Cannibals’ Ball

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, the stories still the same, the rationalization of what should be a shame.

Wouldn’t it be nice if propagandists were so bold as to tell you in the opening line of their books what they were honestly trying to accomplish? If George Fitzhugh was so honest to do so in his book Cannibals All it might have looked like the opening line to this little ditty. Alas, one can find Fitzhugh’s true message by digging through the lines of inanity.

A purely superficial critique of Fitzhugh’s book may include the observation that while Fitzhugh starts out by convincing the reader that the writer is going somewhere, he is quickly read as jumping off the deep end after what a modern day psychologist would surely conclude is the reaction of his subconscious mind driving him to the point of hysteria due directly to the obvious contradictions that his conscious mind fails to see when it allows his hand to grab the pen and put these thoughts to paper. For instance, Fitzhugh perceives despotism to be inherent in the Constitution,

“‘ the new governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class self-elected despots,”

while he fails to see how despotism is truly inherent in the master/slave relationship.

In fact it is rather easy to destroy Fitzhugh’s arguments for the status quo. Just as he puts so much stock in reframing the argument by ignoring the despotism inherent in his proposals and enhancing it in the democracy that he condemns, he also puts too much stock in his description of the relatively easy going life of the slave and by simply describing how and why he’s wrong in his portrayal weakens if not destroys his entire argument.

However, it must be said that Fitzhugh, if by chance, wasn’t entirely wrong either. It may be hard for the modern reader of Fitzhugh to see any correlation between a slave and a free laborer, after all liberals have been fighting against the likes of people like Fitzhugh for time eternal and at least in this case have been successful in securing what ironically modern conservatives have come to take for granted, such as the 8-hour work day, overtime, workers compensation, workplace safety standards, child labor laws, etc., etc., etc. The fact is that in the day and age of Fitzhugh and prior to these liberal benevolent benefactors, free laborers, including children as young as 5, toiled in conditions at least as bad as those of the slave. As the PBS special on Andrew Carnegie and the “Gilded Age” points out,

“While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation’s 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line. Rural Americans and new immigrants crowded into urban areas. Tenements spread across city landscapes, teeming with crime and filth. Americans had sewing machines, phonographs, skyscrapers, and even electric lights, yet most people labored in the shadow of poverty.”

Yet Fitzhugh’s description of what it was like for a slave would make almost anyone living in a tenement wonder where to sign-up for such a gig. After all as Fitzhugh rosily describes, wouldn’t we all like to work less than 9 hours a day, be provided shelter, food and clothing and have holidays, sick days and the Sabbath off? For some of us this isn’t too far from our present reality but as I have already described you only have to thank a liberal. Even still, to neglect that Fitzhugh’s description of free laborers, at least in part, prevails for many millions of workers in this country today, would be to discount the truth of the matter in much of the same way that Fitzhugh is guilty of,
“We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploitate them. The free laborer must work or starve.”

Additionally, Fitzhugh is partially correct in pointing out that free laborers are,
“‘more of a slave than the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right.”

Fitzhugh is only partially correct in his characterization of free labor slaves as being “more of a slave than the Negro.” Though it would never have occurred to Fitzhugh to do so and would have run entirely against his conservative philosophy, the act of simply asking a slave what his life was really like would be sufficient in utterly destroying Fitzhugh’s argument. Since the modern United States are thankfully lacking for slaves we can still lob Fitzhugh’s argument atop the ash heap of history merely by describing how the life of a slave truly was in opposition to Fitzhugh’s cheery and almost entirely fictional portrayal. In the book Charles Ball, The Life of an American Slave written in 1859, we at least come to understand, albeit academically, what the life of a slave was truly like.

The book describes a life filled with endless toil, violence and beatings, rape, hunger and the forced dissolution of families, which doesn’t exactly jive with Fitzhugh’s description of the south as upholding,

“Love and veneration for the family is with us not only a principle, but probably a prejudice and a weakness”

It would seem to the modern reader that “prejudice” and “weakness” are all Fitzhugh and his ilk are capable of communicating.

Charles Ball describes what the life of a slave was truly like in the south that supposedly had “love and veneration for the family,”
“My story is a true one, and I shall tell it in a simple style. It will be merely a recital of my life as a slave in the Southern States of the Union - a description of Negro slavery in the “model Republic.”

My grandfather was brought from Africa and sold as a slave in Calvert County, in Maryland. I never understood the name of the ship in which he was imported, nor the name of the planter who bought him on his arrival, but at the time I knew him he was a slave in a family called Maud, who resided near Leonardtown. My father was a slave in a family named Hauty, living near the same place. My mother was the slave of a tobacco planter, who died when I was about four years old. My mother had several children, and they were sold upon master’s death to separate purchasers. She was sold, my father told me, to a Georgia trader. I, of all her children, was the only one left in Maryland. When sold I was naked, never having had on clothes in my life, but my new master gave me a child’s frock, belonging to one of his own children. After he had purchased me, he dressed me in this garment, took me before him on his horse, and started home; but my poor mother, when she saw me leaving her for the last time, ran after me, took me down from the horse, clasped me in her arms, and wept loudly and bitterly over me. My master seemed to pity her; and endeavored to soothe her distress by telling her that he would be a good master to me, and that I should not want anything. She then, still holding me in her arms, walked along the road beside the horse as he moved slowly, and earnestly and imploringly besought my master to buy her and the rest of her children, and not permit them to be carried away by the negro buyers; but whilst thus entreating him to save her and her family, the slave-driver, who had first bought her, came running in pursuit of her with a raw-hide in his hand. When he overtook us, he told her he was her master now, and ordered her to give that little Negro to its owner, and come back with him.

My mother then turned to him and cried, “Oh, master, do not take me from my child!” Without making any reply, he gave her two or three heavy blows on the shoulders with his raw-hide, snatched me from her arms, handed me to my master, and seizing her by one arm, dragged her back towards the place of sale. My master then quickened the pace of his horse; and as we advanced, the cries of my poor parent became more and more indistinct - at length they died away in the distance, and I never again heard the voice of my poor mother. Young as I was, the horrors of that day sank deeply into my heart, and even at this time, though half a century has elapsed, the terrors of the scene return with painful vividness upon my memory. Frightened at the sight of the cruelties inflicted upon my poor mother, I forgot my own sorrows at parting from her and clung to my new master, as an angel and a saviour, when compared with the hardened fiend into whose power she had fallen. She had been a kind and good mother to me; had warmed me in her bosom in the cold nights of winter; and had often divided the scanty pittance of food allowed her by her mistress, between my brothers, and sisters, and me, and gone supperless to bed herself. Whatever victuals she could obtain beyond the coarse food, salt fish and corn bread, allowed to slaves on the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, she carefully, distributed among her children, and treated us with all the tenderness which her own miserable condition would permit. I have no doubt that she was chained and driven to Carolina, and toiled out the residue of a forlorn and famished existence in the rice swamps, or indigo fields of the South.” (Ball, 10-12)

The problem for Fitzhugh is not only in his mischaracterizations of slavery but also in his haste to reframe the argument he neglects to see that we do not have to make a choice between slavery or free labor slavery. That’s the beauty of living in a country that derives its governing power by the consent of the governed but Fitzhugh is almost entirely blind to this reality. Workers and voters can and did unite to create the conditions that negate Fitzhugh’s argument.

Additionally, the fact that free laborers lived difficult lives tantamount in many ways to the lives of slaves, in no way lends credibility to Fitzhugh’s argument. Both systems were inherently evil and bad for human beings. Fitzhugh’s attempt to justify the southern system by basically saying that the northern system was more evil is simply bad logic and childish form of debate.

Nonetheless, this is why “the show never ends.” The iniquitous will always try to rationalize their actions through cliche’ excuses. Fitzhugh’s legacy, if anything, is a case in point of how ordinary people should never allow self-ordained know-it-alls to despotically command the lives of others whether they be slave owners or capitalists. However, the truth is that while modern elites may pick on an easy target like George Fitzhugh the masters of capitalism have countless numbers of Fitzhugh’s that often go without criticism and indeed to the opposite extreme of praise. The quote of the Christian builder in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives is as applicable to the capitalist creator of the tenement as it is to the slave owner,

“How shall the love of God be understood by those who have been nurtured in sight only of the greed of man?”

What To Be Proud Of?

Another email:

One of my sons serves in the military. He is stationed stateside, here in California. He called me yesterday to let me know how warm and welcoming people were to him and his troops everywhere they go. Telling me how people shake their hands and thank them for being willing to serve and Fight, not only our own freedoms but so that others may have them too.

Then he told me about an incident in the grocery store he stopped at yesterday, on his way home from the base. He said that several people were in the line ahead of him, including a woman dressed in a burkha.

He said when she got to the cashier, she made a loud remark about the U.S. Flag, lapel pin, the cashier wore on her smock. The cashier reached up and touched the pin and said, “Yes, I always wear it proudly, because I’m an American.”

The woman in the burkha then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.

Then, a Gentleman standing behind my son stepped forward, putting his arm around my son’s shoulders and nodding towards my son, said in a calm and gentle voice to the Iraqi woman: Lady, hundreds of thousands of men and women like this young man have fought and died so that YOU could stand here, in MY country and accuse a check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen. It is my belief that had you been this outspoken in YOUR own country, we wouldn’t need to be there today. But, hey, if you have now learned how to speak out so loudly and clearly, I’ll gladly buy you a ticket and pay your way back to Iraq, so you can straighten out the Mess in YOUR country, that you are obviously here in MY country to avoid.”

Everyone within hearing distance cheered!

IF YOU AGREE… Pass this on to all of your proud American friends.

I just did.



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Another response:

Should we really cheer at this email? Why shouldn’t we question it? If I offered to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn at a cheap price would you open up your checkbook? I hope the answer is “no.€ Why then are we proud Americans expected to accept the World War II like statement that our soldiers are presently fighting for our freedoms in a country of 25 million people located half way around the world that didn’t and does not even have the capability to attack its weak neighbors, no less the mightiest conventional fighting force the world has ever known?

Is every war a fight over our freedom?

I’m not disputing that our soldiers believe that they are fighting for our freedom; I’m asking you do you really believe that they are? Ask yourself, why believe this? Is it because to believe otherwise is to denigrate our dead soldier’s contributions? Are you afraid that someone may call you unpatriotic if you even suggest that they aren’t fighting for our freedom? If you take this exercise seriously and find that the answer is no and that our soldiers are being used as pawns for purposes other than fighting for our freedoms, isn’t it our duty as citizens of a democracy to ask how long are we going to continue to allow this?

Were our soldiers used as a last resort?

Iraq didn’t attack us, they had no WMDs, no connections to Al-Qaeda and had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. This was well known by some of us well before the invasion and occupation and it should have been known by our leaders. Being that Iraq and Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 what possible justifications do we have for destroying and occupying their country?

Doesn’t anyone realize that we’ve broken almost every international law, laws that we helped to create for the purposes of protecting weak nations from exactly what we perpetrated? Why should we continue to lie about what took place here? Does it help anyone sleep better? Does it help the Iraqis to have a little security or running water and electricity? Does it bring back the 650,000 Iraqi men, women and children, human beings that have been destroyed as a result of our ignorant and impetuous actions? Does it help to return one dead soldier back home to his family? Does it replace just one soldiers missing limb? Does it help to bring an end to this stupid conflict? No, it doesn’t and neither do made up emails like the one I received.

If you want to be a patriotic learn why this country is truly special and get involved in the process so that it stays that way. Pull out the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution and read it if you haven’t and realize that the instigators of this war are pissing all over that which makes us great.

Don’t buy the propagandizing bullshit found in the words above which is part of the process of manipulating citizens into complacency as our country gets stolen out from under us and to justify a policy that no rational human being would if they hadn’t been confused into believing “facts” that were not and never have been true by people who we should expect more from.

There has always been and there always will be people that are killers. We can choose to respond to their actions in kind through irrational and violent action or we can seek to protect the innocent, maintain our integrity and sanity while we bring them to justice. Will we always right every wrong, no, sorry life isn’t fair but we don’t have to destroy that which makes our country truly great because we don’t understand exactly what that means and because we thirst for a little misplaced vengeance against human beings we consider to be deserving and somehow not our equal.

I suggest that not addressing these realities belittles the memories of everyone who has died in this iniquitous war and only ensures that we will again repeat these mistakes.

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