Ghost Dancers 2016

Politics are useless.  We bought into the “Reagan Revolution” and the “Republican Revolution” just as the left has bought into the Half-Kenyan Bastard’s “fundamental transformation”.  As bad as Obama has been for the United States – and the world, the regime is simply riding the extreme swing of the pendulum. 

We used to say that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged.  The new saying may be something like a libertarian is a collectivist who got mugged by the government.  Apart from destroying freedom, government does nothing well.  This makes it difficult to undo the encroachment of government by political means.  There is too much entrenched bureaucracy, too many federal judges with political agendas, too many overzealous prosecutors at all levels, and far too many people in both the 1% and the 99% classes who suck the government teat.

The key is to change the culture – which is virtually impossible for an individual or even a group, but I think there is a zeitgeist.  More importantly, I know that all belief systems and cultural trends are subject to the cold judgment of reality.   Being a Christian, I also trust in God, but all sane humans, regardless of beliefs, must acknowledge an objective reality.  It seems that an increasing number of people, particularly in the West among the so-called First World nations, are not that sane.

 We read of a religious movement among the Native Americans of the 19^th Century called the Ghost Dance.  Unlike the fictional portrayal of the Ghost Dancers in the Western genre, there were several variations of the belief system.  Possibly the most widespread and benevolent occurred as a result of a vision to a Paiute shaman named Wovoka around 1889.  Wovoka had participated in the earlier Ghost Dance movement of the 1870.  In addition to ritual dances, Wovoka’s prophecies emphasized righteous living and non-violence, prayer, mediation, and chanting.  The result, it was believed, would be a return to the old ways, peace with the whites, and a new world where the resurrected dead would be united with the living. 

Many tribes sent representatives to Wovoka’s reservation in Nevada for instruction in this revived Ghost Dance.  As the dance and teachings were taken back to the various tribes, language and tribal culture introduced variations and re-interpretations.  This is perhaps most notable and notorious among the Lakota. 

Kicking Bear, a Miniconjou Teton Lakota, was one of those who made the pilgrimage.  As he took the Ghost Dance to the Pine Ridge reservation, his interpretation differed significantly from Wovoka’s.  The emphasis on non-violence disappeared.  The Lakotas at Pine Ridge began to wear the infamous “ghost shirts” which were supposed to be impenetrable by the white man’s bullets.  As word of this spread, it raised concerns among citizens and the military.  The ultimate tragic result was the Massacre at Wounded Knee. 

Is there a lesson for us today?  For one, disarming a population makes massacres much easier on the oppressors.  For another, our culture has adopted a view that reality is subjective, that the world can be what we want it to if we all just wish hard enough.  There was some truth in what Wovoka taught, and, like him, I believe the living and the dead of every people, tongue, tribe, and nation will be reunited in a new heaven and new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.  Until then, though, the “old ways”, as Wovoka pictured them, with the tribes free of the reservations and the buffalo on the plains as a living sea were not to return. 

There are bad people in the world.  There are greedy people – even among the poor.  There are thugs, including those who hide behind government uniforms, badges, and court orders.  The last few generations in America have grown up in a time of historically unprecedented ease, peace, health, wealth, and abundance.  We are, in short, spoiled.  A spoiled child believes that he can and should have whatever he desires, and that it is only parental intransience that stands in his way.  Barack Obama is only the most obvious present example of this attitude.  I don’t even blame the HKB for this as it is what he was taught as a child among the Reds and nothing has ever shown him otherwise.  Why should he believe differently?  The only real problem is white people refusing to step aside.

The truth is that resources are limited, that somebody has to work to provide for those who think it’s their right to sit on their collective and collectivist asses.  You can’t produce energy from thin air.  You can’t run power plants, power industries, create jobs, heat and cool homes, keep food cold, grow corn and beef and bacon, make iPhones, or any of the other myriad of things that make modern civilization possible without dealing with the basic realities of physics and chemistry.  Cars are not going to run on fairy dust, and the fairies aren’t going to ride the bus.  Your #hashtags won’t stop bullets any better than Kicking Bear’s ghost shirt.