A Walk Amongst the Dead

Every day, we walk amongst the land of the dead.  It goes beyond the cemeteries and graveyards in which we bury our deceased.  All the land we travel on, the roads, the sidewalks, the bike trails, all are built upon those who perished clearing the land, whether they are the bodies of the builders or the bodies of the indigenous that stood in the way of white progress.  These are not the ones for whom we mount iron plaques on buildings.  The plaques are to commemorate those who were responsible for the killing and decimating of cultures.  Murdering and destroying all in the name of progress; build the highways, the railroads, the cities, all on the bodies and souls of those who existed long before we, the white people, came along for the most part by accident and flawed navigation.

Of course, it goes beyond skin color.  The genocide was based on religion (usually non-Christian), political beliefs, and white nationalism, among other factors.  It was called Manifest Destiny, which was the belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined--by the Christian God, its advocates believed--to expand westward across North America*. Manifest Destiny was the impetus, at least partly, for the genocide of the country’s indigenous peoples, the continuation of the enslavement of African people and their offspring.  It was the same rationalization that Adolph Hitler used for the deportation and extermination of Jews, and other races he thought were "lesser."

We are seeing this line of thinking in our current government.  Every day we see the images of people being mobbed and detained by supposed ICE agents. Every day we hear about people being deported, sometimes to countries not of their origin. Every day, the government steals more power from its citizens.

All three branches of government have been infiltrated by Christian nationalists. The current president ran on a not-so-subtle platform of eliminating “the other” i.e. non-White, non-Christians by deportation.

So, when you walk the sidewalks of your town or walking trails in your local park, or when you drive anywhere, remember that there are the bones and ashes and blood of the long since dead.  Be mindful of the dead that preceded you. It was they who made these things possible. It was not just the beliefs of the white settlers and expansionists.  They had to force the indigenous or peoples abducted from their home country into doing the work.

Also, bear in mind, this is the possible future for anyone living in this country now.  Anyone who the Christian Nationalists believe are unworthy of living in this country. People of Color, non-Christians, LGBTQ, and others are in danger.
 
 
*The Overland Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 2 (August 1869)