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JOHN R. HALL, Senior Contributing Editor John R. Hall is a street-trained agnotologist with an advanced degree in American Ignorance. Other hats include: photojournalist, novelist, restaurateur, mountaineer, grocer, nurseryman, and janitor. He’s written three novels which have been read by almost nobody: ‘Embracing Darwin’, ‘Last Dance in Lubberland’, and ‘Atlas fumbled’. An untrained writer and college drop-out, he began his short career in journalism writing the ‘Excursion’ column for The Jackson Hole News & Guide. More recently he penned the ‘Left Column’ for The Molokai Island Times; appropriately on the island once known as a leper colony. John currently resides, writes, and protests injustice in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and walks among the spirits of those who once occupied the 79 Disappeared Pueblos. Read more John Halls’s articles.
For those of us who’ve spent our lives under the heavy hand of Empire, a trip to Mexico’s Corazon can be a life-affirming experience. My wife and I have travelled there three times in the last two years, and are planning a fourth. Possibly even a move there. Friends and acquaintances ask us if we fear for our safety south of the border. Hah! They haven’t a clue.
For those of us who’ve spent our lives under the heavy hand of Empire, a trip to Mexico’s Corazon can be a life-affirming experience. My wife and I have travelled there three times in the last two years, and are planning a fourth. Possibly even a move there. Friends and acquaintances ask us if we fear for our safety south of the border. Hah! They haven’t a clue.
Our last Guanajuato adventure was the entire month of June, 2016. We rented a casita on Privada de Animas (Private Souls), in San Miguel de Allende. I dream of it often, and have recurring nightmares of the ordeal involved in getting there. At the time, we lived in Clark County, Nevada. Begin dream sequence:
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Memorial Day is behind us and I’m scraping the bullshit off my shoes from yet another military-glorifying holiday, then obediently placing them into plastic trays of The Airport Gestapo at Las Vegas Broken Dreams International Airport. Once called Decoration Day, the name was officially changed in 1967. It is a time to remember, honor, and decorate the graves of those uniformed men and women who left a nearly four hundred year-long trail of bloody corpses, orphaned babies, and cries of agony across every corner of the world, in a sacred quest for American-style liberty and justice. It is no surprise that the victims get no holiday. They never have. No glory for losers. No prideful tears, no flags, no salutes, no monuments, no fighter-jet flyovers.
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An army of little Airport Eichmans, uniformed with attitude, herd us through their bizarre, nightmare maze of intense scrutiny with a collective gaze of accusation. Half undressed, separated from all possessions, ordered through the metal detector, body scanner, hands up, step there, hold still. They notice my upright middle fingers and I’m subjected to the brunt of their authority. Why do I have two laptops? Duh, there are two of us travelling. Why am I making their job harder? Sorry, just not a fan of militarism or fascism. We’re here to protect you. Guess you’re doing your job. The U.S. Government hasn’t destroyed any more New York City skyscrapers recently. Obviously old and borderline senile, I’m blocking traffic flow so they cut me some slack and let me pass without a colorectal search. I leave singing a chorus of “This Land is Your Land”. Empire’s foot soldiers. Fuck ’em. It’ll be good to get the hell out of the Belly of the Beast for a while. Mexico!
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A Bomb-sniffing German Shepherd on a short leash dogs me to the departure gate. No coincidence I’d guess that his stone-faced handler runs him by me thrice. Finally onboard and off the ground. Seven miles high above enemy-occupied territory, and on our way to Northern Mesoamerica…Mexico’s Corazon. San Miguel de Allende by way of Mexico City and Leon. Gazing at the sweeping expanse of the Dead Mountain Wilderness in the Mohave Desert below, visions of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States” dance in my head. Heartfelt thanks to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for her well written volume. Before Columbus and The Pope kicked off the New World Holocaust, Central Mexico was one of earth’s seven cradles of civilization. The first and third most massive pyramids in the world. A population of thirty million. Trade routes running in all directions, in a network covering both the north and south continents from the Cape Horn to the arctic, from Atlantic to Pacific. An agricultural society based on corn, beans, and squash with advanced irrigation techniques. Highly developed systems of astronomy and mathematics, and the Mayans should be credited with the invention of the zero…more than two thousand years ago. Not the Egyptians.
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End dream sequence.
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We Americans have all heard the sugar-coated story since childhood. Nearly 400 years ago the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, bringing the light of civilization and bountiful gifts for the hunting-gathering residents. Not that the Native Americans needed civilization, having already been in possession of one for at least ten millennia. Along with the beads and trinkets, the colonist-invaders came bearing the Bible, firearms, firewater, greed, and a myriad of infectious diseases; all of which they gladly shared. The Spanish, French and other Europeans had already been practicing and perfecting their bloody feeding-frenzy conquest-occupation for more than a century in Mexico, Central and South America, so the Pilgrims had some catching up to do.
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And so began the eradication. As the colonists reproduced and more ships added to their numbers, the Native Americans were just an impediment to progress. From pre-Revolutionary times through the early twentieth century, Scalping for Dollars was the most effective way to eliminate what was considered human vermin and to purloin the land. Without the least hesitation, the bounty on scalps was born. After all, these were sub-human non-Christians. Rules changed from time to time, depending on the urgency of extermination. Sometimes trophies from women and children were acceptable…often at a reduced bounty. Other times only adult men qualified. After all, young women and children could be added to the legions of enslaved Africans who had become the backbone of the burgeoning capitalistic economic system.
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The Scalping for Dollars phenomenon left Native American towns and villages piled high with bloody corpses, thereby giving the invaders a new, demeaning, and amusing nickname for the original inhabitants. According to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, this is the true origin of the term “redskins”. Of course other methods eradication were used, including burning villages, torching crops, slaughtering bison, and mass-relocations.
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America’s Founding Fathers are adored and venerated like damned saints. African slave-owning, Native American-hating, land-wealthy white men with a common quest: Growth, land, power. Thomas Jefferson once took time off from his fulltime job, as top stud at his own slave farm, to elucidate his dream for the United States: “However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication (salacious smile) will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.”
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Soon The Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny were engrained in the no holds barred Anglo-American psyche. Within a few generations nearly all of Native American civilization was destroyed, and with the surviving remnants of tribal populations pigeon-holed into reservations for safe-keeping, the quest was on to rule the world. A myriad of minor wars laced with more than enough major ones followed…1812, Mexican-American, Civil, Spanish-American, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and endless Mideast Mayhem. Arguably all, or nearly all of the conflicts, were instigated by The United States.
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Long ago abandoned as official policy, scalping is now used only occasionally and surreptitiously by the U.S. military, being replaced by a plethora of other vehicles of mayhem and terror. So many bombs, so little time, including but certainly not limited to the big ones: The end-time assortment of nuclear weapons. Throw in a mix of multiple varieties of missiles, drones, napalm, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, landmines, and agent orange. Turn loose thousands of highly-trained, undercover intelligence goons. Open a thousand military bases in every corner of the world. Feed the monster of war with more cash than the rest of the world spends on its military arsenals combined. End result…To use the words of Defense Policy Board member and extreme cheerleader for U.S. militarism, Robert Kaplan:
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“By the turn of the 21st century, the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment’s notice. The Pentagon divided the planet into five area commands–similar to the way that the Indian Country of the American West had been divided in the mid-nineteenth century by the U.S. Army…’Welcome to Injun Country’ was the refrain I heard from troops from Columbia to the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq. To be sure, the problem for the American military was less (Islamic) fundamentalism than anarchy. The War on Terrorism was really about taming the frontier.”
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“…taming the frontier”…trouble with the frontier is that somebody else is already living there. Somebody in the way of progress and profit. Some things never change. The U.S. military, which does the scalping and bombing for the descendants of Jefferson, Washington, and Native American-killer extraordinaire Andrew Jackson, is always on the job. Still scalping/bombing those who resist, still burning villages, killing livestock, torturing the uncooperative, and turning the rest into wage-slaves. And always with the cheers and blessings of the vast majority of Americans. In his book “Bureaucratic Insanity: The Search for Meaning”, Sean Kerrigan makes note of how typical Americans respond to the notion of war:
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“In 2003, Comedian Julian Morrow asked a dozen or so random people who the United States should bomb next. Most answered Iran, North Korea or Russia, but a few mentioned Cuba, Italy and even Canada. One individual even said we should bomb France, because ‘They were not our allies (during the Iraq War).’ None of the dozen or so shown in the interview said that we shouldn’t bomb anyone.” No loyal American worth his salt would ever question the basic goodness of dropping bombs on foreigners. Any foreigners, any time, no valid reason required. It’s what we do best.
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Injun Country is now the Russian Federation as NATO troops push threateningly against its border. Simultaneously Empire has provocatively “pivoted” U.S. military forces to China’s shores. There are many constants in history. The U.S. Empire will die as all empires do. This is a given. It can die with a whimper, leaving the remnants of a less than civil society intact, or it can embark on a Doctor Strangelove-Slim Pickens-bomb-riding scalp-hunt within the borders of Russia and China, and die with a bang. If the latter choice is made, we’ll all pay the price. Last year, four Russian intellectuals, living inside the United States, released an open letter to Americans, titled: “A Russian Warning”. The letter, posted on cluborlov on 5-31-2016 was signed by Dmitry Orlov, the Saker, Evgenia Gurevich, Ph.D., and Victor Katsap, Ph.D. Its warning is simple, and should be heeded:
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“If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.”
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It is time for the scalp hunt to end, boys and girls. Enough death , enough bombs. Paz!
About the author
JOHN R. HALL, Senior Contributing Editor John R. Hall is a street-trained agnotologist with an advanced degree in American Ignorance. Other hats include: photojournalist, novelist, restaurateur, mountaineer, grocer, nurseryman, and janitor. He’s written three novels which have been read by almost nobody: ‘Embracing Darwin’, ‘Last Dance in Lubberland’, and ‘Atlas fumbled’. An untrained writer and college drop-out, he began his short career in journalism writing the ‘Excursion’ column for The Jackson Hole News & Guide. More recently he penned the ‘Left Column’ for The Molokai Island Times; appropriately on the island once known as a leper colony. John currently resides, writes, and protests injustice in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and walks among the spirits of those who once occupied the 79 Disappeared Pueblos. Read more John Halls’s articles. 
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