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The Ambiguous Holiday
10 October 2022
Happy ambiguity. Whether you celebrate today as Columbus Day (the federal holiday) or Indigenous Peoples' Day (the grass roots alternative), you have to admit a sizable number of people are celebrating it differently from you. It's the perfect holiday for a divided nation.
Edward Curtis. A family group, Noatak. Three Eskimos. c1929. Library of Congress digital file from b&w film copy neg. cph.3b36217.
We’re not fans of converting holidays from one observance to another. It just doesn't quite wash (even sliding Columbus Day into Italian Heritage Day). But today is different. It's a different take on the same historic event.
Columbus Day celebrates the discovery of another hemisphere by the Europeans in the 15th century. That was before anyone ever thought autopilot was worth investing in. It was great for Europe, not so great for the people already here. Significant events are never without issues.
Indigenous Peoples' Day, on the other hand, recognizes the people who had already discovered this hemisphere and made it home. Before those rascals from Europe overran the place with their greed and diseases. And ambitions for a better life.
On this day, we're celebrating both sides of the coin.
We all came from somewhere else, after all. Some people got here before others had the audacity to impose immigration controls on still others. But no one sprang from a nut that fell off a native tree.
So we became a little concerned as we listened to Saturday’s This American Life report Watching the Watchers about Republicans training to be poll watchers who are convinced the 2020 election was stolen.
The report detailed a training session in which Republicans answering Steve Bannon's call to sign up to monitor polling locations were upset that they were being told not to intervene if they suspected some breach of the rules but to document it with their phones for subsequent litigation (in Act Two, Magazona, of the broadcast at around 27 minutes).
One attendee said that was like watching a mugging and "taking depositions" (27:50). They were out for blood not court filings. But the trainer held firm. Litigation was the means not confrontation.
So elections are now just precursors to litigation by the losers?
Republicans, in an attempt to maintain political power, have turned their party into the party of cheaters, poor losers and liars. They have become the latest example of Lord Acton's observation that power tends to corrupt.
What happens to the game when one side won't play by the rules?
Ironically enough, many of the people who came here left exactly that kind of oppression. The kind where sanctimonious cheats, losers and liars tried to impose their will on honest people who do follow the rules hoping for nothing more than to put their backbone into making a decent life.
Those people, whether indigenous or immigrant, came here first. First of all or first in their family. And still they come, hoping to discover a new world whose fair play would provide an opportunity for them to recover some of what they have lost.
So whether you prefer to honor those who were here before others discovered them or those who discovered those who were already here let's honor those who one way or another were the first to came here. Indigenous or immigrant.
And let’s get on with the business of being here now.