Legacies

 It was, for all practical purposes, a perfect night for a Blood Moon. I had to pull on a jacket, but I could set up the tripod on our deck, fully armed with my camera and the biggest lens I could muster, a 400mm as big as your arm, and wait for the moon's appearance in the inky court of sky. 

It's not particularly difficult for me to imagine what it must have been like for the Yanktons just a bit up the river from me, on a high spot of ground 200 years ago now. The band has been in place for some time already, maybe out after buffalo here, maybe just taking a week off along a river where the grass is green and thick, the horses happy. Somewhere not far away, coyote pups yip, just like they did a night ago. It's quiet and as peaceful as can be in the middle of a covey of tipis.

Then, strangely, the only light other than their fire, the moon up there in the sky shrivels slowly and turns red as a beet, blood red--a blood moon. Save for a few pen prick stars, the moon's glow being strangely extinguished has to be disconcerting--the lights have gone out. 

I'm guessing Blood Moons happened with enough regularity that the band didn't suddenly go bonkers in a massive panic. In all likelihood, they tied the moon's bloodiness to something or other in their lives, probably sat out here, not far from where I'm sitting, and watched that red curtain being drawn over the moon, then watched it slowly emerge once again from its bloody costuming. 

The people who took this land from them didn't think much about how those Yanktons spent long summer days or cold winter nights. Some settlers here were Yankees, but more were Euros--the Dutch, the Low German, the Luxembourgian, all of them besotted with "the American dream," a genuine new-world opportunity to own their own land, their own lives, and their own shot at freedom and dignity. If any of them ever saw the Yanktons they dispossessed, they saw they from the rear because whether or not they were aware of it, those peoples--my great-grandparents among them--never really thought of wild Indians as being people at all, much less residents of this good earth all around. I'm sure my great-grandparents liked them only when they were leaving.

It's amazing to me that, today, those who preach this "Replacement Theory" nonsense don't stop to think that there really isn't a white man or woman anywhere in the neighborhood--yours or mine--who can call themselves "native." We're all imports, all immigrants, whether our origins lie in the eastern states or across the ocean blue. 

Tucker Carlson calls white people "legacy" families, giving them some edge on others, newer immigrants. Those who have been here, those who roots, those who have a legacy--they're the ones at risk today, Tucker says--we're the ones being replaced by a cabal of Democrats trying to destroy American freedoms. We are what America is all about. We are white people, and we are losing the most important battle of all, the battle for power.

So an 18-year-old, half-loco kid from rural New York, overflowing with this "legacy" bullshit, buys a big gun, and outfits it to shoot dead an entire police department. Then he drives 300 miles to Buffalo, New York, cases out a grocery story patronized predominantly by African-Americans, parks his car, pulls on a helmet and bullet-proof vest, and starts shooting before he ever gets into the grocery store. Ten were dead. Ten "replacements" will not "replace" any white people. There. The brain-addled kid thought himself a prophet of justice.

White supremacy is not just pernicious. It's a poison in the national bloodstream, it's rot, and it's evil. It's anti-absolutely everything in the gospel of Jesus Christ, but its embraced--Lord help us!--by those who believe they're loyal members of His body. The vast majority of white nationalists consider themselves devout followers of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

It's bullshit, and Tucker Carlson puts it out there to get richer than he already is. He living off the fear of otherwise good people, and he's not alone. There are others. But not to see that "replacement theory" is producing evil is ducking out of what's all around us right now. 

If you're a Republican and you believe in limited government, in freedom of the individual, in limited taxation, and deplore industry leaving the country--fine! Let your voice be heard. 

But if you're a Republican who buys into this "legacy" claptrap, this "Replacement Theory," please repent. You heard me--REPENT. You're dead wrong. Turn Tucker off and consider instead the gospel of love and grace and denying oneself for others. Consider Acts 10.

If there are legacy families here, they live on reservations. My great-grandparents, born in the Netherlands, are buried here in Orange City, Iowa, where I will be buried as well. But the Schaaps are not specially blessed "legacy families"; we don't somehow deserve what we took from Native people. In the broadest sense, we don't own our land. Manifest Destiny is a convenient falsehood.

A few nights ago I sat out on our deck and watched a Blood Moon, tried to get it into a camera. Long before I sat there, perhaps not all that far away either, it's not hard to imagine that in front of a tipi that opened to the eastern sky, a band of Yankton Sioux sat just as fascinated, just as entertained. 

I've got a heritage and a legacy, but I don't claim sole ownership of the land I inhabit. My people weren't always here.