James Giago Davies

Baking buffalo grass brown
Harnessing the healing power of the sun
By James Giago Davies

My wise friend Mrs. Nesbit told me about a contest between the sun and the wind, how each thought they could force a man to remove his jacket before the other. The wind sent gales so strong the man staggered to keep his feet, but the harder the wind blew the tighter the man gripped his jacket. The sun relaxed, let himself shine his brightest, and the man gradually got so hot he voluntarily removed his jacket.

There is a word you won’t even find in most dictionaries—weaponized—it is a relatively new word, won’t find it in Mark Twain or Jack London novels, and it allows people to describe how seemingly good and gentle things can be turned into cudgels to clobber other people.

Weaponizing a handgun is easy enough. Click off the safety, level the barrel, and blast some folks. That is the sole practical function of a handgun, to kill people; you sure as hell aren’t going to bring any deer down with one.

Weapons don’t really need to be weaponized though, they are inherently weaponized. Circumstances often cry out for more weapons, weapons we can’t carry around like handguns, weapons we need to attack or protect ourselves from threats actual firepower are powerless to combat.

Something positive and good can be weaponized, turning it into something negative and bad. I know, how much simpler could it be to understand? It’s actually pretty complicated. By turning good things into bad things, those bad things can be used as weapons, to influence outcomes, to compel people to respond in ways that serve self interest over the general interest; weaponizing a good thing allows the unprincipled to hide behind the propriety of the good thing, while they are actually out to do some very bad things.

We need an example. If I am a Christian, and I have weaponized my faith, I will express the faith far differently than Christ intended. Christ tells us in the Bible to love our neighbors as ourselves, to turn the other cheek, to repay evil with kindness, to love even our enemy.

It requires nothing but talk to profess our love of God, to talk about his love for us, but inside any church on any Sunday how much of the conversation focuses on our obligation to love even our enemy? I have sat in many pews, and I can attest to the reality, it is almost never brought up, let alone discussed in depth.

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Loving against our will, against our immediate self interest, perhaps even our immediate well being, is the true test of the Christian Christ calls on us to be. Sanctimony is piety weaponized, and the sanctimonious attempt to preach the Good News through the force of wind, whereas the pious preach through the power of the sun. The sanctimonious force you to remove your coat, but the pious compel you to do so of your own free will.

Beyond the religious considerations, we can see how weaponizing faith can be used to alter social reality, whether it’s the KKK cross burnings or ISIS run amok in the Middle East. Religion is really just an idea, and any idea can be distorted into just the right weapon to control others, whether backed up by actual weapons, which it often is.

Manifest Destiny is a weaponized idea, National Socialism was a weaponized idea, and all weaponized ideas distort the good into the bad, and then hide inside the distortion, striking the credulous dupe as something good and necessary.

Time and again the weaponized perpetrators hide in plain sight mistaken for pillars of virtue and strength, if they are even noticed at all. Take government for example, most Americans hate it as if it were something responsible for itself. Government is just the expression of the self interest of the men who control it. The rich and the powerful control our government, and so blaming the government, and not the people who control the people manning that government, is what happens when you are brainwashed—“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

To brainwash people you need to weaponize education, turn education into a tool to keep people in line. H.L. Mencken: “The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

For some time I have tried to use this column to reach the hearts and minds of Lakota people, to open their eyes to the true nature of the dominant culture that oppresses them. Mostly I have failed. Despite my good intentions, despite the veracity of my assertions, Mrs. Nesbit has made me realize I am trying to force the Lakota to remove their jacket by blowing like a fierce wind, when I should be glowing like a warm sun.

Speaking in direct language about difficult topics, about the dysfunctional reality that is Indian Country, is often mistaken for an endorsement of those criticisms, or worse still, mistaken for shame over being Lakota, and those who point out Lakota problems are accused of thinking like the Wasicu.

Inasmuch as the rich Wasicu have weaponized their own culture against rank-and-file Wasicu, so these rank-and-file Wasicu have weaponized themselves against Lakota. The mistake I make is weaponizing my column to combat that reality. If ignorance is a heavy coat people wear, only sunshine can compel them to take it off. The kind of sunshine that bakes buffalo grass brown.

(James Giago Davies can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com)

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