Sins of the Father: American Hypocrisy

It was our Christian European forebears who first landed on America's shoreline, and the white colonists who followed, that cemented our fate. As the Old Testament says over and again, the sins of the father will be visited upon their children.

The Scripture noted above is followed by three more in Exodus and Numbers, each talking about future generations of family, down to the fourth. We may be well beyond that generation in America. I mean, I've traced my own ancestral roots back to my 6th great grandfather, a Revolutionary War hero from Maine. It's apparent, at least to me, that the sins of his British ancestors, some of them Quakers, are still being visited upon our ilk.

I've been watching the fictional drama on Paramount Network, Yellowstone, featuring producer/lead actor Kevin Costner, which deals not-so-delicately with the tenuous relationship between non-native and Native Americans near his fictional ranch in Montana. Each episode reminds me of the hypocrisy of Manifest Destiny, white privilege and American power. Today, the Biblical-rooted idiom, "sins of the father," kept repeating in my stereophonic brain. And this blog post began formulating therein.

No more succinct indictment of American hypocrisy has been made than this by the Brown Political Review last November:

If the United States wishes to punish human rights violations abroad, it must also come to terms with its own flawed record. To be clear, the United States’ claim to moral authority has never been strong. From the genocidal colonialism of indigenous peoples under the guise of Manifest Destiny to the forced internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in World War II, the history of the United States is rife with severe human rights violations (Source: "The Man in the Mirror: Human rights and American hypocrisy," 8 Nov 2018, cached on Google).

The above article goes on to remind us that "the United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), joining Iran, Eritrea, and North Korea as the only countries refusing to participate in the council." That's sadly telling.

It's the proof positive, to me anyway, of the snowballing effect of Manifest Destiny. We see it in the current administration's stance on everything from women's rights to the rights of immigrants and foreigners and the LGBTQ+ community. The hypocrisy is that we forget history (doomed to repeat itself), our own heritage, our non-native origins.

A Foreign Policy article, The Heart and Hypocrisy of the American Empire (19 May 2019), describes
"American power" or Pax Americana as "overbearing, lustful, and mendacious." I call it sinful. It sickens and saddens me that this is both our heritage and our legacy.

In Rob Larson's article earlier this year, Capitalist Freedom is a Farce, he quotes American icon Frederick Douglass, who railed against unfettered capitalism, "Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other. . ." It led Larson to conclude, "capitalism limits both positive and negative freedom...the dynamics of capitalism generate unbelievable concentrations of private power," tending toward monopolies.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.   ~Lord Acton (1887)

That's one way to say it. We are, as a nation, enslaved to the Almighty Dollar. Let us not pretend that we operate under some divine right or that our allegiance to this nation is somehow ordained by Almighty God. That's not the bronze calf at who's altar we worship. Let's be clear about that. Capitalist America is greed-driven. It's power is not god-ordained in anyway, don't be fooled by the inscription upon our currency, "In God We Trust." It might as well read, "In This Almighty Dollar We Trust." Yet, that paper currency isn't worth the pulp it's printed upon.

Yes, our hypocrisy runs deep.

The sins of our father's father's father (well beyond four generations, now) is certainly visited upon us today. This shouldn't be a source of national pride or patriotism. For me, it is a source of great shame.
As the people said in response to Pontius Pilate (Matt. 25:27), "His blood be on us and on our children." We sacrificed human dignity and sanctity upon the cross of Manifest Destiny. It's blood is surely on our hands, America.