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AmerInd Nathan Phillips uses faux victimization to hurt American Indians

Victimology has a new victim all right, and it is one of the few honest to goodness genuine victims in America. That is American Indians.

No one got cheated more, mistreated more, treated like crap more, lied to more, or abused more in the European settling of America than the large assortment of First Americans, who were the first ones to widely settle the continent.

One of the attractive aspects of an otherwise pretty diverse array of American Indian cultures here was their widespread innocence. Even the most powerful, most violent, most cruel tribes (e.g. Lakota Sioux, Blackfeet, Huron, Seneca, Shawnee) demonstrated an almost child-like trust of European American promises. Even after helping the early Pilgrims gain a foothold on the East Coast, and then suffering for it as the unlimited immigration poured into the best, most fertile, most productive hunting and farming lands (the time our Thanksgiving holiday comes from).

When we use the word “attractive” here, we mean in terms of generating genuine and well-earned sympathy for the Native American situation among those who succeeded them in running the continent. A lot of Americans rightly feel bad for the Indians, for what was taken from them, for how they were officially mistreated until even very recent years. It is why so many American Indian faces appear on our early coinage. Americans have always admired Indian virtues like bravery, tenacity, faithfulness and commitment, honor, and high intelligence. You’d have to be a bigot or a jerk not to feel some sympathy for the Indians, and in fact most Americans today do support Indians in their quests to hold on to the little bit of reservation land left to them.

So along comes this American Indian Nathan Phillips guy (whose name seems to have changed several times over the years), aggressively forcing his way into a gathering of Catholic teenagers leaving a pro-life march in Washington, DC. Nathan Phillips is an American Indian who then insists on banging his symbolic drum a few inches away from the nose of a teenager who just stands there, unmoving. This is technically the criminal act of battery committed by Phillips, against a youth, no less. That kid was basically guilty of the huge crime of standing still while being white and Catholic.

Additionally, Phillips was accompanied by a bunch of violent anti-white racists assailing the young kids with all kinds of racial taunts and physical challenges.

At first the Democrat media turned this situation around into some sort of fake assault on Phillips and Indians. Everyone everywhere reflexively blamed the young Catholic kids for being the bad actors here. But then the video footage started to leak out, and it showed the teenagers just standing there, minding their own business, and actually behaving very modestly in the face of serious attempts by Phillips and his buddies at inciting violence and racial hatred.

And so in the end it turns out that Nathan Phillips was not only not a victim, but he was actually the aggressive perpetrator of genuine crimes against the teenagers. Phillips was the victimizer of innocent teenagers. He brought the conflict literally to their faces, and wonderfully they turned the other cheek.

And now, as a result of his own bad behavior, Phillips has attracted the misplaced assistance of the once-fine American Indian Movement group to back him up. Talk about a PR nightmare, AIM has misjudged the situation and thrown its integrity and credibility out the window by taking Phillips’ side in this, despite the physical evidence so clearly showing him to be in the wrong. This damages AIM and innocent American Indians everywhere.

And so the leftist fake victimology movement has claimed yet another victim, this time the American Indians. Phillips and AIM have now managed to remove Indians from being innocent bystanders into aggressive victimizers of young children. Now it’s “the Indians” who are seen as a bunch of bigoted jerks by a huge audience.  News for you, my Indian friends: This can’t possibly work out well for you. Acting like aggressive jerks in the name of Indian culture is indefensible, it undermines your cause. It does not help you. It turns your allies and friends against you. All your hard work to cultivate understanding for your plight gets tossed out the window with this stuff.

And so we see now one more example of how leftist ideology eventually boomerangs back on the people who employ it, hurting them, instead of helping them. In this instance, the American Indian cause for justice and fair compensation is set back, just as politically partisan liberal Jewish groups like the ADL continue to chip away at positive images Americans have come to develop about Jews. Similarly, just when America had elected a black to the presidency through the votes of an enormous swath of Caucasians, leftists then invented the anti-white Black Lives Matter to convince the same pro-Obama whites that they had actually misplaced their trust and votes. And so on.

And at the end of all this failure and destruction of racial progress, it appears that the same old white liberals behind it all don’t bear any blame. And that would be because the white liberal Democrat media protects them.

Will the real Ireland please get up, stand up?

Tramping the Temple Bar in Dublin with old friends, we were in search of native music, and a cold Guinness. Despite our best efforts, we could not find one authentic Celtic pub, that was open at lunch time, anyhow. Every place we went was either blaring the same exact mix of John Denver, U2, the Beatles, and Neil Diamond, or had someone playing those same songs on a guitar. Really loudly.

This was not the real deal Ireland we came to see and experience.

What the hell is all that incongruous music doing on native Celtic soil? So out of place was this alien cacophonous tumult that we finally fled to what we thought was a quiet spot, only to have the talking-level ambience be detonated by just one guy with a guitar. Singing John Denver, Beatles, U2, and Neil Diamond songs. Really loudly. So loudly that we could not speak to one another at the table, except in between his songs. And believe it or not, this pub had run out of Guinness.

No Irish music and no Guinness in this Temple Bar Irish pub….the heart and soul of Ireland. Supposedly.

This arrangement was, to us, utterly bizarre and not at all what these Americans wanted to hear, or experience. We had traveled back to the old country to hear the heart-felt authentic sound of the old country, either old or modern, not modern, plastic inversions from and for the New World. We put up with it and enjoyed each other’s company for a while, and then fled to greener pastures.

Now about that old time Irish religion…every Catholic church we visited there was a museum. They all had small charity shops, selling post cards. Dark and uninhabited, after a thousand years for some, they now sit mute. How sad to see the backbone of Irish morality, spirituality, and identity cast aside so abruptly.

While talking to anyone who would share their views with us about this, which included at least a dozen natives, from taxi drivers to cops on the street to the barber Seamus who cut me hair, we heard the following themes: The Catholic church overplayed its hand and alienated the very flock under its care. By being part and parcel of the public schools, the Church had a lot of control over people’s lives. But instead of being a positive force, the Irish we spoke to said that when they saw a priest coming, they ducked the other way. Their schooling was unhappy, not inspiring. The Church did not have to compete for the people’s trust and allegiance; it took them for granted and treated them like a captive audience.

And then there was the same molestation issue as here, except that it was bigger, known longer, and covered up in plain sight much longer in Ireland than in America. One man, Martin, our taxi driver on the way to the ferry to Holyhead, said “And you loved Pope John Paul, right?”

To which I naturally answered “Of course! He was a powerful force for good on Planet Earth!”

To which Martin replied “Yes, of course you would say this. All the Americans say it. But did Pope John Paul, the greatest pope in modern history, ever apologize for the molestation problem, here or in America? No, he did not, and it caused most Irish to turn away from him and the Church. Including me.”

I was then reminded of Sinead O’Connor’s bizarre outburst on Saturday Night Live decades ago. “Fight the real enemy,” she shouted at a picture of the Pope. Most Americans were stunned and unhappy about it, regardless of their religious affiliation or identity.

Apparently Sinead had a reason that the rest of us did not know. And at that time, Ireland was just an island a million miles away. We did not know what she was talking about, what Martin was telling us about. There were no social media to broadcast her message, just a brief appearance in front of a big TV audience. It was up to the audience members to dig deeper to find out what she meant.

Today, it appears that outside of the really rural areas, the Catholic Church in Ireland is being abandoned by the Irish. Like completely abandoned.

This terrifies those of us who believe in the supremacy of Western civilization. Without the Church, a cornerstone of Western Civilization, the whole falls. What fills that vacuum could be anything, and there are some powerful forces at play, playing for all the chips that spoiled, soft, fantasy-driven Westerners seem to be oblivious to. The Irish are not soft, or spoiled, but they are like children in a way. They are largely innocent children, in my eyes, unexposed to the harsh realities of the outside world, waiting to eat them up. Their guard is down, not up. The Irish are vulnerable, in the way that middle-income American kids are clueless and big hearted about the intentions of their enemies they call friends.

It is painful to see an Irishman drop his own music in Dublin, drop the source of his soul and family, and drop his guard when a fight for his culture is looming in his face.

Will Ireland please stand up? Will the real Ireland please get up? Yes, we know you are tired of fighting, but sadly, we all must fight to stay free. It is a constant thing. You Irish should know this better than everyone else.

For those who want to hear some authentic, modern, native Irish music, in the symbolic spirit of James Joyce; it is possible:

The Pope is Your Man

If you live in Europe, North America, or South America, you are greatly influenced by the Pope in Rome.

Whether you know it or not, the Pope is usually going to bat for you every day. You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread, and you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate and value the Pope, who fills a unique role for all humans.

While it is true that Roman Catholics have a special role for the Pope/Papacy in their theology, a role that non-Catholics find tough to accept, the fact is the Pope is the West’s leading voice on morality, charity, gentleness, kindness, and the other positive little acts that knit together our civilization.  At his best he is a public advocate for all the important little things between people that are right and true, necessary for happiness on our planet. In that way, the Pope is your man.

Over the past 1,500 years popes have played varying roles in politics and the advancement of civilization as we have come to know and treasure it today. Some were better or worse than others. A few were truly bad, and quite a few were truly great leaders.  The Church built much of Europe’s civilization (some of it built with money stolen through the Inquisition, the Church’s darkest time), and we all have gratitude for that stable society we now enjoy.

The pope we have today is pretty controversial, and I will admit I am not his biggest fan right now. Oh sure he says a lot of things that are important for all humans to hear, and I value that. But he also says things publicly and quietly does a lot within the Church that are contrary to how our civilization works.

Gentle critics ascribe this to his South American slum “liberation theology” and his Jesuit training. Harsh critics, including some of my most religiously observant Catholic friends, are much more blunt about their dis-satisfaction. I won’t repeat any of it here, but I will admit to missing very much the somewhat recently departed Pope John Paul, a really inspirational leader and powerful voice for goodness and right action across the planet.

Dear Pope, I hope you find your voice, because it is a voice for all of us. I am not Catholic, but I am a human who benefits from you when you are at your finest. Hurry up, please.