Mark Twain on Columbus Day: The Old Glory of Juan Diego, the Cross, & the Quest for Power

And its hands would warp the entrails of the priest, For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings.

 Denis Diderot 

The mantle of Juan Diego is to Mexico what the American flag is to Americans.

Upon Juan Diego's mantle is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Basically, both are the modern day equivalents of the cross.

And when Simon Bolivar said that the veneration of Diego's mantle in Mexico, during its own Revolutionary War in 1815, "far exceeds the greatest reverence that the shrewdest prophet might inspire," he might as well have been talking about Old Glory.

Or what some might think to call, had not another flag already been so deemed, the stars and bars (with an emphasis on the bars, at least for Native Americans, slaves, minorities and women anyway).

What's really ironic about this, interestingly enough, is that the idea of worshiping a flag, or an eagle, or even an emperor or an empire, was seen by early Israelites (much like Muslims today) to be simply a sign of idolatry, as it detracted from a focus on worshiping God alone, rather than some lesser symbol that was said to embody some special meaning or significance.  And yet today, we see countless Christians, who see themselves as the true heirs to the religion of the Israelites, making the biggest fuss about both the flag of the American empire, and their belief in the sanctity of the American empire itself.

And regardless of what symbol a person is killing and dying for, the only thing that has shed more bloodshed and destruction in the world than the quest for power, is the fear of loosing it.

Every symbol in the world, which we convince ourselves is practically as sacred as the Virgin Mary herself, represents something people everywhere are convinced we need, in one way or another, to stop us all from tearing each other apart, or even destroying the entire planet.  Like Neo-Nazis for their race, we turn every attribute we ascribe to our sacred "symbol"  into a demigod (which means we either are God, at the end of the day, or we certainly like to think we are). 

I just think people should stop looking so much at these symbols, and take a really good look around.

If we demanded even half as much respect for each other that we collectively demand for our "sacred symbols," what kind of world would this look like?  All the world's a stage, after all, and each of us writes upon the pages of history no less than Shakespeare did.

My guess is that, if we did, this place would probably look a hell of lot more like what "America" was before any of us ever got here -  and decided to "follow God" and visit upon its inhabitants a fate far worse than Sodom and Gomorrah (which we celebrate with a holiday for the man who started it all - Wow) -  than it does now.      

As Mark Twain put it:

In many countries we have chained the savage and  starved him to death. In many countries, we have burned the savage at the stake. In more than one country, we have hunted the savage, and his little children, and their mother, with dogs and guns, through the woods and swamps, for an afternoon sport. In many countries we have taken the savages land from him, and made him our slave, and lashed him everyday, and broken his pride and made death his only friend, and overworked him until he has dropped in his tracks.

There are a number of humorous things in the world,  among them is the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other "savages."

We're not civilized, in other words, we're domesticated. And there's a big difference. You might even say they're polar opposites. And while half of us wants to defend the farmers who send us off to slaughter with an ear full of lies, the other is called "evil" for daring to suggest we should govern ourselves.