Marking the Territory

"I talked to Orteguilla and asked him to beg Montezuma kindly to give me a very pretty Indian girl," (254).

Conquest. Even the taste of the word in the mouth is alluring. The word conquest in Amrican culture today isn’t about land or men or riches. It’s about sex. It’s about women. Have you ever heard a woman describe a man as a conquest? I haven’t. And I bet if she did, there’d be major consequences. A girl can’t use a man for sex. That makes her a slut. But a man sleeping with a girl, that sir, is a conquest.

And conquest isn’t that different now, is it? I mean, conquest is sexy. It’s appealing. To conquer something is to defeat it. It’s to own it. The idea of being a man’s conquest may make me ill, but the idea of conquering the obstacles toward my goals, that is appealing to me. It is interesting how this masculine ideal worms its way into not just the men of our country, but the women as well. Success as conquest is a very male oriented thing in American culture, so does that make true success only accessible to men? I certainly hope not.

The problem with things such as masculinity based on unscrupulous sex and unapologetic violence isn’t that it’s something men and boys learn. It’s a problem because It’s subliminal. The sexism that lies just under the surface in a lot of aspects of our culture is so deeply rooted and so natural to us. It’s only when you look closer that it stands out.

Conquest. To overcome by force. To lay claim. To own. This is what Cortez wanted to do to the Americas. This is why the Americas were portrayed as a naked woman.

Certainly the conquistadors who came to the Americas came with the women in mind. The natives were supposedly theirs for the taking. So as they raped the land, they raped the women, murdered its people. And they did it all with a smile on their faces and singing the glory of God.

Their concept of their right to land, resources, women, was ingrained in them. I think that the image of male superiority and dominance that our culture still supports is similar.

I am not saying that all men are like this. Far from it. I know some pretty amazing men. But I do think that people who can’t live up to the American standard of masculinity suffer because of that.

Take Montezuma. He is a feminized version of a powerful man. Why is he so feminized? Because eventually, he is defeated. He is conquered, as a woman should be.
In fact, the only reason why he isn’t a pushover is his masculine aspects, emphasized, as Suzanne said, so as not to seem like an easy conquest. Montezuma is the figurehead of America. He’s like the badass chick that everyone wants to sleep with but isn’t easy to get. Just like conquering America.

The idea of the frontiersman carving out the West, the conquistadors sweeping Central America, all of these are depicted as these epic victories, gaining of our futures. But in the process, so much beauty was destroyed. The Native American cultures were nearly annihilated, as were the indigenous people of Mexico. We forget this when we tell these stories, like a man forgetting the broken woman he leaves after he takes advantage of her. The pain is forgotten. The conqueror made his conquest. But what of the ones who are conquered?

In short, they suffer.

Why do we still relate these stories to our children as victories? Why must we learn later that all our great American fairy tales are lies? Why can’t we tell the truth for once?

Without the truth, children will still grow up thinking that there is glory in conquest. It will be an unconscious thing, an American thing. The Europeans talk all the time about how we Americans think we own everything. Is the conquest narrative why?

"This speech dumfounded Montezuma. In reply he said that he had never ordered his people to take arms against us," (246).

Every Question Is A Stupid Question

“One of those who had been baptized by the Devil with them in the river,” (124).

So beyond the recreation of my days as a swimming instructor playing “Sharks and Minnows” with five-year-olds, “Puritans and the Devil” was a good way to really illuminate what it might have been like in the Puritan mind. Minus of course, the fact that everyone playing knew how stupid they were being. The Puritans did not.

I probably shouldn’t call anyone’s religion “stupid,” especially that of my ancestors, but I can’t help but find that a religion that is so blinded by faith that it doesn’t even know its own is a little bit shady.

As I have mentioned in class, and previously in this blog, I am a Christian. I am even probably descended from some of those selfsame Puritans that came to tame the “Devil’s territory” hundreds of years ago. But I feel like that provides me with the ideal perspective of their mindset. I know how religion can blind you. I have watched friends go blindly into the arms of non-denominational cults, and most “Christians” I know tell me I’m going to go to hell. Yeah. That gets pretty entertaining.

But here’s the thing--religion is nothing without being questioned. Even Jesus was tested in the desert. So the only dangerous faith is an unquestioned, unquestionable one. I have chosen to believe. Choosing not to believe or to doubt is not a sin. In fact, sometimes with the way any organized religion becomes, its about the only smart option. Most Christians I know scare away all the normal people. Almost all of my friends are atheists or agnostics. Do I think they’re going to hell? Uh, no. Besides, even if hell exists, that isn’t my decision. So I’m not about to go pointing fingers and proclaiming that I’m elect, am I?

The worst part of it is, when I say I’m Christian, people assume that I’m a right wing conservative Republican that thinks that dinosaurs and man coexisted and everybody but the members of the JESUS SAVES CHURCH OF GOD AND JESUS CHRIST are going to fry for all eternity in Dantean brimstone.

That’s bullshit. I don’t believe it.

And here is where me and my Puritan ancestors go toe to toe.

There is no questioning in Puritan-land. There is no thought of something else than God. In fact, anything else but the serving of God was considered the work of the Devil! This sort of totality and fear of “other” is what drove the Puritans to atrocity, though their Victorian earnestness is what helped them lay the groundwork for our nation. It is this sort of isolation and theory of “greater good” that makes the lives of innocent people unimportant in the eyes of the people, for the sake of a “higher cause”. The Puritans only had each other, and the devil infested woods. In their eyes, the individual was worthless. Their life was forfeit to God.

…Uh… Not the God I know.

But the Puritan’s God needed their help. It was all out war of the invisible. And war has casualties.

It is the kind of psychology that would “strike the afflicted people to the ground, whether they saw that cast [of eye] or no” (113). They would writhe even when the witch wasn’t looking. And it was still evidence!

What would an angel say if they came down to speak to the Puritans during this time? What would he say? Would they burn him as a witch too?

It just frightens me. To think of being born into that way of thinking. It was stifling enough being born into a rigidly traditional Christian family. This kind of culture would void personality almost completely, and destroy individuality entirely.

Then again, this makes me wonder if we as Americans have really learned anything at all.Times change. People change. Our perspective of the world changes. Or does it?

It is doubtful that a single person in America hasn’t at one point or another questioned the principles upon which our country acts. Not just health care or government spending, but in general. What guides us? What do we, as Americans, feel is a centerpiece to our way of life? I’m sure a few things are coming to mind. Freedom. Democracy. Perhaps a sense of entitlement? A sense of duty to the world?

In Modern Rhetorical Criticism, by Roderick P. Hart, the author questions what he calls, “the master myths of America.” One such myth that he questions is the idea that America is “A new Israel, created by God with a special purpose: to deliver the world’s people from a state of darkness. This myth holds that God gave his chosen people great bounties, but in recompense, expected the American message, (which was really his message) to be spread far and wide.” Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “I don’t believe that.” But the underpinning of the belief still has left its residue on the American psyche. Hart reasons that the branches of this idea brought America to explore the Western Frontier, space, because of the Puritan idea of being the City on the Hill and spreading light and influence into the wilderness. Our sense of duty extended all the way from founding the Red Cross to Vietnam.

And today? Does this still affect us? Do we still have echoes of Puritan ideology lodged deep in the collective American brain?

I was thinking about Mather’s rhetoric, and I thought, “Hey. These witches sound like terrorists.” So I pulled up the speech delivered to a joint session of congress on Sept. 20, 2001 by former president George W. Bush.

Mather’s suspicions ran deeper than that of a few witches causing havoc in the countryside. It was much more of a conspiracy for him. He wrote, “A Malefactor, accused of Witchcraft as well as Murder, and Executed in this place more than Forty Years ago, did then give notice of, An Horrible PLOT against the Country by WITCHCRAFT, and a Foundation of WITCHCRAFT then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably Blow up, and pull down all the Churches in the Country,” (15). Blow up all the churches in the country? Complete annihilation of their way of life? President Bush said of al Queda, “The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians, including women and children. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries.” One might argue that this is, indeed, the nature of the beast, but the rhetoric does more that portray that. These terrorists are everywhere, in 60 countries, willing to kill our children. They have a “directive”, similar to Mather’s “plot” and they will go to any lengths if they are not sought out and destroyed. President Bush said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Mather wrote, “I believe that never were more satanical devices used for the unsettling of any people under the sun.” This same demonification is applied to terrorists in the Bush speech. The former president said, “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. We're not deceived by their pretenses to piety.” Piety is an interesting word, here. It draws the mind back to the protestations of the innocents that denied being witches at the trials. Not to say that terrorists get a bad wrap, but that perhaps there is no room here for a person who is accused of terrorism to escape judgment.

So speaking of judgment, what do we do when it’s time to hang the witch? Or shoot the terrorist? How do we know they are not innocent? How do we distinguish the threat from the unjustly accused? This was one of Mather’s concerns during his witch hunts. He wrote, “Even Good and Wise Men suffers themselves to fall into their Paroxysms; and the Shake which the Devil is now giving us, fetches up the Dirt which before lay still at the bottom of our sinful Hearts. If we allow the Mad Dogs of Hell to poyson us by biting us, we shall imagine that we see nothing but such things and like such things fly upon all that we see,” (21). In other words, if the Puritans were to accuse and hang innocent people, then the witches had already won the battle. What about the terrorists’ battle? In his speech, former President Bush put it this way, “They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

If that is the goal of terrorism, then have we become our own terrorists? If the terrorists wish to take our freedom, are they not doing so by preventing us from saying certain things about the government or carrying aerosol cans on airplanes? What about the Muslim Americans that are profiled by American citizens as possible terrorists every day? Former president Bush said, “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends.” But, like the women of Salem, their very identities make them a target for a hate ideology. Hate the terrorist, hang the witch.

It seems perfectly reasonable to hate the terrorist. We all know that terrorism is evil. However, the nebulous definition of how to tell if someone is a terrorist puts it at witchcraft status. Do we all skirt our Muslim neighbors, afraid of the evil eye? And what about the invasion of privacy for innocent people?

We may not be hanging witches anymore, but we are certainly tapping phone lines, reading e-mails, and now full body scanning people in airports down to nude. Is this false trial?

No, we would say, it is protection from the enemy.

The exact thing Cotton Mather would say of witches over three hundred years ago.

But the point is that Hart’s master myth is still prevalent. We still must protect our city on the hill, the beacon of freedom, from those who might oppose it. And as for those who do oppose us, they must be straight from the Devil. And how American of us to decide to send them back to where they came from, no matter the cost.

(CNN. "CNN.com - Transcript of President Bush's address - September 21, 2001." CNN.com. CNN, n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2010. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/.

Hart, Roderick P.. Modern Rhetorical Criticism. New York: NY, 1980. Print.)

“It may be the devil bears me more malice than another,” (114). 　

"Did You Dress Her Up Like This?"

“A Malefactor, accused of Witchcraft as well as Murder, and Executed in this place more than Forty Years ago, did then give notice of, An Horrible PLOT against the Country by WITCHCRAFT, and a Foundation of WITCHCRAFT then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably Blow up, and pull down all the Churches in the Country,” (15).

So as I was driving this afternoon and thinking about Cotton Mather, since Puritans always come to my mind while driving, I wondered where I would rank on the witchometer for him.

1. Likes to wear black. Check.
2. Owns a black cat. Check.
3. Didn't attend church on Sunday. Check.
4. Believes women should be allowed to be ministers. Ooh, feeling the fires of hell here.
5. Has vocalized interest in witchcraft...

Hmmm... Let's see.

I suppose I should focus on the real problem here, which is ignorance, but I can't help but wonder at the amazing fear and closed-mindedness that the Salem witch trials teem with.

A lot of people in the class had different opinions of what evil is. I think that we were all right. Evil, like good, has many faces, and shows different ones to different people.

In class, Suzanne mentioned Baudelaire’s quote, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.” I agree with this in part. If I were to edit it for my own thoughts, I would say that the greatest trick the Devil could ever pull would be convincing people that there is no such thing as right and wrong-only what is socially acceptable and unacceptable. I am a Christian of the Methodist flavor, and I do believe in the Devil as an individual. Maybe it's because I'm an English person and I see evil personified as easier to deal with, and easier to combat. Don't get me wrong, I still see evil most prevalently as a force, but the juxtaposition of God as a being and the Devil as a being works for me. And that's the important thing about evil. You have to learn how you're going to deal. You're going to need a battle plan.

I think this is where Cotton went wrong. He had a battle plan. But part of the flaw was taking the personification of the Devil just plain too far. That's something Puritan society did in general.
The danger of giving the Devil a face is that all too often, that face is made human, and is then ascribed to people that make the general public uneasy. This demonizing is one of the causes of genocide, war, and oppression. This happened early with women with the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Later you can see it in the Third Reich, the KKK, and the religious war on homosexuals. All you have to do to make your enemy disposable is call them subhuman, say that they are in league with the Devil. Really, humanity hasn't changed much since Puritan days. And if the Devil really does exist, he's sitting in his hot tub and laughing about how his reputation is doing his job for him.
An example of this blindness can be found in Cotton Mather’s On Witchcraft where he says, “the Devils may sometimes have a permission to Represent an Innocent Person, as Tormenting such as are under Diabolical Molestation,” (18). To me, this called to mind the way the Puritans, people who believed they were God’s chosen people, became the instruments of their enemy during the Salem witch trials. Evil can take the guise of an innocent person. And it does so through fear, and closed-mindedness. Mather says, “even Good and Wise Men suffers themselves to fall into their Paroxysms; and the Shake which the Devil is now giving us, fetches up the Dirt which before lay still at the bottom of our sinful Hearts. If we allow the Mad Dogs of Hell to poyson us by biting us, we shall imagine that we see nothing but such things and like such things fly upon all that we see,” (21). To me, this rings prophetic in retrospect. These good and wise men went, in a sense, mad in their witch hunting. The evil that was done in response sounds just like the evil Mather describes. The Puritans thought the Devil got into the people that were accused. Maybe the reality is that the real evil was in the community.

Does the Devil have a sense of irony? To convince good people to murder innocents in the name of God? And if so, how are we seeing this in today’s world? From America to Afghanistan, the examples can be staggering.

I wonder what Cotton Mather would say about our world today. I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be in the Puritan club. I like joy and life too much.

As for Puritanism. If the devil was out to destroy them, I think he succeeded. And the Puritans themselves made it that much easier.

“And the Devil thus Irritated, immediately try’d all sorts of Methods to overturn this poor Plantation,” (14).