This is the third response I’ve crafted to the “MAGA Kid and the Native Elder” incident, and a few things are becoming clear: that my initial response was an overreaction to the event and some facts I didn’t yet know; that the facts matter on one level, and that on another level, they don’t matter.
How we process these as a community of readers and as members of other communities will determine whether this event is a catalyst for evolution or further division. It’s progress or regress.
It’s that clear, and it’s that critical.
As a “regular guy,” all I can offer is my own experience. As a consciousness student and teacher, I can offer some insight. I hope that my experience with this event will trigger within you some thoughts and insight about your own.
When I saw the first pictures of the young, white male who appeared to be smirking at an elderly Native man, I had to fight violent thoughts against the kid. From what I read on social media, so did many others. Reading initial reports did nothing to assuage my rage. It appeared that a Native elder was on a march, and a bunch of MAGA kids showed up to block their passage.
The nerve!
“Someone needs to teach that kid any number of lessons,” I thought. Most of my imagined lessons had to do with at least some level of physical discomfort to him, and providing emotional relief for myself. I felt energized and wrote an article about respect and social evolution.
As more information came out Sunday about the nature of the confrontation, the names of the players, the interviews and videos, it became apparent to me that this was a complex situation with many moving parts that are hard to precisely identify.
Nick Sandmann is the name of the MAGA kid. His apparent motive was one thing that I had to “take my foot off the gas” about. Yes, he was wearing a MAGA hat, a movement I can’t stand and that I feel is incompatible with the world I want to create, and that I associate with Manifest Destiny. I have a special hatred for that particular concept. But do those things make him guilty? If so, of what? And if so, so what? By the way, I’m glad no one had a camera pointed in my face when I was 17. I also acted in unwise ways. I also had a smirk on my face when I was doing it, I promise.
The Elder… what was he up to? I’m heavily involved in Native spirituality and know and love many Elders that look just like him. Still, might he have done something different? As it stands, after listening to and reading Mr. Phillips testimonies on the event, I feel his heart was in the right place, but that his method might have been more effective had it been applied differently. No judgement, just an observation. In the end, I wasn’t there. He likely handled it a whole lot better than I might have.
Finally, there was a group of black men that were part of what I’ll call an “intense spiritual group.” To my perception, of the three groups involved, these might have been the most responsible for the flare-up. Again, it’s not important, just my perception.
So, this and that and this and that… and none of it is important. Is that what I’m saying?
I’m not saying that none of it is important, only that the facts are only interesting on the same level that a lawyer might find them interesting. This level is where the “facts of the case” matter. However, I suspect that what really happened is never fully going to be known by those that weren’t there. We have now coherent responses by both Sandmann and the Elder Nathan Phillips, and there are conflicts.
If I were a judge, I would be duty-bound to get to the bottom of it. I would call witnesses, cross-examine them, determine believability, assign a punishment and look for the next crime. In the end, I might find one guiltier than the other. That’s all that process would accomplish.
But my Teachers tell me I’m NOT a judge.
Yeah, but what if I want so badly to judge that Kid, to drag him through the mud and smack that grin off his face for what he did? Or, if I find myself on the other side, what if I want to blame the Mr. Phillips, castigating him for getting so close to Sandmann?
That emotion – right there – is the key to understanding. It’s the only way this event becomes useful for evolution.
It’s not satisfying on an emotional level to walk away from revenge, or from an emotional expression. Like, at all. Hey, it’s not for a three-year old, either. But, what do I really believe? The event has passed, no one is in physical danger from this event. What is the most effective course of action, in retrospect?
The most effective course is to give up on the facts, and place attention on the metaphor.
Here’s what I see as the metaphor, the one that made me so emotional. Maybe it’s yours, too: the Oppressor vs. the Oppressed, with all that entails. The latter gets his way by allowing greed to guide his depraved actions, for which there is no bottom. Oppressor appears to block the passage of the Oppressed. Kid smile says to my subconscious, “I can be here because I am more than you, old man. I matter and you don’t.” Elder epitomizes in the picture and initial videos the struggle of the Indigenous, the downtrodden, those who the MAGA people seem to have so little regard for and that Manifest Destiny definitely doesn’t. The picture, one provided by my imperfect perception, is one of stringent injustice. It’s millions of Bison murdered so the Natives would have no food. It’s the 7th Calvary machine-gunning women and children in a ditch in 1890. It’s the killing of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. It’s Standing Rock, and even our addiction to sugar.
All these things are what I tied to one picture and a few videos. Is it any wonder my emotion spiked? How about yours?
Suddenly, it’s clear to me that it’s not the kid I hate. How can I? I don’t know him. Instead, it’s damned likely I’d take a bullet for him. So, it’s not about the individual. It’s about the representation, the metaphor.
No, Nick Sandmann is not innocent. As I write this, a picture has been sent to me of kids from his high school, one in blackface, at what appears to be a school basketball game. It’s even more ammo I could use to hate on Nick. But if I am what I say I am, I have to believe that karma is a real thing, and the best teacher. A far better one than I am, anyway. I have to let that emotion go because Nick is not the point.
The point, the Capital P Point, is that for me to embody my statement that “We Are One,” I have to love Nick, and work within myself to root out injustice. And part of that has to do with seeing the difference between myself and emotion. Hell, I teach this. But until I embody it, I don’t have it.
I want to create a world where we act as if we are one. I can’t change anyone else. I can protest. I can work on individual manifestations of injustice, but until I effectively and actively and in fact change my own perception and cease identification with my dicey emotions, I will only ever find myself in the middle of a world of Other.
We can and must create what we want. If it’s a world of Unity, we do that by embodying it and in no other way.
Are we ready to create that world?
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Photo: AP News