Divisiveness, Drunken Pilots And Kim Kardashian: A Pigeon-toed Indian Pontificates About The 2012 Elections

“If this nation continues with this divisiveness, this country is going toward a really destructive path. Obama should be the person to bring us together, yet he’s tearing us apart.”

Now mind you: I’m not an Obama apologist: I think that he’s a very good president that can be great.  At this moment in time, he’s far from great and, although he has been exemplary in his understanding of Tribal issues, has made some decisions that I wonder what the heck he’s thinking. I’m also not a Democrat apologist: they have many of the same flaws, in the big picture, as the Republican Party. At this point, Dennis was so nice that I didn’t necessarily want to offend him or be brisk with him. Still, facts are facts, and the notion that Obama is the cause of the divisiveness in the nation is not something that I was prepared to silently let ride.

I thought about it—how can I be diplomatic, yet honest, to this handsome, yet ridiculously dishonest, man?

“Dennis, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think you’re completely off—I respect your opinion, but not your history. Let me explain. I think I can honestly say that my reading of history shows that the nation has always been divided. The only thing is that rich, white dudes like yourself didn’t have to care about us poor people’s side of the divide before. Dennis…seriously? Never been this divided? Unless there was a huge hoax, like the reports that we landed on the moon, this country had a civil war with hundreds of thousands of Americans killed. That’s pretty divided, I’d say. I also think that the country was fairly divided when your people massacred thousands of Natives at any particular massacre site. I could name a few. Believe it or not, us Natives—as much as we seem to like white stuff—didn’t agree with those massacres of women and children. I also suspect that black folks did not agree with slavery or Japanese people with internment camps. But maybe the country’s citizens weren’t divided because Natives and blacks weren’t citizens yet.”

“But seriously, that doesn’t seem divided to you? Yet now, because a few white rednecks want to secede because babies are getting treated by a doctor and a black man told that doctor to treat those babies, the country is the most divided it’s ever been? I can’t really see that one, Dennis.”

Dennis was such a good listener that he never said another word. Instead, we sat quietly until the “Special Needs Boarding Section” was called for boarding.

Gyasi Ross is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and his family also belongs to the Suquamish Nation. He wrote a book called “Don’t Know Much About Indians (but i wrote a book about us anyways)” which you can get at DKMAI.com. He is also co-authoring a new book called “Of Course I’m a Boy, Silly!”, and the website and publishing company for that handy-dandy book is CutBankCreekPress.com (coming soon). He also semi-does the twitter thing at twitter.com/BigIndianGyasi

Image Credit: photokitty07

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