From Obama to Trump: Tracing the Contours of Change and Consistency Between Administrations

On the morning of March 6^th, 2017, Donald Trump signed into law for the second time an executive order attempting to stop the flow of migrants and refugees into the United States from six (down from the original seven) Muslim majority countries, this time excluding Iraq on the advice of the Pentagon and the State Department on account of its essential role in the ongoing campaign against ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).¹ A year ago, under then-President Barack Obama, a move of unilateral legal bombast of such blanket proportions emanating from the White House would have seemed close to impossible, though most of the American political landscape shares this same tinted veneer of impossibility—an impossibility which, now fulfilled, has morphed into a dangerous and unprecedented absurdity. This essay will trace the foreign policy contours of both the Trump and Obama administrations in order to contrast them and analytically investigative what—and to what extent—has thus far substantively changed in terms of America's policy dispositions in the realm of international relations. Major contrasts in already implemented policies of the Trump administration are plenty, many very dangerous in implication; however, much of the underlying policy infrastructure in foreign affairs remains both expectedly and unexpectedly contiguous with the preceding Obama administration, such as a strategically rhetorical caution with regards to North Korea's missile testing, the continued existence of the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the policy of unilateral American strike intervention in places such as Yemen. Much else, however, has cleanly broken from the previous administration, such as the scrapping of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade deal, the above mentioned hard-line xenophobia of the executive orders on refugees and immigration, the advent of the far-right in a more general regard to the executive branch and social landscape, the development of an apartheid-style wall on the border between Mexico and the United States, and an extremely friendly relationship with Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu, extending so far as to probe the possibility of moving the official American embassy to contested Jerusalem, which both Israel and the decimated Palestinian Territories claim as their rightful capital.² Due to limitations on length, all of the above is sufficient only towards scratching the surface of these issues; or, rather, towards tracing their contours.

There is much in President Trump's demeanour and tone that add to the generally correct impression of discontinuity with previous political orthodoxy, especially that practised by Obama during his time in office. However, despite the tectonic shift in operative ideology, policy content, and rhetoric, it can often be far too easy to overlook some of the analogous similarities and continuity between the two administrations when Donald Trump as an abrasively overwhelming spectacle flaunts himself so readily and constantly through the news media.³ In this time of unprecedented political instability, it is essential to trace these continuities and catalogue said analogous similarities as have been made apparent thus far in order to tease out a deeper context from the web of volatile and widely misunderstood socio-political complexity that is the American political landscape. As such, we can start with Trump's promise, made as a candidate on the campaign trail in April of 2016, to cancel remittance payments to Mexico and redirect the money towards funding his wall on the southern border.⁴ An important distinction, however, must be made between Trump's rhetoric and truly enacted policy, as it is clearly enacted policy that is of greater consequence than policy promises. This being said, Trump has only been in office for a little over a month at the time of writing, and has not enacted his pledged cancellation of remittances, though he has officially begun development of the southern border wall with Mexico, but has yet to concretely impose any measures to force Mexico's payment for its construction. Rather ironically, then-President Obama was quick to chastise candidate Trump for such a promise when he said, “The notion that we’re going to track every Western Union bit of money that’s being sent to Mexico—good luck with that.”⁵ What is overlooked in this exchange is the fact that, under legal directives implemented under his administration, Obama cancelled remittance payments to Somalia from Somalis and Somali-American's working in the United States. The intention was to cease these payments so as to avoid the money falling into the hands of terrorist organizations, though it facilitated quite the opposite when people desperate to send portions of their earnings to destitute relatives instead opted to pack suitcases full of money onto planes, often unattended, in the hopes that it would make it to its intended beneficiary.⁶ Not only did this mean that many Somalis did not receive the money that acted as their primary source of income, but that when the suitcases did not make it to their intended destination, they are far more likely to have instead wound up in the hands of the same terrorist groups the American government intended to financially starve.

On climate, Trump's rhetoric may be as good as policy insofar as the agreement signed in Paris during November 2015 by 194 countries on capping carbon emissions and weaning off fossil fuels over the course of the coming decades is, for all intents and purposes, non-binding. As was reported by the UK's Guardian newspaper this past November, only 4 days prior to the 2016 American election, “The Paris agreement is legally binding in forcing governments to accept and cater for the [cap on global temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius]. But the commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in line with that goal are not legally binding. This means incoming governments can renege upon them. There are no sanctions for governments that flout the goals.”⁷ This means that Trump should have no real procedural issue withdrawing the United States from the covenant if he decides not to abide by its terms. There would have perhaps been a chance for the agreement to enjoy a stronger legal standing in America had it been presented as an official treaty and put to the Senate to ratify as such, but as it stood in late 2015, the Senate was stacked with an overwhelmingly obstructionist Republican majority bent on stymieing President Obama's every move. Regardless of this, it is also true that, even if it had been ratified as a national treaty, it could have been repealed by a new composition of senators following another election. Considering the recently-elected Republican majority in both houses of government, the push to repeal would likely have remained as much of a risk as withdrawal is today, and was thus not likely something Obama could have worked to avoid.⁸ As it stands, however, it seems that Trump has yet to make up his mind in as far as the Paris agreements are concerned, and is, reportedly, being counselled to remain within the pact by his daughter Ivanka and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, while being advised to the contrary by former Goldman Sachs banker as well as former Breitbart News executive and the first demonstrably fascistic—or, cryptofascistic—White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon.⁹ Alongside this, Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a man who, when asked whether he believed in global man-made climate change, simply stated that “the climate is changing, and human activity contributes to that in some manner.”¹⁰ More substantively, however, and more troubling, is that during his time as Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA as many as 14 times¹¹ as part of his crusade against the agency he now leads as a self-described “leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda.”¹² In this respect, he attempted to clarify during his confirmation hearings that he believed most environmental policy can be left within the exclusive jurisdiction of the states, distancing himself from the more federalist approach taken by previous EPA administrators such as Obama's last appointee, the air quality and environmental health expert Gina McCarthy.¹³ Beyond all this, the elephant in the room would be Trump's 2012 Twitter remarks which alleged that “[t]he concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”¹⁴ It is absurd past statements like these coming from none other than the new President of the United States that paint a more ideational concern for those in opposition, regardless of who Trump puts in place to oversee matters of environmental and energy sustainability. When Obama attended the signing of the Paris climate agreements, most world leaders and dignitaries present assumed Trump was going to lose the coming Republican primary contests and slip into political obscurity. However, fear-mongering found further legitimization and social license as only a few days prior to the congregation, the French capital had been devastated by a series of coordinated terrorist attacks that took the lives of 130 people, and injured hundreds more.¹⁵ Immediately, the environment became fertile ground for political gain through fear by the likes of the far-right French Presidential-hopeful and National Front leader, Marine Le Pen.

Trump himself, then just a candidate in the Republican primaries, also capitalized on the Paris attacks, stating that things “would have been different” if Parisians had been carrying guns.¹⁶ Thus far, despite incoherently belligerent pledges made on the campaign trail, the Trump administration has kept anti-terrorism policy and operations coherently contiguous with those of his predecessor, having given the green light to a Navy SEAL raid on an al-Qaeda branch (AQAP, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) compound in Yemen in late January 2017. The raid itself had been developed under Obama's administration, but the Pentagon advised waiting for a moonless night to launch the operation, the next of which would not come until after Obama's term ended on January 20^th. In itself, the raid resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL, as well as several civilians including the 8 year old daughter of Anwar al-Alwaki, an al-Qaeda operative who also happened to be the first American citizen extra-judicially assassinated by drone strike in 2011 on the orders of President Obama.¹⁷

During his time in office, Obama oversaw the rapid expansion of the weaponized drone program begun in earnest under his predecessor, George W. Bush. Intended as a strategy to deal with the proliferating asymmetrical threats facing the American military machine without putting any actual personnel in harms way, these remote drone operations consist of two main tactical approaches. The first are known as 'personality strikes,' the criteria for which “require the operator to develop a high level of certainty about the target's identity and location, based on multiple sources such as ... imagery, cell phone intercepts and informants on the ground.”¹⁸ Personality strikes, then, are designed to be accurate and specific in their choice of targets. On the other hand, the second main tactical option are known as 'signature strikes,' which are notoriously vaguer in their strike criteria. When planning and orchestrating signature strikes, “the United States assesses that the individuals in question exhibit behaviors that match a pre-identified 'signature' (for example, pattern of observable activities and/or personal networks) that suggests that they are associated with al Qaeda and/or the Pakistani or Afghan Taliban organizations. Because the identity of the target is unknown, even during the strike, it is possible that these persons are innocent civilians, a possibility that both [the Obama] and former [Bush administration] officials concede.”¹⁹ As a result of such indiscriminate attacks, innocent victims are galvanized by anger, fear, and despair, only to then become radicalized and easily lured into joining—and thus growing and perpetuating—extremist organizations like al-Qaeda, ISIS, or the Taliban. This is one particular realm of American foreign policy and its consequent blow-back that is unlikely to change under the Trump administration, and the remote drone program in particular could see significant growth in its military application as Trump looks to 'get tough' on such groups as listed above. In this respect, many see the new administration's so-called Muslim ban as a bit of cruel and deliberate irony, insofar as the countries to which the travel ban applies have been the target of American bombings, both discriminate and indiscriminate, over the course of the past three decades.

It can be soundly argued that the Obama administration was responsible, alongside the preceding Bush administration, for fuelling violence and chaos across the world which resulted in the continued destabilization of these regions, thus contributing to the circumstances conducive to the ongoing international refugee crisis. It seems incontrovertible, however, that Obama was, on net, much more open to and receptive of refugees and immigration from all corners of the globe during his tenure than his successor is, or likely ever will be. In 2016, under Obama's watch, the United States granted entry to some 85,000 refugees, 38,901 of whom identified as Muslim.²⁰ As it stands, this means “the U.S. has admitted the highest number of Muslim refugees of any year since data on self-reported religious affiliations first became publicly available in 2002.”²¹ This data set, however, belies a deeper and more disturbing point of similarity between the Trump and Obama administrations: in the first five years of Obama's Presidency, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued deportation orders to over 2 million people, most of whom were disproportionately Latin American including “hundreds of thousands of parents of U.S.-born American citizens.”²² Trump, by contrast, has yet to truly begin his pledged mass deportations of illegal immigrants, but already there has been debate over so-called 'sanctuary cities' which have committed to denying federal authorities the requisite information and access needed to identify and deport undocumented immigrants within their local jurisdictions. On its face, it seems strange that these cities did not make themselves available as 'sanctuaries' at all during the Obama era, but upon closer inspection, the nuance in deportation criteria has indeed altered to an extent which may soon be stymied due to legal overreach. Whereas the Obama administration gravitated into a primary focus on the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were shown to be involved with gangs or credibly accused of serious crimes such as murder or drug trafficking, in mid-February 2017, the Trump administration broadened the criteria for deportation so as to make “[a]ny immigrant who is in the country illegally and is charged or convicted of any offence, or even suspected of a crime [...] an enforcement priority, according to Homeland Security Department memos signed by Secretary John Kelly. That could include people arrested for shoplifting or minor offences.”²³

It is a challenge to attempt an ideological classification of Trump, as he appears to exist primarily as a cult of personality deeply cultivated through the media with a rather impulsive Presidential disposition which, at its most coherent, seems to be operatively transactional. He is against strictly globalized free trade, though he still believes in American global imperialism as demonstrated in his adding $54 billion to the military budget via dollar-for-dollar cuts in other departmental funding, including the EPA and international financial aid through the State Department.²⁴ Obama, on the other hand, is much easier to categorize in terms of his double neoliberalism, first in the form of his support of neoliberal economic theory, and second, in the form of his operative neoliberal multilateralism on the world stage. Both are demonstrated aptly in his dedicated pursuit of the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have expanded global free trade and integrated the markets between the signatory nations into the international system to an unprecedented degree. On another level, Trump's ascendancy represents the rise of what is broadly known as the so-called “alt-right” (alternative right) to the American political scene and, by implication, the globe. The most forward example of said ascendancy would be the appointment of former Goldman Sachs banker and Breitbart CEO Stephen Bannon as White House chief strategist, a man known as an open white supremacist²⁵ and anti-Semite.²⁶ In this regard, the operative ideological composition of the American executive branch is, in many ways, unprecedented. It is also in stark contrast to the ideological make-up of the Obama administration, as well as the entire political orthodoxy that has both implicitly and explicitly reigned since the end of the Second World War. Through a more constructivist lens, a certain cryptofascism of immense ideational consequence has come to inhabit the American executive branch, one that speaks broadly of 'taking back the culture' for those of white and ultimately European descent. Though it would be naive to explicitly define the new administration as openly and operatively “fascist,” it is not only entirely fair, but is also entirely true that all of the ingredients are now present, and if a particular political, geopolitical, or domestic attack incident appeared as a convenient catalyst, then the administration would likely not only be required to respond, but would respond vigorously and comprehensively via an authoritarian and 'dystopian' overreaction. To clarify, it is essential to define fascism so as not to allow the reader to mistakenly conflate it with its other more specific historical connotations. To do so, this paper will rely on the definition synthesized and provided by Alex Schulman in his study for Human Rights Watch titled “PurgePolitik: The political function of decadence in fascism,” in which he asserts that “we cannot circumscribe fascism as a simply political system that held power and prestige from about the early 1920's until the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, but rather as a set of sociopolitical and cultural tendencies that, while particularly ascendant in that period, threaten to break through in various forms at any time.”²⁷ Through his scholarly synthesis of multiple other academic sources looking at fascism as a political phenomenon, Schulman comes up with a list of nine demonstrable 'symptoms' or signs of fascism, eight of which are disconcertingly applicable to the new Trump administration and its political standard bearers. For the purposes of this paper, only the eight applicable symptoms will be listed and elaborated on. The first is a “virulent antiliberalism and anti-individualism,” demonstrated quite presciently in the Trump administration's aggressively adversarial relationship with the media, which Stephen Bannon explicitly labelled “the opposition party” that should “keep their mouths shut,”²⁸ alongside the banning of multiple news organizations from White House press briefings. Second is the “[e]mphasis on the aesthetic structure of politics, on [...] emotion, usually involving some sort of cult of personality at the center”; third, “[a] totalizing system where a single party under a single “great leader” is associated with the will of the entire nation-as-organism”; fourth, the “[e]xaltation [...] of the new against the old, [and] of charisma over rationality”; fifth, “[e]xcessive militarism, whether imperialistic or simply focused on a fetishization of martial discipline at home,” demonstrated in the increased military budget and aggrandizement of imperialistic martial values; sixth, the “[f]etishization of masculinity, defined as aggression and a will-to-power, as a virtue”; seventh, the “[f]etishization of continuous struggle as a virtue, variously defined”; and, finally, the eighth and final symptom, a personal addition of Schulman's, which is the “purgation of [social, cultural or political] decadence” as an excessively prevalent motif.²⁹

It can be soundly argued that the United States has been a 'totalitarian democracy' since the legal ratification of the U.S. PATRIOT Act (a terrifyingly clever Orwellian acronym which stands for the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act”) under the Bush administration in 2001.³⁰ As such, the first prerequisite circumstances toward a more fascistic polity have been present since 9/11, but the machinery of state has now, 16 years later, fallen into the hands of an unpredictable ethno-nationalist administration under the helm of a dangerously narcissistic and temperamentally unstable 'Great Leader' who has a serious disdain for complexity. So, though it may not be explicit fascism, it is operatively fascistic in a way that is entirely unprecedented in the history of the United States of America. As well, as a result of the unipolarity of American hegemony in a largely globalized system, there is little to delineate the domestic and international spheres due to the sheer scale and reach of American imperial and economic influence.³¹ The Obama administration, though nominally liberal in contrast to the invasively over-abundant right-wing political extremism so widespread in the American body-politic, ultimately still worked primarily to maintain and preserve American imperialism, thus acting as a bridge between the regressive right-wing extremism of the Bush administration and the fascistic ethno-nationalism of Trump and his cabinet, and even working to inadvertently increase the tools of coercion available in the arsenal of the executive branch. Much has changed drastically in the transition from Obama to Trump, but ultimately, the deeper machinery of the state has remained a totalitarian democracy ready for further abuse by fascistic elements of the far-right since the attacks of 9/11. Guantanamo Bay is about to get a new and expansive lease on life.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS AN ESSAY FOR MY INTERNATIONAL POLITICS COURSE. 

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1"Trump Signs New Travel Ban Executive Order", CBC News, last modified March 6, 2017, accessed March 6, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-travel-ban-revised-1.4011197.

2Tovah Lazaroff, "US Delegation In Israel To Study Relocation Of Embassy To Jerusalem", The Jerusalem Post, last modified March 4, 2017, accessed March 6, 2017, http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/US-delegation-in-Israel-to-study-relocation-of-embassy-to-Jerusalem-483221.

3Douglas Kellner, "Donald Trump And The Politics Of The Spectacle", American Nightmare 117 (2016): pp 3-6.

4Andrew Cockburn, "A Policy Of Hypocrisy", Harper's Magazine, April 26, 2016, accessed March 6, 2017, https://harpers.org/blog/2016/04/a-policy-of-hypocrisy/.

5Ibid.

6Andrew Cockburn, "A Policy Of Hypocrisy", Harper's Magazine, April 26, 2016, accessed March 6, 2017, https://harpers.org/blog/2016/04/a-policy-of-hypocrisy/.

7Fiona Harvey, "Keep It In The Ground: The Paris Climate Agreement Is Now Official", The Guardian, last modified November 4, 2016, accessed March 7, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/04/the-paris-climate-agreement-is-now-official.

8"Legally Binding? It's Nonsense! - COP 21 Paris Summit", COP 21 Paris Summit, last modified 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://climateparis.org/legally-binding.

9Coral Davenport, "Top Trump Advisers Are Split On Paris Agreement On Climate Change", The New York Times, last modified March 2, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017.

10"Sen. Bernie Sanders Questions Scott Pruitt", C-SPAN, last modified January 18, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4648453/sen-bernie-sanders-questions-scott-pruitt.

11Brady Dennis, "Scott Pruitt, Longtime Adversary Of EPA, Confirmed To Lead The Agency", The Washington Post, February 17, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/17/scott-pruitt-long-time-adversary-of-epa-confirmed-to-lead-the-agency/?utm_term=.f708ca1eab91.

12Scott Detrow, "Scott Pruitt Confirmed To Lead Environmental Protection Agency", NPR, last modified February 17, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515802629/scott-pruitt-confirmed-to-lead-environmental-protection-agency.

13"Gina McCarthy: Executive Profile & Biography", Bloomberg, last modified 2017, accessed March 11, 2017, http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=276590019&privcapId=5376654&previousCapId=5376654&previousTitle=United%20States%20Environmental%20Protection%20Agency.

14Donald Trump, "Donald J. Trump On Twitter", Twitter, last modified November 12, 2012, accessed March 7, 2017, https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en.

15"Paris Attacks: What Happened On The Night", BBC News, last modified December 7, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34818994.

16Jeremy Diamond, "Trump: Paris Massacre Would Have Been 'Much Different' If People Had Guns", CNN, last modified November 14, 2015, accessed March 7, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/14/politics/paris-terror-attacks-donald-trump-guns/.

17Eric Schmitt and David Sanger, "Raid In Yemen: Risky From The Start And Costly In The End", The New York Times, February 1, 2017, accessed March 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/world/middleeast/donald-trump-yemen-commando-raid-questions.html.

18C. Christine Fair, Karl Kaltenthaler and William J. Miller, "Pakistani Opposition To American Drone Strikes", Political Science Quarterly 131, no. 2 (2016): 387-419, accessed March 7, 2017, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/10.1002/polq.12474/full.

19Ibid.

20Phillip Connor, "U.S. Admits Record Number Of Muslim Refugees In 2016", Pew Research Center, last modified October 5, 2016, accessed March 8, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/05/u-s-admits-record-number-of-muslim-refugees-in-2016/.

21Ibid.

22Alex Street, Chris Zepeda-Millán and Michael Jones-Correa, "Mass Deportations And The Future Of Latino Partisanship", Social Science Quarterly 96, no. 2 (2015): 540-552, accessed March 8, 2017, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12158/full.

23"Trump Administration Plans Could Lead To Vast Increase In Deportations", CBC News, last modified February 21, 2017, accessed March 8, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-immigration-trump-1.3992271.

24Michael Steinhauer, "Trump To Seek $54 Billion Increase In Military Spending", The New York Times, last modified February 27, 2017, accessed March 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/us/politics/trump-budget-military.html.

25Jonathan Ofir, "Steve Bannon’s Judeo-Christian ‘Camp Of The Saints’", Mondoweiss, last modified March 11, 2017, accessed March 13, 2017, http://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/bannons-christian-saints/.

26Ben Sales, "Stephen Bannon: 5 Things Jews Need To Know", The Times Of Israel, last modified November 14, 2016, accessed March 13, 2017, http://www.timesofisrael.com/stephen-bannon-5-things-jews-need-to-know/.

27Alex Schulman, "PurgePolitik: The Political Functions Of Decadence In Fascism", Human Rights Review 8, no. 1 (2006): 5-34.

28"Trump Aide Bannon Lambasts US Media As 'Opposition Party'", BBC News, last modified January 27, 2017, accessed March 13, 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38766620.

29Alex Schulman, "PurgePolitik: The Political Functions Of Decadence In Fascism", Human Rights Review 8, no. 1 (2006): 5-34.

30Cathy Zeljak, "The USA Patriot Act", Problems Of Post-Communism 51, no. 1 (January 2004): 63-65, Military & Government Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed March 13, 2017).

31Radovan Vukadinovic, "America In The New World Order", Medunarodne studije 1, no. 2-3 (2001): 5-20.

Who Killed William Robinson?

During the years of 1867 to 1869, Salt Spring Island and the surrounding region experienced a spate of four spectacularly violent murders that shook the gulf island and its surrounding communities to their cores.  Following the murder of William Robinson in March 1868 1 (chronologically, the second murder to occur), a 26 year old native man by the name of Tshuanahusset was hastily arrested, tried, and convicted to death for William's murder by a colonial jury through a British court that took no stock of the complexities in reaching a credible verdict when the accused himself could not read, spoke little to no English, and was not educated in any sophisticated western sense as the members of the jury were.2 As well, though he was convicted of Robinson's death, eight months following the murder, settler Giles Curtis was similarly killed, as well as partially decapitated, while his farmhand partner Howard Estes was at church one Sunday morning.3 Though it is conceivably possible that Tshuanahusset found time to get involved in Curtis's murder prior to being arrested, he had been dead less then a month when a native man who went by the name of Charlie was murdered as well, his body being left eerily half-decapitated just as Curtis's was. This leaves open the possibility that Tshuanahusset was either wrongfully convicted, or there was more than a single actor involved in what seems to be a series of connected murders. This paper will set forth a theory of what occurred all those years ago, based primarily on the observations of mutually reinforcing cultural misunderstandings that often resulted in a racism aptly demonstrated by all sides throughout the archives. Racism, as embodied in a clash of cultures, was one of the defining features of 19th century North America, and in this sense, British Columbia was certainly no exception. Misunderstandings between colonists and Natives escalated at times into serious violence. Though this did not define every individual relationship between natives and colonists, it did make for 'itchy trigger fingers' on both sides. When one such misunderstanding led to the death of two native chieftains near Nanaimo, it sparked a vengeful saga of native partisan violence and robbery, tragic examples of which seem to have been the three murders that took place on and around Salt Spring Island between 1867 and 1869, and appear not to have been committed by a single person, but rather by a small, organized group (or groups) of people. 

Looking back from 1907 on the grim events of the 1860s, Thomas Crosby, a Methodist missionary from England who had journeyed to British Columbia to spread Christianity among aboriginal tribes and was working at doing so in Nanaimo at the time of the murders,4 reflected on an incident in which a couple of white men sailing a sloop came across two native chieftains in their canoes who desired to procure some of the alcohol they were selling. After the chieftains purchased said alcohol from the men, they—belligerently drunk on what they had—demanded more. The quarrel escalated, and the two white men shot the chieftains dead, almost certainly out of feeling threatened. When their bodies were brought home to their respective tribes, it caused an angry furor among them. Crosby himself, connecting the dots, theorizes that the tribes “swore vengeance on those who had murdered their friends, or any other white men [... and i]n consequence, not long after this a white man by the name of John Brown, at Cowichan, was murdered, and poor innocent Robinson, a colored man, was shot in his cabin on Salt Spring Island, and about the same time Hamilton, another white man, was killed near Nanaimo.”5 This was part of a vengeful militant reaction among certain aboriginal groups and individuals, and the three murders under inspection in this paper were likely part of a bigger picture that included the additional murders Crosby mentions. Three things must be noted here which are of the utmost importance: one, that it was not necessarily just 'white men' who were targeted, but settlers as a whole; two, that it must be understood by the reader that this is not to say this single incident in question catalyzed a uniform reaction, but that this circumstance represents one aggravated misunderstanding among many, whether they were executions of young aboriginal men, private encounters between colonists and natives gone horribly awry, the perception of territorial and spiritual encroachment, or an endemic sense of transplanted Euro-American superiority, such incidents would compound themselves cumulatively over time in the frightened and angry perceptions of “the Other” on both sides; and three, that such impressions were not monolithic among all settlers and natives, nor was it strictly dichotomous in terms of whom felt sympathy for whom at any given juncture during these particularly troubled times. But it appears that, among some, there was an organized and violent response based on a sense of vengeance rooting from native disenfranchisement in their own lands and the oppressive imposition of European legal and cultural norms under the yoke of the British colonial project and sparked by numerous misunderstandings between settlers and natives that escalated into tit-for-tat murders on both sides. In some cases, the murder committed was judicial in nature, as the expeditiously negligent execution of Tshuanahusset demonstrates.

The evidence to support this theory of vengeful murder and robbery as a reaction to colonial excesses, both real and perceived, is clearly indicative of a pattern that lends much weight to the theory's credibility. In court records pertaining to the murder of Giles Curtis, settler John Norton testified that, while travelling from Nanaimo accompanied by who he calls “my Indian,” they came across a group of five other natives who began to speak in their language. Norton asserts that “[o]ne of them took the axe up belonging to us and was walking [off] with it. We took it from him. The Indian we had with us wanted us to go away, he said they [were] talking about killing him. We then got away and when we were in the Boat and out of danger my Indian told me that [they] had said they wanted to kill a Boston man, and that they wanted to kill all of us and throw us into the sea, to pay for what the Kanakas [native Hawaiian migrant settlers] had done at Nanaimo.”6 This testimony is simply a thread in the observable pattern, superseded by the stronger testimony of Sylvia Stark regarding the violent death of Giles Curtis. Recalling how a native man by the name of Willie was apprehended as a suspect shortly after the murder, Stark writes that “[h]is wife said she would tell all she knew about the case if the law would protect her. She was left to mind the canoes and could only tell of seeing the stolen goods brought back. She knew their intent, though not a witness to the slaying.”7 Sui-Tas, an aboriginal man, similarly testified at the trial regarding the murder of Robinson that he had been travelling with Tshuanahusset at the time and bore witness to the killing. His story is as follows: “[w]e started from Chimainus. We crossed over to Salt Spring Island [... and as] we got there [Tshuanahusset] said he [would] like to kill the colored man ... [he] left the canoe & took his musket with him & went to the house [...] I got very cold in the canoe & I started for the house of the colored man too[, and w]hen I got there I went to the fire to warm myself & the colored man Robinson was cooking at the time. [Tshuanahusset] was sitting down ... with his musket in his hand. [Robinson] then went to the table to eat what he had been cooking. [Tshuanahusset] was standing by the fire[,] then [he] told me to look round & see if there was anything of value & to take them when he shot Robinson [...] I got afraid & went outside & just as I got outside I heard a shot. [Tshuanahusset] shouted to me come back & take the things but I was too much afraid & never went back.”8 Sui-Tas was subsequently banished by his tribe following Tshuanahusset's trial and execution, threatening him with death were he to ever return.9 This reflects one of two possibilities: either the tribe was simply offended by the fact that his testimony resulted in the execution, or they were likewise aware of what occurred. 

Though there is much more evidence available to be utilized in support of this theory, restrictions on length leave them out of the permitted scope of this paper. Racism was a key theme of the day, resulting from a myriad of mutual misunderstandings and aggravations. This led to 'itchy trigger fingers' on all sides, often as a result of conflating such misunderstandings and misdeeds as being culturally indicative of something inherently threatening about every member of the body politic opposed. As aboriginal peoples became less and less at home in their own lands, some integrated with the European cultures while others were desperately prompted by events into crudely revolting through murderous vigilantism. It is likely that some of these crimes, however, were motivated by alcoholic intoxication, though this would not be a suitable explanation for the majority of cases. In conclusion, the circumstances were far from binary, but in a wider appraisal, cultural confusions and the neurosis of imperial superiority increased the felt distance between the dominant and subordinate cultures, leading to innumerable tragedies, many of which became glossed over as the necessary casualties of British expansion. As Martin Luther once said, “blood alone moves the wheels of history.”10 
  
-  -  -
PLEASE NOTE: THIS WAS WRITTEN AS A FINAL ESSAY FOR MY "CANADA TO CONFEDERATION" HISTORY CLASS IN DECEMBER OF 2016. ALTHOUGH I GOT 80% ON THIS ESSAY IN QUESTION, I FAILED THE CLASS DUE TO MISSING IT SO OFTEN AS A RESULT OF MY EPILEPSY'S SEIZURE SYMPTOMS FLARING UP AND ALSO CAUSING SERIOUS EMOTIONAL DISORIENTATION. DUE TO MY FAILING THE CLASS, I FELT TOO DEFLATED TO SHARE THIS WORK UNTIL NOW.


Bibliography:

BCA, Vancouver Island, Supreme Court of Civil Justice, GR-2030, Mflm. B-9802, Joseph Needham, Bench Books of Criminal Cases Heard Before Judge Joseph Needham 1867-1869, Trial of Tom, June 2, 1869, 85, 107-145. 

BCA, Colonial Correspondence, File 1169-70, Morley, J. (Mflm B1342), John Morley, The Curtis Murder, Coroner's Inquest, December 17, 1868. 

Bolt, Clarence. "Biography – CROSBY, THOMAS – Volume XIV (1911-1920)". Dictionary Of Canadian Biography. Last modified 1998. Accessed November 19, 2016. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/crosby_thomas_14E.html. 

Crosby, Thomas. "Among the An-ko-me-nums". Toronto: William Briggs, 1907. 137-139.

Luther, Martin. "Martin Luther: Quotable Quotes". Goodreads. Last modified 2016. Accessed November 19, 2016. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/432542-blood-alone-moves-the-wheels-of-history. 

Smithe, W. "Letter to the Editor," The British Colonist, June 5, 1869.

Particulars of a Horrible Murder, Daily British Colonist, December 21, 1868. 
"Threats." The British Colonist, June 3, 1869. 
Wallace, Marie Albertina (Stark). Salt Spring Island Archives, Add. Mss. 91, Sylvia Stark's Description of the Death of Giles Curtis, n.d.

Primary Source Analysis: Pope Leo I the Great & the Council of Chalcedon, 5th Century CE

Pope Leo I's letter to the bishop Flavian regarding the heretical theologian Eutyches, alongside the definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon, are both documents written in the year 451 CE during a period of recurring theological dissonance between different arms of the Church throughout the fragmented and decaying Roman Empire. Pope Leo, also known as Pope Leo I the Great, was in constant correspondence with many disparate portions of Christendom, intervening in an attempt to mend theological schisms through rebutting heresies and implementing strong sanctions on those who did not strictly follow the tenets of the faith.¹ The Bishop Flavian is addressed in the letter also intended as one such Papal intervention in the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon, elaborating on Christological concerns regarding the proper relationship between God the Father and God the Son in light of a strictly defined institutionalized orthodoxy.² The primary focus of this paper will be on such Christological concerns as they appear in the primary source documents already named above, placing them and their authors in the historical context of the fourth and fifth centuries, as well as identifying some of the religious themes and theologies surrounding.

Though eastern Byzantine Christian orthodoxy was slowly yet inexorably drifting away from the purview of the western church, during the time of the Council of Chalcedon in the middle of the fifth century, the two sects had not completely removed themselves from the others orbit. As such, it was not highly unusual for the western papacy to occasionally involve itself in the activities and controversies of the east. Pope Leo I, whose pontificate was dedicated to the preservation of orthodoxy and the unification of the western church, felt compelled to contribute to the ecumenical debate in Chalcedon through letter, condemning Eutychianism and reaffirming the equally human and divine natures of Christ.³ The letter itself, written in the evocative, religiously-layered prose typical of the time, was probably first penned in Latin from the Pope's residence in Rome and sent to Chalcedon by way of sea or land. Eutyches, who had first seen himself ejected from the priesthood on the grounds of his alleged heresy, was reinstated a priest until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when, according to Leo, he spoke of renouncing his heresies, thus deserving mercy under the doctrine of the church.⁴

The heresies allegedly committed by Eutyches were primarily Christological in nature. Whereas the orthodox position, articulated by Leo, held that Christ was both human and divine since his conception, Eutyches emphasized the divine nature of Christ, seemingly to the neglect of any human nature if we are to accept Pope Leo's interpretation of Eutyches' beliefs.⁵ The orthodox position was reaffirmed in the definition of faith from the Council of Chalcedon, a statement of collective religious belief and prescribed dogmas agreed upon for the eastern Byzantine church by the close of debate.⁶ The statement also clarifies the purpose of Leo's letter to Flavian as having been written also for the Council of Chalcedon. As well, nowhere is a single author named for the definition of the faith, but the start of the document specifies that both the Council and the resulting agreement were decreed orthodox by Marcian and Valentinian Augustus, the latter, as emperor of the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Empire, and the former, as emperor of the Western Roman Empire during its period of final decline.⁷ The overarching purpose of the definition of the faith is a reaffirmation of the beliefs and dogmas decided upon at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, alongside the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Partially affirmed, as well, is the consensus on doctrine agreed upon at the Council of Ephesus in 449 CE. However, in explicitly designating the Nicaean and Constantinopolitan councils as more authoritative in their consensus than Ephesus, this definition of the faith in some sense 'repealed' the heretical doctrines put forth two years earlier without rejecting them entirely.⁸

Near the end of the definition of the faith, there is a more nuanced rebuttal to a heretic other than Eutyches, as the document turns its attention to those who refuse to apply the title of “God-bearer,”⁹ or as it was known in its original Greek, “Theotokos,”¹⁰ to the Virgin Mary. This heretic, who went by the name of Nestorius, was officially challenged and disgraced in his beliefs through letters written by Cyril, the pastor of Alexandria until his death. In these letters, Cyril asserts that through rejection of the God-bearer title, it is implied that Nestorius thus did not believe that Christ was God.¹¹ What one must wonder is whether or not this was a broad-sweep misinterpretation of Nestorian theology, one which saw all alternative Biblical interpretation as a serious sin, perhaps in part because of the perceived threat it posed to existing orthodox structures and doctrine. Interesting as well is that “Theotokos,” the original Greek terminology for “God-bearer,” has often also been translated as “Mother of God,”¹² and is likely the etymological source of the use of said title as a statement expressing sudden shock or disbelief. Certainly, the Christian reverence for the Virgin Mary would also in part be causative of the strong emotional tone usually associated with its cultural use as an expression.

Central to both the definition of the faith and Pope Leo's letter to Flavian and the Council of Chalcedon itself is the Nicene Creed, indirectly referenced earlier with the mention of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Pope Leo, in his letter, articulately paraphrases it as “the common and undivided creed by which the whole body of the faithful confess that they believe ... [one:] in God the Father almighty, and [two:] in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord ... who [three:] was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary.”¹³ This creed, authoritative in both the eastern and western churches, was explicated and approved as dogma at the above mentioned Council of Nicaea, establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as a counterweight to theologies such as Arianism and Sabellianism. Whereas, on the one hand, Arianism stressed significant difference in substance between God the Father and God the Son, Sabellianism, on the other hand, pushed an argument which emphasized that both God the Father and God the Son were of a single, unified substance.¹⁴ As examples, Arianism and Sabellianism are two among many, a well-spring of competing theologies which posed a threat to the institutionalized centralization of power in the hands of existing church structures, both east and west. Sabellianism, as well, is similar in theological substance to the ideas disseminated by Eutyches. Though the heresies of the fourth century differed slightly from those of the fifth, the tradition of countering opposing theologians by convening an ecumenical council and coming to (or forcing) a consensus was, by this time, over a century old.¹⁵ It must be clarified that during this period in history, the divide between the eastern and western churches was not so dichotomous. Pope Leo I's involvement in the Council of Chalcedon, hosted as it was in Byzantine Anatolia, is evidence of this, as both east and west continued to push their doctrines as universal despite their growing so far apart over time as to become as discernible from one another as they are today. Though the Nicene Creed remained a mutual doctrinal bedrock for both sects, nuanced differences piled up and evolved over time to create the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches as we know them. Pope Leo I died ten years after the Council of Chalcedon, in 461 CE,¹⁶ earning the posthumous moniker of “the Great” for his many important contributions to early Christianity, as well as for the effort he expended to maintain orthodoxy throughout Christendom. One must wonder if a heretic is something nearly exclusive to monotheism, with its insistence on a single deity and thus a single, irrevocable truth. In conclusion, this truth is a clumsy set of contractual mantras. Stipulating a contract not so much with God as with a religious bureaucracy defending its sacred hierarchies, these final words from the definition of the faith spell it out clearly enough: “no one is permitted to produce, or even to write down or compose, any other creed or to think or teach otherwise.”¹⁷ Such singular universalisms bred the religious conflict so typical of the day, as each new and nuanced interpretation was taken as a revelation that now needed to be imposed on the world for its own wicked sake. Structures of oppression were given an unassailable religious legitimacy that elevated kings and popes into men appointed by a metaphysical deity for the good of all. As regards this and all religious conflict, one can perhaps reflect on the words of Pope Leo himself when he said of all heretics, of which he was one in contrast to others, that “[b]y not being pupils of the truth, they turn out to be masters of error.”¹⁸

PLEASE NOTE: THIS WAS WRITTEN AS AN ESSAY FOR A HISTORY CLASS ON EARLY TO MID-MEDIEVAL EUROPE, ANALYZING DIRECTLY THE PRIMARY DOCUMENTS LISTED BELOW AND SUPPLEMENTED WITH CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION FROM THE PROVIDED TEXT.

1. William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman, The Medieval World View, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 44.

2. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. 451.

3. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. 451.

4. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. 451, [15].

5. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. [4].

6. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451.

7. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [1].

8. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [4].

9. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [10].

10. William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman, The Medieval World View, 3rd ed., 60.

11. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [7].

12. William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman, The Medieval World View, 3rd ed., 60.

13. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. [2].

14. William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman, The Medieval World View, 3rd ed., 54.

15. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [3].

16. William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman, The Medieval World View, 3rd ed., 44.

17. Definition of the faith from the Council of Chalcedon. 451, [11].

18. Leo I. The letter of Pope Leo I the Great (440–61) to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, about Eutyches. [1].

Debunking the Myth of the Ecologically Noble "Indian" (properly titled Natives, First Nations, or First Peoples):

Since contact, European settlers and their ancestors in North America have come to believe a series of sweeping oversimplifications regarding the First Nations, assumptions applied to a population mistakenly imagined as part of a monolithic entity, one which is seen as at least being relatively homogeneous in terms of custom and culture. This has led to such overarching stereotypes as the “uncivilized savage,” which in turn generated its more positive mythological antitheses, that of the “noble savage.” Now, as history has lurched onward, this same mythical archetype has developed modern offshoots, the debunking of which is the mandate of this paper. The Aboriginal populations of North America have been victim to erroneously conflated perspectives since European contact. Though attitudes have evolved, this tendency towards the mass conflation of such diverse and complex societies alongside how they interact with one another and the world around them has led to much self-perpetuating misinformation. Among this flood of misinformation, much of the modern environmentalist movement has taken the old stereotype of the “noble savage” and renovated it to assert that aboriginal peoples are the original conservationists, having lived in a pristine, conscientious balance with nature. The issue with this misguided appraisal of all aboriginal peoples is that it relies on the claim that Natives did not intervene in the environment in any significant way (such as species overkill) whereas recent evidence suggests that many aboriginal populations had deliberately and significantly been altering environments to meet their needs for millennia prior to contact.

In the epilogue to his controversial 1978 book “The Keepers of the Game”, Calvin Martin points to this stereotype of the ecological Indian as being the assumed equal and opposite reaction to the stereotype of European-Americans as environmentally destructive and irresponsible¹. In this sense, the narrative of both myths rely on and reciprocate with one another dangerously, creating cultural presuppositions that bleed into the ideological dispositions of the modern global environmental movements. In looking to challenge these myths, Martin points to the fur trade in Canada during the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and how tribes became complicit in, and, in some places, the major driving force behind the commercial overkill of fur-bearing animals. As an example, he found that by 1635, the Huron tribe of the Lake Simcoe area in modern-day Ontario “had reduced their stock of beaver to the point where Father Paul Le Jeune, the Jesuit, could flatly declare that they had none”². This severe exploitation of such fur-bearing animals as beavers was at its most acute within the vicinity of major trading posts and among the tribes already closely associated with the trade, such as the Mi'qmaq and League Iroquois. This, in stark contrast to the tribes beyond effective European influence at the time who enjoyed abundant beavers and other fur-bearing animals within their regional localities.³ Quoting Nicolas Denys, a merchant who spent 40 years living with the Mi'qmaq, Martin relays that "few in a house [beaver den] are saved; [the Mi'qmaq] would take all. The disposition of the Indians is not to spare the little ones any more than the big ones. They killed all of each kind of animal that there was when they could capture it."⁴ From this, Martin extrapolates the following: “In sum, the game which by all accounts had been initially so plentiful was now being systematically exterminated by the Indians themselves.”⁵ Of course, as must be noted, this is due to the mass incentive provided by trading posts which were looking to satisfy the high demand for pelts in the European market. Denys, already quoted above, comments on this fact when he says that, prior to and during the formative years of contact, the Mi'maq's “greatest task was to feed well and to go hunting. They did not lack animals, which they killed only in proportion as they had need of them”⁶.

In his Aboriginal overkill hypothesis, Charles E. Kay of Utah State University asserts that “[i]t is often claimed ... that Native Americans' religious belief systems prevented those peoples from over-utilizing their resources.” However, “Native Americans tended to view wildlife as their spiritual kin where success in the hunt was obtained by following prescribed rituals and atonement after the kill. A scarcity of animals or failure in the hunt were not viewed as biological or ecological phenomena, but rather as a spiritual consequence of social events or circumstances”⁷. In other words, if Native Americans could not find game to harvest, it was not due to overkill; it was because their animist deities were displeased. In his paper “Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian”, ethnographer Paul Nadasdy discusses these same misunderstandings when he points to the example of the Rock Cree first nation (of what is today northern Manitoba) who did not believe humans could affect or deplete animal populations through over-hunting, thus making them anti-conservationist in the modern Euro-American sense.⁸ During the pre-contact era, the Rock Cree concept of respect came bundled with the belief that all hunted game would be reincarnated and offer itself to the same hunter at some point in the future. This ideological framework also assumed that hunters had to kill all the animals they saw, whether or not necessity demanded. This was because it was thought that if an animal offered itself to a hunter, to refrain was offensive to the creature, thus jeopardizing ones chance of receiving these offerings in the future. It is thought this is what caused the Cree hunters to play a major (though unwitting) role in the near-extinction of local beaver populations in the early to mid-1800's.⁹ In fact, there is no evidence to suggest any prohibition on waste or over-hunting until well after European contact, likely as a result of the already mentioned near-eradication of the local beaver, after which it is thought the Rock Cree began to gradually reformulate their relationship with animals, coming to see human over-hunting as one potential reason for population declines. After awhile, this prohibition on waste entered as a key element into the Cree concept of respect.¹⁰

The example of the Rock Cree of northern Manitoba is only one historical trajectory among many. Whereas the Cree eventually adopted something akin to typical conservationist principles, the Yup'ik Eskimos of western Alaska still hold strongly to the belief that hunted animals are constantly reborn and that as such, over-hunting is impossible. This has lead to much tension between the Yup'ik and state wildlife management,¹¹ muddying the monolithic myth of the ecologically noble savage into a larger, richer, and more ambiguous arena of complexities in need of deeper investigation. Having partaken in over-hunting in some places while subsisting on settled agriculture complete with urban centres in others, the Aboriginal populations of North America were much more complex, consequential, and advanced than has generally been recognized until very recently. In whole, it can be said that pre-contact natives exerted a much more anthropogenic influence on their environment for innumerably diverse reasons, all fitted within a spiritual framework often largely divorced of any 'conservationist' ethic as we would understand it today. In conclusion, with all of the provided examples, author John Green's pithy maxim rings true: “truth resists simplicity,”¹² as it always has and always will.

1. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 160.

2. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade, 27.

3. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade, 27.

4. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade, 28.

5. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade, 28.

6. Calvin Martin, Keepers Of The Game: Indian-Animal Relationships And The Fur Trade, 33.

7.Charles Kay, Aboriginal Overkill And Native Burning: Implications For Modern Ecosystem Management, ebook, 1st ed. (Logan, Utah: World Journal of Applied Forestry, 1995), accessed September 23, 2016, 122-123.

8. Nadasdy, Paul. "Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism." Ethnohistory 52, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 291-331. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, 308.

9. Nadasdy, Paul. "Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism," 308-309.

10. Nadasdy, Paul. "Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism," 309.

11. Nadasdy, Paul. "Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism," 309.

12. YOU ARE WRONG!, video (YouTube: Hank Green, 2011). 

PLEASE NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS AN ESSAY FOR MY UNIVERSITY HISTORY COURSE, "CANADA TO CONFEDERATION."

A Lowdown on "The Villages," Billionaires, and Christina Grimmie

Saturday, June 11th, 2016
The Villages, Sumter County, Florida
United States of America

From the scant research I've done thus far on the "census-designated place" (or CDP) I find myself in known only as The Villages, it's a retirement development community that has, for the most part, sprung into its current iterated existence only in the last 5 or 6 years. It lacks a real municipal government (hence why it is a CDP and not an incorporated municipality), and is headed by the current generation of a rich development family who began with Michigan businessman Harold Schwartz selling tracts of land in the area via mail order. Long story short, the American government passed a law prohibiting the sale of land and real estate through mail order in 1968, which left Schwartz and his business partner, Al Tarrson, with large tracts of land in the area, prompting them to begin the development of a mobile home park in the early 1970's. When, by the 1980's only 400 units had been sold, Schwartz bought out Tarrson's share and brought his son, Harold Gary Morse, on-board in 1983.

Taking the hint that vapid suburban developments are worthless without the filler of hyper-convenient consumer amenities, Morse began to commercially upgrade the sprawling suburbia and created a community endlessly peppered with large tracts of land turned into giant golf courses between streets and neighbourhoods... so much so, in fact, that one of the most common ways to get around, whether you golf or not, is with golf carts.

Not surprisingly, real estate in the area is expensive, and as the brain-child of a now deceased billionaire, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that both The Villages and the larger area it is incorporated within have a heavy bias towards the Republican Party. In the past, it's been a key campaign stop, both for Republican's attempting to secure their party's nomination, as well as for Republican's that have made the ticket and are looking to further woo area residents with promises of lower taxes on the rich and assurances that climate change is a liberal conspiracy to undermine economic progress. During this current election cycle, both Ben Carson and Marco Rubio made appearances in the community to do just that. And in 2012, after having secured the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney and his then-running mate Paul Ryan made a few stop-overs on their quest to actively destroy the world by way of deliberate political negligence.

So, for me, it's a novel experience to explore a truly gated community... one that is not only gated in action, but in theory as well. The kind of place that proves the maxim that if you've got more, you've got more to lose. And thus, more to fear. Of course, in gated communities like this one, crime is a truly rare occurrence. The only recorded murder I could find from the last two decades occurred in 2006, during what appears to have been an armed break and enter. By all logical evaluation, this area is extraordinarily safe, but only as a component part of a much larger problem that endangers the existence of the entire human race.  

Libertarian socialist polemics aside (and I apologize for any sweeping generalizations, I do want to point out there are Democratic voters in The Villages that complain of the distinctly Republican tilt, tho we do have to admit that the binary split between Republicans and Democrats can't be the only two visible demographics in the area and that we must also admit that the breakdown is based on who people vote for, not necessarily their genuine political disposition), my whole experience here has been one very conducive to writing. Perhaps because I've felt more troubled than I usually do. Travel does that to a wuss like me (a wuss who says to himself, "yes, you're gonna be terrified, depressed, and confused at times, but perseverance through such discomfort is just part of the adventure!").

So, what, does that reveal me a wuss? Or does it reveal a particular kind of bravery? Either way, weathering myself to acceptance of potential discomfort doesn't make said discomfort any more comfortable. Perhaps it does give me something to grasp on to when I'm freaking out, though. It's also just a sign of my slowly getting to know myself better and better as the years roll by.

Once again, here I am, staying back at our rental timeshare in the heart of The Villages' suburbia, writing like it's what I'll one day do for a living. At the very least, I can hope. But at the very most, I can keep writing, and it just might occur as a happy side-effect of my belatedly embraced passion for the Word. (My Word, not God's).

In rather distressing but lugubriously unsurprising news, 22 year old Christina Grimmie, a woman just a year younger than me and a past winner of The Voice, spiritual successor to American Idol, was senselessly shot to death yesterday after a concert she held in Orlando. While signing fans autographs, a boy (or man, I'm not enlightened to particular details) whipped out a gun and quickly unloaded on her before the singer's brother tackled him to the ground, then prompting the assailant to turn the weapon on himself. Needless to say, he was successful in killing both her and himself, adding to a list of recent and not-so-recent murders endemic in America thanks to a continued misinterpretation of the Second Amendment via the powerful NRA lobby in Washington.

Coming from Canada, my observer's logic is painfully simple. Guns at Wal-Mart, gun shows free of background checks, and just basic Grand Theft Auto-style gun outlets equals only one thing: a whole bunch of criminals empowered by their intrinsically greater lethality (I mean, come on, what kind of gang feels 'empowered' when all they've got are a bunch of sharp objects? The only time gang violence is a notable problem in Vancouver is when said gangs smuggle guns in from across the border), and a whole bunch more people who would not have otherwise become criminals or committed suicide were it not for the acquisition of these weapons being close to as simple as getting a six-pack of beer. But hey, it's one of those logical observations that's so close to most Americans noses that it's become entirely invisible... save for when one looks in the mirror. A metaphorical mirror. No, Donald, I'm not suggesting that if you look in the mirror there will be a gun below your nose. And yes, Donald, that one movie where Harrison Ford lands the plane is, well, just a movie. I know you're disappointed.
                       

On My Trip to the Sunshine State, Bernie Sanders, Third Party Candidates, and Being Humiliatingly Destitute for my Girlfriends Parents

Thursday, June 9th, 2016
"The Villages," Sumter County, Florida
United States of America

I sit awkwardly hunched over a TV stand I've made into an impromptu table / desk for the dual purposes of both writing these words in my pocket Moleskine journal, as well as finishing the last half of a decked-out Publix sub sandwich, apparently a favorite snack here in Florida.

This trip, even when of a particular subjective discomfort, has been plenty worth it. I'm not sure if it's just basic anxiety, or if all the rent and tenancy drama back home in Victoria has made me as moody as I have been at times throughout. It may also have something to do with the seizure, as brief as it was, that I had in an Orlando Disney World resort hotel room shower just under a week ago. Jen's parents have been so consistently sweet and assistive with me, even though I showed up on their doorstep deadbeat broke. The fact that they have covered 90% of this trip for me makes me feel like I am potentially being ungrateful any time I either want or need time to myself. I know, as a previous and long-term sufferer of anxieties both social and general, that this is likely more perception then it is reality, but it gnaws at me quite often nonetheless.

Jen's father, Bill, was kind enough to provide me with some analytical and summary work related to his profession as a forensic toxicologist. I essentially just combed through a binder of documents  on a case involving alleged intoxication and workers compensation eligibility following a catastrophic on-the-job accident in which an electrical lineman contracted to work on live transformers along a back-road in St. Augustine, Florida, removed one of his protective rubber gloves, ostensibly to perform a particularly delicate operation, and slipped, only to accidentally electrocute his entire right arm and have it amputated in the emergency room. Though I couldn't claim to know all the variables of the case, the impression I got was the one Bill communicated to me: that, because he was a recreational marijuana user with trace metabolites in his blood, the company he worked for used the pipe found on his person and the trace metabolite readings from his post-accident urine sample as presumptive evidence. That is, guilty until proven innocent. And a very convenient excuse to allow them to break the already broken back of this broken man by refusing any health coverage or subsidy.

As if this one-armed man, now presumably out of most work forever, could use the extra bad news that the company he was employed with was now going to toss him out like a tainted piece of meat.

Alas, this really is the unadulterated logic of neoliberal capitalism. And the United States has been sick with this cancer for decades. They've even often "been down with" (as in, assenting to) "the sickness."

There are truly no real upsides to dirt-cheap liquor in a land already so systemically neglectful of health. I mean, with my epilepsy, mood issues, and, at times, horribly debilitating eczema, I would have been a long-lost cause were I born American (and I am truly thankful I wasn't, though I do not say that in a resentful sense... nor do I say it with a boyishly naive sense of Canadian nationalism).

I say it because I know what I need, at least insofar as I've always had it. Were I to dedicate myself to the pursuit of a more horizontal social order, egalitarian healthcare would still top my agenda for everyone's sake.

Writing all this has already imbued me with some psychic release. As I started this entry, I had been sipping on a fine Portuguese vinho verde. I rather insensitively finished the bottle, and am now sipping at a cold bottle of Yuengling amber lager, a beer which claims to be from "America's Oldest Brewery," established in 1829. It's a favorite down here, and one you can't find in my neck of the Canadian woods.

Since I've been down here, history has reached a few new milestones and points of interest, as it always does. In particular, I refer to Hillary Clinton's "clinching," as so many news sources put it, of the Democratic Presidential nomination (surprise, surprise). Bernie, of course, is going to keep his word and not be a "spoiler," as he himself calls it. After a rather notable meting with President Obama, Bernie has pledged to support Clinton and assist in the effort to defeat Donald Trump.

I'm not going to start throwing around revolutionary credentials and claim Bernie is assenting to an iron will, of sorts, or that he has somehow revealed himself counter-revolutionary (I mean, that sort of baseless claim to a sole revolutionary legitimacy and the arrogant name-calling tit-for-tats are what I dislike and disrespect so much about Karl Marx and his inner circle, and we all know the 19th century ended 116 years ago), but I will be honest about what I think is possible for Bernie, and the potential outcomes, both good and not so good, I can foresee.

First off, the Green Party nominee for President, Jill Stein, has been suggesting both her and Bernie team-up on the same ticket for months now. With Hillary securing the Democratic nomination, she has once again extended that olive branch to Sanders' and his supporters. I would be silly to call it the "best" option Bernie has, but it's not a bad one, and would be noble in the attempt alone. The "spoiler" argument, first levelled on Ralph Nader as the American left looked for someone to blame for the neoconservative victory of Bush Jr. in 2000, is not a truly valid argument against third party voting when held-up to the expounded democratic rhetoric of American ideologues.

Of course there should be a plurality of parties to choose from. Is it not neoliberalism that thinks of competition as virtue? Or is that an older version of capitalism I'm thinking of?
Regardless, competition in the public eye forces more comprehensive change, as each party will always be guaranteed to try to appeal past its base and offer something meaningful to further flung demographics. Sure, it's all still marketing, but it's time the American voting public started using these usually manipulative political marketing strategies to theirs (and the worlds) advantage. With a more plural and fractured political class, the efforts of a greater range of people can begin to be felt in elite circles. Even if Bernie ran on the Green ticket, if he could succeed in the minimal sense of throwing the Greens upward to 15% of the popular vote, this would guarantee that, during the next election cycle in 2020/21, the Green Party nominee would be mandated to debate on an equal footing and in the same live mass broadcast venues as the two main party candidates. In this sense, it might be a more worthwhile objective to break the two-party system than it is to keep the Donald out of the White House (though I still struggle with the thought myself).

- - -

Breaking from the political rant, I feel it may be important to return to myself.

My note-to-self on this Florida overture for future adventures would have to be: don't come without at least a few hundred bucks next time. Though I love Jen's parents and truly appreciate everything they've done for me, travel when it isn't at least possible for some self-direction some of the time makes me feel bonded to other's circumstances, for better and for worse. At some point in the next decade, I would love to return to Florida with a few of my Canadian friends in tow. It'd be a fantastic opportunity to see the much weirder parts of the state, fabled on the internet for surrealism and excess. It's too bad, at this point, that I'll neither ever attend a Bernie or Trump rally, both of which would have been fascinating from a historical point of view.

Not that I ever made it to a partisan rally in Canada during our last election cycle, however.