for their own economic gain. The problem is the ancient tribe of straight white male Christians that still exists here. The Amurkans.

Now, there's not a thing wrong with being white and straight and male and working-to-middle class and Christian and conservative. I myself have been all of those things at some point in my life, and am still most of those things. But if you feel like you're part of a chosen people, a tribe God gave a country to in order to have them procreate there, to the exclusion of all others, and in the process ruling the world, then you might be a redneck. You're definitely part of the problem.

The Founding Father.

"The U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." -- Sean Hannity

I use "Amurka" as opposed to America in order to separate the two, in the same way that the Amurkan Tribe's spiritual leader, Sarah Palin, differentiates between a "real" America and a fake one, or the way its shaman, Glenn Beck, speaks about reclaiming a country that he only remembers from commercials. And therein lies the problem: that country, Amurka, has never really existed. But over the past few decades, there's been a thriving cottage industry dedicated to scaring people into believing there was, and that the tribe that ruled it is in danger of losing everything.

Sociologists tell us that societies originally ordered around clans, really just extended families, who bred close to home and who flew the flag of their people. Eventually, as the world's population increased and got to know each other, those became tribes. Tribes weren't clannish, but they were racial and religious; they created "origin myths" in which they created and protected by a higher being for a certain purpose, a being who then instructed them to perpetuate their number at any cost. When the population became larger and the world smaller still, these tribes joined together, out of mutual interest, and became the societies we know today. Usually, they defined themselves by territorial borders. You know, countries.

This was fine when America was founded as a nation of rugged individualists -- there was a general, European "enlightenment" view that only white-skinned males had the intelligence to create and sustain such societies, but there was a surprising bit of latitude within that narrow thought. By and large, white male citizens were allowed to live as they pleased. Which is why modern Americans for example, still argue over the religious beliefs of our Founding Fathers.

A tribal gathering.

But by the end of the 19th century, however, America was connected, one interdependent economic and social organism. At that point, the country began to create one overwhelming dogma about itself and what its place was in the world; problem was, the very nature of democracy (and, to a lesser extent, capitalism) meant that the story would be ever-changing. The melting pot, through decades of often-tragic struggle, became real, not just racially but culturally.

As the 1950s ended and the nation -- now the standard bearer of the world, thanks largely to that rugged individualism -- came to grips with its clamoring underground, this began to be a problem. Hence, the retroactive creation of the Amurkan Tribe, the segment of white Christian conservative fundamentalists who began to believe that this land and everything in it had always been created for specific use as their Eden. And that creation story, that tribal origin myth, handed down from generation to generation, touches every aspect of American society today. It is the force which seeks to hold the country back, in order to keep it in a place it's never really been.

Consider the following.

"The term ‘gay marriage’ is an oxymoron. Because marriage is a union and a bond between a man and a woman to do one thing: the furtherance of society by procreation, through creating new life." -- Allen West (R-FL) 

Onan was a minor Biblical figure (Genesis 38) who, in order to spite his tribal leadership, shot his seed upon the ground, rather than into a female participant. (He refused to impregnate his brother's widow for the sake of the tribe, knowing that he wouldn't have any legal claim to the kids.) For this, Yahweh sentenced him to death. Not because God took moral offense at the act of masturbation. Rather the refusal to propagate the tribe was the sin in question. Believe it or not, this little five-verse passage is the entire reason your priest told you that you were going to Hell for touching yourself (assuming he didn't offer to help). "Onanism," for many years, was used as a polite technical term for masturbation.

The fear.

More importantly, this is what Amurkans speak of when they denounce gay marriage as threatening to what they call "traditional" marriage. It removes men from what they see as their main duty in life: making more tribe members. Being gay, therefore, is an affront to God, and "gay marriage" literally legitimizes it. It's the same fear that drives the anti-abortion crowd, who always seem to care a lot less about the health and care of babies once they're born; not procreating is what's most destructive to the tribe.

So is stem cell research. No matter how many sick people it may cure, the next generation of the tribe will always be seen as more important by sheer virtue of their youth and relative health. So it doesn't matter that the object in stem-cell research isn't a baby, but a piece of something that could never on its own become a baby. It's still an affront to the covenant. If God sees the Amurkans aren't taking procreating seriously, he will remove his blessings and protection from them. See?

''[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 
years ago.'' -- Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

Global warning and creationism also have to be rejected out of hand, because they take the creation myth out of the Lord's hands, and put it in the hands of scientists. Mortal scientists. Imagine a scientist wandering into the camp of some jungle tribe that's never met civilization, and explaining that little bugs they couldn't see, living inside them, were what was making them sick. You get the idea. And you can forget about having the government cleaning the air or the water. God is in control, God runs nature, and God will take care of us. Any other party line screws up the backstory.

Tribalism affects issues in non-religious ways, as well. The Second Amendment is prized by the tribalists with a knee-jerk ferocity; for every one American that wants to protect his home and family, or just shoot his own dinner, there are ten Amurkans who see the Amendment as a legal loophole, an opt-out clause that allows them to break their treaty with the American government. Tribes historically have recognized when it was necessary to acquiesce to a greater societal power for their own continued existence, but they always reserve the right to act independently. They honor neither the individual nor the government. The Stars and Stripes are not venerated as a symbol of freedom, or even America, but as a tribal war flag. Why else get so upset about someone setting it on fire?

"We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that." -- Rick Perry, Governor of Texas

Not a contradiction.

Guns are a big part of this idea, as are secessionist movements. America, to the Amurkan, is seen as something that can be discarded when necessary. This is why Amurkans have been co-opted by the "small government" movement, a reaction against the central government and in favor of small, local governments, which, coincidentally for the tribe, are regional and easily formed around tribe outposts. You know, suburbs. You can factor in New World Order conspiracy theorists into this idea, as well; it's one thing to consider the Federal Reserve undemocratic by its very nature, quite another to assume that tribe members are about to be rounded up and that the climactic battle of Good and Evil is about to be played out on our soil. (Hint: The Tribe wins.)

Amurkans do not trust other races, no matter how clean, hard-working, or even Christian they can be. This is why Mexican immigrants must be kept from the path to citizenship, and then removed from the holy land when they can't become citizens. It's why white people move out of neighborhoods when black folks move in. It's why no one wants a mosque that's not a mosque at Ground Zero even though it's not. It's why they made fried chicken and watermelon jokes about Obama, even though he doesn't eat those things. It's why your aunt sends you Ebonics jokes in email. It's why torturing brown people is fine, but feeling up white people at airports is not.

''Barack Obama... chose to use his name Barack for a reason -- to identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?"-- Glenn Beck

The right-wing politicos of this country began about 30 years ago to court Amurkans, in order to get their votes after a few disastrous decades in and mostly out of the White House. Reagan's "welfare queens" speech and George H. W. Bush's Willie Horton ad and his son's original characterization of the unnecessary Iraq war as a religious crusade -- all these things are designed to wink at Amurkans, to let them know the Great White Father has their best interests and livelihoods in mind. None of their tax money will be spent on non-tribesmen on their watch. No Head Start, no welfare, no Pell Grants, no affirmative action. Government is broke, sorry. No more money for you. The tribe must not be threatened.

This is, therefore, the 20 percent of America that goes out to vote and tip elections one way or another, the constant 20 percent figure in those polls, the percentage that are fed and instantly believe things you can't believe anyone would. Saddam Hussein planned 9/11? The Earth is 6,000 years old? Donald Trump would make a good President? Really?

“[The rich are] the people who’ve been hit the hardest by this recession, and who need to create the jobs that will get us out of it.” -- Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Minority Leader

Of course, if that political arm really cared about creating better lives for these people, instead of just creating the rhetoric of fear, the manufacturing base wouldn't have disappeared from their homeland and their sons and daughters -- a disproportionate number of soldiers are Amurkans -- wouldn't be sent off to die to keep enough oil on the international commodities market. The neocons have done everything in their power to hurt the tribe, much like the American government did to the Native Americans, and using much the same strategy:  exploit their fear of other tribes, sell them guns, and all the while eat away at their livelihood until they're too weak to resist in any meaningful way.

The internet knows.

But the media is owned by many of these same interests, so the stories are kept misdirected away from the larger issues and onto easy stories the tribe understands. Amurkacentrism is everywhere. When Egypt explodes, the Nightly News finds a tribe member living there and watches them so they don't get hurt. When an Amurkan child, or someone who could pass for one, is in danger, endless stories are devoted to her. And when a story does manage to damage the rep of someone in power, it's only because Amurkans got hurt.

In the mind of the tribe member, their white Christian race was brought to this land by God himself, who helped them depopulate it so they could repopulate it. To them, it has always been their holy land and no other. They will propagate the species, they will secure its resources, they will only care about its members. Regardless of who else might actually live here.

''My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.'' -- South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer

So to you Amurkans, who believe they are the chosen people of this land: Shut up. You did not build this country. This country stopped being built around 1968 or so, and has been falling apart ever since. You are owed nothing, any more than someone who refuses to work. You don't get to "take this country back," because you have no natural birthright to it. You shame your actual forefathers, who didn't feel they were on some sort of cultural welfare, who were too busy creating the standard of living you're now in the process of losing. Your time is at an end, and it's not because Janet Jackson showed her nipple or someone hung a foreign flag in his garage or Glee exists. It's everyone's country now; the good news is, you can still apply for citizenship. There's a lot of work to be done.