I’ve been dealing with more rabbit problems today, so here’s a repost to tide you over til tomorrow.
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repost → deal → tomorrow
The Republican party has become an extremist party.
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party → become → ?
And they’re probably going to be punished for it in November; polls show rapidly deteriorating support for both Donald Trump and the GOP that has fallen in behind him.
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that → go → him
Extremism ought to be punished.
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Extremism → punish → ?
I’ll have lots more to say about the Republicans’ failures in the days to come.
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I → have → days
But even though Democrats deserve to win, that doesn’t mean they’re free from the creeping extremism that has taken over essentially all of American politics and public discourse in the age of social media.
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that → deserve → media
Although Dems are not nearly as extremist as the GOP, they have become a much more ideologically extreme party than they were during the days of Obama.
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they → become → Obama
Dems’ extremist positions include dogged opposition to any form of effective immigration enforcement, tolerance of systematic (and systemic) racial discrimination, various trans issues, and…land acknowledgements.
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positions → include → discrimination
Isn’t that just a respectful way of acknowledging that the land we’re on used to belong to Indigenous people?
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we → acknowledge → people
Isn’t it just a way of saying “Hey Indigenous people, we haven’t forgotten you”?
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we → say → you
As I wrote in a post two years ago — still one of my most popular posts of all time — land acknowledgements don’t just recognize Indigenous people.
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acknowledgements → write → people
They are a way of fundamentally delegitimizing the United States — of declaring that this is a country that has no right to exist.
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that → delegitimize → right
And beyond that, land acknowledgements implicitly advance a theory of collective racial ownership of territory that is morally indistinguishable from the worst blood-and-soil nationalism of the racist far Right.
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that → advance → Right
Nor are land acknowledgements a fringe practice, limited to progressive cultural spaces.
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acknowledgements → limit → spaces
As Dave Weigel recently reported, they have become a sort of ritualistic utterance at Democratic Party events:
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they → report → events
Democrats' decision to formalize land acknowledgments in their party meetings could haunt their candidates more than they realize…
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they → formalize → candidates
A tradition of naming historic Native tribes during regional events that started in Australia before spreading to Canada, arriving in the US via art exhibitions, is now part of every major party event…
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that → name → event
The 2016 Democratic convention did not contain a land acknowledgment.
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convention → contain → acknowledgment
But the practice of beginning events with a nod to slaughtered tribes and "stolen" land spread during President Barack Obama's second term and Trump's first term, along with other progressive ideas about race and history…
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practice → begin → race
Democrats did not have campus conferences where they agreed to embrace language that conservatives see as anti-American…
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conservatives → have → that
They just adopted the terminology when activists told them it was a good idea.
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it → adopt → them
But in the long term, they represent — and contribute to — the creeping rise of anti-American and illiberal ideology on the broad American left.
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they → represent → left
That will probably be an electoral liability at some point, but more fundamentally, it’s a departure from the liberal nationalist ideology that made the Democrats such an effective governing party in the 20th century.
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Democrats → ’ → century
So anyway, here’s my post from 2024.
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post → ’ → 2024
The United States, like all nations, was created through territorial conquest.
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States → create → conquest
Most of its current territory was occupied or frequented by human beings before the U.S. came; the U.S. used force to either displace, subjugate, or kill all of those people.
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U.S. → occupy → people
To the extent that land “ownership” existed under the previous inhabitants, the land of the U.S. is stolen land.
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land → exist → U.S.
This was also true before the U.S. arrived.
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U.S. → arrive → ?
The forcible theft of the land upon which the U.S. now exists was not the first such theft; the people who lived there before conquered, displaced, or killed someone else in order to take the land.
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who → exist → land
The land has been stolen and re-stolen again and again.
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land → steal → ?
If you somehow destroyed the United States, expelled its current inhabitants, and gave ownership of the land to the last recorded tribe that had occupied it before, you would not be returning it to its original occupants; you would simply be handing it to the next-most-recent conquerors.
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you → destroy → conquerors
If you go back far enough in time, of course, at some point this is no longer true.
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this → go → point
Humanity didn’t always exist; therefore for every piece of land, there was a first human to lay eyes on it, and a first human to say “This land is mine.”
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land → exist → it
But by what right did this first human claim exclusive ownership of this land?
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human → claim → land
Why does being the first person to see a natural object make you the rightful owner of that object?
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you → see → object
And why does being the first human to set foot on a piece of land give your blood descendants the right to dispose of that land as they see fit in perpetuity, and to exclude any and all others from that land?
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they → set → land
What about all the peoples of the world who were never lucky enough to be the first to lay eyes on any plot of dirt?
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who → lay → dirt
Are they simply to be dispossessed forever?
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they → dispossess → ?
I have never seen a satisfactory answer to these questions.
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I → see → questions
Nor have I seen a satisfactory explanation of why ownership of land should be allocated collectively, in terms of racial or ethnic groups.
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ownership → see → groups
…and 83 more, not listed.
The Aporia
