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God Hates
Mexicans
By Charles Pierson
January 03,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Counterpunch"
-
People will believe anything if it flatters their
vanity. Think of the idea that Americans are God’s
favorites and that the Almighty directs history for
America’s benefit, even when that harms non-Americans,
particularly non-Whites.
From the belief that divine providence guides America’s
destiny came two more bad ideas. American exceptionalism
and Manifest Destiny were heroic-sounding euphemisms
used to justify the trampling of Native Americans and
Mexicans in the course of the US Empire’s mad dash
across the continent.
Divine providence was such a transparently self-serving
and chauvinist notion that we can be thankful that it
has vanished from American thinking. Except that it
hasn’t. Michael Medved, nationally syndicated
conservative radio host, makes the case for heavenly
intervention on behalf of the United States in his new
book, The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the
Rise of the Republic.
Medved argues that the rise of the US cannot be
explained naturalistically; there must have been a
divine guiding hand. The American Miracle opens with the
“extraordinary coincidence” of Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams both dying fifty years to the day from the signing
of the Declaration of Independence. Such a wildly
improbable conjunction of events, writes Medved, could
not have been mere coincidence. In another early
chapter, Medved describes how unusual weather conditions
saved the Continental army following the disastrous
Battle of Long Island. A fierce storm on the night of
August 29/30, 1776 kept British troop ships from
reaching vulnerable American positions. A dense fog,
unprecedented during the Summer months, rose up towards
morning and continued past daybreak, concealing the
Americans and allowing them to make a strategic retreat
from Long Island across the East River to Manhattan.
Incredibly, not one American life was lost during the
retreat.
The Almighty also brought about the freeing of the
slaves. President Lincoln had determined not to issue an
Emancipation Proclamation until there was a major Union
victory; otherwise, Emancipation would be seen as an act
of Northern desperation. The Union victory at Antietam
on 17 September 1862 gave Lincoln what he wanted. That
victory, Medved writes, came about through a literal
miracle. Confederate battle plans wrapped around three
cigars were found by Union soldiers in a campground
which Confederate troops had vacated the day before.
Possession of the Confederate plans ensured Union
victory. Five days later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln
issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
Medved finds in such wildly improbable occurrences “a
pattern for which the influence of some higher power
remains the most rational explanation.”
Baloney. Strange concatenations of unlikely
circumstances happen everywhere, not just to Americans.
People in every nation can point to “evidence” that God
loves them best. Were George Washington’s many escapes
from death testament to divine protection, as Medved
insists? Fidel Castro survived dozens of assassination
attempts by the CIA and lived to be 90. Washington only
lived to be 67. Did God love Castro 34% more than George
Washington?
Washington and Fidel may just have been lucky. Still, if
you want to believe that God kept Jefferson and Adams
alive long enough so that they could expire on the
fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
be my guest. That belief is harmless. And if you believe
as does Medved that the attempt on the life of President
Andrew Jackson failed because God kept the powder in the
assassin’s gun from igniting, that belief is harmless
too (although even the reviewer for the conservative
Commentary magazine questioned why God would want to
save the life of this slaughterer of thousands of Native
Americans).
What should disturb us, however, is occasions when, to
hear Medved tell it, God’s intervention on behalf of
America harms non-Americans, particularly non-Whites. On
such occasions, ruling elites use divine providence to
justify American imperialism and racism.
Consider Medved’s chapter on the Mexican War. The
Mexican War divided the US public between extremists who
wanted to seize all of Mexico and moderates who just
wanted half. Moderation won out. The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, signed by the US and Mexico on February 2,
1848, formally ended the war and ceded California and
large chunks of what would become New Mexico, Arizona,
Nevada, Utah, and Colorado to the United States for $15
million.
Unknown to both Mexico and the Administration of
President James K. Polk, gold had been discovered nine
days earlier on January 24 at Sutter’s Mill, California.
The deal would not have gone through had Mexico known
what it was losing. Medved says that the timing of the
discovery was no accident. Medved quotes a French
prospector who said at the time: “It had been so ordered
by Providence, that the gold might not be discovered
until California should be in the hands of the
Americans.”
What the hell had the Mexicans done to piss God off? The
US had been the aggressor in what Mexicans aptly call la
intervención norteamericana. The Mexican War was a
blatant land grab which the US cloaked in the half-baked
notion of Manifest Destiny. In asking for a Declaration
of War, President Polk told Congress that Mexico had
“invaded” US territory. Polk knew that was false.
Americans were the invaders. Washington sent troops into
Mexico pursuant to a bogus claim that the border of
Texas (which had become a US state in 1845) extended as
far south as the Rio Grande (p. 241). Medved
unquestioningly accepts Polk’s bogus claim as sincere.
The US House of Representatives did not. In November
1848, the House voted to censure President Polk for
starting an unnecessary war.
As for Manifest Destiny, Medved is fine with it. Medved
told a caller to his December 2 show that he was glad
the US acquired California. California, he said, had
been going to waste under the Mexicans. The Mexicans,
and the Spanish before them, had done nothing to develop
California. Or to populate it. Medved tells us that in
1848, a mere “7,500 people of European ancestry”
(because Whites are the people who matter) lived in
California.[1] California must have seemed to Americans
like a land without people for a people without (enough)
land.
Today, the phrase “Manifest Destiny” has gone out of
fashion, replaced by the secular doctrines of
“humanitarian intervention” and the “right to protect”
(with its hip abbreviation “R2P”). Don’t be fooled.
These are simply this season’s imperialist styles. The
US still goes where it pleases and takes what it wants.
“U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Why then does God “shed his grace” on America rather
than let loose the thunderbolts we deserve? It is not
because Americans are better than other people, Medved
assures us. Medved explains that God blesses the US “not
as reward for distinctively righteous behavior but as an
exercise of his inscrutable will” (p. 21). I’ll say it’s
inscrutable. In the case of the Mexican War, God’s will
was downright perverse if we believe that God gave
victory to the nation that started the war.
Medved insists that God’s grant of His favor imposes
“obligations” on America towards the rest of the world.
Tell that to the Pentagon and State Department. Medved
is aware of the left’s criticism of US foreign policy,
but rejects it. Medved points out that America’s
military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan,
etc. (it is a lengthy “etc.”) added no territory to the
US. Yes, but what Medved does not consider is that it is
less hassle for an imperial power to rule indirectly
from outside than directly from inside. Medved also
declares that US military interventions have largely not
benefited the US, but are carried out at great expense.
To US taxpayers, certainly, but the military-industrial
complex does just fine.
I told a priest in my antiwar group about Medved’s book.
He replied by telling me about eisegesis. Don’t confuse
that with exegesis. In exegesis, believers approach a
biblical text with an open mind with the purpose of
determining the text’s meaning. Eisegesis, on the other
hand, is imposing your own meaning on Scripture. My
friend said that it sounded like that is what Medved was
doing.
Medved sees himself in The American Miracle as telling
history’s greatest success story. It has not been a
success story for non-Whites. It still isn’t. The US
robbed Mexicans of half of their country in the 1840s.
Medved’s subtext, whether he intends this or not, is
that God hates Mexicans. Why else would He hand half of
Mexico—including California’s gold—to the American
aggressors? It seems like many Americans hate Mexicans,
too. We have just been through a Presidential election
where 62,979,636 voters cast their ballots for a
candidate who promises mass deportations. That’s 46.1%
of all votes cast. (To his credit, Michael Medved
rejects Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations.)
God must hate Native Americans, too. Western expansion
drove Native Americans from their homes, and to this
day, Whites continue to displace Native Americans.
Running an oil pipeline through a mostly White city like
Bismarck, ND is unthinkable. But Whites don’t have a
problem with the Dakota Access Pipeline fouling Native
American water and destroying Native sacred grounds at
Standing Rock. (Medved has referred to the water
protectors on air as “morons.”)
My purpose has not been to attack religion. My purpose
has been to attack the misuse of religion in the service
of imperialism. It is a misuse of religion to suggest
that God blesses one people by bringing calamity down on
another. It is a misuse of religion to suggest that God
favors the strong over the weak, Americans over
non-Americans, Whites over non-Whites. I prefer to think
that God blesses the downtrodden, the victims of
injustice, not the conqueror. I do not know how many
Americans share Medved’s views. Let’s hope it is not
many. That would be a blessing.
Charles
Pierson is a lawyer and a
member of the Pittsburgh Anti-Drone Warfare Coalition.
E-mail him at
Chapierson@yahoo.com.
Notes.
[1] The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
remarks that “The American takeover of California caused
an indigenous population decline that was sharper than
in any other time or place in U.S. history. In 1848 the
California Indian population was probably about 150,000.
By 1860, it was only 30,000.” See Jeffrey Ostler,
“Genocide and American Indian History,” in Oxford
Research Encyclopedia of American History (Mar. 2015).
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