The Entitlement Culture

William Cronon in “Changes in the Land” does an excellent job of describing how the cultures of both the Indians and colonists altered the New England environment. While Cronon analyzes the effects of the “political organization, systems of production and in human relationships with the natural world,” he fails to recognize the root of these behaviors. Plainly and simply, Cronon nearly entirely neglects to adequately judge the obstinate ignorant hubris of and the colonist’s alienation from nature as not only having played a significant role in its effects on the environment but also having played a foundational role in the creation of their culture. Furthermore, his descriptions of the colonists in relation to the Indian way of life could not paint a more glaringly contradictory portrait.

If the Indians lived with nature, then the colonists lived off nature. For all the ignorance of ecology that the colonists exhibited, the Indians on the other hand displayed a deep appreciation and understanding of the realities of nature and defined their limited needs accordingly. And while it may be true that there doesn’t exist a “pristine world of an earlier and now lost time” due to the unending variations inherent in nature, it is without question a legitimate judgment to say that the early colonists, whose legacy still persists today, were not only unquestionably ignorant of the cycles of nature in which they lived but that the breadth of their culture formed both in the old and new worlds seems to have flowed from their colossal arrogant ignorance of their relationship with nature and in doing so has undoubtedly left a “fallen humanity in a fallen world.” Cronon’s description of not only the behaviors but the extent of the ramifications of the relative differences in ecology between the colonists and Indians could not make this point more lucidly.

Essentially Cronon argues that the cultures of both the colonists and the Indians were responsible for “changes in the land.” He posits that capitalism through the creation of international markets, debt and the commoditification of nature, English law by way of its violently backed supremacy, its property bounding requirements and its unequal treatment of the Indians, the importation of domesticated animals, which rapidly consumed resources and required fencing and the dispersal of colonists throughout New England, in addition to a factor somewhat a part of but not entirely removed from culture, epidemiological hegemony, which in some cases resulted in the wholesale destruction of communities of Indians, were all factors that influenced changes in the land. While the Indian “community’s social definition of “need” was inherently limited, and made economic abundance a relatively easy attainment for its members,” the culture of the colonists seemed to push them towards an insatiable drive for more.

The very act of sailing wooden ships across the vast ocean without a destination was a very clear example of their voracious appetites. Once landed, the imposition of the colonist’s culture upon not only the Indian’s way of life but also on and against the realities of nature describes a people alienated from their own relationship with the land and their culture as merely the product of this estrangement. Only a people so affected could create a culture thus; to violently impose its way of life on others, to perceive it as one’s right to not only treat nature but also people in such an injuriously officious manner, to sell the products of nature for the accumulation of an arbitrarily established form of profit, to continually encroach upon a people despite the fact that mere contact leads to their macabre demise. Where Cronon sees culpability of both cultures in altering the landscape, prudent analysis should certainly judge the Indian culture as infinitely more responsible, just and sustainable in making changes in the land as viewed against the backdrop of a culture making changes ????????to the land.

The Biggest Fairly Tale I’ve Ever Seen: The Clinton Legacy

Bill Clinton was probably one of the most gifted Presidents in our country’s history and by far, the biggest disappointment. Despite his charisma and nearly unparalled ability to suavely articulate the pants off nearly anyone, he was after all a colossal bold faced liar and deceiver. However, all that is despite his politics, which were moderate at best and mostly downright conservative. In fact, it could rightfully be argued that Clinton was more conservative than W. It’s no wonder he gets along so well with Senior.

Now many of your initial inclinations to these statements may be shock but when you throw out Clinton’s rhetoric and look solely at his record it’s hard to discern the liberal pariah that the Right tries to make him out to be.

I dare you to name an example of a successful Clinton backed “liberal” policy? “Don’t ask, don’t tell?” Universal health care that he pawned off on his wife because he didn’t want the political failure on his record? Clinton’s real legacy is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act where the federal death penalty was expanded to some 60 different offenses, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, also know as “welfare-to-work,” a euphemism that merely hides how hard politicians have made it for the poor to climb out of the doldrums, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which essentially destroys the notion of fair use of media that you already own, the Telecom Reform Act which has allowed for greater monopolies of all forms of the media (newspaper, television, radio), the Communications Decency Act which attempted to infringed on the right of free speech, the Defense of Marriage Act which denies the equal protection of the law to homosexuals and let us not forget, probably one of the most disastrous in U.S. history, the Iraq Liberation Act, which called for regime change and was used by W. and Congressional Democrats and Republicans to find an excuse to use force to invade and occupy the impotent country.

All of this is Clinton’s true legacy; presidential signatures on bills that later George W. Bush and the Republican controlled Congress didn’t have to find a way to pass.

But the most profound failure of the Clinton years, besides taking credit for economic successes his administration had absolutely nothing to do with, was the facade that all these half-measures represent not what they truly are, that being political expedience and the embodiment of the societal wide conservative harshness and intolerance that has swept our nation anew, but that these policies, these lies, these deceptions and the smooth-talking and cheating attitude in some way represents that what it means to be on the Left.

Clinton and the New Democrats are “What’s Wrong with Kansas” and the reasons why this country has such a resistance to turning as decisively Left as it has turned Right. When history eventually paints its picture of the Clinton’s legacy it should be as a continuation of what came before it; it should include the fact that the country’s hemorrhaging started with Nixon, accelerated under Reagan, continued through Bush and Clinton and was taken to a further extreme by George W. Bush. Hopefully, this country never again aspires to the true legacy of William Jefferson Clinton and the rest of the other Right-wing presidents.

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